Art Basel, which closed on Sunday, effectively rounds off the art market’s annual program of fairs, sales and exhibitions. Coming after auctions in New York that clocked sales totals less than half of those a year earlier, art dealers have been cheered by apparently buoyant sales at the fair.

Dealers ticked off the highlights: a Sigmar Polke for €6.5m (£5.1m) at David Zwirner and Paul McCarthy’s Tomato Head (Green) (1994) sold by Hauser & Wirth for $4.75m (£3.3m) and a Mike Kelley Reconstructed History for $1.5m. The availability of such works suggested that dealers are getting more of the best work coming up for sale now that the auction houses have stepped back from offering seller’s guarantees.

But whether these headline sales, like the auctions, are a gloss that disguises other weaknesses, is not yet clear. The art market has been going through a testing period, not least its sensitivity to fluctuations in the global economy and the uncertain political outlook.

But the one story that might have been expected to affect art market confidence – the civil suit against the directors of the Knoedler & Company gallery in New York earlier this year, appears to have had scarcely had any impact.

Back in February, jurors heard how the gallery – one of the most prestigious – had passed off literally dozens of fakes said to be by abstract expressionist masters including Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock to unwitting collectors. The case was settled before Knoedler’s directors, Anne Kennedy and Michael Hammer, were called to testify but not before the court heard how collectors Domenico and Eleanore De Sole had been swindled.

In total, the gallery sold upwards of 70 fakes to collectors who were readily – and understandably – willing to trust the provenance of the works offered by the gallery. “A case like this tends to wake people up,” Jason Hernandez, the lead prosecutor in the criminal investigation, told Artnet. “It touched such a well-known gallery in addition to how much money was involved.”

But the case also hinted at another issue: just how few artists’ estates now have functioning authentication boards. In 2011, following a lawsuit brought by the British collector Joe Simon-Whelan against the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board over its refusal to authenticate a self-portrait of the artist that Simon-Whelan had purchased for less than $200,000 in 1989, the Warhol Foundation closed down the service.

But that was not the Warhol Foundation’s only problem with provenance. Dozens of Brillo boxes it had authenticated over the years had to be “reclassified” as posthumous works.

Other authentication boards soon closed up: Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, Jean-Michel Basquiat. The cost of defending cases (the Simon-Whelan case had cost the Warhol estate $7m) and the threat of further lawsuits over issues of liability had made such services too risky to maintain, each said.

One of those to benefit is Richard Polsky, an art dealer, author and Warhol expert who is now running an authentication service, Richard Polsky Art Authentication. He told the Guardian recently that the Knoedler fraud trial “had no effect because it was an isolated incident in terms of the scale of what happened. There were so many red flags. It was unbelieveable. That’s why it had no effect. It gave dealers something to talk about, and it was a lot of fun, but I don’t know anyone who thought it made any sense on any level.”

“That’s not to say that things don’t happen on a daily basis that aren’t always kosher, but that was one of the most unusual cases I or anyone has seen.”

It was unusual, he says, because the intent to pass the fakes off was so clearly fraudulent. Sixty percent of the art that Polsky is asked to authenticate is fake. But they are fakes without fraudulent intent. “There’s a huge difference between fraud with the intent to make money and, ‘Oh, I love Basquiat. I’m going to make my own’, and somehow that reaches the market.”

The motivation for faking art is sometimes hard to figure out, Polsky says.

“Someone called me from North Carolina saying they’d found a carving of a cat with Warhol written on the bottom of it. Then they said they found a Picasso in the same market. I laughed, of course, but the point is, what was the intent? Maybe the guy that made the cat was doing it for fun, got bored, and put it in a market.”

Part of the reason that the Warhol Foundation was so detested by collectors was that it didn’t just refuse to authenticate certain works, it refused to authenticate, then stamped “denied” on the back, and refused to offer any explanation for their decision.

“The Warhol people had you sign a disclaimer stating that if they found the work to be inauthentic they were allowed to stamp the work on the back. Obviously, if they did that you’d be bummed out. But if you asked them why, they wouldn’t give you a reason. They’d say something like, ‘We don’t want to aid counterfeiters.’ So now you’d not only be bummed out but mad!”

His policy, he says, is complete transparency. The service costs $2,500 for a painting, $1,500 for a drawing and $1,000 for a print. “You get a letter explaining why, or why not, I think it’s authentic or inauthentic.” There’s a legal disclaimer, of course, but at least – unlike a multimillion-dollar art estate, he’s not worth suing.

For the most part, the business of authentication is determining what makes sense. Warhol, clearly, directed his studio to make works for him and he was, to some degree, almost cavalier over what he chose to sign. Provenance, as the plaintiffs in the Knoedler scandal found out to their cost and embarrassment, is key.

“If someone comes to me saying they inherited a Warhol from their mother who’d bought it from a gallery in Cleveland in the 60s it’s fairly easy to determine that there were no galleries in Cleveland in the 60s that showed Warhol. But it’s a great feeling when something checks out.”

But that’s not to say that frauds are not taking place daily. A scandal over faked 18th-century French furniture, with two specialists under investigation for the alleged making and sale of counterfeit chairs for as much as $1m each, some of which were bought by Versailles, is currently making headlines in France.

Polsky says that though this art market has been in a boom far longer than anyone anticipated, that does not necessarily translate into a greater opportunity for fakery. In part, that’s because the manufacturing involved in many artists’ work is simply too difficult, and too expensive, to duplicate. “You can’t fake a Jeff Koons – it would cost too much to manufacture.” The temptation to fake may be greater, but the more valuable art becomes, the more scrupulous – usually – people become about buying it, he says. “As the saying goes, if it’s too good to be true it probably is. If you’ve got a Damien Hirst butterfly painting show me something. A letter from White Cube or Gagosian. Or where did the butterflies come from?”

In those types of cases, authentication is relatively straightforward. But things can always get complicated. Polsky recalls a case in which Keith Haring’s estate refused to approve graffiti the artist had made in the New York subway. The work was real but the estate claimed the artist had not intended the work to reach the market.

“So it’s all about intent. Did Haring intend these things to be works of art? The answer is yes, he did. Whether he intended them to enter the market is not my concern. My concern is: are these real, did Haring intend for them to be real?”

The opposite is true in the case of Willem de Kooning’s toilet seat. The artist was living in the Hamptons when he took some paints to the outhouse and painted the toilet seat. Years later, someone tried to sell it. “I would turn that down,” says Polsky. “Did De Kooning paint it? Yes. Did he intend it to be a work of art? No. That’s how the authentication works – what was the artist’s intent?”

Summary: A New York court recently heard how a gallery sold more than 70 fakes but one art authenticator says the case was such an outlier that its impact was minimal


The hottest toy of the holidays may not be all it's cracked up to be.

Spin Master's Hatchimals, an interactive toy that hatches from a plastic egg, is facing major criticism from parents who had difficulties hatching the product in the days after Christmas.

Related: Hatchimal Is Latest Toy Craze Taking Over America

Customers complained that the Hatchimal took hours to hatch, if it hatched at all, and, for some, the batteries didn't last long after hatching.

Spin Master did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment, but urged customers on Twitter to direct message the company for assistance or to contact its customer service number.

However, it seems that a lot of parents reached out to the company. Consumers complained that they spent upward of two hours waiting on the phone for a representative before hanging up or being disconnected.

The toy, which retails for about $50, has sold for upward of $250 on eBay prior to the holidays.

Spin Master wasn't the only company inundated with complaints. Mattel's Barbie Hello Dreamhouse, an app- and voice-controlled version of the classic Barbie Dreamhouse, also faced backlash from consumers.

A number of parents reported receiving an "error code 18" message when trying to use the toy. The error message refers to a wireless network issue. Another prominent error reported by consumers is an "error code 11," which prevents the front door of the house from opening.

Mattel and ToyTalk, the company behind the tech for the Hello Dreamhouse, did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

The Hello Dreamhouse retails for about $300.

This article first appeared on CNBC.

Summary: Parents complained after dud devices left kids anguished and some said they couldn't reach the maker of the Hatchimal to get answers.


It’s impossible to talk about the Nashville six-piece Diarrhea Planet without talking about its guitar section. Some bands have one musician on ax duties; others two; still others, three. But Diarrhea Planet, which is playing at The Sinclair on New Year’s Eve, offers up a four-guitar attack — a stadium-size sound that comes across as even more massive in cramped rock clubs. Their supersize string section gives them a substantial edge in a live setting, allowing them to replicate sonic assaults that would for other bands only be possible in a tricked-out recording studio or with session guitarists lurking in the shadows.

On “Turn to Gold,” its most recent album, Diarrhea Planet sounds a little more mature; bursting out of the basement-show scene and traveling the circuit of festival stages and late-night talk shows will give a shot of maturity to anyone. If anyone’s going to slide into the void of straight-shooting rock bands whose brawny riffs are matched by their hooks, though, it might as well be the band with four guitars. The striving “Let It Out” has steely determination and a spaceship-in-the-night feel of urgency; “Ain’t a Sin to Win” combines a pogo-ready pace with a shout-and-response chorus; “Ruby Red” is an open-road love song that grooves along on hope and a sweetly psychedelic outro.

Diarrhea Planet is also one of the most raucous live acts out there, with its multi-headed six-string hydra, house-show roots, and love for the form of rock fueling chaos onstage that’s mirrored and magnified by the audience. For those people who want to close out 2016’s weirdness with wall-to-wall rock ’n’ roll — and who aren’t afraid of the people around them getting a little wild — Diarrhea Planet’s blown-out rock swagger is the way to go. (The band is also playing at Great Scott on Friday should you want to catch the clamor in a more intimate setting.)

Dec. 31, 8 p.m. $30, $25 advance. The Sinclair, Cambridge. 617-547-5200, www.sinclaircambridge.com

Summary: Nashville’s Diarrhea Planet is known for its raucous live shows and four-guitar attack.


Tara Reid was barely 3 when she first staked a claim to center stage. “She was in this recital at her dance school and came out with this group of little girls,” says her mother, Donna. “But then Tara decided to take one giant step in front of everybody and do her own dance.” When the music stopped, Reid kept twirling. As Donna recalls, “The owner of the school finally had to walk out and carry her off.”

Nowadays Reid, 25, has less fear of getting the hook. But the star of the 1999 teen comedy hit American Pie and its new sequel is learning life in the limelight has its not-so-bright side. The party-hopping New Jersey native has made headlines lately, but not for her movies (April’s Josie and the Pussycats was a box office flop): She has broken up with Carson Daly—her former fiancé and the heartthrob host of MTV’s Total Request Live—and is a friend of embattled celebrity publicist Lizzie Grubman, who was charged with assault last month for hitting 16 people with her SUV outside a Southampton, N.Y., nightclub.

“I’ve been through a lot lately,” says Reid, adding that she still feels “a little hurt and a little confused” about the end of her 17-month relationship with Daly, 28. In April the pair, who met on an MTV shoot in Cancún in February 2000, postponed their planned May 2001 wedding. In early July Reid moved out of the Manhattan apartment they shared.

One problem was that Daly was unhappy with her traveling all the time, Reid says. “If Carson was an actor, he’d understand why I have to be away on sets and that if I have to kiss another guy in a movie, I do it,” she says. Another was relentless gossip. “He’d read in the tabloids that I was with [That ’70s Show]’s Ashton Kutcher, but that was a bunch of bull,” she says. “Then I started reading he was with a stripper, and that wasn’t true. You start tripping on each other for no reason. It makes you crazy.”

Although Reid appeared on Total Request Live along with the rest of the Pie cast on Aug. 9, she and Daly don’t keep in touch. “We’re not at that place yet,” she says. In the weeks since their breakup, she has vacationed in the South of France—where she hit nightspots with pals including 20-year-old hotel heiress Paris Hilton—and visited the Hamptons with investment banker Jason Ader, 34, who, she insists, is just a friend: “I’m in no position now to be in any sort of relationship.”

She did, however, keep a date for an Aug. 13 interview with Southampton authorities concerning her friend Grubman. Reid wasn’t present on July 9, when the 30-year-old publicist backed her SUV into a crowd waiting to get into the Conscience Point Inn nightclub. (Grub-man maintains it was an accident.) But she had attended a private beach party with Grubman earlier. “She was barely with Lizzie that night,” says Reid’s lawyer Judd Burstein, “and did not see her drinking or taking drugs.” Reid defends Grubman’s character. “She’s one of my closest friends in the world,” she says. “She’s loyal; she’s kind. I’d go to bat for her any day.”

Still, it’s no wonder Reid plans to take off the rest of the summer “to chill and hang out with my family.” The second of four children of day-care-center operators Tom, 60, and Donna, 52, Reid began her showbiz career shortly before her ill-fated recital, when a talent agent spotted her dancing on a table at a mall near her hometown of Wyckoff, N.J. After appearing in TV ads for McDonald’s and Crayola, Reid landed her first movie role at age 11 in 1987’s A Return to Salem’s Lot. Three years later she won a scholarship to the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, where Sarah Michelle Gellar was a classmate. Even among that crew, “she was one of those people who you knew was destined for something big,” says actor Jerry O’Connell, a former schoolmate.

After her 1994 graduation, Reid nabbed a recurring role as a street-smart runaway on TV’s Days of Our Lives. Later a steamy turn as a trophy wife in ’98’s The Big Lebowski propelled her into such teen fare as 1999’s Cruel Intentions.

The next task for Reid is buying a house to replace an L.A. apartment. She wants more roaming room for her pooches: Labradors Summer and Tequila, golden retriever Molly, and Yorkshire terrier Stoli. Now that her love life is on hiatus, they’re a girl’s best friend. “I love dogs,” she says. “They’re always there for you.”

Samantha Miller Fannie Weinstein in New York City

Summary: Tara Reid was barely 3 when she first staked a claim to center stage. “She was in this recital at her dance school and came out with this group of little girls,” says her mother, Donna.…


Six-year-old Lindsay Ratcliffe of Flat Rock, Mich., lives inside a body that is biologically older than that of her grandmother. At just 20 pounds and 36 inches tall, she is one of 68 known children who suffer from progeria, an extremely rare and fatal disease characterized by rapid aging in children. It occurs in 1 of every 4 to 8 million births around the world, according to the Progeria Research Foundation.

Summary: Barbara Walters reports on Kaylee Halko and Lindsay Ratcliffe, two vibrant young girls who suffer from a rapid aging disease called progeria -- a fatal condition that currently affects 68 known children in the world. The disease causes children to age at 10 times the normal rate. On average, children die at the age of 13.


Friday, October 25th 1996, 2:01AM

A pricey escort yesterday lost her bid for a $1 million judgment against the wealthy ex-husband she accused of bigamy, theft and physical abuse.

Stacey Lynn Miller was awarded just $11,100 in damages after a two-week civil trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Defendant Michael Zerin, a millionaire gun merchant who lives in Trump Tower, said he felt "totally vindicated" by the verdict. "We never gave in to her extortion," he said. "It just proves that justice does prevail."

A disappointed Miller, who had sought more than $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages, said she felt the jury was swayed by testimony that she is a prostitute which she insisted she is not.

"I think it's apparent that the jury felt because I was an escort, I somehow deserved this treatment . . . that it was okay for him to hit me, to harass me," said Miller, who reportedly earns $350,000 a year entertaining wealthy clients.

The breakup of the couple's brief 1995 marriage, she had said, was followed by months of harassment that included Zerin's use of police contacts to probe the escort service where she worked.

But defense attorney David Breitbart called Miller a gold digger who drugged Zerin into a sham marriage.

The jury cleared Zerin of an assault charge and an allegation that he filed a false criminal complaint against her.

Miller was awarded $9,000 for the loss of a diamond engagement ring and clothing she claims Zerin kept after their breakup, as well as $2,100 in legal fees incurred for her troubles with police.

But several jurors denied that the prostitution issue influenced them.

"It didn't make a difference," said juror Candice Hansen. She said the bottom line for most of the panel was that Zerin's treatment of Miller was not bad enough to merit damages.

Summary: A pricey escort yesterday lost her bid for a $1 million judgment against the wealthy ex-husband she accused of bigamy, theft and physical abuse. Stacey Lynn Miller was awarded just $11,100 in damages after a two-week civil trial in Manhattan Supreme Court. Defendant Michael Zerin, a millionaire gun merchant who lives in Trump Tower, said he felt "totally vindicated"by the verdict. "We never gave in to her extortion,"he said. "It just


Jan 14th 2012, 18:09 by J.M. | TAIPEI

CHINA and America can breathe a sigh of relief. A closely fought presidential election in Taiwan has delivered a second four-year term to the China-friendly incumbent, Ma Ying-jeou. China had feared that his opponent, Tsai Ing-wen, would try to steer the island closer to formal independence. America professed neutrality, but clearly did not want to see tensions rise in the Taiwan Strait. To officials in Washington as well as Beijing, Mr Ma looked the less likely of the two to stir up trouble.

Mr Ma’s party, the Kuomintang (KMT), has also retained its control of the legislature. In parliamentary polls, held at the same time as the presidential ones, the KMT won 64 of the legislature’s 113 seats. Ms Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won 40. Mr Ma’s fortunes were boosted by the unexpectedly poor performance of a third candidate, James Soong of the People First Party. Mr Soong’s decision in November to join the race prompted fears in the KMT that it would lose some of its supporters to him. (His party split from the KMT in 2000.) “Jiu jiu jiu”, urged large characters on one election van in Taipei this week, meaning “Save, save Jeou”. In the end, Mr Soong took less than 3% of the vote. Mr Ma got nearly 52%, against less than 46% for Ms Tsai.

But the elections were not entirely good news for Mr Ma. In 2008 he won with 58% of the vote and his party secured 81 seats in the legislature. His popularity has been dented by the battering of the island’s export-dependent economy by the global slowdown. Many Taiwanese complain of a growing gap between rich and poor and increasingly unaffordable housing prices. Ms Tsai made considerable progress in restoring the unity and confidence of her party. The DPP had been shaken badly by corruption scandals surrounding its former leader, Chen Shui-bian, who was president from 2000 to 2008. (Mr Chen is now serving a 20-year sentence for corruption.) After her defeat today, Ms Tsai announced her resignation as the DPP’s chairwoman. But her party has shown that it is back as a powerful contender.

There will now be much bickering in the DPP over whether Ms Tsai could have done better. Some in her party will ask whether she should have signalled acceptance of what the KMT and China call the “1992 consensus”: an agreement they say was reached between the two sides to accept the idea of “one China”—and to disagree about what it means. In the build-up to the polls, many business leaders publicly expressed support for this consensus, implying support for the KMT’s way of handling ties with China. To the DPP, anything even hinting at the notion of one China of which Taiwan is part is anathema. China on the other hand insists that the 1992 consensus must be the basis for any cross-strait agreements. It attacked Ms Tsai’s calls for an ill-defined “Taiwan consensus” to replace it.

China will be especially relieved not to have to grapple with new cross-strait semantics at a time when it is preoccupied with its own (democracy-free) leadership changes later this year. Even if Ms Tsai had won, many analysts believe, China would have been restrained in its response, fearing that an escalation with Taiwan might exacerbate political divisions and social tensions at home. China’s president, Hu Jintao, will be stepping down as part of the leadership shuffle. He must be glad to know that the DPP’s next chance at the presidency of Taiwan will not come till long after his departure.


3 Rake wormcasts into the lawn as a top dressing and scatter molehills on the border, before making the first cut.

4 Clear ponds of leaf-catching netting and reinstall pumps and lights.

5 Pressure-wash slippery algae off paths and paving.

...WAYS TO KICK-START THE VEG PATCH

1 Hoe winter-dug beds to remove weeds and debris, then rake in all-purpose fertiliser to prepare for sowing next month. Asparagus is a perennial and needs its own patch – sunny, sheltered and extremely well-manured.

2 Plant onion and shallot sets with their tops just under the surface to stymie foraging blackbirds.

3 Dig a trench 5in (12cm) deep and line it with well-rotted organic matter before planting chitted first early potatoes.

4 Fill a pit with well-rotted organic matter and plant dormant rhubarb crowns so the top of the rootball is level with the surrounding soil.

5 Sow peas, lettuce, leeks, kale, carrots, broccoli, beans, sweetcorn and spinach, and keep the seed trays in a cold greenhouse. Peppers and aubergines need a warm windowsill. Pot up strawberries in the greenhouse for an early Jubilee weekend crop.

1 Divide late summer and autumn-flowering perennials, herbs such as chives and mint, and marginal plants around your pond, including arum lilies.

2 Split snowdrops into gaggles of three or four bulbs and redistribute around the garden.

3 Layer magnolias, rhododendrons and viburnums.

4 Take basal stem cuttings from delphiniums, salvias, lupins and asters.

5 Scoop up self-sown seedlings of cerinthe and hellebores, and transplant or pot up to sell or swap.

LUNCH HOUR Make a wiggly wormery

1 Buy three stackable storage boxes, one with a lid, from a pound shop. Cut the bottom off two, leaving a 2in (5cm) lip, and make new bases from wire mesh offcuts. Line the third box with gravel for drainage and fix a tap to the side.

2 Pile 'em high, the one with the tap sitting on bricks; next, one with a mesh base, lined with newspaper and a two-inch starter layer of compost for the worms (available from Wigglywigglers.co.uk; 01981 500391); on top, the other mesh-bottomed box, with lid, for your kitchen waste.

DAY OFF Create a Monet meadow

1 Wild flowers turn troublesome, poor soil into a pretty playground for wildlife from March to September (remove the topsoil if your ground is too good).

2 Weed thoroughly – a new meadow can’t stand the competition – and rake to a fine tilth around 6in (15cm) deep. Sow the seed mixed with horticultural sand or sawdust for even distribution. Tread in and water.

3 For instant results try new Meadowmat, a carpet of half native grasses and half perennial wild flowers – 34 species – laid like ordinary turf. It costs £9.50 per square metre (01842 828266; enviromat.co.uk).

WEEKEND Plant a living wall

1 Step one in the manual of good garden design is dividing up your space – to create more intimate and interesting rooms.

Climbers scrambling over willow or hazel hurdles make excellent decorative walls. They can also disguise the compost heap and other garden uglies.

2 Brace the hurdles by wiring them to round wooden stakes hammered into the ground, or concreted into pre-dug holes.

3 Pot-grown rambling roses can go in year-round (March is the last chance to plant bare-rooted ones). They need sunlight for four to six hours a day, in a spot where roses haven’t grown before.

4 Add lots of well-rotted organic matter and a handful of bonemeal to the soil, water and mulch (not quite up to the stem).

5 If you choose clematis, sink the top of the rootball at least 4in (10cm) below the soil surface. C. armandii is a deliciously scented evergreen, as are the jasmine 'Clotted Cream’ and Trachelospermum jasminoides.

TEA BREAK Matchmake stone fruit

Apricots, peaches and nectarines flower before there are many bees about so hand-pollinate daily with the traditional rabbit’s tail or a watercolour brush.

THIS MONTH IN MY GARDEN: MATTHEW WILSON, Garden designer and Gardeners' Question Time panellist

I'LL BE...REPAIRING RAVAGED GRASS Winter, toddler twins and enthusiastic builders have turned my lawn into a ploughed field. I dig a 2in (5cm) layer of grit into the top 8in (20cm) of cultivated soil to improve drainage and durability before laying Rolawn Sovereign turf. I used this in the RHS gardens I ran because it combines resilience and attractiveness.

INDULGING PERENNIAL PASSIONS Our suburban plot is new to us and still a blank canvas. It is by no means big, so I’m planting only a few of the varieties I love most, such as the hardy salvias ’Ostfriesland’, ’Mainacht’ and ’Amethyst’, but lots of them, and swathes of the prairie grass Panicum ’Squaw’. The soil is warming, the risk of extreme frost diminishing, and there is enough moisture to ensure roots establish before the plants really start to grow in April.

MAKING A MODERN SHRUBBERY In the past I’ve been guilty of neglecting shrubs but not this time. I’m planting ’Hawkshead’, the fuchsia for people who don’t like fuchsia, with slender white flowers; Hydrangea paniculata, the antithesis of the big mop heads; and Cotinus 'Old Fashioned’, for its pewter summer foliage and autumn colour.

Matthew Wilson is a BBC Radio 4 'Gardeners’ Question Time’ panellist and former RHS head of gardens’ creative development. His book 'Making a Garden’ is out in paperback (£12.99, Quadrille)

CURE IN APRIL Deadhead, leave foliage (unknotted) for six weeks after flowering and fatten up bulbs fortnightly with tomato feed. Divide if crowded.

CURE IN MAY These scented bronze, Madeira and deep purple biennials are the ideal foil for perky March yellows. Sow for flowers next year.

DIAGNOSIS Neglected forsythia with sprinkling of flowers on dreary brown buzzle

CURE IN NOVEMBER Rejuvenate – cut out dead, diseased and crossing stems, and thin the remainder by half.

Summary:
Spring has almost sprung, says Harriot Lane Fox, and now is the time to
  prepare your garden for this summer’s frivolities.


SALEM — Occasionally, as an art critic, you come across an object so marvelous it seems utterly berserk. When it happens, quite often you look around and realize that you are in the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.

Case in point: this single ball of ivory carved into 15 concentric spheres.

Fifteen. Try to get your head around that. I have been trying ever since I first saw it perched atop a carved wooden stand inside a glass vitrine — without luck.

COURTESY PEABODY ESSEX MUSEUM/CHIP VAN DYKE

I have read a description of how it was made, kindly provided to me by PEM curator Karina Corrigan. And yet I still can’t shake this feeling of head-scratching, eye-rubbing dismay.

The piece was made in Guangzhou, China, in the late 19th century. It was almost certainly made for foreign patrons, either on commission or speculatively. There had been a market for this kind of stuff (stuff?! I ask you!) among Europe’s monarchs and aristocrats for centuries. The carving of spheres within spheres in China itself goes back to the 14th century, if not before.

In this example, the outside layer — so lusciously carved with abundant floral motifs — is by far the thickest of the 15 spheres. The surfaces of the interior layers have been pierced to create various intricate geometric patterns.

It’s what we all want to know. But frankly, my brain just stops at a certain point.

Still, if you’re dying for an explanation I can refer you to the Rev. William C. Milne, who went to China, saw similar objects being carved, and described the process in a book, “Life in China,” published in 1857:

“A piece of ivory, made perfectly round, has several conical holes worked into it, so that their several apices meet at the centre of the globular mass. The workman then commences to detach the innermost sphere of all. This is done by inserting a tool into each hole, with a point bent and very sharp. That instrument is so arranged as to cut away or scrape the ivory through each hole, at equi-distances from the surface. The implement works away at the bottom of each conical hole successively, until the incisions meet. In this way, the innermost ball is separated; and to smooth, carve and ornament it, its various faces are, one after the other, brought opposite one of the largest holes. The other balls, larger as they near the outer surface, are each cut, wrought and polished precisely in the same manner. The outermost ball of course is done last of all.”

Of course. Have another coffee. Read it again. It helps.


AP/ November 12, 2012, 10:41 AM

PARSIPPANY, N.J. — Watson Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Monday it received approval to sell a generic version of Pfizer Inc.'s drug Revatio, a treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension.Watson said it will bring its generic to market soon. It said U.S. sales of Revatio totaled $339 million over the 12 months ended Sept. 30. The drug treats high blood pressure in lung arteries.The main ingredient in Revatio is sildenafil citrate. That's also the main component of Pfizer's blockbuster impotence pill Viagra, which was originally developed to treat blood pressure problems. Viagra tablets contain larger doses of the drug than Revatio, and generic versions of Viagra are not expected to reach the market until late 2019.Shares of Watson rose 57 cents to $85.67 in morning trading. Pfizer shares added 4 cents to $24.21.

Summary: Watson to sell generic version of Pfizer's Revatio


''The problems of the disabled are unpopular,'' says Itzhak Perlman, who is used to encountering difficulties maneuvering around airports, restaurants, hotels and concert halls all over the world. ''Architects have to become more aware of exactly what is involved in designing barrier-free buildings and homes.''

Dedicated to helping handicapped people everywhere, Mr. Perlman frequently lectures to architects about what he calls ''universal designs'' -designs that can accommodate everyone. ''You don't have to be in a wheelchair to walk through a wider doorway, ride an elevator or use a ramp,'' he says.

Recently Mr. Perlman discussed his design theories with the architect I.M. Pei. ''Not enough has been done to help the disabled in spite of the Federal building regulations,'' says Mr. Pei. ''I was already quite familiar with this issue when I designed the Kennedy Library in Boston, and I have been equally concerned with the welfare of the handicapped in my plans for the New York Exposition and Convention Center.

''Mr. Perlman has dramatized many important points for me,'' said Mr. Pei, ''and together we are working on some exciting new ideas to enable disabled people not only to be comfortable using a building, but to truly enjoy it as well.''

Mr. Pei said that there are ''so many things a handicapped person is deprived of - the experience of riding an escalator, for instance, of feeling vertical movement in space.''

''It is so important in getting the sense of a building and is an excitement most of us take for granted,'' he said. ''An elevator is just not a good enough substitute. In designing a home for a disabled person, the program must be far more personal and involve careful planning on the part of an architect.''

Both he and Mr. Perlman advise architects to put themselves in their clients' situation. ''Spend a day in a wheelchair or blindfolded - it's the best education there is,'' said Mr. Perlman. ''There are so many kinds of disabilities and everyone deals with their problem differently.''

No set guidelines can begin to accommodate everyone adequately, but, according to Mr. Perlman, a few basic areas to think about when planning a home are:

* Stairs - Try to avoid them whenever possible.

* Doorways - How wide do they need to be?

* Work spaces - Desks, counter tops, as well as telephones, kitchen appliances and light switches should be at heights that are easy to reach.

* Bathroooms - Layouts must be accessible to everyone.


NEW YORK — Translating an iconic novel into a movie can be a process fraught with peril, one that’s felled even the most talented of filmmakers. But when you’re adapting a book as embedded in the American popular consciousness as Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” you better have the same thirst for adventure and scorching spirit of rebellion that burns across the pages of the novel. The 1957 countercultural cri de coeur, by a native son of Lowell, has long stood as one of those sacred and “impossible-to-adapt” texts, so any filmmaker must face the judgment of finger-wagging fans, fussy scholars, and the survivors of the Beat movement.

Sam Riley, the 33-year-old Brit who plays Kerouac’s alter ego, Sal Paradise, in the long-awaited cinematic adaptation of “On the Road,” sums up the dilemma: “A lot of people are going to think it sucks. A lot of people are thinking that it shouldn’t be made or can’t be adapted well. A lot of people are going to think, ‘Sam, who? The English guy? Why the [expletive] should he play Kerouac?’ ”

The man who tackled the herculean task, Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles, chose to tune out the skeptical background chatter while embracing many of the important voices with a stake in the adaptation, from scholars such as eminent Kerouac biographer Ann Charters to the surviving poets, philosophers, and artists of the Beat movement.

“You have to remain faithful to the spirit of a book. That’s the most important thing. But in doing that, you sometimes have to bifurcate from the novel in order to better do justice to it,” said Salles, during an interview in December as “On the Road” was having its New York premiere. The film opens in the Boston area on March 22.

Kerouac’s novel, whose characters ramble across the American landscape soaked in booze and hopped up on Benzedrine, still stands as a burning, yearning ode to youthful freedom, rebellion against conformity, and the mad desire for self-discovery and visceral experience. Told in stream-of-consciousness style, it became a seminal work in the so-called Beat Generation of writers that included fellow travelers Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs.

While “On the Road” had never before been made into a movie, it hasn’t been for lack of effort. Kerouac famously tried to coax Marlon Brando into playing the part of Dean Moriarty (alter ego of the real-life Neal Cassady). Kerouac biographer Barry Gifford and novelist Russell Banks penned scripts for producer Francis Ford Coppola. At one point, Coppola planned to direct an adaptation starring Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt. Celebrated directors such as Gus Van Sant have also been attached, with stars such as Johnny Depp and Colin Farrell rumored to be headlining.

After various failed attempts, Coppola and his son, Roman, finally enlisted Salles and playwright José Rivera to adapt the novel after seeing their 2004 road trip film, “The Motorcycle Diaries.” Based on revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s memoir by that title, the film traces the formative journey of two young men searching for adventure and meaning as they cross an impoverished South America rife with economic inequality.

Salles, 56, first encountered “On the Road” in Brazil in the mid-1970s while he was in college. At the time, Brazil was under brutal military dictatorship. Censorship of the press and all art forms was prevalent, as were the torture and exile of dissidents. The book had a profound influence on him.

“It’s a book that is so inherently American but had an echo for very different reasons in Brazil at the time that I read it because we were living under this repressive regime,” Salles said. “The characters in ‘On the Road’ were seeking all forms of freedom in a conservative society colliding against them. Yet they were somehow able to define a sense of a future for themselves. That was very emblematic to me and a number of other friends who got hold of the book.”

Salles picked up the novel again before starting work on “The Motorcycle Diaries,” because he felt that the two works had a natural connection. “Both journeys are about those transitional years, from youth to adulthood, with all the moments of discovery that come with it, but also, eventually, the moments of pain,” he says. “And I wanted to infuse the ‘Diaries’ with that sense of immediacy and urgency that you have in ‘On the Road.’ ”

While he was passionate about the novel, Salles felt that he needed to immerse himself in the world of the Beats. He decided to hit the road with a Super 8 camera and make a documentary retracing Kerouac and Cassady’s journeys in the novel. He crisscrossed the country and spent time with all the major living Beat poets, artists, philosophers, and scholars that he could find, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, Michael McClure, Amiri Baraka, among others. In total, he spent six years, on and off, filming what he calls “Searching for ‘On the Road.’ ”

Making the documentary, Salles said, “informed us about the social-political background that influenced the story — about those very pivotal years in postwar America where you were invited and encouraged to conform. This young group of men and women refused that possibility and truly redefined what kind of future that they wanted for themselves.”

An important insight for Salles and Rivera came during a trip eight years ago to Lowell, where Kerouac’s brother-in-law, John Sampas, showed them a copy of the famous “scroll” version of the novel — the 120-foot-long roll of taped-together sheets of paper on which Kerouac banged out the original manuscript in 1951 (the original scroll has been entrusted to Indiana University). Salles and Rivera were taken with the intense, visceral quality of the scroll compared with the rewritten and edited 1957 version. They latched onto the fact that even the very first line of the scroll (“I first met Neal not long after my father died”) begins differently than does the published novel (“I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up”).

“In the published version, you have somebody who had already been married, had gone through a divorce, and then meets a young man who is going to be the igniter of this journey,” Salles said. “But in the original scroll, what you have is something infinitely more powerful: the loss of a father triggering the beginning of a journey. The question of identity and the need to find your place in the world becomes vital from the first line. So the father and son leitmotif became the center of our adaptation. It’s the loss of fathers, but also the difficulty that these characters have in being fathers themselves.”

To prepare the cast — which includes Garrett Hedlund as Dean and Kristen Stewart as his child bride, Marylou — Salles staged a monthlong “beatnik bootcamp” bonding session in Montreal before production on the film began. He brought in real-life Beat Generation figures, Kerouac biographers, Beat experts, and Cassady’s son, John, to talk to the cast. They read books, watched documentaries and films from the era, and listened to a lot of jazz.

“We very much became a unit,” said Riley, who had previously dealt with the pressure of playing a real-life cult icon, as Ian Curtis of Joy Division in the film “Control.” “And we all realized that we were the guys and girls that were going to have to do this, when so many people had tried and failed and so many great actors had almost played these parts. So we all shared that burden and that gift.”

In an attempt to channel the novel’s frantic energy and free-form, jazz-influenced language, Salles encouraged improvisation throughout the shoot. “Because of the impressionistic nature of the book, you try to improvise as much as you can and incorporate what the actors, who are also passionate about this project, are bringing to the table.”

Despite her deep love of the novel, Stewart acknowledged the inherent challenges of improvising on a film shoot. “The whole process of making a movie goes against the idea of spontaneity,” she said. “You plan everything when you make a movie. So it’s like, how do you intend to be spontaneous and surprise yourself?”

A key point to remember, Salles said, is that the characters in “On the Road” are still the anxious, searching young men and women who would only later become the leading lights of the Beat movement. “This film is about the first steps of a generation that would later change the cultural landscape in America. But this story is happening in these pivotal, formative years of life, so they are confronting dilemmas and asking many questions that they don’t have the answers to yet. We tried to capture that loss of innocence, that moment where you try to find your place in the world.”

Summary: Translating an iconic American novel into a movie can be a process fraught with peril, one that’s felled even the most talented of filmmakers. But when you’re adapting a book as embedded in the popular consciousness as Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” you better have the same thirst for adventure and scorching spirit of rebellion that burns across the pages of the novel.


NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook’s stock has passed its $38 IPO price for the first time since its rocky public debut last May, crossing a symbolic hurdle that has eluded it for more than a year.

Shares of Facebook Inc. increased 1.2 percent to $38.08 in morning trading Wednesday. That’s the highest the stock has traded since the company’s highly anticipated initial public offering ended with a thud. The stock is up by more than 50 percent since last week.

The world’s biggest online social network has been on a roll since reporting stronger-than-expected earnings on July 24. Investors are especially upbeat about its fast-growing mobile advertising revenue.

Facebook’s ability to grow mobile revenue was one of the biggest concerns in the weeks leading up to its IPO last year. Investors were worried that its ad business was not migrating to mobile gadgets as quickly as its user base. Facebook urged patience.

In the April-June quarter, Facebook derived 41 percent of its ad revenue from mobile advertising, or about $656 million of $1.6 billion. That’s up from zero in the spring of 2012 and from 30 percent in the January-March quarter of this year. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last week that the company has ‘‘made good progress growing our community, deepening engagement and delivering strong financial results, especially on mobile.’’

Still, Facebook has room to grow. Research firm eMarketer expects Facebook to increase its mobile advertising revenue more than fourfold to more than $2 billion this year. This would give the Menlo Park, Calif., company a 13 percent share of the global mobile ad market, up from about 5 percent last year.

Facebook is currently No. 2 in mobile ads, well behind Google. EMarketer estimates that Google had a 52 percent share of the global $8.8 billion mobile ad market last year. This year, the firm expects Google’s share to grow to 56 percent.

Summary: NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook’s stock price has passed its $38 IPO price for the first time since its rocky initial public offering more than a year ago. Shares of Facebook Inc. are up 1.2 percent to $38.08 in morning trading Wednesday. The world’s biggest online social network has been on a roll since reporting stronger-than-expected earnings on July 24. Investors are especially upbeat about its fast-growing mobile advertising revenue. Facebook’s ability to grow mobile revenue was one of the biggest concerns in the weeks leading up to its IPO last year. Investors were worried that its ad business was not migrating to mobile gadgets as quickly as its user base.


The distinctive white sails of the Sydney opera house darkened last night to mourn the death of Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed the global landmark.

The Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, led praise for Utzon, whose most distinctive creation had a troublesome birth but became the country's most recognised building. "Jørn Utzon was a visionary architect whose legacy includes one of the world's most spectacular and inspiring buildings, the Sydney opera house," Rudd said in a statement.

From the prime minister's residence overlooking the building, Rudd told reporters: "In the great sweep of history, what we're left with is a beautiful building, Sydney's symbol to the world, Australia's symbol to the world." He called Utzon "a son of Denmark but ... in terms of his spirit, a son of Australia as well."

Floodlights that illuminate the shell-like structure were dimmed for one hour to mark Utzon's death. Flags on the city's other landmark, the Sydney harbour bridge, are to be lowered to half-mast today in honour of the architect, the New South Wales state government announced.

"Jørn Utzon was an architectural and creative genius who gave Australia and the world a great gift," said Kim Williams, the chairman of the trust that operates the venue. "Sydney opera house is core to our national cultural identity and a source of great pride to all Australians. It has become the most globally recognised symbol of our country."

Utzon died from a heart attack in his sleep early on Saturday, in Denmark, according to his son, Kim Utzon. He was 90. His design for the opera house was selected in 1957 after a worldwide competition but he was pushed off the project in 1966 after wrangling with the state government.

Utzon left Australia, never to return. His building was finally completed in 1973, with drastic changes made to the layout of the theatres by government-appointed architects. It cost A$100m to build - 14 times the original budget of A$7m.

Though today the scandal over the cost is a distant memory, the failure to achieve Utzon's original vision for the building is largely viewed as tragic.

Summary: Australian prime minister leads tributes to Danish designer who never saw finished building


What do you think happened?

Not quite what the city council was hoping for. First, complaints went up, as some rubbish didn’t always make it into the truck as workers hurried from house to house. Then, speeding tickets increased, as did traffic accidents, as trucks rolled down the road driven by workers motivated to get the job done as fast as possible.

Welcome to the world of unintended consequences. For every great plan, there are unforeseen events, mishaps and sometimes a result that is completely opposite to intentions.

Unintended consequences are the third rail of management. No matter how seemingly sensible our intentions, unexpected things will happen, almost all of the time. It’s up to smart managers to think and rethink, to avoid the biggest blunders. It’s a bit like the Hippocratic Oath, the first principle of medical ethics: do no harm. When we change the rules for how people work, we should be sure not to mess things up even more.

Problem: Medical residents are working excessively long hours, compromising medical care and even creating medical problems for the residents themselves.

Solution: Cut back on hours.

Reality: The source of many medical errors is the “handover” between residents or physicians, when the outgoing resident transfers key information to the incoming shift. With shorter shifts, you inevitably get more handovers and with more handovers you get more mistakes. How could that be? Shockingly, doctors are not much better at communicating during handovers than they are at other times, leading to incomplete information-sharing on patient status.

In fact one recent study indicated that residents who worked shorter, 16-hour shifts actually reported making more medical mistakes than residents who worked 24 hours.

Tight budgets complicate matters further. Just because residents are working shorter shifts likely doesn’t mean you get to add more residents. So, much the same work completed in a 24-hour shift now gets packed into 16 hours.

But surely these problems are exclusive to politicians and medical associations, right? It would appear that a link to major corporations would be tenuous, at best.

As a PhD student in the 1980s I was assigned to read corporate proxy statements to learn more about how much, and how, senior executives were paid. Proxies were required to identify the top five most-highly paid managers in a company, which I usually found in an easy-to-read table listing salary, bonus and stock options.

Try doing that today. The simple table is long gone, as pressure for better disclosure has given rise to reporting of numerous columns of data on such things as restricted stock, performance units, supplemental grants, post-employment compensation and even such quaint artefacts of a bygone era — salary and bonus. Then there’s a separate table for stock options (granted, exercisable, timing, exercise price, etc.), as well as a list of peer companies so shareholders have a relevant point of comparison.

While the purpose of all this additional reporting was ostensibly meant to provide better data to shareholders about the companies they own, it also turns out to have an unintended consequence. And it’s one that is hardly favourable to these shareholders: CEO and other executive compensation have skyrocketed over time. For example, CEO compensation has increased by 725% over the last 30 years in the United States. In Germany, pay has gone up 350%.

Laying bare the many forms of compensation accruing to CEOs has not reined in giant pay packages, but rather has done quite the opposite. It turns out that when data on compensation is openly available, it’s easier to compare what other CEOs are earning to what you’re getting. Since no one believes they should be underpaid, there is a natural ratcheting up of pay.

This is also true when you look across countries. The pay premium earned by US CEOs relative to their brethren in other developed countries declined in the 2000s, a period that corresponds with the adoption of new disclosure rules by a number of European Union countries like the UK, plus Norway and Switzerland. From 2003 to 2007, for example, the US pay premium (relative to other countries) dropped from 58% to 2%. The more boards and CEOs are aware of what others are getting paid, the more they will be motivated to ensure their own pay matches the going rate, apparently even across continents.

Is it possible that better disclosure is associated with an increase in CEO pay? How else to explain how the compensation of CEOs in Canada has moved in lockstep fashion with the availability of more information on pay to boards of directors who are charged with setting pay?

Changing the rules that govern how people do their jobs — whether it is collecting trash, interning as a medical resident, or determining CEO compensation — turns out to be a risky proposition.

The next time someone suggests doing so at your organisation, remind him or her of the Hippocratic Oath. And then get ready for turmoil.

Comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, on our Facebook page or join the conversation with us on Twitter.

Summary: When executive decisions trigger mayhem, hereâs how to turn the ship around.


Janet Yellen is now the head person at the Federal Reserve. No surprise there. Her confirmation was pretty well assured. What is equally unsurprising is the question that arose: Just how will she be addressed — chair, chairwoman, chairman, or chairperson?

This question has arisen with other high profile women. The best resolution is for the executive to express her choice and her organization to publicize it so there is no ambiguity.

That’s exactly what the Federal Reserve did. Yellen’s preference: chair. While it’s not the most important decision she will make in her tenure, it does matter because it allows people to address her correctly from the start.

As important as it was for the Fed to publicize how to refer to Yellen, it’s equally important for people writing or referring to her to get her name and title correct. People’s names and titles matter, and when they are misspelled or mispronounced people notice, and they really don’t appreciate it.

Recently, I came within a hair’s breadth of making just such a faux pas. I researched a blog item about Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York carefully and even included a link in my blog to a New York Daily News article about him eating pizza. Without realizing it, I misspelled his name.

Fortunately, an editor at Boston.com saw the mistake and corrected it for me. She e-mailed to let me know about the misspelling.

So while mistakes can and do happen, take the time to find out not only how to spell a person’s name correctly, but also how to pronounce it correctly. Call the person’s office to confirm both spelling and pronunciation.

This is particularly important when going for a job interview. If an applicant gets the interviewer’s name correct while her competition doesn’t, it will be noted. Finally, don’t automatically rely on your contact management system to have a person’s name entered correctly. Take the time to double check.

Summary: Janet Yellen is now the head person at the Federal Reserve. No surprise there. Her confirmation was pretty well-assured. What is equally unsurprising is the question that arose: Just how will she be addressed — chair, chairwoman, chairman, or chairperson? This question has arisen with other high profile women as well. The best resolution is for the woman executive to express her choice and her organization to publicize itsit so there is no ambiguity. That’s exactly what the Federal Reserve did. Yellen’s preference: chair. While it’s not the most important decision she’ll she will make in her tenure at the Fed, it does matter because it allows people to address her correctly from the start. It’s important for people writing or referring to her to get her title correct


From birthday suit to lawsuit.

cast member Jessie Nizewitz is suing VH1's parent company Viacom for breach of contract after the network aired uncensored au naturel footage of Nizewitz to shocked viewers of the

The complaint, which was filed in Manhattan, also takes two production companies to task for broadcasting a clip in July during which a shot of Nizewitz's crotch was not blurred out.

The model says producers promised non-G-rated glimpses of her body would be appropriately concealed.

That's not exactly how it all went down on

's third episode, which showed Nizewitz, 28, and her potential paramour getting, well, down and dirty in the sand as they wrestled, setting the stage for the peek-a-boo in question.

The suit, obtained by PEOPLE, claims Nizewitz suffered "severe emotional distress, mental anguish, humiliation, and embarrassment" after the slip-up.

"I felt lied to, manipulated and used. I was horrified," the Long Island-based Nizewitz told the

, adding, "I immediately started getting text messages. Everyone saw it."

She also says that the offending boob-tube exposé ruined a burgeoning romance.

"He never called me again after the show aired," she told the paper. "I would have hoped we could have had a long-term relationship."

Nizewitz is seeking $10 million in damages. A rep for the network declined to comment.

Summary: Jessie Nizewitz is suing VH1's parent company, Viacom, after the network inadvertently aired footage of her body that was not blurred out


Twelve years on, Interpol’s debut might have been the best and worst thing ever to happen to the band. “Turn on the Bright Lights” became a defining album for both the group and its era, a landmark document of New York’s rock renaissance in the early 2000s. It was so lauded, in fact, that it became a hard act to follow, with each successive release often deemed a pale imitation of the masterwork.

“El Pintor” is different: the first Interpol album since its debut that doesn’t sound self-conscious or eclipsed by old glories. A return to form, it brims with fresh ideas, in everything from the looser production to the chordal detours that suggest the trio is ready to tweak its formula. It’s also the first album that singer-frontman Paul Banks (above), guitarist Daniel Kessler, and drummer Sam Fogarino have made without founding bassist Carlos Dengler. (Banks took over on bass for “El Pintor,” which is an anagram of the band’s name.)

As an opening salvo, “All the Rage Back Home” is Interpol in miniature — capable of sounding delicate, as it initially does, but more at home with the song’s jagged, brittle textures. Built on the one-two punch of drums and guitar, “Breaker 1” harkens to early work, while “My Blue Supreme” cuts the band some slack to explore a serpentine melody that’s surprisingly funky — not a word associated with Interpol.

“Same Town, New Story” is the real revelation: It pulses with a backbeat over Kessler’s curlicue guitar licks, as Banks intones: “Feels like the whole world/ Is up on my shoulders.” Five studio albums in, it’s nice to see Interpol get its gloomy groove back. (Out Tuesday)

ESSENTIAL “Same Town, New Story”

Interpol performs at House of Blues on Nov. 21.

Summary: Five studio albums in, New York’s Interpol gets its gloomy groove back on the superb “El Pintor.”


The entrance to Petra, hidden deep inside a canyon, is through a famous cleft in the rocks, the Siq.

It was 13 years ago that Edward Cullinan Architects won a competition to design a new visitors' centre at Stonehenge. Yet the centre - since the subject of a further design competition, won by Denton Corker Marshall - has still to be built, and the debate over exactly what it should offer visitors thunders on. Who is it for? How "accessible" should it be? Will it simply encourage ever more visitors to this besieged site? Why not just forget the whole thing, close all visitor "facilities" at Stonehenge, remove all mention of the standing stones from tourist "literature" and leave this special place alone for people to discover it as if for the first time?

Because the tourist industry is an invaluable revenue earner, that's why. And because certain historic monuments are etched into our pilgrim mindscape: Stonehenge is one of those sites that has to be visited, a kind of secular Mecca.

Petra is another: the ancient Nabatean trading city carved into the rose-red rocks of what, today, in southern Jordan is one of the world's best-known and most alluring tourist sites. Like Stonehenge, it remains a truly magical place. Like Stonehenge, it can be overwhelmed with visitors. And, like Stonehenge, this Unesco world heritage site is to be fronted by a new £3m visitor and interpretation centre, in this case sponsored by the Jordanian ministry of tourism and antiquities, funded by the World Bank, and designed by Edward Cullinan Architects, winners of an international competition held last year. Now the designs - in association with Bitar Consultants, a local multi-disciplinary design practice, and the British exhibition designers, Land Design - have been completed. Construction is due to begin in early 2006.

The architect in charge of the project is Roddy Langmuir, a High lander educated at Edinburgh and architect of the Archaeolink visitor centre, Aberdeen, and the gateway building to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. He also worked for eight years on the Cullinan scheme for Stonehenge.

"Of course the project has been controversial," says Langmuir. "But the Jordanian government needs both the charisma and revenue Petra offers. What we've tried to do, as I hope you can see in the drawing [shown above right], is make sure that the visitor centre is tucked into the landscape. You could describe it as landscape architecture: it follows the contours of the site; it is faced, and to an extent built from, local stone. The building won't dominate the entrance to Petra - far from it - but will lead visitors gently in and out of the site without in any way damaging it. We're looking to maintain the aura of Petra as a lost city, a place to be discovered. It needs to reveal its secrets almost reluctantly to the visitor to keep the vital dramatic element of surprise."

The entrance to Petra, hidden deep inside a canyon, is through a famous cleft in the rocks, the Siq. It is best seen just before dawn, not simply to avoid the air-conditioned coach parties that turn up after hotel breakfast time, but to catch the first rays of sun to touch the almost surreally beautiful facade of the 2,000-year-old treasury building as they paint it rose red in front of your unbelieving eyes. And yet the true entrance to Petra is really the encampment town of Wadi Musa, a sprawl of pizza parlours, burger joints, internet cafes, shops selling traditional Nabatean trainers and Bedouin baseball caps, and brassy hotels with endless copies of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, filmed at Petra.

Wadi Musa is a bit of a mess. In an ideal world, the whole joint would be pulled down and replaced by a compact new town built in local stone. In this way, the approaches to Petra would be all but virginal, the city's magic restored. All new development would merge into the mesmerising landscape of this great rift valley.

For a visitor centre to work here, it needs more Petra and less Wadi Musa. The ancient city revels in truly dramatic contrasts between shadow and intense light, between compression and release, as the Siq, in places as narrow as a Venetian alley, opens up into spaces where horses can canter past pedestrians. It needs, as well, to capture something of the reason Petra was here, a defensive location eventually captured by Roman legions but, equally importantly, a secure international marketplace and a source of prized incense that had once made the city rich. It also needs to tell the story of how, in 1812, Johann Burckhardt, a Swiss explorer disguised as a Muslim pilgrim, became the first European in centuries to visit Petra, changing it for ever. Afterwards, Petra gradually became one of the most magnetic of all tourist destinations.

When Petra was made a world heritage site in 1985, Bedouins whose families had lived there for centuries, many in caves, were pushed into new villages that you can see if you climb up the narrow paths threading up from the ancient tombs, temples, colonnades and an 8,000-seat amphitheatre.

All visitors to Petra will need to pass through the new gateway. This begins with a ticket office and leads through five galleries, which can be bypassed by visitors in a hurry to get to Petra itself, given over to various displays and interpretations of the site. The first, adorned with huge reproductions of David Roberts' cinematic watercolours of Petra, will deal with "discovery" - from a largely European perspective. The second, Origins, will be an explanation of why Petra was built in such an exotic location; the third, Living City, will be devoted to displays of how people lived their daily lives in such an unusual place. The fourth, Disappearance, will explain why Petra only ever truly flourished for 400 or so years; while the fifth, Story Tellers, will allow today's archaeologists to show how new discoveries are still being made on site.

Visitors are then free to meet the guides swarming outside by the old Petra gate leading to the Siq. On their return, they climb up a ramp back into the new building, and pass into a drum-shaped tower at the centre of a courtyard garden. Here they will be able to look down on an interactive model of Petra to piece together in their minds the things they have just seen for real. The amphitheatre at the heart of the complex will be used for evening shows and performances, while the long stone wing projecting from it will house offices for the Petra site staff, and archeaologists.

Cullinans will surely give shape to a special and gently beautiful building at Petra. It is what the Jordanian government wants, and who can can blame it? In a world as dreamy as Petra, we might well abandon visitor centres everywhere and leave historic sites for visitors to stumble across. This, though, in a world of 850-seat Airbuses, is not going to happen. The visitor centre at Petra remains, as at Stonehenge, a perplexing challenge for architects worldwide.

Summary: Petra is one of the strangest, most beautiful places in the world. Does it really need a tourist centre? By Jonathan Glancey.


In the summer of 1963, a Time magazine cover story on the new wave of realistic films set in northern England claimed that moviegoers 'are getting a bit bugged by the same scummy roofscape and the eternal kitchen-sinkdrome. They sometimes find it a bit hard to believe that things are really all that bad in Merry England. Yet at their best British protest pictures have served up great juicy hunks of local colour.' Three years later, in another cover story, Time wrote: 'Ancient elegance and new opulence are all tangled up in a dazzling blur of op and pop ... Everything new, uninhibited and kinky is blooming at the top of London life.'

What had happened between those two articles was the rise, or fabrication, of what became known as 'Swinging London'. In 1962 the American statesman Dean Acheson famously said: 'Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role.' Now we had a role as the style and fashion capital of the world. The actual Swinging London was short-lived, beginning symbolically with the free-spirited Julie Christie catching the midnight train from Yorkshire to London in Billy Liar in 1963, and ending with the sobering concurrence in November 1967 of the devaluation of the pound and the conviction of Last Exit to Brooklyn for obscenity.

Though in many ways a shallow, meretricious, exploitative, self-deceiving time, you didn't have to be on drugs, as many were, to find those years exhilarating. One particular aspect of the period was the way different media and artists were brought together, and this is one of the reasons why a small exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery in London is so fascinating. It celebrates the 40th anniversary of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up, the best film to arise out of, and to comment on, Swinging London.

Made in Britain by Italians, Blow-Up is a paranoid thriller, a mystery without a solution, based on a short story by an Argentinian, Julio Cortazar, and set in Paris. The dialogue was by the most sensational new British playwright of the time, Edward Bond. The subtle jazz score that contributes to the picture's enduring vitality is by an American, Herbie (credited as 'Herbert') Hancock, but everyone you see on screen is British, with the classless hero Thomas (David Hemmings) from a profession that dominated those times - photography. Like Antonioni himself, Thomas is an example of what Tom Wolfe was later to dub radical chic, a trendy lefty fascinated by art, fashion and eroticism. He goes from an undercover job recording life in a doss house to a fashion shoot, and moves on to observing and becoming involved in an alienated world where reality and illusion merge. He believes he has witnessed and recorded a murder, but has he? Is it an expression of his guilt as an uncommitted observer? 'I always mistrust everything which I see, which an image shows me,' Antonioni has said. 'Because I imagine what is beyond it. And what is beyond an image cannot be known.'

Most significantly the exhibition features a couple of abstract paintings in a mottled, pointillist mode by the late Ian Stephenson, and a set of 12 photographs by Don McCullin. The paintings are attributed in the film to Thomas's neighbour, played by John Castle, who says of them: 'They don't mean anything when I do them... then it sorts itself out and adds up. It's like finding a clue in a detective story.' McCullin's photographs are the series Hemmings's character takes in the Greenwich park where Vanessa Redgrave appears to be setting up her lover for assassination. They are at the centre of the film's mystery and have now taken on an iconic status similar to McCullin's more characteristic photographs, and they belong in a movie that itself has become an iconic work of its times.

· The exhibition Antonioni's Blow-Up is at the Photographers' Gallery, London WC2 until 17 September

Summary: Philip French: A fascinating exhibition explores the cool mystery of Antonioni's iconic film Blow-Up.


FORTUNE — There are some in the tech media who think covering enterprise technology is a major snoozefest. But it can actually be incredibly entertaining — especially when Oracle ORCL CEO Larry Ellison goes off on a tirade against his competitors.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle announced its third-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon, beating analysts’ expectations and sending its stock up in after-hours trading. After falling short last quarter, the company impressed the Street with strong quarterly sales of new software, up 7% from a year earlier.

But between talk about increased software sales, the company’s new cloud service, and its Fusion applications, Ellison and his posse (including co-presidents Mark Hurd and Safra Catz) took plenty of time to bash their rivals.

MORE: Why Workday has Oracle and SAP worried

Ellison has previously referred to Marc Benioff’s Salesforce.com CRM as the “roach motel” of cloud services, but he went relatively easy on the smaller company this time around. He did claim Salesforce.com’s products weren’t as “secure” as Oracle’s new suite of cloud-based software. He also took a few jabs at Workday, another cloud-based software maker that has been nipping at Oracle’s heels, saying the company’s biggest mistake was not relying on an Oracle database (Workday would not comment on Ellison’s statements).

“I think it’s a fundamental mistake and it’s going to create all sorts of problems for them down the road,” Ellison said during the company’s earnings call on Tuesday. “They’re going to have to build out that tool set themselves rather than relying on us like Salesforce does, rather than relying on us like NetSuite does, rather than relying on us like SuccessFactors does, as SAP does. They all rely on us. But Workday, they’re going to rely on themselves.”

By far, Ellison devoted the most time to bashing SAP SAP , the number one player in the business applications market. Ellison knocked the German software maker’s attempts in the cloud and its recently-launched analytics appliance HANA, which is expected to eventually compete with Oracle’s database technology.

“Six years ago, we made the decision to rewrite our ERP and CRM suite for the cloud,” said Ellison. “We called it Fusion. SAP called it Confusion.”

MORE: Salesforce gets into HR

When asked about the possible threat from SAP’s HANA, Ellison gave analysts an earful: “Now when SAP, and specifically Hasso Plattner [SAP’s co-founder), said they’re going to build this in-memory database system and compete with Oracle, I said, ‘duh, get me the name of that pharmacist, they must be on drugs.’ And that was interpreted by Hasso as saying Larry Ellison doesn’t believe in in-memory database. Quite the contrary, we’ve been working on in-memory databases for the last 10 years.”

Ellison added that SAP will never even begin to compete with Oracle’s database business, and co-president Hurd also chimed in, saying he has yet to find any HANA customers that are defecting from Oracle (SAP says it has sold HANA to companies like Procter & Gamble, Adobe, Lenovo and Cisco Systems).

HANA may be far from being a real threat to Oracle’s dominance in the database business, but SAP’s new analytics appliance, which stores data in memory rather than on traditional disks, is off to a promising start (a recent Deutsche Bank report jokingly referred to HANA as “Having A Natural Advantage”; the acronym really stands for High-Performance Analytic Appliance).

As for the cloud, both SAP and Oracle have yet to prove they have what it takes to make the shift to developing and selling software-as-a-service, despite a number of hefty cloud acquisitions under their belts. And Oracle has an added challenge of proving it can revive a slumping hardware business.

MORE: The marriage plot: Single CEOs make for riskier investments

One company that didn’t make Ellison’s public hit list — a Las Vegas-based startup called Rimini Street. The small but growing company says it offers a 50% discount on support contracts for Oracle products. Third-party maintenance providers like Rimini Street could end up eating into Oracle’s (and SAP’s) highly lucrative support business. Oracle has sued Rimini Street for IP infringement, and the smaller company responded with a countersuit. The two are expected to battle it out in court in early 2013. And you know what that means — plenty more juicy enterprise tech fodder for months to come.

Summary: Between talk about increased software sales and the company’s new cloud service, Larry Ellison and his posse took plenty of time to bash their rivals.


JPMorgan Chase disclosed Thursday that a cyberattack over the summer compromised the accounts of 76 million households and 7 million small businesses, far more than originally estimated.

The hacking ranks among the biggest of all-time impacting a corporation and serves as a stark reminder of how companies are being outwitted by people intent of stealing their client information.

JPMorgan said in a regulatory filing on Thursday that the widespread data breach affected customers who used the bank’s Chase.com and JPMorganOnline websites, as well as the Chase and J.P. Morgan mobile apps. While the breach may have compromised users’ contact information – such as names, address, phone number, e-mail, etc. – the bank says “there is no evidence” that customers’ financial information was stolen.

That would mean that customers’ account numbers and passwords, as well as their Social Security numbers, were not compromised in the breach. JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, emphasized that it has yet “to have seen any unusual customer fraud related to this incident,” and the firm noted that customers are not liable for unauthorized transactions on their accounts so long as they notify JPMorgan promptly.

The bank says it continues to investigate the matter and is cooperating with government authorities in their ongoing investigations into the breach. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and various security firms focused on digital forensics are also investigating the attacks.

News of the JPMorgan hacking, and that of several other banks, was first revealed in August. Thursday’s filing by JP Morgan shows that it was far larger than originally estimated.

The banking giant’s stock fell 0.2% in after-hours trading after having dropped 0.9% during the day. JPMorgan’s shares JPM have lost 1.3% of their value since the end of August, when the attacks were first announced.

Summary: Breach of banking giant's computer security ranks among the biggest ever and is far larger than previously believed.


You have no idea just how much more your boss’ boss’ boss is making compared to you.

According to a study published by Harvard Business Review of 16 mostly European countries, Americans had the greatest disconnect on paycheck totals, believing that top executives make about 30 times more than average workers. Execs actually make about 350 times greater than the rank-and-file worker. Americans also have a greater misperception of the actual chasm in wealth between the poorest and the wealthiest than do people in other countries, according to the survey.

Unlike people who live in other countries, Americans seem “relatively disinterested in differences in pay,” says Lisa Keister, a sociology professor at Duke University. This was underscored by new research that found that people generally fret over inequality, but Americans, more than others, underestimate how vast the gap is between the average worker’s compensation and the wages of top corporate executives.

Figuring out who makes up the wealthiest 1% of Americans—and how they got there—is key to understanding economic inequality and social mobility, Keister says. But little is known about them, she believes, because Americans tend to stick to their own economic class and mingle little with others in different parts of the economic spectrum.

“We tend to spend most of our time with people like us,” she says. That’s called “homophily,” or love of the same, which is the tendency of individuals to associate with those who are similar.

Even those “who are extremely rich or extremely poor,” explains Keister, from her office in Durham, N.C., “spend most of their time in the company of other very rich or very poor people, giving them little reason to think about inequality most of the time.”

Typical manifestations of hyper wealth, such as huge homes, luxury cars and other similar accoutrements, do not impinge on the daily lives of others. But in big cities where people live close together— and differences in wealth are more visible—the income gap may be undeniable and the subject of resentment, but people accept it, notes Bonnie Jacobson, a therapist who sees various strata mix in group therapy sessions she conducts at the New York Institute of Psychology.

“There is envy because some people can fly in private plans, have maids, and own big houses,” Jacobson says, “People do care. They work for banks, for example, and they work hard, but they don’t see the kinds of paychecks that the CEO is getting, and it’s frustrating.

“But a lot of people can get past that,” she believes, “because they often have the feeling they are lucky to be working … they are lucky to have a job.”

Keister, at Duke, agrees. In an article in the Annual Review of Sociology, released in June, she wrote that in addition to not usually facing the country’s economic disparities, “even as inequality worsens, most people have tended to fare better.

“Some segments of the population have fared worse over time, but people are largely faring better than prior generations. This creates individual well-being even in the face of growing inequality.”

The upward mobility of some groups along with the “American ethos that anyone can make it,” has kept people from fully realizing the extent of the wealth gap. Even so, Americans surveyed in the Harvard study agreed with workers in other countries that highly skilled employees are paid too much and lower-skilled workers are being compensated too little.

The disconnect between perception and reality in the United States was highest among the countries studied in the Harvard Business School study. People surveyed in Australia, Chile, South Korea and Taiwan estimated even higher gaps between worker paychecks and the boss’s income, the actual difference in compensation was greatest in the United States because American CEOs are the highest paid in the world, with median compensation of $10.5 million in 2013.

CEO compensation has soared in recent decades, quadrupling from around 30 times the average worker salary in the 1960s to more than 100 times the average in the 1990s. The trajectory has continued relentlessly upward. In the United States today, CEOs earn an average 354 times the amount one worker earns.

The stark division between the haves and have-nots may draw greater public attention once the federal government implements the salary ratio requirement Congress passed in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. It requires companies to disclose the ratio between their CEO’s compensation and the salary of a median-earning employee.

Corporations, fearing startling headlines, are fighting the disclosure requirements on the grounds that they set up an unfair comparison between companies, which may use different methods to calculate the ratios. Participants in the Harvard study agreed that the ideal pay ratio for CEOs to unskilled workers was 4.6 to 1, which would result in a U.S. worker making $1.8 million at a company where the CEO makes $12.3 million. Currently, that worker makes $34,645, the study found.

“The lack of awareness of the gap in CEO to unskilled worker pay,” says Michael Norton, a study co-author, “likely reduces citizens’ desire to take action to decrease that gap.”

Despite recent protests by fast-food workers for a higher hourly wage, especially in the restaurant industry, where CEOs have handsome compensation packages, Norton noted that “many of the heated debates about whether CEO pay should be capped or the minimum wage increased are debates based on an extreme lack of knowledge about the true state of affairs.” The data, he argues, “might force people to examine their assumptions.”

At Duke, in the “Getting Rich” course that Lisa Keister teaches, students learn about stocks, bonds, credit, and the practicalities of buying a house, as well as less understood topics like business cycles and the nation’s social and economic stratification.

“They begin to understand wealth and how it is concentrated, and they learn about economic inequality,” she says. But underlining the mixed American attitudes about money and wealth, a noticeable percentage—about 15 %—of her students, she says, choose Wall Street as a first job.

“It’s remarkable,” Keister says, “how many of them go into finance when they graduate.”

Summary: In a study of 16 countries, Americans had the greatest disconnect on the income gap, believing that top executives make about 30 times more than average workers. Execs actually make about 350 times as much.


After the shocks and alarms of last week, a bit of good news on Ebola.

First, the World Health Organization has declared Nigeria Ebola-free, after six weeks elapsed without any new cases in the country being reported.

That’s important because it suggests that the disease has been stopped in Africa’s most populous country. As Nigeria also has more direct international flights with the rest of the world, the containment of the virus there sharply reduces the number of possible channels by which the virus could spread beyond the three countries it has hit hardest–Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

The announcement will be a big boost to morale among the world’s heath authorities, proof that the disease can be contained by proper medical procedures, after the lapses in protocol in the U.S. and Spain that allowed the virus to infect health care workers there.

“It’s possible to control Ebola. It’s possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu told TIME. “If any cases emerge in the future, it will be considered—by international standards—a separate outbreak. If that happens, Nigeria will be ready and able to confront it exactly as we have done with this outbreak.”

For the WHO to declare Nigeria as Ebola-free, the country had to make it 42 days with no new cases (double the incubation period), verify that it actively sought out all possible contacts, and show negative test results for any suspected cases.

Nigeria had 20 cases of Ebola after a Liberian-American man named Patrick Sawyer flew into Lagos and collapsed at the airport. Health care workers treating Sawyer were infected, and as it spread it ultimately killed eight people, a low number next to the thousands of cases and deaths in other countries. Nigeria’s health system is considered more robust, but there was significant concern among experts that a case would pop up in one of the country’s dense-populated slums and catch fire.

Fears that the virus was still spreading in Nigeria had been behind an incident on Thursday, when a passenger who had originally flown from Lagos was taken ill with signs of fever on an Air France flight to Madrid.

However, that passenger has now tested negative for the virus, media report the Spanish Health Ministry as saying.

In addition, Teresa Romero, the Spanish nurse who became the first person to contract the disease in Europe after treating a patient repatriated from west Africa, has now twice tested negative for the virus, and is considered to be recovering.

“She now has no virus and we’re waiting for the second result,” Teresa Mesa, a spokeswoman for Romero’s family, told Spanish TV Sunday. in televised comments late yesterday. “I’ve spoken to her and she’s in great form.”

Elsewhere, AFP reported Monday that some Air France staff have refused to work on flights to Nigeria, Guinea and Sierra Leone (the airline doesn’t fly to Liberia) due to concerns about catching the virus. It quoted a spokesman for the company as saying that it was able to operate its flights as normal, however.

Summary: WHO says the virus has been stopped in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, while Europe's first case has responded to treatment and is recovering.