As Harper Lee's death is reported, we revisit our review of her 2015 "comeback", Go Set A Watchman.

“Do you want your children going to a school that’s been dragged down to accommodate Negro children?” asks a character in Harper Lee’s newly published novel, Go Set a Watchman. “The Negroes,” he explains, “have made terrific progress in adapting themselves to white ways, but they’re far from it yet”.

Those words – and many more like them – come from none other than Atticus Finch, known to readers of To Kill a Mockingbird as the heroic lawyer who couldn’t live with himself unless he took on the doomed case of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Atticus Finch, the moral conscience of 20th century America. Atticus, the namesake of thousands of boys born since 1960; now it seems their parents might as well have called them Adolf.

Go Set A Watchman is the “parent”, as Harper Lee has put it, of To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee is now 89, and living in a nursing home in Alabama. She wrote this book in 1957, and reworked it with her editor for years until it became To Kill a Mockingbird – the only book she ever published. Last summer, the manuscript of Go Set a Watchman was found in a safe deposit box, and considered to be sufficiently distinct from To Kill a Mockingbird as to be publishable as a separate novel. Because the action takes place 20 years later than the story of To Kill a Mockingbird, it feels like a sequel. But really, it’s more like a ghost: the spectre of Lee’s restless, ardent thoughts in progress.

The main source of shock will be the transformation of Atticus, now 72, into a racist. We learn that he once joined the Ku Klux Klan – “when the Klan was respectable, like the Masons”. He has among his papers a tract entitled “The Black Plague”, and appears to condone the views of a visiting speaker who talks about “n------” who will “mongrelise the race”.

What’s more, there is a crucial discrepancy in plot terms – which Lee’s editors have said she specifically did not wish to correct. In a flashback to the central court case in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus is said to have “won acquittal for a coloured boy on a rape charge”. The message of To Kill a Mockingbird – in which Atticus’s innocent client, Tom Robinson, is convicted by the jury – was that individuals must behave honourably, even if societies can’t change overnight. In Go Set a Watchman, society finds Tom Robinson innocent; yet the individual who defended him is shown to be full of prejudice.

The set-up is that Scout, now 26 and known as Jean Louise, has come home from New York to find Maycomb changed. Calpurnia, the servant who raised her, puts on proper airs in her presence and instead of seeing the little girl she loved, sees “white folks”. Her peers speak about black people in terms Jean Louise thinks should make “their flesh creep”. “What was this blight that had come down over the people she loved?” the narrator asks. The clear implication is that Scout has been gone too long to understand that her people are approaching a point of civil war. This is, as one character puts it, “the last agonising birth pain” of the South.

There is one critical point to make about the book’s politics. Although we may now find him intolerable, and although readers who hold Mockingbird dear may feel betrayed, Atticus’s views are not, in themselves, alarming for their time. Indeed, the story relies on the fact that the heroine – and only the heroine – finds them abhorrent. Go Set a Watchman is a book about a daughter realising how she has blindly adored her father and conducting, through the politics of civil rights, her own private rebellion.

“She did not know that she worshipped him,” Lee writes of Jean Louise. Or, as her uncle Jack tells her: “Now you, Miss, born with your own conscience, somewhere along the line fastened it like a barnacle onto your father’s.” Atticus, if anything, is still the wiser of the two players in this Oedipal drama. “Men carry their honesty in pigeonholes, Jean Louise,” he tries to explain. “They can be perfectly honest in some ways and fool themselves in other ways.” Slippery, yes; but it’s a better line than any of hers.

When Harper Lee’s editor, Tay Hohoff, received the manuscript of Go Set a Watchman in 1957, she felt, as she later wrote, that “there were many things wrong about it”; “there were dangling threads of a plot”, but there was enough life in it, and enough wisdom and wit, she said, that “the editorial call to duty was plain”. Reading the book now, it’s hard not to think Hohoff deserves a posthumous Pulitzer: to see the potential for a book of Mockingbird’s quality in this one is an act of exceptional perspicacity and optimism.

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The fact that Go Set a Watchman is not quite a draft makes it more confusing. If we were reading notes or marginalia, it would advertise itself more clearly as what it is: a novelist’s path to a better book. There is a small amount of overlap – enough to see the fine tailoring in Hohoff’s edit. There are some phrases that seem markedly Lee’s – "the inevitable verbena"; "state accommodations for the irresponsible"; "on clear days Cousin Joshua read Greek" – and others of a level that has been entirely excised from Mockingbird: “hopelessly lost in the forest primeval"; "the train honked derisively".

Though the views that propel it are more radical than those of To Kill a Mockingbird, in genre terms Go Set a Watchman is barely a novel at all. It contains several passages of undigested shouting, of the kind a student might write in a political pamphlet. The climactic scene, in particular, involves a detailed discussion of states’ rights that will be virtually unintelligible to non-American readers. And it’s bookended, rather half-heartedly, with sentimental scenes designed to obscure this and sell it instead as a love story.

Lee has not yet learned how to hide what she knows, and the book is weighed down with literary references. A cat is named after an obscure Victorian poem. Jean Louise quotes Matthew Arnold under her breath, and muses about Wordsworth as she’s mowing the lawn. The explications of Maycomb’s mores – the most transparent vehicle for Lee’s self-described ambition to be “the Jane Austen of south Alabama” – are overworked and underpowered.

Most significantly, the story is told in the third person. To Kill a Mockingbird’s narrator was virtuosic: not merely first person but a kind of double exposure, offering a six year-old’s point of view and a 26 year-old’s vocabulary. It was an elegant way of saying the same thing, because there is no one better to report, deadpan, on the irrational behaviour of adults than a child.

There is none of that skill here, and it leads you think about the notion of distance. Not just the distance in time between writing and publication, but between novelist and subject. Lee is a less interesting writer when she's offering a version of her contemporary self. A story about childhood, set in the past, serves her much better – and feels, paradoxically, more immediate.

Here, Jean Louise is fraught and sanctimonious. She cries, she sneers, she sweats with apprehension. Her father’s behaviour literally makes her sick. The book's point of view doesn't have enough distance for irony, because although you can sometimes see Lee striving for that as a stylist, Jean Louise is too full of outrage to make it possible. Go Set a Watchman is, altogether, a more anxious book. Its heroine is more hysterical, and its register less confident – both prose and character operating as if they had something to prove.

In terms of biographical speculation, it’s intriguing that this was what Lee wanted to write when she left home for New York, and that the more forgiving version of her father – on whom Atticus was based – emerged as she made return visits to tend to him when he was sick. Both books are dedicated to “Mr Lee” and to her older sister Alice. One wonders whether Alice, who died before plans to publish it were announced, hid this book in order to protect the memory of her father.

But the survivors who are likely to feel most sore are readers who have attempted to live by what they took to be the principles of Atticus Finch. Those people might consider Go Set a Watchman’s screeching, unsympathetic heroine. They might do well to imagine that in 1957 most readers would have sided with Atticus’s politics of prejudice. And they might consider this: by publishing Go Set a Watchman now, Harper Lee has merely demolished a fiction; if she’d published it then, she might have prolonged that era’s most intolerable facts.

Go Set a Watchman (William Heinemann, £18.99) was published on Tuesday July 14 2015.

Summary: Harper Lee's editor deserves a Pulitzer for turning this ghostly first draft into the masterful To Kill a Mockingbird, says Gaby Wood


The Lowell City Council chose Boston-based developer WinnCompanies Tuesday night to kickstart a large but long-stalled development there.

The council voted to name Winn as master developer for the Hamilton Canal District, 15 acres along canals on the edge of the city’s downtown. Under the plan, Winn will oversee a mix of buildings that could include at least 400,000 square feet of office and commercial space and hundreds of units of housing — one of the largest urban development opportunities in Massachusetts outside the immediate Boston area.

The $800 million project has been in the works for a decade.

Last year, another Boston-based developer, Trinity Financial, parted ways with Lowell after talks over an extension of their development rights fell through. Lowell officials sought a new developer, and Winn filed a proposal.

Now the company, which specializes in affordable and middle-income housing and has launched several successful smaller developments in Lowell, is committed to seek permits for its first Hamilton Canal sites within six months and aims to start construction within a year, according to the Lowell Sun.

Summary: WinnCompanies chosen as the developer for the Hamilton Canal District.


Most televised political debate in the United States is a lifeless, platitude-laden sideshow with virtually no value except as a grim form of entertainment, like watching democracy itself fed to the lions at the Coliseum. That is why Vermont’s recent gubernatorial debate, in which every candidate on the ballot was invited to participate, was such a breath of fresh air.

Vermont’s Democratic incumbent governor Peter Shumlin has a virtual lock on the election, with a double-digit lead over Republican challenger Scott Milne. Fortunately, the five other candidates on the ballot made for a lively discussion October 9.

In a world where political campaigning has been largely reduced to platitudes and soundbites, Vermonter and revolutionary socialist Pete Diamondstone called for the overthrow of the entire capitalist system and the outlawing of private enterprise. His solution for the problem of illegal drug use is to legalize everything and make the government the national drug dealer. One need not pass judgement on the quality of his program, but if suggesting that Uncle Sam start slinging smack isn’t thinking outside the box, pretty much nothing is. Plus the whole time, he appeared to be wearing jorts with suspenders and tall white socks, which counts for something as long as we’re going to fight about whether or not the president is allowed to wear a tan suit.

So much is taken for granted when our politicians get together to argue. Not so in Vermont last week, when self-described “lightworker” and most-chill candidate ever Emily Peyton answered a question about healthcare by suggesting we start by alleviating poverty. With poverty a major player in our obesity epidemic, her point may be too often left aside in our debates on healthcare. Peyton’s comment that money spent on healthcare “ought to go to the healers” may be a little rich in New Age lingo but her point is worth considering, with administrative costs a major driver of the increase on the pricetag of going to the doctor.

And it’s not just the refreshing willingness of dark horse candidates to state the obvious that endears one to this debate, but the humble honesty on display. To a question about how to lower the cost of college in Vermont, Bernard Peters—who is either a Duck Dynasty fanboy, a very dedicated hipster or just extremely legit—said, more or less, that he had no idea. Later the Libertarian candidate Dan Feliciano was asked about the incumbent governor’s program to get drug offenders into recovery rather than behind bars. He said, without equivocation, that he’d do literally nothing different. Good luck finding a mainstream candidate who would publicly take that position.

There’s the pure entertainment factor too (which was in no short display at Idaho’s similarly bizarre debate earlier this year). Through it all Cris Ericson and her extraordinary hat were fighting the good fight for highway rest area enthusiasts, chemtrail conspiracy theorists and food stamp recipients, who, she noted for reasons unknown to the rest of us, might be using food stamps to buy lottery tickets to get rich to be able to afford fruits and vegetables. So there’s also that, whatever that is.

Two of the candidates said one of the most important things they’d do if given the power is ensure that debates are open to every candidate on the ballot. Until Game of Thrones comes back there’s no better entertainment out there and with the dark horses thrown into the mix we might actually have some useful discussion.

You can watch the entire debate here.

Summary: Vermont's gubernatorial debate was a sure cure for the nation's political blues


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WATCH: The comedienne took issue with the inclusion of her name on the cover of Glamour's "Chic at Any Size" special issue.

Curvy model Ashley Graham is criticizing Amy Schumer after the comedienne was upset that Glamour magazine implied she was plus size. And Schumer has responded.

"I can see both sides, but Amy talks about being a big girl in the industry," Graham told Cosmopolitan magazine, which put her on the cover for its August issue. "You thrive on being a big girl, but when you're grouped in with us, you're not happy about it? That, to me, felt like a double standard."

If you're scratching your head, wondering where Graham's commentary came from, let's go back for a second.

Schumer, 35, sounded off in April about being named on a Glamour cover for a special issue of the magazine with the cover line "Chic at any size." She was listed along with Graham (the cover model for the issue as well), Melissa McCarthy and Adele under the line "Women who inspire us."

"@glamourmag put me in their plus size only issue without asking or letting me know and it doesn't feel right to me," she wrote in part on Instagram. "Young girls seeing my body type thinking that is plus size? What are your thoughts? Mine are not cool glamour not glamourous."

The 28-year-old Graham, who wears a size 14, should understand. The Sports Illustrated model doesn't refer to herself as plus size either. In the Cosmo interview, she explained why.

"Just because I'm not calling myself plus size doesn't mean I'm not representing a woman who is," she said. "I'm giving curvy women a seat at a table that we've never been invited to before — a table with high-end fashion people who have never considered us beautiful."

Schumer took to Twitter immediately after the interview hit the internet, taking the high road.

Summary: Curvy model Ashley Graham is criticizing Amy Schumer after the comedienne was upset that Glamour magazine implied she was plus size. And Schumer has responded."I can see both sides, but Amy talks about being a big girl in the industry," Graham told Cosmopolitan magazine, which put her on the cover...


Peter O’Toole appeared on Broadway just once, as Henry Higgins in a 1987 revival of “Pygmalion.”

O’Toole, who died Saturday, was famous for his drinking, but it wasn’t booze that made him eccentric onstage (and off) in this production.

“There was something off-kilter about him,” says a source who worked on the show. “We found out it was cocaine during the photo shoot. Martha Swope [the photographer] said to the press agent, ‘Somebody ought to powder his face because he’s very sweaty on his upper lip.’ ”

Sweat was running down from his nose, sweat mixed with gooey white powder.

The stage manager discreetly wiped his face, but then O’Toole began to run his fingers through his hair until “he looked like he’d stuck his finger in a socket,” the source says.

A few days later, Merle Frimark, the press agent, had to go to O’Toole’s suite at the Wyndham hotel to show him the photographs for his approval. He greeted her in a short bathrobe. He wore nothing underneath.

“He was the skinniest man I’d ever seen,” she says. “He reminded me of Carol Channing. She’s the only person who can put on a pair of tights, and they’re baggy. He was like that. Just a bean pole.”

Frimark had a pile of photographs. O’Toole went through them.

“Nope,” he said, flipping each one like a frisbee across the room. “You can’t use any of them. Look at my hair!”

O’Toole agreed to appear in the play on one condition: That the Shuberts, his producers, hire his friend Christopher Plummer’s daughter Amanda to play Eliza Doolittle.

But a few weeks into the run, he called the Shuberts and summoned them to his suite. “It is a matter of grave importance,” he told them. “To me, and ultimately to you.”

Shubert executives Gerald Schoenfeld and Philip Smith turned up at the appointed time and were offered tea by O’Toole’s butler. They waited for their star. And waited. Finally, he entered from a side door, doubled over and moving across the room like a crab.

“He looked like he was going to jump us,” Smith recalls.

He sat down and said, “This cast is absolutely insane. They are all crazy. But the worst is Amanda!”

“Peter, you insisted we hire her,” Smith protested.

“Chris made me do it!” he said. “But she’s insane!”

An hour later, Schoenfeld and Smith made their escape. “See you at the theater, Peter!” they said.

He crawled back to his room.

As it turned out, the critics hammered Plummer. They enjoyed O’Toole’s performance, but Frank Rich caught something of its oddball quality: “Mr. O’Toole has no qualms about making goo-goo eyes directly at the audience, if that’s what it takes to keep its attention — and, given that the eyes retain the iridescent blue of ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ who will complain?”

“Pygmalion” was not a success on Broadway, and a few years later, O’Toole gave up stage acting for good.

“I couldn’t bear theater directors,” he told his friend, journalist Richard Ingrams, during a delightful BBC interview in 2010. “I’ve never known anything sillier in my life. People who have never been on the stage are suddenly put in charge over everybody. No, no, I can’t take that.”

O’Toole gave his final stage performance in a revival of “Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell” at the Old Vic in 1999.

Jeffrey Bernard was a writer for the Spectator and a famous lush. Whenever he was too hung over to write a column, the Spectator would publish the line: “Jeffrey Bernard is unwell.”

O’Toole and Bernard were friends and drinking buddies, and his performance was hailed by the critics.

Phil Smith saw it. “He kept getting drunker and drunker as the evening went on, and he did so beautifully,” Smith says.

O’Toole had a theory about how to play a drunk: “You stand up when everything says that you cannot possibly stand up. You take a cigarette out when everything says it’s impossible for you to find one.”

The audience jumped out of their seats to applaud O’Toole at the curtain call. “I decided there and then I wouldn’t do it again,” he said. “Now is the time to go.”

He continued to appear in movies because “I don’t have to carry a picture anymore. I just pop in, wobble and pop out.”

Asked by Ingrams if he had any sage advice for young actors, O’Toole took a sip from his Guinness and warbled: “Keep smiling through . . .”

Summary: Peter O’Toole appeared on Broadway just once, as Henry Higgins in a 1987 revival of “Pygmalion.” O’Toole, who died Saturday, was famous for his drinking, but it wasn’t booze that made him eccentric…


Australian Paralympian Daniel Michel is one of a kind.

The 22-year-old is the first Australian boccia player to be picked for a Paralympics in 16 years and the only one on the team heading to Rio in September.

Daniel was part of some 150 athletes officially farewelled at a ceremony at Sydney's Town Hall on Tuesday.

"It's my first opportunity to represent Australia at the highest level which is what I've always wanted to do," the Sydney-based athlete told AAP.

Born with spinal muscular atrophy, Daniel took up boccia five years ago and has since dedicated himself to the sport, training for 30 hours a week and astutely studying opponents.

Similar to lawn bowls, boccia is played indoors with leather balls, testing muscle control and accuracy.

"I compare boccia to cricket in the sense that it is a concentration sport," he said.

"You must also be able to make difficult decisions under immense pressure ... there is not a lot of room for error and you don't get second chances."

He was joined at the ceremony by three-time Paralympic swimmer Ellie Cole and Andrew Edmondson, who is aiming to help Australia to back-to-back gold medals in wheelchair rugby.

Edmonson is making his Paralympic debut in the sport dubbed murderball for its full contact nature.

"We'll be really out there to hit each other hard, which is good," Edmonson said.

Retired wheelchair tennis player and Sydney gold medallist David Hall encouraged athletes to ride the groundswell of support.

"I remember my first in and you're just so full of energy and full of beans," he told AAP.

As a 22-year-old Hall bombed out in the first round during his Paralympic debut at Barcelona in 2012 - a result that sparked a surge to world number one three years later.

"The result was a bit of a motivator and you've got to embrace what happens whether you're successful or not," he said.

"(But) they're a young group and I think they'll do really well."

Australia picked up 32 gold medals at the London Paralympics four years ago and have finished in the top five of the tally since 1992.

More than 4000 Paralympians will compete in Rio from September 7-18.

Summary: Australia's Paralympic athletes have been officially farewelled at Sydney's Town Hall before  competing in Rio in September.


The majority of American households have a pet (62%, according to the Humane Society of the United States). That’s a problem if you’re trying to sell your home.

It’s not just the smell, either, (though that’s a huge issue). Damage to floors, pet hair all over the couch, a torn-up yard or a dog barking while someone is touring your house can have a negative impact on potential buyers’

“It’s a first impressions kind of business,” said Arvin Sahakian, a real estate agent and vice president of mortgage marketplace BeSmartee. “I would say it has a big impact on what a buyer is willing to pay.”

For every dollar it costs to repair damage caused by pets, a buyer might reduce their offer by $2 to $3, estimates David Scott of RE/MAX Valley Realtors, in a news release on the topic. That could end up costing more than if you repair the damage yourself, before selling the home.

That’s not always easy, especially when it comes to odor.

“Even if the home is staged properly, it’s just something about that smell, particularly with cats,” Sahakian said. He recalled an experience when he showed a home in Los Angeles that looked great from the outside, but upon opening the door, the tour was pretty much over. “We were nearly blown back by the intense odor of cat urine. It was likely coming from the multiple litter boxes in the living room and hallways.”

Read Next: 4 Homeownership Myths to Avoid

He hadn’t been able to see the property before bringing his clients by (which was a red flag), and one of the potential buyers was allergic to cats. She immediately walked out, and the couple wanted to move on.

Like many in the real estate world, Alexandrea Merrell has a similar story. She’s now a broker for Town Residential in New York, but this experience took place in Georgia, where a woman had moved to a nursing home, leaving her kids to sell the house.

“You could hardly go in the house,” Merrell said. The whole house smelled like cat urine. “They tried steam cleaning, and they even had a company come in that was a fire remediation specialist — after a fire they come get the smell out. Ultimately what we had to do was remove the floorboards, they had to chisel away the top level of concrete, re-pour the concrete and seal it. Even then there was always kind of this funky smell.”

Those are extreme examples, but even fixable damage or messiness can be just as problematic.

Read Next: This Simple Home Improvement Tip Could Save You a Bundle of Cash

“I had a house where they had an incontinent Pomeranian. It was one polka dot after another all over the house,” Merrell said. “Even though the carpeting can come out, it was just so distracting. The house wasn’t going to sell.”

Even if there’s no damage, a messy house can give off a sense of neglect. Or, as Merrell put it, “If you don’t care enough to take care of that before I come and look at the house, what else did you not care about?”

Keeping the dog or cat in a closed off room or backyard might be a problem, too, if a potential buyer is afraid of the animal or gets distracted by their presence.

Assuming you want to sell your house quickly and for a good price, a tidy house that’s been rigorously cleaned should be a top priority. No matter how nice you think your house is, a little pet stink or clutter can cost you a lot.

Summary: Take a deep breath.


Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is an extreme example – a really, really extreme example – of a widespread leadership problem. As mobs storm grocery stores and bakeries to avoid starvation, infant mortality rockets because hospitals lack electricity and medicine, people risk and sometimes lose their lives trying to leave the country, which is illegal – and now, we learn from the New York Times, malaria is rampaging through the country – Maduro has taken no effective action against one of the worst humanitarian crises in the Western hemisphere. Why not? Only two possible explanations seem available: He’s either clueless or evil.

Any leader whose behavior seems explainable only by those two options is in deep trouble. Maduro certainly is. His approval rating is 12%, finds a recent poll, and 83% of respondents say they’d vote to remove him given the chance. Opposition leaders have been struggling to organize a recall referendum, which apparently will not take place until next year.

But in fact many leaders invite that same two-pronged evaluation through behavior on a far smaller scale than Maduro’s. An especially common scenario is a leader’s failure to remove a subordinate who is terrible at his or her job. Everyone who works for that person knows that he or she is damaging the organization and must go, yet the boss doesn’t act. Why not? The leader must be clueless – ignorant of what’s plain to everyone else – or evil – aware of the problem yet unwilling to fix it, for unknown reasons that cannot be good.

That situation can arise with any kind of organizational problem, not just personnel. The leader sometimes deludes himself into thinking he’s got time to act because others aren’t yet aware of the problem. Just the opposite is usually true: In most organizations, the boss is the last to know.

The no-good-explanation quandary arises also when a leader himself or herself can’t supply a better explanation for problematic behavior. It’s a non-partisan issue. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server as Secretary of State or Donald Trump’s “Second Amendment people” remark last week, many voters are asking themselves: clueless or evil?

Leaders who stumble into this trap need to get out as fast as possible. As J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has rightly observed, a leader’s problems “do not age well.” Yet most leaders in this fix just make matters worse. Maduro is a good example. Instead of trying to reverse the course of a tragically failing economy, he’s doubling down on the disastrous policies that led there, installing a Marxist professor from Spain as his unofficial top economic adviser. In that poll cited earlier, 94% of respondents said they think the military is unable to handle food distribution. Maduro responded by elevating the military’s role, replacing the Minister of Interior and Justice with a general. Then, on Saturday, he left his chaotic country to spend the weekend in Cuba celebrating Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday.

Clueless or evil? Any leader who can’t supply a better answer than those two alternatives is, sooner or later, doomed.

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Summary: Power Sheet - August 15, 2016


09/29/2016 AT 02:15 PM EDT

A Georgia mom is speaking out after a police officer allegedly told her that she

her 1-month-old son at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Columbus, Georgia, when a sheriff's deputy approached and said she "needed to cover up because someone might find it 'offensive,' " and that if her nipple was exposed he would have to arrest her for indecent exposure, the new mom

"He also pointed out how he could 'already see my areola' and that if someone saw my nipple (even if I were trying to cover up) that he would have to arrest me and that he 'really didn't want to arrest me,' " Shukla writes. "For him to see my areola he would've had to have been staring VERY hard."

Shukla says she informed the deputy

"in any location where the mother and baby are otherwise authorized to be."

Another woman who witnessed the incident snapped a photo of Shukla arguing with the deputy and posted her own message on Facebook, which Shukla later posted as well.

"I told the deputy I have no problem with her feeding her infant," the woman writes. "I had heard of women being told to stop breastfeeding but I had never witnessed it in real life. I was so angry I was shaking, she was so upset she was having trouble gathering herself."

to the incident on Facebook Monday morning, saying that he had consulted with the deputy and was

"My wife and I have four children, each of whom were breastfed, and two of my daughters now have small children of their own. Therefore, I fully understand and appreciate the right of a woman to feed her child wherever she is most comfortable," Darr wrote. "Our office does not condone these actions and will ensure all officers know and understand the law. On behalf of the Muscogee County Sheriff's Office, I would like to personally extend an apology to the woman involved, and we hope that she knows that these are not the opinions or practices of the office as a whole."

that she filed an official complaint Monday morning, and hopes that no other mom will go

again that night, adding that he had met with Shukla, and is "very concerned" about her treatment.

"We have sent out a reminder to all of our deputies, that in accordance with Georgia law, a woman has a legal right to breastfeed wherever she needs to, without having to cover up."

Summary: A breastfeeding mom shared her story after she says a police officer said it was illegal for her to nurse in public because it would be indecent exposure


The company said it will receive £100 million from the initial public offering (IPO) with the rest going to its venture capital backers, including Index Ventures and Vitruvian Partners and some of the senior management and employees.

Thursday marked the so-called "conditional dealings" of Just Eat, which is not open to the entire public and is usually traded by institutional investors. The "unconditional dealings" in which all investors can participate in share buying will begin on April 8.

Read More'Beware' the UK IPO flurry fueled by private equity

Just Eat's IPO comes amid a flurry of listings in the U.K. such as budget shop Poundland and online appliances retailer AO.com. There have been 32 flotations on the London Stock Exchange this year, raising £5.73 billion.

Many analysts have expressed the concern about high valuations of the recent listings, particularly technology firms.

Richard Holway, chairman of Tech Market View, said that while the business is a good one, Just Eat should not be labelled a technology company and fetch such a high valuation.

"My problem is that we label so many companies as tech stocks so giving them frothy tight valuations," Holway told CNBC in a phone interview.

Read MoreBoom in UK IPOs led by 'bricks and clicks'

"Ultimately they will have to have a mature, tight valuation eventually. I'm fearful that if the bubble bursts and their share price goes down, it will ripple through all of the tech stocks."

Summary: Investors have taken a bite out of online takeaway service Just Eat as the company shares popped on its London stock market debut.


By DAVID HINCKLEY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Thursday, April 27th 2000, 2:12AM

WBAI (99.5 FM) has named a program director: Bernard White, morning co-host and a 20-year 'BAI veteran. He replaces the revered Samori Marksman, who died in March 1999.

"I just hope to put my shoes next to his," said White yesterday. He said he hopes to sharpen the station's hard news focus, "to do what we do better" and "help put some of the magic into radio."

Acknowledging that 'BAI and parent Pacifica are currently undergoing several crises - as usual - he said, "I think I can help with the healing." He said he had talked with "others considered for the job" who urged him to take it.

He will give up the full-time morning shift and says he is considering replacements. One candidate is Clayton Riley,.

On the air, White is polite, soft-spoken and often bemused - which can disarm those who think WBAI is always too serious. He is well versed in history, and while he acknowledges controversies around WBAI, he vigorously defends the station's unique value.

AROUND THE DIAL: Sam Greenfield takes the 5-7 p.m. daily slot on WEVD (1050 AM). His 9-11 p.m. gig may go to Arnie Mazer. Â Carol Miller is working middays at WHCN in Hartford. Â WKCR (89.9 FM) plays Duke Ellington 6 p.m. tomorrow to 6 a.m. Sunday.

Summary: WBAI (99.5 FM) has named a program director: Bernard White, morning co-host and a 20-year 'BAI veteran. He replaces the revered Samori Marksman, who died in March 1999. "I just hope to put my shoes next to his,"said White yesterday. He said he hopes to sharpen the station's hard news focus, "to do what we do better"and "help put some of the magic into radio.


Sunday, November 13th 2005, 1:05AM

- THE X LIST edited by Jami Bernard (Da Capo Press, $17.50) The Daily News' Bernard spearheads the National Society of Film Critics' "guide to the movies that turn us on," featuring essays from 40 top reviewers on the most exotic and erotic films ever made. The choices range from "Young Lady Chatterley" and "Eyes Wide Shut" to "Deep Throat" and "Last Tango in Paris." Bernard's five personal picks are the recent "Secretary" (2002) and oldies "Rebecca" (1940), "Gilda" (1946), "Bye Bye Birdie" (1963) and "Carmen Jones" (1954).

- DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT MYTHOLOGY by Kenneth C. Davis

(HarperCollins, $26.95) The USA Weekend columnist returns with another "Don't Know" title. This one's a massive overview of every myth under the sun. Davis shatters commonly held myths about myths, differentiating them from allegories and legends, and explores the history of such tales in societies and religions around the globe, from Mesopotamia's Gilgamesh to Genesis' Noah. You can read here, too, about Native Americans' use of peyote, a tempestuous Nordic god of thunder and a debate over the meaning of evil.

- THE GOOGLE STORY by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed (Delacorte Press, $26) Vise, a Pulitzer winner at the Washington Post, teams with research whiz Malseed to chronicle the birth and growth of Google, and how it became one of the most important corporations in history. This unauthorized account tracks Google's founding in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page and the two venture capitalist firms that jointly financed the startup. The authors also report on the secret computer network that accomplishes Google's searches, and its current enterprises - including the controversial "book scanning" project.

- OPUS DEI by John L. Allen Jr. (Doubleday, $24.95) The author, who is the CNN and NPR Vatican commentator, previously wrote "All the Pope's Men." Here he examines the mysterious and controversial sect of the Catholic Church that features in "The Da Vinci Code." He traveled the world to interview current and former members of the 84,000-strong organization, even spending several days living in an Opus Dei residence. He includes his findings on the group's finances, its treatment of women and its influence.

Summary: BETWEEN THE COVERS - THE X LIST edited by Jami Bernard (Da Capo Press, $17.50) The Daily News' Bernard spearheads the National Society of Film Critics' "guide to the movies that turn us on,"featuring essays from 40 top reviewers on the most exotic and erotic films ever made. The choices range from "Young Lady Chatterley"and "Eyes Wide Shut"to "Deep Throat"and "Last Tango in Paris."Bernard's five personal picks are the recent "


One Equity Partners is finally independent, around one year after news first broke that the private equity group was being spun out of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. JPM .

J.P. Morgan has been the only investor in One Equity Partners since the group was founded in 2001, helping to back deals for such companies as Polaroid, Mandiant, TV Guide and Pirelli Tires. Last year it launched a process to sell its entire position in the group, plus a package of investments in third-party private equity funds, in order to scale back its private equity exposure.

What the bank apparently didn’t realize, however, was that the private equity secondary market simply couldn’t handle such a large transaction. OEP’s portfolio most recently was valued at around $4.5 billion, but even the largest secondary funds only have around $10 billion in committed capital. That would have meant several secondary firms teaming up (which is rare) and then highly-leveraging the portfolio (which is even rarer).

So JPM instead began selling the third-party stakes piecemeal, and worked to sell as much of the OEP portfolio as it could. The result was today’s deal, in which Lexington Partners (lead) and AlpInvest Partners agreed to acquire JPM’s stakes in around half of the OEP portfolio companies for just under $2 billion (a price first reported by the WSJ, and confirmed by Fortune). It’s important to note that this sort of structure is different than Lexington and AlpInvest buying a 50% stake in the entire portfolio. No specifics one which portfolio companies were involved, but chances are that it was many of the stronger ones.

It also is worth noting that the OEP portfolio had already shrunk a bit from the time it was valued at $4.5 billion, via liquidity events. For example, the firm today has just 30 portfolio companies, down from 34 when we first reported on Lexington’s involvement back in May.

“This really was a negotiated deal because the original process didn’t yield a solution,” explains a source familiar with the situation.

J.P. Morgan said that the deal is not expected to have a material impact on its earnings. OEP is now considered an independent entity, with both Lexington and AlpInvest believed to have made additional commitments so that the firm can make new investments.

Sign up for Dan’s daily newsletter on deals and dealmakers at www.GetTermSheet.com

Summary: J.P. Morgan sells half of its private equity unit for nearly $2 billion, but wanted to be rid of it all.


When Joan Miro first met Joan Baixas at one of his puppet shows in Barcelona in 1973, Baixas asked the Surrealist master if he would design puppets for his company, La Claca. Miro had already spent many years working on painted versions of Ubu Roi, the absurd, violent king of Alfred Jarry's invention and, spying an opportunity to produce a subversive, grand guignol performance along the lines of Ubu, Miro replied that he'd rather create an entire show.

Baixas and Miro developed a character based on Ubu, called Merma, a 'stupid, cruel, violent dictator who was also a lot of fun', in Baixas's description. This was near the end of Franco's rule and Merma was a political allegory so strong that the piece, which wasn't performed until 1978, three years after the dictator's death, could not take place in a public square. The title was Death to Merma. 'That,' Baixas says now, 'was because we thought we were going to be able to forget him.' On the contrary, he has found, almost 30 years later, that Merma is alive and well. 'The name is unimportant,' he says, 'because, unfortunately, there are many Mermas now.' Baixas's revised version, finally to be performed as intended - as a movable public spectacle - in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern on Saturday is entitled: Merma Will Never Die. 'In recent years,' Baixas, says, 'we have seen leaders who wage wars with lies and who play games with democracy. The least we can do is laugh at them.'

Baixas, a painter himself, found Miro 'a very radical person artistically, and very affectionate personally. He taught me that life and art are the same thing; he taught me vitality over intellectualism; the depth in simplicity and how hard you have to work to find it'. The two large backdrops that eventually accompanied Death to Merma (now hanging in the Miro Foundation in Barcelona) were to be among Miro's last great works. He died in 1983. 'This work was very important to him,' says Baixas. 'He worked on it in my studio for two weeks non-stop. In those two weeks he lost six kilos. His wife was worried he'd die in the process. "So what?" he replied to her, "What more could I want than to die working on this?"'

Summary: A puppet show designed by Miro is set to be reborn. Gaby Wood reports.


Is the golden age of showstopping cultural architecture starting to unravel? There were worrying signs this week that some of the 21st-century's masterworks might have built on metaphorically shaky foundations. First to the chopping block was Santiago Calatrava, the exclusive and reclusive designer of beautiful bridges and structures such as the Athens Olympic complex and the World Trade Centre Transportation Hub. This week, the Spanish genius's magnum opus, Valencia's City of the Arts and Sciences – a Calatrava-designed landscape of theatres, galleries and cinemas – hit a bit of a snag when he was accused of "bleeding Valencia dry". The unfinished campus has cost taxpayers over €1bn so far, €100m of which has gone to the elite architect, it's alleged.

Spain is now saddled with a host of embarrassingly excessive projects, including Peter Eisenman's opulent City of Culture in Galicia, which opened last year, four times over budget, Oscar Niemeyer's handsome new gallery in Aviles, named in the Brazilian architect's honour, which was forced to close after six months, and Valencia's long-delayed, barely used Castellon Airport.

It's not much better in Italy, where Zaha Hadid's Maxxi gallery in Rome has also run into financial difficulties. This week, its president, Pio Baldi, resigned amid accounting difficulties, a huge hole in the gallery's accounts and threats of closure, just two years after the building won Zaha the Stirling prize. As the cuts start to bite across the eurozone, we're probably in for more. Good timing, at least, for the Architecture Foundation's new exhibition on The Economic Crisis and its Consequences for Architecture, at their London project space. Presented by Dutch critic Hans Ibelings, author of Supermodernism, it asks whether we are now witnessing the formal end of the industrial revolution, and what, if anything architects can do about it.

Talking of prescient Dutch men, somehow avoiding this Euro-bonfire of vanities was Rem Koolhaas. Last week his OMA unveiled plans for a home for Moscow's Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture in the middle of Gorky Park. Despite being run by the fabulously wealthy Dasha Zhukova – aka Mrs Roman Abramovich – OMA's new Garage is not plated in platinum and lined with snow leopard fur. In fact, it's a relatively modest revamp of a crumbling Soviet-era restaurant building. Much of the original concrete building is preserved, behind a new wrapping of translucent polycarbonate.

Then this week, here's Koolhaas providing another cultural home for an even grander dame of the art world: Marina Abramovic. The first lady of performance art has long grappled with issues of permanence for her ephemeral work – which has often involved acts of prolonged, painful physical endurance. Now she at least gives it a permanent home. It's another conversion – of a former theatre in Hudson, New York, which OMA promises to transform into a new type of cultural building, "a laboratory for exploring time-based and immaterial art". "As well as training artists," the press release goes on, "Abramovic also wants to train audiences in the mental and physical disciplines of creating and experiencing long-durational work." Sounds like some comfy chairs are in order then.

And lest anyone accuse Rem of getting too highbrow, he also made a cameo appearance this week in the latest episode of The Simpsons. He's seen manning a "Lego Architecture" stand in the children's play area of a cruise ship, showing awed kids how to build their own CCTV Headquarters. Is that how he persuaded the Chinese? Still, Frank Gehry was a more game Simpsons cameo in 2005. He designs a new concert hall for Springfield, inspired by a letter from Marge that he screws up and chucks away (at 3 minutes 50 seconds).

On to the Olympics now, and the latest stage in the interminable countdown also marked the debut of one of the best pieces of London 2012-related design: the Olympic torch, which was lit in Greece. It was designed by Barber Osgerby and like much of their work it's clean, simple and elegant: a triangular cone of perforated gold-plated aluminium resembling a deluxe Cornetto. It's a symbolic sculpture but a functional one, too; those perforations make it lighter to carry and help dissipate heat, so the handle doesn't get too hot. Last month, the torch was the surprise winner of the Design Museum's Design of the Year award, beating favourites such as Michael Hopkins' Velodrome and Min-Kyu Choi's Mu folding plug. After a promotional tour of Britain most product designers would kill for, the torch will meet with its (top secret) Thomas Heatherwick-designed cauldron in the Olympic stadium in July.

Summary: Steve Rose: Santiago Calatrava comes under fire over Valencia's City of the Arts and Sciences, Zaha Hadid's Maxxi gallery faces closure, but Rem Koolhaas's star keeps rising ... as far as The Simpsons


Sunday was the first time all season that I was glad I didn’t own A.J. Green in either of my fantasy leagues.

I realize how crass that sounds, because my fake team’s fate is benefiting from the real-life, season-ending injury to an excellent receiver. But admit it: You immediately thought of yourself when you heard the news, too.

One of my league-mates texted me just seconds after seeing Green go down on the RedZone Channel: “Noooo!” And I knew what he meant.

Later, when the Bengals announced he likely had torn his hamstring, the same owner texted: “I’m done. Season over. Can’t believe this.” With a few extra thoughts that are best left to your imagination.

Later, during the Sunday night postgame show, I heard the news that Giovani Bernard had torn his ACL and also will miss the rest of the season. And my warped mind immediately made the personal connection: No more sharing for Jeremy Hill! I might have even performed a subconscious fist pump.

What is wrong with me?

Last Wednesday, I made a blockbuster trade of one of my favorite players, LeSean McCoy, in return for Matt Ryan. (I thought QB was my team’s only weakness, until Dak Prescott lit up the Ravens and looked into the camera at me as if to say, “Do I look weak to you?”) Needless to say, I squirmed when Shady waltzed into the end zone early Sunday afternoon.

And when he went out with a thumb injury? Yep, I sent the following text to my trading partner: “Damn shame, buddy. I feel just awful for you.”

Catch ’em while you can

Rex Burkhead, RB, Bengals: Though Hill is the biggest beneficiary of Bernard’s exit, Burkhead will receive an increase in his workload, too. Especially in the passing game. Just how productive the Cincinnati offense will be without Green and Bernard is another story.

Tyler Boyd, WR, Bengals: Boyd’s fantasy stock obviously soars with Green’s injury. Boyd scored the first TD of his rookie season Sunday, and should be the most-targeted Cincinnati wideout down the stretch.

Rishard Matthews, WR, Titans: Why is he still available in 40 percent of all leagues? Have you not seen the tear Marcus Mariota has been on? Have you not noticed that Matthews is his favorite WR target? In fact, he has been one of the most reliable receivers in Fantasyland over the past seven games. And on Sunday, he proved he can even do it without reaching the end zone.

Allen Hurns, WR, Jaguars: He is still owned in roughly 70 percent of all leagues, despite catching just three passes for 22 yards over the past three games. If you insist on owning a Jacksonville wideout not named Robinson, consider Marqise Lee, who has overtaken Hurns in the pecking order and scored his first TD of the year against the Lions.

Brandon LaFell, WR, Bengals: See Boyd, Tyler, above. There’s only one Cincinnati receiver worth banking on now, and LaFell ain’t the one.

Follow Ladd Biro at fantasy-fools.blogspot.com, on Facebook and Twitter (@ladd_biro).

Summary: Later, when the Bengals announced he likely had torn his hamstring, the same owner texted: I’m done.  Later, during the Sunday night postgame show, I heard the news that Giovani Bernard had torn his ACL and also will miss the rest of the season.  Last Wednesday, I made a blockbuster trade of one of my favorite players, LeSean McCoy, in return for Matt Ryan.  (I thought QB was my team’s only weakness, until Dak Prescott lit up the Ravens and looked into the camera at me as if to say, “Do I look weak to you?”) Needless to say, I squirmed when Shady waltzed into the end zone early Sunday afternoon.  [...] when he went out with a thumb injury?  Yep, I sent the following text to my trading partner: Damn shame, buddy.  Boyd scored the first TD of his rookie season Sunday, and should be the most-targeted Cincinnati wideout down the stretch.  Have you not noticed that Matthews is his favorite WR target?  [...] he has been one of the most reliable receivers in Fantasyland over the past seven games.  [...] on Sunday, he proved he can even do it without reaching the end zone.  If you insist on owning a Jacksonville wideout not named Robinson, consider Marqise Lee, who has overtaken Hurns in the pecking order and scored his first TD of the year against the Lions.


Before you go, we thought you'd like these...

The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's office confirms to ET that hypothermia was the cause of country singer Craig Strickland's death after he embarked on a hunting trip in Kaw Lake this past December. His friend, Chase Morland, also died during the excursion.

Strickland was found dead on Jan. 4 after he was reported missing on Dec. 27. Strickland's body was recovered in a "thick tree and brush" that made it difficult to locate him because of the camouflage hunting gear he was wearing.

WATCH: Craig Strickland's Bandmates React to His Death -- 'He Is Smiling Down on Us'

The 29-year-old musician's death was ruled accidental by the medical examiner.

See more photos of Craig Strickland throughout his career:

Craig Strickland died of hypothermia, medical examiner rules it was accidental

This undated image released by Lightfly Creative shows Craig Strickland, lead singer of Arkansas-based country-rock band Backroad Anthem. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Strickland, 29, of Springdale, Ark., died at Kaw Lake, near the Kansas-Oklahoma state line after he and Chase Moreland disappeared on a hunting trip. Strickland'sbody was recovered on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016. The body of Morland, 22, of Van Buren, Ark., was recovered Dec. 28. (Brian Armas/Lightfly Creative via AP)

Craig Strickland and Chase Morland

In case we don't come back, @BackroadCRAIG and I are going right through Winter Storm Goliath to kill ducks in Oklahoma. 😅 #IntoTheStorm

Chase Morland and Craig Strickland

Thank you so much @kristinathomasphotography for sending these beautiful pictures of us. I am crying because they make my heart so full of love for this man. I love him with every fiber of my being. And I want to thank everyone for all the love, kind words and support they have sent to our family. Thank you for continuing to pray without stopping. Because of you we have been able to make it through this difficult time. Thank you for loving us and Chase's family. Thank you @CrossChurch and @shilohsaints For holding a prayer session for Craig for the past two nights. I couldn't make it through life without all of you. Thank you to all the people who have come up, called, and messaged me to shower me with love. Thank you to @backroadanthem for loving me as a sister and being there for our family every step of the way. Thank you to all the OK law enforcement agencies that have cared so much through this crisis. I'm sorry I can't thank everyone for everything you have done. But know that I love you and appreciate every single call, text, hug and prayer. To update everyone, the search for Craig has been called for the night and will resume in the morning. We love you and appreciate you more than words can say. Please continue to pray for both our and Chase's family.

Craig Strickland with his band Backroad Anthem

R E A D Y for tonight in Jonesboro. AR Brickhouse 9pm 👍🏼

From Little Rock last night to now sitting in a tree in Brown County Illinois... Ready to give an Illinois buck a ride in the back of the truck... 👊🏼

Thank you everyone who will be there tonight. You have no idea what that means to me and does for my heart. I am so blessed to have my CrossChurch and Shiloh family. I wouldn't be able to walk through this difficult moment without all of you. Thank you all. Love you ❤

Merry Christmas from the Stricklands ☺ #PrettyWife #Christmas

#missusa2015 with my love ❤ @backroadcraig I'm so incredibly happy a member of our Vanbros family won it!!! So proud to have judged you at Miss OK USA @missusa! You did amazing!! 👑💖👏🏻

Well that was fun... #KendrickFincher #Arkansas

Last week, the late singer's wife, Helen Strickland, tweeted out a pic of her husband's newly completed headstone. "Craig's headstone turned out amazing!" she wrote. "Thank you Matt Snow from Signature Stone for making our vision a reality!"

WATCH: Country Singer Craig Strickland's Body Found, Wife Tweets -- 'Thank You Lord for Leading Us to Him'

The former beauty queen has kept her husband's memory alive on social media. "I will forever cherish our year of marriage," she Instagrammed. "I love you Craig Michael."

Summary: The Oklahoma Medical Examiner's office confirms that hypothermia was the cause of country singer Craig Strickland's death.


Boston-based startup accelerator MassChallenge has revealed two partnerships that will promote female entrepreneurship and help assist midcareer job changes in the startup ecosystem.

On Tuesday, MassChallenge announced a partnership with Startup Institute that it hopes will benefit early-stage companies and help growing startups add skilled employees. Days earlier, the accelerator program said it will partner with Women’s iLab to promote female entrepreneurship and encourage the creation of more startups led by women, while also sponsoring seats in the 2015 MassChallenge program.

“Dedicated seats for women-owned startups, and those with gender-equal leadership, in the world’s largest accelerator is our first big initiative to help the next generation of female entrepreneurs get their ideas off of the ground,” Katrina Melesciuc, a cofounder of Women’s iLab said in a statement.

Scott Bailey, MassChallenge Boston managing director, said that after he met the team at the Women’s iLab, they began working together to make sure that MassChallenge was addressing the needs of the female entrepreneurs coming through the program. “They are going to help us recruit great startups with women founders,” he said, “and we are going to add programming to better support those women.”

The partnership between MassChallenge and Startup Institute, which teaches skills to job seekers looking to join early-stage companies, benefits both organizations, said Allan Telio, vice president and program director of Startup Institute Boston.

“This is about helping our startups deal with one of the biggest problems they have, which is talent,” Bailey said of the connection with Startup Institute. A more formal relationship will make it easier to bring together the high-potential, entrepreneurial students from Startup Institute with MassChallenge companies and startups.

Both MassChallenge and Startup Institute are in the midst of international expansion initiatives. With programs operating in the United Kingdom and Israel, MassChallenge has plans to open in 10 cities throughout the world in the next five years. Startup Institute, which also operates in London, has a branch in Berlin as well.

Summary: Boston-based startup accelerator MassChallenge has announced two new partnerships that will promote female entrepreneurship and help assist mid-career job changes in the startup ecosystem.


THE BROTHERS K By David James Duncan. 645 pp. New York: Doubleday.

THE 19th-century Russian novel has been born again in "The Brothers K," David James Duncan's wildly excessive, flamboyantly sentimental, tear-jerking, thigh-slapping homage to Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy -- and the game of baseball.

For the title isn't merely a spin on "The Brothers Karamazov," though Mr. Duncan makes frequent references to that heavy tome. "K," we are reminded, is also the baseball-scorecard symbol for striking out -- and thus, as Mr. Duncan extrapolates it, for failing, flunking, pratfalling, making a bad situation even worse. But it can have a positive side as well. "To lose your very self for the sake of another," he adds, "is . . . the only way you're ever going to save it."

The strikeout kids are the brothers Chance, four boys of the baby-boom generation born to Hugh Chance, a worldly-wise and weary fastball-slinging minor-league pitcher, and Laura, Hugh's staunchly conservative Seventh-day Adventist wife. Kincaid, the novel's principal narrator; his brothers, Everett, Irwin and Peter, and their twin sisters, Beatrice and Winifred, grow up in Camas, Wash., a working-class town where Hugh supplements his meager baseball salary by working at the local paper mill.

Everyone believes that Papa Chance is destined for the big leagues -- until an accident at the mill crushes the thumb on his pitching hand. Laura declares that this, like all tragedies, is God's will, and that nothing can be done to make it better. The family settles for a life of noisy desperation until a foulmouthed surgeon offers to repair the injured thumb with bones from Papa's toe. Thus Hugh Chance is reborn as his team's pitching coach and "stupid situation reliever," known, of course, as Papa Toe.

For a while, the national pastime, seen on television and from rump-punishing bleachers far from the bright lights of the major leagues, becomes a complex metaphor for all that Papa Chance and his sons hold sacred. Everett, the eldest, even goes so far as to mark the beginning of the turbulent 60's not with the Kennedy assassination or the arrival of the Beatles but with the day Roger Maris became "the assassin of a legend," hitting 61 home runs and breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record.

But the family romance with baseball fades a bit as the brothers mature. In a manner similar to Dostoyevsky's manipulation of the Karamazovs, Mr. Duncan's Chance brothers become representative types of America's countercultural youth, whose passions, he suggests with oversimplified hindsight, were due more to spiritual uncertainty than to politics, the Vietnam War or that famed hedonistic trio -- sex, drugs and rock-and-roll.

Everett declares himself an atheist and becomes a long-haired campus radical, eventually fleeing to Canada to escape the draft. Peter, the family intellectual, embraces Eastern mysticism and departs for India to study obscure religious texts. Irwin, who clings to his mother's rigorous faith, trusts blindly that God will protect him when he is drafted and sent to Vietnam. And Kincaid, who escapes the military because of an eye injury, tries to hold an increasingly estranged family together as he sees his older brothers venture out into the world beyond Camas.

After taking a swipe at the sentimental, up-from-despair endings of Frank Capra movies, Mr. Duncan delivers a more drawn-out but no less crowd-pleasing conclusion. Along the way we are shown that evil exists in the world to make more good, that villains are needed to bring out the heroic in common men and that faith in some kind of divine presence lies at the end of all quests, whether or not we are aware that we are questing.

Those who have lived through, perhaps even inhaled, the intoxicating fervor of the 1960's and early 70's will delight in Mr. Duncan's flip wisdom and period nostalgia. The pages of "The Brothers K" sparkle with puns and jokes, with tie-dyed references to pop culture. And they're tinged with Mr. Duncan's steadfastly romantic view of baseball and its thankless, gritty farm-team circuit.

Still, one can't help noticing that Mr. Duncan's attempt to define the secular passions of the era in spiritual terms avoids two major movements: civil rights and feminism. Blacks are hardly seen or heard in this book and, with the exception of proud, suffering Laura Chance, women surface mostly as incomplete characters content to be the objects -- or victims -- of male desire.

Mr. Duncan's first novel, "The River Why," celebrated and satirized the Emersonian quest for mystical transcendence in fly fishing. "The Brothers K," published almost a decade later, goes further to plumb America's soul, trying to find common ground between the rigid fundamentalism of the religious right and the feckless, go-with-the-flow spirituality of the counter culture.

In trying to justify the ways of God to man, fathers to sons, sinners to saints, the United States to Vietnam and baseball to everything under the sun, Mr. Duncan seems a trifle overambitious. And this, along with his tendency to sermonize, leads him away from his book's true strength: his warm, unabashedly sentimental celebration of the American family. As individuals, the Chances may be strikeouts. But as a family, they can survive the stolen bases, spitballs and dumb luck that keep life, and the national pastime, interesting. In "The Brothers K," this message lands with the loud, confident smack of a high fly ball caught in an outfielder's glove. One leaves Mr. Duncan's stadium with a happy glow. 'K' IS FOR FAILURE

David James Duncan had been working on his second novel for two years when he happened to reread "The Brothers Karamazov." "I found there were a lot of parallels," he said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Portland, Ore. "There's an inquisition scene of sorts, an exile, a murder scene, a public scandal." He decided to call his own novel "The Brothers K," and use it "to poke fun at the similarities."

"But the main thing I was thinking," he added, explaining the book's title, "is the baseball statistician's lingo. A 'K' is a strikeout, which is a personal failure. I love the fact that a man who is considered a success in baseball has a 30 percent success rate -- in other words, a 70 percent failure rate."

Like Hugh Chance in the novel, Mr. Duncan's father was a pitcher. "He was an outstanding city-league softball pitcher. He batted about .500 every year." Like Peter, one of Hugh Chance's sons, Mr. Duncan studied Eastern religions. But unlike Irwin, the youngest, he did not go to Vietnam.

"I was spared that one by a high lottery number," he recalled. "I was actually a fruitarian at the time and was planning to escape the draft by being underweight."

Also like the Chance children, Mr. Duncan, who is 40 years old, was raised in the Seventh-day Adventist faith. "I knew I was going to take on the fundamentalist upbringing," he said. "It feels natural to me to waffle between extreme reverence and extreme irreverence -- and nothing makes me feel less reverent than a church." -- SUSANNAH HUNNEWELL

Photo: David James Duncan. (Douglas Frank/Doubleday)


Protester to protester, the sentiment was this: ''Congratulations!'' There were handshakes and high-fives and compliments like, ''You looked great naked.''

Two distinct groups of young men and women who on Thursday protested the coming Republican National Convention -- one blocked traffic naked, and the other rappelled down the front of the Plaza Hotel and draped its facade with an anti-Bush banner -- found themselves outside the heavily guarded Manhattan Criminal Court at the same time yesterday.

They seemed like brothers and sisters in arms. Pleasantries were exchanged. But their stories were vastly different. The group of rappellers, called Operation Sibyl -- in ancient Greece, a sibyl was a fortuneteller -- but also known as the Plaza Four, said they had had a tough 25 hours in jail before they were arraigned on felony and misdemeanor charges of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal trespass. Judge Gerald Harris released them on their own recognizance yesterday despite the $2,000 in bail that the prosecutors had requested from each.

The other group, Act Up, blocked traffic, naked, on Eighth Avenue in front of Madison Square Garden, the convention site. They were arrested on misdemeanor charges and given desk appearance tickets. Two were held for close to 24 hours, but most did not spend the entire night in jail. Nonetheless, the protesters seemed ecstatic about being pictured on the cover of The Daily News and inside other papers yesterday. ''We were so excited,'' exclaimed Kaytee Riek, 20. (A public health student from Washington, Ms. Riek said she wants more financing for the global AIDS crisis.)

One woman got an early morning e-mail message from her parents expressing their anger about seeing her naked on television.

The difference between the charges faced by Act Up and Operation Sibyl comes down to this -- the police said an officer had been injured on the Plaza's roof while trying to arrest the rappellers: Terra Lawson-Remer, a graduate student at New York University studying for a law degree and a doctorate in law and society; Cesar Maxit, an architect from Texas; Rebecca Johnson, a seminary student from Oakland, Calif.; and David Murphy, a teacher at a Manhattan trapeze school.

According to a March 10 Police Department document outlining legal guidelines for the convention, officers are instructed, under certain circumstances, to consider charging protesters with second-degree assault if any are injured while trying to make arrests.

Ms. Johnson said she had warned the officer to watch his step. Her lawyer, Gerald B. Lefcourt, accused the court of trying to ''send a message with bogus charges.''

While Ms. Johnson and her fellow protesters were pleased with their newfound media exposure, if not their charges, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called their actions ''an outrage'' on a radio program yesterday. He was particularly dismayed that one man helping the protesters outside the Plaza was a city employee -- Evan Thies, the spokesman for City Councilman David Yassky and Operation Sibyl's media coordinator.

''This has nothing to do with First Amendment rights,'' Mr. Bloomberg said. ''You can express yourself, but you don't have a right to put other people's lives at risk.''

Mr. Yassky released a statement saying he regretted that Mr. Thies had been involved in the stunt while recognizing the sincerity of his convictions. ''However,'' he wrote, ''the method of yesterday's protest at the Plaza Hotel was wrong, and in my opinion it shows poor judgment to have assisted the protesters.''

Mr. Thies, who was never in the Plaza or on its roof, was charged with a misdemeanor and was released at 3 a.m. yesterday.

Mr. Maxit, 28, and Mr. Murphy, 31, who have been arrested at protests before, said it had been their worst experience in the criminal justice system. They said they were robbed of cash in the middle of the night while in a general-population holding cell next to the court. Mr. Maxit said a man had punched him in the face because he looked at the man after the man had instructed, ''Don't look at me.''

Mr. Maxit and Mr. Murphy said they were shocked by other prisoners' drug use and felt too frightened to sleep. They complained about the correctional officers, calling them angry and uncaring.

Ms. Johnson, 25, and Ms. Lawson-Remer, 26, said they had it easier in a jail cell with women who were mostly supportive.

Mr. Maxit and Mr. Murphy expressed regret at not being able to return to the Plaza for a warm bath and a good meal.

''One thing I have to say, it looked like they had a pretty nice hot tub,'' Mr. Murphy said. He and the others said the group had asked for donations and saved their own money to be able to afford the nearly $300 a night room.

Summary: Four young people who rappelled down facade of Plaza Hotel to drape an anti-Bush banner on it spend tough 25 hours in jail before being arraigned on felony and misdemeanor charges; most members of Act Up who took of their clothes off and blocked traffic in front of Madison Square Garden are simply arraigned on misdemeanor charges and given desk appearance tickets; difference is that police officer was injured in Plaza incident; photo (M)


So how long did subjects stare at the strip before accepting its conclusion? Those who were hoping to see the strip turn green waited a lot longer than those who were hoping not to. Good news may travel slowly, but people are willing to wait for it to arrive.

The same researchers asked subjects to evaluate a student's intelligence by examining information about him one piece at a time. The information was quite damning, and subjects were told they could stop examining it as soon as they'd reached a firm conclusion. Results showed that when subjects liked the student they were evaluating, they turned over one card after another, searching for the one piece of information that might allow them to say something nice about him. But when they disliked the student, they turned over a few cards, shrugged and called it a day.

Much of what happens in the brain is not evident to the brain itself, and thus people are better at playing these sorts of tricks on themselves than at catching themselves in the act. People realize that humans deceive themselves, of course, but they don't seem to realize that they too are human.

A Princeton University research team asked people to estimate how susceptible they and "the average person" were to a long list of judgmental biases; the majority of people claimed to be less biased than the majority of people. A 2001 study of medical residents found that 84 percent thought that their colleagues were influenced by gifts from pharmaceutical companies, but only 16 percent thought that they were similarly influenced. Dozens of studies have shown that when people try to overcome their judgmental biases -- for example, when they are given information and told not to let it influence their judgment -- they simply can't comply, even when money is at stake.

And yet, if decision-makers are more biased than they realize, they are less biased than the rest of us suspect. Research shows that while people underestimate the influence of self-interest on their own judgments and decisions, they overestimate its influence on others.

For instance, two psychologists, Dale Miller and Rebecca Ratner, asked people to predict how many others would agree to give blood for free or for $15, and people predicted that the monetary incentive would double the rate of blood donation. But when the researchers actually asked people to give blood, they found they were just as willing to do it for nothing as they were for a $15 reward.

The same researchers measured people's attitudes toward smoking bans and asked them to guess the attitudes of others. They found that smokers vastly overestimated the support of nonsmokers for the bans, as did nonsmokers the opposition of smokers to the bans -- in other words, neither group was quite as self-interested as the other group believed.

Behavioral economics bolsters psychology's case. When subjects play laboratory games that allow them to walk away with cash, self-interest dictates that they should get all the cash they can carry. But scores of experiments show that subjects are willing to forgo cash in order to play nice.

For instance, when subjects are given a sum of money and told that they can split it with an unseen stranger in any proportion they like, they typically give the stranger a third or more, even though they could just as easily have given him nothing. When subjects play the opposite role and are made the recipients of such splits, they typically refuse any split they consider grossly unfair, preferring to walk away with nothing than to accept an unjust distribution.

In a recent study, the economists Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter had subjects play a game in which members of a team could earn money when everyone pitched in. They found that subjects were willing to spend their money just to make sure freeloaders on the team didn't earn any. Studies such as these suggest that people act in their own interests, but that their interests include ideals of fairness, prudence and generosity.

In short, doctors, judges, consultants and vice presidents strive for truth more often than we realize, and miss that mark more often than they realize. Because the brain cannot see itself fooling itself, the only reliable method for avoiding bias is to avoid the situations that produce it.

When doctors refuse to accept gifts from those who supply drugs to their patients, when justices refuse to hear cases involving those with whom they share familial ties and when chief executives refuse to let their compensation be determined by those beholden to them, then everyone sleeps well.

Until then, behavioral scientists have plenty to study.

Op-Ed Contributor Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of the forthcoming "Stumbling on Happiness."

Summary: Harvard University Prof Daniel Gilbert Op-Ed article notes that research suggests that decision-makers do not realize just how easily and often their objectivity is compromised; holds that human brain knows many tricks that allow it to consider evidence, weigh facts and still reach conclusion it favors; says by uncritically accepting evidence when it pleases us, and insisting on more when it does not, we subtly tip scales in our favor; maintains that research shows that while people underestimate influence of self-interest on their own judgments and decisions, they overestimate its influence on others (M)


Among all of the hypotheticals, I find the notion of Steven Stamkos wearing the Maple Leafs crest next season among the least plausible.

It doesn’t make sense that No. 91, having gone through a rebuild at the start of his career with Tampa Bay, would choose to spend the best years of the rest of his career doing the same in Toronto.

And signing Stamkos, presuming he in fact becomes a free agent, wouldn’t seem to quite mesh with the plotted step-by-step reconstruction of the Leafs carefully plotted by Brendan Shanahan and that is now being effected by Lou Lamoriello.

The era of lowered expectations would come to an end immediately upon the signing of Stamkos, whose addition would beg for accompanying moves.

So, no, I don’t believe that there is the slightest correlation between Stamkos’ looming availability this summer and Toronto’s excise of Dion Phaneuf’s $7 million cap hit that runs through 2020-21 via last week’s stunning trade with Ottawa.

The deal does indeed create oodles of projected space for the Leafs down the line, albeit with a skeleton roster, following the 2017-18 season. And who might become available as a 27-year-old free agent on July 1, 2018?

Why, none other than John Tavares.

It is more than two years down the line, and the steps that might take the Mississauga native — for whom Greater Toronto has lusted since ever before this other No. 91’s junior career commenced in Oshawa a decade ago — from here to there cannot be plotted at this early date.

But the Islanders have work to do here with not only Tavares, working on the fourth year of a club-friendly six-year deal worth $5.5 million per season, but with their entire team in making the transition from Long Island to Brooklyn.

Maybe it will change upon this summer’s transfer of ownership, but the franchise thus far has attempted to straddle the two locales, in essence refusing to acknowledge the reality of where the team plays and to whom it belongs.

In doing so, in refusing to build a practice facility in the borough but instead recommitting to skating on the Island, ownership has placed an undue burden/inconvenience on the players. The Nets finally were able to build a practice facility in Brooklyn. Wouldn’t you think the hockey team could?

It is a few months into Year 1 of the commute and the Islanders — including Tavares, who, we’ve been told by numerous individuals, has worried about this on behalf of his teammates ever since the move to Barclays became a fait accompli — already are tired of it. Imagine grinding through year after year of it.

We know how proud Tavares is of being an Islander and of being a part — no, the nucleus — of this comparative revival that, still in all, has not produced a single playoff series victory. But times change. A first-round exit this year (or, an unexpected miss altogether) would not bode well for either the core in uniform or anyone within the organization wearing civilian clothes, and it shouldn’t.

Two years from now to then. Now, the focus is on No. 91. In two summers it could well be on another No. 91.

And if it is, expectations will be anything but low in Toronto, where and when the Maple Leafs will be ready.

Now that the banner is up for one Marty Brodeur in New Jersey, it is time for the other Marty to get his due in Tampa Bay, where the bitter exit should be left in the past and the glorious past should be celebrated.

Next year, No. 26 to the rafters for Martin St. Louis.

So Radko Gudas concusses Buffalo rookie Daniel Catanacci with a vicious shot to the head Thursday night in Philadelphia and the Flyers’ defenseman not only isn’t suspended, the Department of Player “Safety” doesn’t even deem the hit worthy of a formal review.

Predatory hits such as this, and predators such as Gudas, will continue to exist, if not flourish, as long as the collective body of players and the NHLPA remain mute on the issue.

If they don’t care enough to put a stop to it, why should anyone?

Listen, if you want to contend that Ryan McDonagh should have gotten a five-minute major for his cross-check across Wayne Simmonds’ head last Saturday in Philadelphia, OK, that might be a fair read of the play.

But meanwhile, Kerry Fraser’s explanation of support for the league’s decision not to suspend Simmonds for the ensuing gloved sucker-punch to the jaw that concussed the Rangers’ captain was simply ludicrous.

Writing for his blog on TSN.ca, the long time, now retired, referee contends that, “The blow delivered by Simmonds could not be regarded as a powerful, forceful punch,” before later referring to “the relative lack of force in the glove punch …”

The punch to the jaw concussed McDonagh.

That’s not powerful and forceful enough?

So Dan Girardi, undrafted, played in his 700th NHL game on Friday. His teammate, Dan Boyle, also undrafted, has played in 1,067.

The top 10 undrafted players of the past 25 years: 1. Ed Belfour; 2; St. Louis; 3. Adam Oates; 4. Joe Mullen; 5. Boyle; 6. Curtis Joseph; 7. Brian Rafalski; 8. John Madden; 9. Steve Thomas; 10. Girardi.

From a PR standpoint, perhaps the Jets did indeed do the right thing by locking up Dustin Byfuglien to that five-year deal worth $7.6 million per season. But what percentage of the Jets’ budget/revenue did they commit to a player who has helped the franchise win exactly no playoff rounds in what is going on five seasons, and at the expense of what that general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff might have gotten in return for No. 33?

If Christian Ehrhoff wasn’t able to play on a needy Kings’ defense, then it should not have been all that much of a surprise that the veteran cleared waivers last week.

Imagine if Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals were played on an ice surface the equivalent of the field on which Super Bowl 50 was contested. The league never would hear the end of it.

Where was Dan Craig when the NFL needed him?

Finally, we don’t give much quarter in this space, but hopefully people understand that all criticism is confined within the context of the hockey/business side of things. It never is meant to be personal.

On the human side of it, this sport and industry are filled with fine folks with big hearts, the latest of evidence of which has been manifested through donations to stricken and beloved Associated Press writer Ira Podell though the GoFundMe.com/TeamIra fundraising page, including $5,000 from the Rangers and $2,000 from the NHLPA.

Similarly, the NHL and its teams’ generosity has been reflected by their continuing charitable efforts on behalf of the NWHL Boston Pride’s seriously injured and irrepressible Denna Laing that include a $200,000 donation from the league.

Summary: Among all of the hypotheticals, I find the notion of Steven Stamkos wearing the Maple Leafs crest next season among the least plausible. It doesn’t make sense that No. 91, having gone through a reb…


The White House Thursday promised that President Barack Obama would veto Congress' response to the president's request for funding to fight the Zika virus, saying it provided too l...

The House has passed a $1.1 billion House-Senate measure to combat the Zika virus, but the GOP-drafted measure is a nonstarter with Senate Democrats and the Obama White House.

House Speaker Paul Ryan sent lawmakers packing for the holiday break early Thursday morning after a raucous, hours-long sit-in waged by congressional Democrats failed to force a vo...

A Democratic lawmaker is offering a twist on calls by Republican colleagues to drug-test people applying for government welfare benefits—proposing to force those in upper-income br...

The latest piece of the campaign agenda commissioned by House Speaker Paul Ryan is promising to reclaim powers ceded to the presidency, give stronger directions to federal bureaucr...

A Republican-run House committee has voted along party lines to censure the IRS commissioner.

Conservatives angered by the inclusion of LGBT protections in an otherwise routine spending bill scuttled the measure Thursday, a stark display of the potency of a civil rights iss...

The parents of a Kansas teenager whose shocking murder nearly a decade ago inspired legislative calls for cellphone carriers to give police phone records in life-or-death situation...

As Democrats shouted "shame," seven House Republicans switched their votes and defeated a measure on Thursday meant to protect gay rights.

The House has voted to ban the display of the Confederate flag on flagpoles at Veterans Administration cemeteries.

Summary: House Legislation stories and articles from Fox News Politics


Oakland has hired the former animal control chief in San Francisco to head its long-beleaguered animal division.

Rebecca Katz, 43, who left San Francisco’s Animal Care and Control in July under pressure from the city administrator, will start in Oakland on Nov. 17, officials said.

She will take over an Oakland department that has suffered from years of understaffing and slashed budgets but has a fervent cadre of volunteers and supporters. Despite the ongoing challenges, the department has seen a steady decrease in its euthanasia rate — about 25 percent this year, down from 40 percent in 2012 — and an increase in adoptions.

Katz’s hiring comes in the wake of the City Council’s unanimous decision last spring to overhaul the department, shifting the oversight from the police to city administrator and beefing up funding, staffing, equipment and other resources.

“I get the sense there’s a lot of support from both city officials and the city staff to turn things around at animal control,” Katz said Wednesday. “Oakland is becoming more and more of an important and successful city, and I see a lot of potential for growth and improvement. … I’m thrilled to be a part of it.”

In San Francisco, where she led the animal division for six years, Katz put forth several innovative programs, including pairing shelter dogs with people who live in supportive housing, arranging air charters for Chihuahuas, and setting up a satellite shelter on Market Street.

Katz is a deputy city attorney who lives in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley.

She left her San Francisco post in July apparently due to a dispute with City Administrator Naomi Kelly.

Summary: Katz’s hiring comes in the wake of the City Council’s unanimous decision last spring to overhaul the department, shifting the oversight from the police to city administrator and beefing up funding, staffing, equipment and other resources.  In San Francisco, where she led the animal division for six years, Katz put forth several innovative programs, including pairing shelter dogs with people who live in supportive housing, arranging air charters for Chihuahuas, and setting up a satellite shelter on Market Street.


SpinMedia, a network of pop-culture sites that hypes itself as one of the top 50 networks in the country, has hit the wall.

Faced with dwindling venture money and a mountain of debt, the company has undergone an assignment for the benefit of creditors and flipped the old company to a new one with some new backers.

The deal means that $125 million in equity that venture firms put in over the years is wiped out. Silicon Valley Bank, the banker that had loaned $12.5 million to the old company, has cut its losses and settled its obligation.

The old company known as SpinMedia LLC will now be known as SpinMedia Group. CEO Dale Strang would not reveal losses, liabilities or revenue, but insisted, “the biggest chunk of liability with the old company has been resolved.” Sources said that involved a settlement with Silicon Valley Bank.

The company has hired Tom Morrissy, a former publisher of Entertainment Weekly and OK! to be executive vice president and chief revenue officer.

The reorganization is similar to a bankruptcy, but it is under the supervision of the state of California, which does not require the kind of public filing that federal bankruptcy court does.

“It’s a good outcome to an exhaustive process,” said Dale Strang, a former top executive at Vibe Media who became CEO in September, marking the third person to hold the job in less than a year. “It’s a new company with new money and some new people.”

He is predicting that the company will turn a profit in 2014.

All the equity holders in the old firm lost their investments. A few of the investors are putting some money into the newly formed company. MC Partners, which was an original investor, is now the main one behind the new company and is backing it with $10 million in new money; it is being joined by Focus Ventures and Anthem Ventures, Strang said. One new backer is Washington, DC-based TDF Venture Partners.

Red Point Ventures, which was a big backer in the old lineup, has sat this one out and has apparently written off its investment.

The websites that SpinMedia has purchased over the years to boost its traffic — ranging from small, recently acquired Pink Is the New Blog to the entire Vibe Media operation that it purchased last year from a joint venture controlled by Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. and NBA great Magic Johnson — are also likely to have been burned, with their equity reduced to zero under the reorganizations.

Sources said that some of the previously acquired sites’ owners, including Pink Is the New Blog and the former owners of Spin magazine and the website, are each said to be owed $1 million by the old company.

Spin Media was known as Buzz Media until it acquired Spin magazine and website two years ago and changed the name of the entire company.

Short consumer-engagement time on many of the 40 sites in the Spin network was always a problem, suggesting viewers were popping into many of the sites briefly, spending less than 90 seconds before exiting.

The network includes sites such as Celebuzz, The Superficial, Buzznet and Go Fug Yourself. The company had two major downsizings of staff in 2013, and as the editorial staffs were slashed, traffic began to erode as well. By November, it had fallen to around 26 million unique visitors on all platforms, down from 34 million in March.

Strang said the company currently has about 165 employees. He said the sale of the assets to the new firm did not involve any new layoffs, but added, “We’re constantly trying to be at the right size.”

Morrissy, who had most recently been executive vice president and chief revenue officer at Selectable Media and earlier worked at Synaptic Digital, said the new funding will allow the company to pursue more digital and app traffic than it could with the old company.

“It’s a new day and a new look,” he said.

Summary: SpinMedia, a network of pop-culture sites that hypes itself as one of the top 50 networks in the country, has hit the wall. Faced with dwindling venture money and a mountain of debt, the company ha…