I followed Hugh's chatty but precise instructions, with a couple of modifications to suit my diminutive kitchen. This is my account, written in diary form, taking day one as December 23. You could follow the same method to produce a simple but elegant dinner for another occasion.

It is best to order a goose from your butcher. Ask for as much of the skinned neck as possible. You will also need the giblets, liver and skin of the neck. Ask the butcher to joint the goose for you as follows. The neck, breasts, and legs must be separated. Tell him that you will need as much of the fat as possible for making confit.

Making the goose fat and marinating

Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 and put the fat in an ovenproof dish.

Cook it for half an hour before straining all the liquefied fat through a sieve into a bowl. Return the remaining solid fat to the oven and repeat this process every 15 minutes until all the fat is rendered. If you're squeamish, buy goose fat in tins or jars.

While you render the fat, prepare the legs for confit by laying them in a container that will fit in the fridge. Mix1 tbsp salt with 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper. Rub this all over the legs and refrigerate overnight.

Put the neck (but not the skin) and all the giblets into a good-sized saucepan. Cover with water and simmer for about two hours. Strain the neck and giblets, but keep the stock if you would like gravy for Christmas dinner. Refrigerate the neck and giblets.

Marinate the neck skin in a small container or sealable bag with 1 tbsp brandy or rum and 1 tbsp port, and refrigerate overnight.

Making confit with the legs

Heat the oven to 120C/250F/gas mark 4. Scrape the seasoning off the goose legs. Heat the goose fat in an ovenproof dish that is large enough to take the legs with plenty of room to spare. Immerse the legs in this fat, making sure that they are covered. Cook them in the oven for at least three hours, or until they are very tender.

If you have no suitable roasting dishes, you can make confit on the hob. Cover the legs with the fat as above and cook on the lowest heat possible (for about 3 hours). The meat should come off the bone with a gentle nudge of a spoon. Then transfer the legs and fat to a container, making sure they are covered. Leave in a cool place overnight.

Making the goose neck sausage

Do this once the confit is in the oven and finish it off in the same tray or pan.

The giblets and neck meat picked off the bone and chopped roughly 4 oz/110g sausage meat 1 generous tbsp soft butter 6 sage leaves 1 tsp salt 4 tsp fresh ground black pepper The neck skin and its marinade Butcher's string

Combine the chopped giblets and neck meat, sausage meat, butter, sage, salt and pepper and marinate in a bowl.

Tie the narrow end of the neck with butcher's string and stuff the filling into it from the other end. Tie it with another knot (Hugh recommends a reef knot).

Prick the sausage in several places using a needle or sharp fork, and cook it in the confit fat for 14 hours, turning every half hour unless it is fully covered. Once it is cooked, refrigerate it overnight.

With the sausage and confit ready, you have the foundations for three courses. Spend the morning making the cake, then prepare the trimmings: the salad for the first course, the split peas for the confit, and the roast vegetables for the breast.

Goose neck sausage and bitter leaves

Simply serve slices of the delicious sausage with a bitter leaf salad. I used a mixture of red and white chicories and watercress. Because I put chutney on the table, I dressed the leaves only with a pinch of salt and a little extra-virgin olive oil. It was perfect.

Confit of goose with split-pea purée

I veered slightly from River Cottage at this point because I can't look at pulses without reaching for my Indian spices. Have the peas ready before people arrive and reheat gently with a little water when you are ready to serve this course.

8oz/225g green split peas 3 cloves garlic 1 tbsp unsalted butter 1 tsp cumin seeds 2 confit goose legs 2 oranges, cut into quarters

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Boil the split peas and whole garlic cloves in 2 pints/1 litre of unsalted water until they are tender and begin to thicken. Add more water if they appear dry too quickly. Once you have a thick porridge, they are ready.

In a small frying-pan, heat the butter and fry the cumin seeds for about a minute. Add them to the peas and fold in. Season the peas to taste with salt.

Place a small roasting tray in the oven with 2 tbsp of the goose fat. When hot, roast the legs skin side down and turn them over after 5 minutes. Cook for another 10 minutes until they are crispy on top. Drain off the fat and nudge the flesh and skin from the bone with a spoon or fork.

Serve with a little of the pea purée and a segment of orange to garnish.

Breast of goose with roast vegetables

Cook the vegetables before your guests arrive and reheat them in the oven while you eat the second course and cook the breasts. Cooked and sliced, two breasts will feed six.

6 Jerusalem artichokes 4 carrots 10 small red potatoes 4 red onion 2 goose breasts

Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Cut the vegetables into equal-sized pieces and toss with 3 tbsp olive oil or goose fat and a pinch of salt.

Combine all the vegetables in a roasting tray, in a single layer with the salt and fat. Roast for about 40 minutes.

As soon as the vegetables go in, heat another tray with 2 tbsp of the goose fat and add the breasts, skin side down. Put in the oven. After 10 minutes, turn them over and sprinkle with a little salt. Roast for another 20 minutes if you want them pink, or 30 minutes for brown meat.

Remove from the oven and rest for 10 minutes before slicing thinly lengthways and dividing between everyone at the table.

This is effortless, but it tastes a million dollars. For convenience, you could use vacuum-packed, cooked and peeled chestnuts. Hugh would perhaps disapprove of my redcurrant sauce, but it was a great foil for the sharpness of the cake.

For an 8 in/20cm springform cake tin, you will need:

8oz/225g each unsalted butter, bitter chocolate, peeled and cooked chestnuts 4 large eggs, separated 4 oz/110g caster sugar

4oz/110g redcurrants 2 tbsp port or sweet wine

Heat the oven to 170C/325F/gas mark 3. Melt the butter and chocolate gently in a pan or bowl suspended over hot water.

Beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and creamy, and fold into the chocolate mix. Whisk the whites until they are just stiff and carefully fold them into the other ingredients (the mix should have a mousse-like texture).

Grease and line the cake tin, pour in the mix and bake for 25–30 minutes. The top should look cracked, but the cake will still wobble slightly.

Allow it to cool for half an hour before serving. For the sauce, mix the redcurrants with the port or wine and heat them until the fruit falls apart. Push through a sieve, or serve it rough and ready from the pan.

• All recipes serve six.

• 'The River Cottage Year' by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hodder & Stoughton) is available for £15.99 plus £2.25 p & p. To order, call Telegraph Books Direct on 0870 155 7222.

• Next week: Delia Smith

Summary: In the second of a three-part series, Tom Norrington-Davies  road-tests the holiday recipes of the nation’s favourite cookery writers. This week: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall


Early-decision admissions policies may be falling out of favor at some top universities, but many schools are quietly using an array of other tools to win over the best students early.

In increasing numbers, colleges are wooing their top choices with notes of praise and hints of acceptance letters and scholarship money to come. The idea is to win their affections by getting them some good news before the competition does. This courtship, which can take place up to several months before formal acceptance letters hit...

Summary: Early-decision admissions policies may be falling out of favor at top universities, but many schools are quietly using an array of other tools -- notes of praise, hints of scholarships -- to win over the best students early.


A new trailer for A Most Wanted Man, adapted from John Le Carré’s espionage thriller, has been released.

The film stars Oscar-winner Philip Seymour Hoffman, who tragically died in February, in his final major film role. He stars as Günther Bachmann, a hard-drinking anti-terrorism agent who must determine whether 26 year-old half-Chechen, half-Russian immigrant Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) is an Islamic extremist or another victim of the war on terror.

Directed by Anton Corbijn (Control, The American) and based on Le Carré’s 2008 novel of the same name, A Most Wanted Man premiered at the Sundance film festival earlier this year to positive critical reception, with much praise for Hoffman’s leading performance. Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe and Robin Wright also star.

A Most Wanted Man is released in the UK on September 12, and in the US on July 25.

Summary: Exclusive: a new trailer for the John Le Carré espionage thriller A   Most Wanted Man, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in his last major role


Sotheby’s BID -0.32 % hoped for smooth sailing on Monday when it offered up an André Derain painting of a London barge with “Red Sails” for at least $15 million on Monday—but bidders sniffed at the price tag and let the work sink. The painting, along with 20 other works in Sotheby’s cringing sale, went unsold.

Despite a reasonably chipper, smaller sale of contemporary art at rivals Christie’s and Phillips the night before, Sotheby’s $145 million sale of impressionist and modern art landed like a reality check, confirming that the market is still churning through a contraction. Sellers who could afford to hang onto their trophies sat out this round, while buyers squinted at whatever was left rather than overpay—with a few exceptions.

The bright spot of Sotheby’s sale was Auguste Rodin, whose creamy marble sculpture of a kissing couple from 1901-02, “Eternal Spring,” sold to a telephone bidder for $20.4 million, a record for the artist at auction and well above its $12 million high estimate. The Metropolitan Museum of Art owns a similar “Spring,” but the Rodin Museum in Paris does not, which may have given this example extra cachet.

New York art adviser Nancy Whyte engaged in a dogged duel with a telephone bidder in order to win Maurice de Vlaminck’s 1905 landscape, “Undergrowth,” for $16.4 million, within its $12 million to $18 million estimate. “It’s rare and it’s great,” Ms. Whyte said after the sale, “but there were things in this sale that weren’t top quality and needed lower estimates. It’s a new paradigm.”

Her Vlaminck also got a boost because of its safe-bet ownership history, having been in the family of Texaco heiress Sarah Campbell Blaffer for the last half-century. Several pieces from the estate of New York pharmaceutical executive Elmer Holmes Bobst and his wife, Mamdouha, also fared well, including a Claude Monet’s seashore scene, “Low Tide at Petites-Dalles,” that sold for $9.9 million, well over its $5 million high estimate.

Paul Signac’s 1892 “Houses at Port, Saint-Tropez,” a butter-yellow pointillist view of the French Riviera city, sold for $10.6 million, within its $8 million to $12 million estimate.

Elsewhere in the sale, bidding proved eerily thin. “Apocalyptic, no?” whispered a Paris dealer, Vincent Matthu, even as the sale was ongoing. “Where are the Chinese?”

Indeed, Sotheby’s chief seller to Beijing buyers, Patti Wong, stood at the phone banks but didn’t lob a single bid for her clients all night, a turnabout from several years ago when her collectors took home several trophies in any major sale. Mr. Matthu said the expected star of the sale—that sunken Derain—should have elicited a few bids from Asia. After the sale, Ms. Wong shrugged when asked about Chinese collectors, and another Sotheby’s expert, Helena Newman, said Derain’s rarity at auction makes it “harder to find a right price for him,” she said.

Monte Carlo dealer David Nahmad said Sotheby’s simply peppered its sale with too many mediocre pieces that carried estimates that looked fair a few months ago but now appeared steep. “In every auction, there are mistakes in finding the right evaluation,” he said.

Sotheby’s missed the mark more than it has in several seasons, though—only managing to sell 66% of its offerings and failing to meet its own presale expectations of $165 million. Casualties included examples by Rene Magritte, Joan Miro, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Overall, the house’s total amounts to a fraction of last May’s $420.4 million total.

The result comes at a time of staff-shuffling turmoil and lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings for the house—all of which may put redoubled pressure on Chief Executive Tad Smith to deliver when the house holds its contemporary sale on Wednesday.

“Sellers want prices they could have gotten six months ago,” added Mr. Matthu, “but it’s a new market.”

Earlier Monday, Sotheby’s reported a much deeper-than-expected loss in the first quarter of the year as the company reported a 35% decline in net auction sales.

For the quarter ended March 31, Sotheby’s reported a loss of $25.9 million, or 41 cents a share, compared with a year-earlier profit of $5.2 million, or seven cents a share. Sotheby’s posted an adjusted loss of 35 cents a share, worse than analysts’ expectations of a 23-cent loss.

Revenue fell 32% to $106.5 million, below analysts’ forecasts of $125 million.

—Anne Steele contributed to this article.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications: Kelly Crow is the author of this article. An earlier version carried an incorrect byline. (May 9)

Summary: Sotheby’s hoped for smooth sailing when it offered up André Derain’s ‘Red Sails’ for at least $15 million—but bidders sniffed at the price tag. The painting, along with 20 other works, went unsold.


One of the most bizarre and entertaining meals I’ve ever had in my life was at a place on the Lower East Side called Sammy’s Roumanian. A sign at the door to the basement restaurant said “No Spritzing Allowed.” The waiters were identical triplets, causing confusion, and they served platters of Jewish specialties such as kreplach (meat-filled dumplings) and flanken (boiled beef). There was a jar of chicken fat on the table, vodka in a block of ice and a bottle of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup. How did the syrup get that name?

You’ll find the answer to this and much else in “Food and the City,” Ina Yalof’s delightful oral history of, as her subtitle has it, “New York’s Professional Chefs, Restaurateurs, Line Cooks, Street Vendors and Purveyors.”

The author visited all five boroughs to write about more than 40 restaurants, very broadly interpreted, since some are trucks, diners and pizzerias. Ms. Yalof interviewed more than 50 people, not the usual star chefs (we’ve heard more than enough about them) but a praline artisan, a Brooklyn tortilla supplier whose kitchen turns out 450,000 a day, the owner of a Long Island duck farm and even a woman who calls herself “entertainologist”—a private chef for celebrities.

When Ms. Yalof pays attention to a fancy or famous restaurant, like Le Bernardin, she doesn’t interview executive chef Eric Ripert, but Justo Thomas, the fish butcher who works in a 5 foot by 10 foot alcove in the basement. At the Four Seasons, just recently closed, she talks to Jesus Albino “Albi” Chauca, an Ecuadorean who toiled in the kitchen for 16 years. The cast of characters is remarkable and Ms. Yalof captures their humor, passion and genuine enthusiasm for extremely hard work.

The author is an investigative journalist, not a food writer. As a child in Miami Beach, she was raised on a diet of TV dinners and her father’s one specialty, “Leo’s Famous Croquettes,” (canned Bumblebee salmon, eggs, Pepperidge Farm breadcrumbs and a great deal of butter). She was eventually taught to cook by her mother in-law, who had an “efficiency apartment” in an Upper West Side hotel. The refrigerator stood in the bedroom, she writes, “covered with vine-patterned Con-Tact paper so it would ‘fit in’ with the décor.” Somehow it contained enough food to feed a hockey team.

The idea for Ms. Yalof’s book came from a chance conversation with a neighborhood butcher. “His repartee was so entertaining . . . that it got me thinking: How many others like him are there around this city?” Plenty.

There’s Luis Iglesias, “The Mexican Menace,” who works at the Grand Central Oyster Bar. He’s the eight-time world-champion oyster shucker (15 a minute) who has never tasted one. “I’ve tried to but I just can’t do it.” He shares that phobia with Woody Allen who once commented, “I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.”

Ms. Yalof meets the head chef at Riker’s Island, who’s not some beefy bruiser but a five-foot-tall 60-year-old woman named Paulette Johnson. The native Jamaican is responsible for turning out 47,000 meals a day (breakfast at 5 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m. and dinner at 4 p.m.). When Ms. Johnson was asked at her job interview how she’d feel about managing the number of people needed to produce such vast amounts of food, her answer was unintentionally ironic: “It’s not really the size of the gun, sir, it’s the effect of the bullet.”

While Ms. Johnson cooks up pasta casserole (and, on occasion, her famous carrot cake) for prisoners, Lulu Powers caters parties for movie stars and politicians and pays close attention to their fickle tastes. The drink of the moment is “birch tree water,” Ms. Yalof assures us. “. . . And please not coconut water. It’s over.”

Some of the people Ms. Yalof meets have impressive personal histories that have nothing to do with food. Luísa Fernandes, the chef at Robert, a restaurant on top of Museum of Art and Design, is a Portuguese woman who worked for Doctors Without Borders as a nurse and parachute jumper in Angola and Kosovo. Alexander Smalls, great grandson of slaves, was a well-known opera star before he became proprietor of the Cecil, a well-known brasserie in Harlem. Mohamed Abouelenein, an Egyptian who owns the popular midtown food cart Halal Guys, is a former soccer player with a doctorate in veterinary medicine.

And then there are the mysteries she solves. Occasionally I’ve noticed many firefighters dressed in their gear shopping together in a supermarket while their truck idles outside. JoJo Esposito, a fireman on Staten Island explains that “the whole company has to go out together because if we get a run, that’s where we’re leaving from.” Six nights a week they get a real meal, and he cooks it. “Why me? Take a look. I’m the heaviest guy in the room.” His favorite dish is rigatoni with sausage. If a call comes in while he’s cooking, they’re all out of the firehouse in under a minute—including Mr. Esposito. When they return, he heats up their dinner. “There’s not a meal that I make that you can’t heat up and it’s just as good later.”

As for Fox’s U-Bet at Sammy’s Roumanian? David Fox, the originator’s grandson, explains the sauce’s name. His grandfather, a Brooklyn-born Jew, was a gambler who went to Texas to invest in land and lost all his money there. “But he did come back with something,” says Mr. Fox. “He came back with an expression that everyone used in the Southwest —‘You bet!’ ‘Feelin’ okay today?’—‘You bet.’ ‘Hot enough for ya?’ ‘You bet.’ And that, in a nutshell is how our chocolate syrup got the name Fox’s U-Bet.” They’ve been making it since 1900.

—Ms. Hodgson is the author of “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time: My Adventures in Life and Food.”

Summary: Moira Hodgson reviews “Food and the City: New York’s Professional Chefs, Restaurateurs, Line Cooks, Street Vendors, and Purveyors Talk About What They Do and Why They Do It” by Ina Yalof.


Kristy Blackney, 24, had been backpacking through Asia since last month. Source: Facebook

Victorian backpacker Kristy Blackney did not die in a flash flood but likely drowned in a Cambodia river taking a night swim, a local police chief said.

Ms Blackney's body was discovered on Sunday morning outside a riverside hostel where she had been staying in Kampot, southern Cambodia.

Kampot province police commissioner Mao Chanmathurith told nine.com.au that media reports of a flash flood striking the area were inaccurate.

"There was no flood," Comm Chanmathurith said in a telephone interview.

"I think maybe she drank some alcohol, went for a swim at night and drowned."

A local source confirmed to nine.com.au that people had been warned a flash flood was forecast on Kampot River, but that it was yet to hit where Arcadia Backpackers hostel was situated.

Kristy Anne Blackney, an Australian tourist, was found dead in the Kampot River. Source: Supplied

Ms Blackney is widely reported to have been travelling alone, but Comm Chanmathurith said a young man had been questioned and released by investigators.

A local doctor had confirmed the cause of death as drowning, but did not indicate if Ms Blackney had been drinking on the night she died, Comm Chanmathurith said.

Police were called to the scene about 10am on Sunday, after Ms Blackney's body was spotted in the river hours after her tragic late night swim.

Ms Blackney, who grew up in Inverloch on the Victorian coast, had left Perth for Bangkok on July 26 for an extended holiday in south-east Asia, according to her Facebook page.

An online fundraising page has been set up to help Ms Blackney's family bring her body home, with donations so far totalling $23,000.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Victorian backpacker Kristy Blackney did not die in a flash flood but likely drowned in a Cambodia river after drinking alcohol and taking a night swim, a local police chief said.


Jon Dorenbos played in his first Super Bowl on Tuesday night. Well ... Super Bowl of reality TV.

Dorenbos, who has captivated America's heart as a magician this summer, performed on the season finale of America's Got Talent. Just two days after the Eagles' Pro Bowl long snapper was part of a 29-10 victory over the Browns, which included an appearance from Vice President Joe Biden and the debut of rookie quarterback Carson Wentz, Dorenbos brought his act to live television one more time.

Dorenbos' card trick involved him pulling out cards with each of judges' names (and Simon Cowell's son's name, Eric) scribed onto cards. Dorenbos also had "Eric" written on a blackboard.

More impressive was Dorenbos' storytelling. With The Script's "Hall of Fame" in the background, Dorenbos dished inspiration to the crowd.

"This is life!" he said, pointing at a spread-out deck of cards. "When everything is going so perfect, and yet, tragedy and chaos, they strike us when we least expect it. And it's what we all have in common. We all face this. But I think the difference is do we decide and do we choose to live in vision or do we live in circumstance? And I don't know about you guys, but I wake up every single morning and I choose to lose in vision to find happiness, knowing that life will work itself out, and we will find ourselves."

Dorenbos' story goes well beyond football. When he was 12, his father, Alan, killed his mother, Kathy, with a bench grinder. Dorenbos' aunt and uncle, on his mother's side, won custody of him and his sister Krissy. Dorenbos used magic, along with football, as an outlet for his tragic teenage years.

Voting is now closed, but the Eagles did their best to help their guy out.

We asked some other #Eagles to help spread the word about @JonDorenbos on the #AGTFinale.They did okay. pic.twitter.com/EqajTwTKPR

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) September 14, 2016

Dorenbos also got a high-profile endorsement from a rival:

Incredible talent on @nbcagt and @JonDorenbos has been an inspiration with his magic and his story. Well done buddy! #respect

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) September 14, 2016

The winner of the 11th season of America's Got Talent will be announced Wednesday. After that, Dorenbos will be back in Philly, attempting to lead the Eagles to the America's Got Talent finale of football, also known as the Super Bowl, in February.

-- Follow Jeffrey Eisenband on Twitter @JeffEisenband.

Aaron Rodgers, America's Got Talent, Carson Wentz, Cleveland Browns, Football, Heidi Klum, Howie Mandel, inspiration, Joe Biden, Jon Dorenbos, Long Snapper, Magic, Magic Trick, Mel B, NFL, Philadelphia Eagles, Simon Cowell, Super Bowl

Summary: Eagles long snapper Jon Dorenbos delivered an inspirational magic trick in his act in the America's Got Talent finale.


Officials suspect that a teen who was gang-raped by three young men near the Eiffel Tower had been chatting to one of the alleged perpetrators online prior to the attack.

Three Algerian nationals have been charged over the assault in the Champ-de-Mars garden after being arrested in a Paris hotel on Friday, CBS reports.

The victim, believed to be 19, is alleged to have begun chatting to one of the attackers via Facebook two days before the rendezvous in the park on September 10.

But his reported invitation to "drink coke and eat strawberries and grapes" allegedly turned into a sickening premeditated attack that only stopped, according to Le Parisien, when a pair of Canadian joggers intervened.

Witnesses said the witness was "dazed, partially naked, and crying" when she emerged from the rapists' clutches.

The Daily Caller reports that the alleged attackers are all aged 17 and were set to return to Germany, where they reside, just before police caught up with them.

If convicted, the trio could face 15-20 years behind bars.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Officials suspect that a teen who was gang-raped by three young men near the Eiffel Tower had previously been chatting to one of the alleged perpetrators online.


A villager sits on the section of China's Great Wall that has been smoothed over. (AFP)

Chinese social media users are in an uproar over restoration of a 700-year-old section of the Great Wall that has been covered in cement, turning it into a smooth, flat-topped path.

Known as one of the most beautiful portions of the "wild", unrestored wall, the eight-kilometre (five-mile) Xiaohekou stretch in northeast Liaoning province was built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty.

Photos posted online showed that its uneven, crumbling steps, jagged walls and plant growth had been replaced as far as the eye could see with a white, concrete-like cap.

"This looks like the work of a group of people who didn't even graduate from elementary school," said one user of China's Twitter-like Weibo platform. "If this is the result, you might as well have just blown it up."

"Such brutal treatment of the monuments left behind by our ancestors! How is it that people with low levels of cultural awareness can take on leadership positions?" asked another. "Why don't we just raze the Forbidden City in Beijing, too?"

Even the deputy director of Liaoning's department of culture Ding Hui admitted: "The repairs really are quite ugly," according to state broadcaster CCTV.

The restored section stretches in northeast Liaoning and was built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty. (AFP)

Though the restoration was completed in 2014, photos of the work only went viral in recent days, with Chinese state media outlets quick to pile on scorn for what CCTV commentary called the "destructive repair".

The Great Wall is not a single unbroken structure but stretches for thousands of kilometres in sections from China's east coast to the edge of the Gobi desert.

In places it is so dilapidated that estimates of its total length vary from 9,000 to 21,000 kilometres, depending on whether missing sections are included. Despite its length it is not, as is sometimes claimed, visible from space.

Emergency maintenance was ordered for Xiaohekou in 2012 to "avoid further damage and dissolution" caused by "serious structural problems and issues due to flooding", the State Administration of Cultural Heritage said in a statement on its website in response to public and media outcry.

The government body has begun an investigation into the approval, implementation and outcome of the maintenance work, stating that it would deal with work units and personnel found to be at fault severely, "without justifying their mistakes".

Local villagers living near the Xiaohekou section said tourist numbers had declined since the repairs were completed.

"After tourists see it now, they say that there's already a lot of concrete in the city -- there was no need to come all this way to see the Great Wall here," a villager said, according to the Chinese Business Morning News.

"Now if it rains or snows, no one dares to climb the renovated wall," another explained. "If you're up on it and you slip, you'd fall to your death."

China has made it a national imperative to improve protection of cultural relics, with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang both writing remarks in April calling for greater governmental efforts in conservation so that traditional Chinese culture could continue to inspire future generations, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Around 30 percent of China's Ming-era Great Wall has disappeared over time as adverse natural conditions and reckless human activities -- including stealing the bricks to build houses -- erode the UNESCO World Heritage site, state media reports said last summer.

Under Chinese regulations people who take bricks from the Great Wall can be fined up to 5,000 yuan ($750), according to the Global Times, but plant growth on the wall continues to accelerate decay, and tourism, especially to undeveloped sections, continues to severely damage the world's longest human construction.

Summary: Chinese social media users were in an uproar Friday over restoration of a 700-year-old section of the Great Wall that has been covered in cement, turning it into a smooth, flat-topped path.


A southeast Queensland abattoir has been fined $225,000 for releasing ammonia into a nearby creek, killing fish.

The Brisbane Magistrates Court was told officials from the Department of Environment and Logan City Council investigated sites in Native Dog Creek, downstream of the facility, from June to October 2014 after reports of dead fish.

They found the kills were due to uncapped and broken pipes releasing the chemical into the local environment.

The court found the Mt Cotton abattoir caused serious environmental harm and breached the Environmental Protection Act 1994.

In addition to the fine, the abattoir's owners were ordered to pay costs as well as almost $9700 in damages to two downstream landholders.

Summary: A southeast Queensland abattoir has been fined nearly a quarter of a million dollars for releasing ammonia into the local environment.


The head of one of Australia's largest companies has urged the West Australian government to do what it can to ensure Perth Airport gets direct flights from London.

Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder is one of a group of business leaders to urge the government and airport to grab the "once in a liftetime" opportunity for Perth to get the flights and become a regional and business hub.

The others were Macquarie Group WA chairman Mark Barnaba, Hawaiian Property Group chief executive Russell Gibbs and former Cathay Pacific and British Airways chief executive Sir Rod Eddington.

Qantas wants to offer the non-stop service from April 2018 using new long-haul Boeing 787 planes.

However, Qantas is in dispute with Perth Airport corporation over who should pay the cost of making it happen.

The airline wants to operate the international flights from a domestic rather than international terminal to link it with its domestic operations, requiring a $25 million upgrade.

That would allow people from cities such as Melbourne and Sydney flying to Perth and quickly getting on to an international Qantas flight to Europe rather than spend time being bussed to a different terminal.

The airport's management is refusing, saying it has already spent enough and citing the $250 million it spent recently upgrading the international airport terminal.

"This is an amazing opportunity because I don't think is going to be one flight a day. In the longer run I think it's the potential to be up to four flights: London, Paris, Rome, Frankfurt direct flights in out of Perth," Mr Goyder said.

"I'm one who usually says the government should stay out of things but think about what Melbourne does to attract events to Victoria ... someone, somehow we need to get this thing up and running."

WA's economy was in a slowdown and it was up to the economy to facilitate the direct flights because they would bring tourism and business that would help the economy, he said.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce had told him that WA Premier Colin Barnett had been supportive, Mr Goyder said, and the airline would ultimately pay its way through user fees but there was still a risk it would not happen over a "small amount of money".

Opposition Leader Mark McGowan said Qantas made a lot of money out of WA through the east-west Australian and north-west WA routes sometimes charging exorbitant fares.

The WA government should use its authority and leverage as a major airline customer to demand an outcome that was good for the state, he said.

Summary: Business leaders, including the Wesfarmers CEO, say the prospect of non-stop flights to and from Perth and London is too good to miss out on and must happen.


Photo: Mike Ehrmann, Getty Images

Chris Jones (right) and Colin Kaepernick during the 49ers’ 31-24 loss in Miami on Sunday.

Chris Jones (right) and Colin Kaepernick during the 49ers’ 31-24 loss in Miami on Sunday.

49ers’ defensive lineman Chris Jones has dealt with pain

ORLANDO — Nearly two years ago, in a practice leading to Super Bowl XLIX, then-New England defensive tackle Chris Jones simultaneously felt a pop in his calf and the injured muscle contract.

The pain was excruciating, but a resulting MRI exam revealed nothing.

The result: Jones gritted through 14 snaps in the Super Bowl with a torn calf muscle that required surgery, a diagnosis he learned of a week later when he had a second MRI.

“I went out there and continued with the pain,” Jones said. “That’s just what we do as football players. We play through the pain. To play the sport, you’re going to go through injuries like that. I went through it. I ended up getting it fixed.”

Jones, who was claimed off waivers by the 49ers on Nov. 8 and made his debut with an impressive start Sunday in a loss at Miami, has dealt with more pain since winning that hard-earned Super Bowl ring.

He said he had complications after his calf surgery, which forced him to sit out the 2015 season. He then was waived by the Patriots in April and signed by the Dolphins, who waived him after he played seven games this season.

On Sunday, he started for the 49ers in place of Quinton Dial and was a major reason the NFL’s worst run defense limited running back Jay Ajayi to 45 yards on 18 carries. Jones made only two tackles, but routinely occupied double teams that allowed teammates to roam free.

“I thought Chris Jones did a great job,” defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil said. “I thought he gave a boost to our defense. He was rock solid at the end position for us, took two linemen a lot and allowed (linebackers) Nick Bellore and Gerald Hodges to scrape free to the ball. I thought that he was one of the reasons we had so much success in the run game. So, he’s going to continue to have a role in our defense.”

Jones, 26, hopes his debut with the 49ers is the start of another high point in what has been an up-and-down career.

A 2013 sixth-round pick of the Texans, he was waived by both Houston and Tampa Bay before Week 2 of his rookie season. Instead of washing out of the league, however, he was claimed by the Patriots and led AFC rookies with six sacks while starting 11 games. In 2014, he had three sacks and made 12 starts during their last Super Bowl season.

In other words, Jones is a journeyman, but he’s a vagabond with a decent pedigree. His nine career sacks rank third on the 49ers’ 53-man roster and he’s one of three players with a Super Bowl ring.

Left tackle Joe Staley said Jones’ strong start wasn’t shocking, given his approach since his arrival.

“He came in and immediately practiced hard and fast and you could immediately see that he wants it,” Staley said. “It wasn’t a surprise that he went out there and had success. … I think it’s kind of a message to a lot of the guys. You’ve got to come in and work hard every single day and be ready for your opportunity. I know he was only here for a certain amount of weeks, but he showed it in practice.”

Jones arrived two days after the 49ers’ run defense reached its nadir by allowing its NFL-record seventh straight 100-yard rusher. The 49ers have since gone to great lengths to avoid further humiliation by clogging the line of scrimmage with defenders, even at the expense of leaving their secondary short-handed.

The results: They’ve allowed their second- and third-fewest rushing totals of the season over the past three games, but also allowed opposing quarterbacks in those games to throw for an average of 313.7 yards and eight touchdowns.

On Sunday, Miami head coach Adam Gase interpreted the 49ers’ defensive game plan as a slap at quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who threw for 285 yards, three touchdowns and had the second-highest passer rating (130.6) of his five-year career.

“We look at is as (being) a little disrespectful,” Gase said. “As if they didn’t think we could really throw the ball.”

It’s more likely the 49ers didn’t think they could stop the run without extra assistance, although Jones could help their cause over the last five games.

For his part, Jones hopes Sunday was a solid beginning following a pain-filled recent past.

“I’m here and I somehow started the game,” Jones said. “And I’m going to keep working hard and show that I’m still passionate about this game and about getting some wins for this team.”

Eric Branch is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ebranch@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Eric_Branch

Summary: 49ers’ defensive lineman Chris Jones has dealt with pain  ORLANDO — Nearly two years ago, in a practice leading  to Super Bowl XLIX, then-New England defensive tackle Chris Jones simultaneously felt a pop in his calf and the injured muscle contract.  Jones gritted through 14 snaps in the Super Bowl with a torn calf muscle that required surgery, a diagnosis he learned of a week later when he had a second MRI.  Jones, who was claimed off waivers by the 49ers on Nov. 8 and made his debut with an impressive start Sunday in a loss at Miami, has dealt with more pain since winning that hard-earned Super Bowl ring.  On Sunday, he started for the 49ers in place of Quinton Dial and was a major reason the NFL’s worst run defense limited running back Jay Ajayi to 45 yards on 18 carries.  “I thought Chris Jones did a great job,” defensive coordinator Jim O’Neil said.  A 2013 sixth-round pick of the Texans, he was waived by both Houston and Tampa Bay before Week 2 of his rookie season.  Instead of washing out of the league, however, he was claimed by the Patriots and led AFC rookies with six sacks while starting 11 games.  Jones arrived two days after the 49ers’ run defense reached its nadir by allowing its NFL-record seventh straight 100-yard rusher.  The 49ers have since gone to great lengths to avoid further humiliation by clogging the line of scrimmage with defenders, even at the expense of leaving their secondary short-handed.  On Sunday, Miami head coach Adam Gase interpreted the 49ers’ defensive game plan as a slap at quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who threw for 285 yards, three touchdowns and had the second-highest passer rating (130.6) of his five-year career.


Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. (AAP file image)

Doctors are demanding they shouldn't be forced to help patients die if Victoria becomes the first state to legalise limited euthanasia.

Premier Daniel Andrews says an announcement on Thursday will provide "a way forward" on assisted dying.

Peak lobby group the Australian Medical Association opposes euthanasia and its Victorian branch wants to be involved in the development of any legislation.

"We do not want to engage with deliberately ending a person's life," AMA Victoria president Lorraine Baker told reporters on Wednesday.

"For centuries the medical profession's ethical framework has revolved around preserving life."

Dr Baker acknowledged community attitudes on assisted dying had changed and opinions within the medical profession varied.

"I should imagine the debate will be hot - our own experience within our own profession is that people hold very wide-ranging views," she said.

Doctors also want to be able to say no if they morally objected to assisting a patient die.

A cross-party committee of MPs in June recommended legalising assisted dying in limited circumstances.

The committee examined voluntary euthanasia laws in other countries and found they had robust regulations to protect people against abuse.

It recognised the right of doctors to conscientiously object to assisted dying and recommended: "A health practitioner should be required to refer the patient or enduring personal guardian to another health practitioner if their personal views or beliefs prevent them from complying with lawful directions in a valid instructional health care directive."

Mr Andrews on Wednesday said the government would respond to the committee's report on Thursday.

It's been suggested the government will establish an expert panel to advise it on an appropriate model.

The legislation could then be put to parliament with all MPs voting according to their conscience and could be settled by the end of next year.

Opposition Leader Matthew Guy says Liberal MPs will be granted a conscience vote but personally he's concerned that the AMA is worried.

"Who would you trust? I oppose these kind of bills because I don't trust politicians when it comes to end-of-life circumstances," he said.

Exit International founder Philip Nitschke says the committee's proposal is more limited than he'd like - but he's still hopeful.

"I think I would be very surprised if it was to fail," he told AAP.

Right to Life Australia President Margaret Tighe told AAP that Mr Andrews could be unwittingly signing the death warrant of his own government by ignoring problems associated with legalised patient killing in other countries.

The South Australian parliament last month knocked back for the 15th time voluntary euthanasia laws in that state.

Summary: Victoria's government will respond this week to MPs who have called for legislation on assisted dying.


By midday yesterday it looked like we might be in for a big Cyber Monday, and today, final stats show that it was definitely a strong showing for online retailers.

According to numbers provided by Coremetrics, sales for this year’s Cyber Monday beat last year by 13.7 percent. Moreover, it appears that Black Friday deals moving online hasn’t taken much thunder away from the year’s busiest online shopping day –- sales yesterday topped this year’s Black Friday by 24.1 percent.Some other numbers directly from the report [PDF link]:

The average dollar amount consumers spent per online order rose 38.2 percent from Cyber Monday 2008 ($180.03 versus $130.24), led by apparel retailers.

Consumers bought nearly 10 percent more items per order on Cyber Monday 2009 compared to Black Friday 2009 and nearly 30 percent more compared to Cyber Monday 2008.

Consumer shopping hit its peak from 9-10 a.m. PST, but maintained stronger momentum throughout the day than on Cyber Monday 2008.

The big Cyber Monday numbers follow strong results from Black Friday. Does that point to good economic news ahead? Perhaps, though Coremetrics is quick to point out that the stats are being driven at least in part by more consumers turning to the Web to find the best prices on items.

Did you do any online shopping yesterday? Let us know about your experience in the comments.

Summary: By midday yesterday it looked like we might be in for a big Cyber Monday, and today, final stats show that it was definitely a strong showing for online retailers. According to ...


Whether you're in the mood for a sapphic horror story or a campy classic, here are 11 films to check out this Halloween that appear to a queer sensibility.

A group of queer women head to a park in Texas for a camping trip to celebrate one of their birthdays in horror film "Make A Wish." Unfortunately for them, one of the women is actually a psychotic killer.

Paul Verhoeven's last film before heading to America to begin his Hollywood career was German horror picture "De Vierde Man" (The Fourth Man), starring Jeroen Krabbé as bisexual novelist Gerard Reve. For fans of gory and violent Halloween films, this one's for you.

RELATED: Queer 2.0: Gender-Bending Halloween Dos & Don'ts

2004's "Hellbent" is reportedly the first gay slasher film, and it went on to a limited theatrical release after its film festival run. The film centers on a group of friends in West Hollywood who go to the site of the murder of a gay couple years before. Things quickly take a turn for the gory and dangerous.

The Child's Play series released its fifth installment, "Seed of Chucky," in 2004. Like the others, it centers around murderous dolls, but this one has an interesting gender-related storyline woven in.

The 1993 cult film "Hocus Pocus," about a trio of evil witches who get resurrected by a teenage boy, is the perfectly campy Halloween choice. And with the actresses Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy in the starring roles, you'll be sure to laugh.

This comedic horror film is perfect if you're looking for a fun and light Halloween flick. Written by Jim Hansen and Jeffery Self, "You're Killing Me" is about a seemingly happy couple, Joe and George. Joe just happens to be a serial killer -- no big deal.

2012's "ParaNorman" is an animated film about young man who has the ability to speak with ghosts. It's one of the supporting characters, Mitch, who caught our attention -- he's the first gay character in a major animated film.

"Mania," about a lesbian couple who have fled their hometown after a brutal murder, is not for the faint of heart. Check this one out if you're in the mood for a horror-packed Halloween film.

Sometimes it's great to go with a cult classic. The 1975 musical film, starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick, will have you singing and dancing in your Halloween costume.

"Rosemary's Baby" gets a lesbian-retelling in "Lyle." Gaby Hoffman stars as Leah, a pregnant woman who moves into a Brooklyn brownstone with her wife, June (Ingrid Jungermann), and their daughter, Lyle (Eleanor Hopkins). The film centers on Leah as she descends into paranoia.

Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon are involved in a complex -- and dangerous -- love triangle in this 1983 cult horror film. If you're feeling a movie that's sexy, scary and has an '80s vibe, "The Hunger" is a must-see.

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Summary: Whether you're in the mood for a sapphic horror story or a campy classic, here are 11 queer-inclusive films to check out this Halloween.


I think it’s a very cool idea, but I’m not convinced that it will work. As mentioned in your article, Pete, “huge teams are tough to coordinate, and it’s hard to motivate people to contribute”, which may lead to inconsistent product offerings and communication problems.

I’ve participating in smaller projects/companies that have operated in a similar fashion and all sorts of problems inevitably arise… from issues regarding stakeholder percentages to personal scheduling conflicts, which lead to missed deadlines.

I wish them all the best and hope they can prove me wrong.

I really wish you had done a little bit more research before posting this review. The site has horrible, terrible ideas. In fact, all of the ideas I read fit in one of two categories: either already done or nearly impossible to execute. For example, the current #5 is a cell phone that is used for “authentication to desktop applications (windows & *nix), web applications, cars/motorbikes, ATM’s, controlled doorways, gas stations, retail purchasing, etc”. Meanwhile, the #3 submission was “A photo community to let anyone who can take pictures to post their digital photos for sale online: auction or fixed priced.” Because people are submitting ideas on markets they’ve obviously done little to no research on, the ideas usually already implemented, or their lack of understanding of the business requirements result in wildly unfeasable ideas. Your post didn’t addess how you can’t comment on an idea, mark an idea as already implemented, or how competitors could mine the good ideas from the site without contributing. The high signal to noise ratio will be the undoing of this site.

It reminds me of the GameDev.net forums — Kids coming in with crazy game ideas. Even good ideas are worthless — its the painful hours of making them happen thats worth the big bucks.

Another thing is.. if you have a great idea, and are able to code it.. why not build it yourself?

It doesn’t really matter if the idea isn’t unique… What really matters is that you are able to innovate the idea with your own twists and have good PR.

MySpace certainly wasn’t the first social network, and Google wasn’t the first search engine.

With that said, I do think people need to do their research before jumping into development of ideas. Doing things blindly often leads to stubbed toes.

Having lived through (and enjoyed) the business experiment (TBE), I was excited to see Cambrian House (CH) launch and have spent some time there over the past few weeks. CH have taken a few steps forward and a few steps back from where we left off at TBE.

On the plus side, CH does a much better job of communicating the overall vision - and it shows in the rapid growth of their membership. They’ve clearly thought through what it takes to build software. I like the way that creative and code contributions are managed by CH - definitely an improvemnent over TBE.

That said, Michi is right; the ideas submitted at CH do totally suck - I don’t think they’ve attracted a single entrepreneurial mind yet - CH could really benefit from the involvement of the TBE crowd. CH’s biggest downfall heer is that they don’t really understand the collaborative nature of crowdsourcing and w.o.c. The ideas funnel at CH wouldn’t be so littered with crud if they had let the community discuss the ideas - the idea submission part of the community badly needs some healthy criticism to end the flow of brain-farts being posted there.

The two main challenges that CH shares with TBE are a) no useful guidelines were set for the type of products CH could build and b) although the product creation model is better developed than TBE’s there’s no solid plan for contributing to the operations of the business. Beyond that, I’m also skeptical about CH’s points system - it’s nice in that it’s simple and transparent - but sucks in that it seems very arbitary, did not solicit crowd input and is poorly tied to the total value of the products.

It’ll be interesting to see how this evolves - CH has definitely attracted a far more creative team than we had at TBE. Regardless of whether CH eventually pays anyone, if it’s anything like TBE, I highly recommend getting involved for the learnings that will come from this.

In regards to the team development … how do you explain how any open source projects on SourceForge get produced? I don’t think that CambrianHouse is saying there will be massive teams on each project. There could be if needed, but I think it will end up being small teams on many projects. It will be interesting to see how they manage this, and what their system will be I can hardly get all my friends together for a drink at the same time muchless develop software.

Okay…and as far as the ideas go, I’d like to point out the sites been live for 16-17 days. They’re not even out of beta yet, so I’m sure better idea’s will be found as they go along. You’re right, some of the ideas are weak, but at least people are using the site! Cut them a little slack for that.

And I agree that people who have ideas, or want development experience should get involved.

Just a quick comment– I think users with truly well researched and developed ideas may be wary to post it on CH. There would be no way of knowing if the idea was seen on CH by a non-user, swiped/stolen, and developed behind the original thinker’s back.

But it is still in beta…maybe they will figure out a way to ease people’s minds but I believe until then –most contributers will be from those with “sucky” ideas or those who can’t get funding.

What is wrong with “sucky” ideas? I for one, am all for the haphazard, crazy, half-cocked, write down any ol’ crap idea method.

I am pretty sure CH arent going to run off and develop a project on the basis that 1 individual clicked his own link 400 times.

I have contributed many ideas to the project, simply because I am not a programmer, have a day job that is totally separate from IT land, and simply want programs that make my life easier and/or more interesting. Yes, there are some silly ideas there (mine included) but these are people simply stating what would make their life easier. I think it is premature to judge the CH process until they reveal subsequent steps. What would be the use of crowd-sourced software without the crowd? We could have “smart people who have done this before-sourced software” but what fun would that be!! As has been noted, all the cluey ones are already doing their own start-ups or sniggering at the current ones. In these early stages, I think the emphasis is on fun.

I do agree that some method for people to comment on or rate ideas would be sensible, and my understanding is these features will be launched, but launching them immediately would have discouraged use of the site, as people would have had their ideas squashed the moment they were posted. Again, where is the fun in that?

I dont expect to make a cent out of the process but Ill sure have some fun along the way

Does anyone remember the HalfBakery.com ? Isn’t this basically the same idea (with a little spin to make it a competition)?

Looking at HalfBakery just now (for the first time in many years) I realize how far ahead of their time they perhaps were. Their voting system, user comments, user profiles, etc. would all fit very well into the Web 2.0 cosmos.

Anyway, I also just realized tha Cambrian House apparently plans to take it a step further and actually develop some of these ideas? Is that right? Seems like quite an undertaking, but democratic software development would be pretty neat.

But a quick scan through the idea turned up a few lemons… I see one suggestion for “Jobster” a social job seekers network (Jobster?), “Artsy” where people can sell prints of their photos (Zazzle? CafePress?), “Online Secretary” (Backpack), “iBarter” like ebay but with trades (SwapThings? Lala? SwapTree? etc.), “Stock Trade Hivemind” (Social Picks? FeelingBullish? BullPoo?), etc.

There seems to be the opportunity for something really innovative to come out of this, but mostly I’m seeing a lot of copycat ideas being thrown around so far.

On a different note–I do love the design/colors/layout though

It’s awesome that you’re having a healthy discussion about whether or not we’ll succeed. While we don’t want to disrupt the debate, we just wanted to clarify a few points.

1. You can now comment on ideas.

2. We’re constantly updating. Our community is always giving us feedback and we heed to the wisdom of the crowds.

3. As far as the ideas go, we trust our community to pull the diamonds from the rough. There may be lots of rough, but that’s the nature of the beast.

4. BPAndrew – To answer your question, it’s one thing to make a product and another to sell it. Making people want to pay money for your product is a whole different ball game. Coding isn’t commercializing.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming

Summary: Calgary-based Cambrian House, which launched officially on June 28th, is generating a lot of buzz around its crowd-sourced software strategy. ...


By JIM FARBER DAILY NEWS MUSIC CRITIC

Tuesday, April 1th 2003, 8:09AM

To extinguish the burning question on everyone's lips about Lisa Marie Presley: Yes, she can sing.

At least in the sense that she can carry a tune, sustain a note and maybe even belt a bit.

But on Presley's first foray into the music biz - "To Whom It May Concern," which arrives in stores April 8 - singing doesn't seem to be her main concern. Sneering, huffing and pouting take far more precedence. Throughout the album's 11 songs, Presley snarls and heaves her words with the forced petulance of someone impersonating the world's most ornery teenager.

She is now 35 years old.

If such an advanced age makes Lisa Marie the Grandma Moses of firstalbum artists, the dawdling makes sense given her impossible heritage.

As the sole offspring of The King, she has, shall we say, something to live up to. Yet the scrutiny and sensationalism that have defined so much of her life have also given her plenty to write and sing about.

Presley can also count three busted marriages to inspire her - including one so unbelievable (to Wacko Jacko) - it must draw giggles from Liza Minnelli and David Gest.

Given her history, it's no surprise that the first man to help shape her talent and experience into song was Glen Ballard. As the producer/co-writer of Alanis Morissette's rant-filled debut CD, he's a man well-versed in turning frustration into art. Ballard wrote "Lights Out," this album's first single, with Presley, and oversaw the test runs for the album back in 1998.

Still, "To Whom It May Concern" didn't really get going until the president of Presley's record company, Andy Slater, hooked her up with Eric Rosse, the producer of another disclosureloving female artist, Tori Amos.

Together, Rosse and Presley have come up with a recording that's certainly focused - to a point where it creaks with self-consciousness. Everything, from the singing to the lyrics to the production, sounds affected. Each element sweats hard to drive home the same point: That we're dealing with one very tough, and honest, cookie here.

In most of her lyrics, Presley curses and complains, railing about those who betray her, use her or fail to see her as her own woman.

As she snarls in one representative moment:

"I'm the target for the daggers/

"That's the truth thrown your way, today."

If the goal was to come off as hard and confident as Chrissie Hynde, the result just makes her seem as contrived and pleading as Alannah Myles - the leather-clad Canadian who scored one undeserving hit in the '80s, "Black Velvet."

"I'm just a son of a bitch, no matter what you say," Presley stridently declares in the opening track, "S.O.B."

Few listeners will doubt that this description applies, but the voice that's pushing the point sounds like it's trying way too hard. Presley prowls through the verses, and hurls the choruses, like an actor interpreting her life rather than a person living it.

The music doesn't make things seem any more natural. The compositions and production both recall the over-manicured corporate guitar-rock of the '80s.

Think: Bryan Adams, without the good melodies - or the lesser tracks of Lita Ford.

That's a shame, given the automatic - if admittedly voyeuristic - appeal of the life Presley means to reveal in the songs.

In "Lights Out," she sings about the Graceland she both identifies with and dreads:

"Someone turned out the lights out there in Memphis/

"That's where my family's buried and gone/

"Last time I was there I notice a space left/

"Next to them there in Memphis/

"In the damn back lawn."

You root for this to sound as interesting as it reads.

Tellingly, in the title track, Presley writes about what has become her pet cause - opposing the mass-marketing of drugs (like Ritalin) for children "that make you sit still and listen." Could it be that she feels her most troubling feelings have too long been suppressed?

"To Whom It May Concern" aims to let Presley release those very demons. But what came out doesn't feel vulnerable or revealing, just angry and defensive.

Perhaps that's the inevitable consequence of having to lead such a guarded life. But it means that, as we listen to Lisa Marie's debut, we don't feel drawn in, only pushed farther and farther away.

Summary: To extinguish the burning question on everyone's lips about Lisa Marie Presley: Yes, she can sing. At least in the sense that she can carry a tune, sustain a note and maybe even belt a bit. But on Presley's first foray into the music biz - "To Whom It May Concern,"which arrives in stores April 8 - singing doesn't seem to be her main concern. Sneering,


Sunday, April 27th 1997, 2:02AM

Three years after Stephen King wrote his horror novel "The Shining," about a man who takes his family and becomes winter caretaker of a resort hotel with a haunting and haunted history, director Stanley Kubrick made a memorable movie version of it. Jack Nicholson starred as Jack Torrance, the former alcoholic overtaken by demons, and Shelley Duvall played his wife. King wrote the original screenplay adaptation for Ku-brick, but Kubrick re-jected it and penned his own.

This month, on the 20th anniversary of the novel's publication, the au-thor reclaims the story by mounting his own six-hour miniseries, "Ste-phen King's The Shining," starring Steven Weber and Rebecca De Mornay.

The ABC mini-series kicks off to-night, continues to-morrow and concludes Thursday (9-11 each night).

Had King loved what Kubrick and company did with "The Shining," he wouldn't have felt the need to revisit it. And clearly, the differences between the film and television versions (differences we'll cover a bit later) are so major and substantive, there is a real sense that King was being less than forthright when he wrote, in 1981's "Danse Macabre," that he felt "The Shining" had "been fairly treated" by the film adaptation.

What does King really think?

He's not talking because in order to get the rights from both Kubrick and Warner Bros. to remake "The Shining," one of the stipulations was that King would agree to a self-imposed gag order and not comment on Kubrick's adaptation.

However, that wasn't always the case.

In 1983, Kubrick told Playboy that Kubrick's "The Shining" was "a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little."

In 1986, quoted by Jessie Horsting in "Stephen King at the Movies," King, dismissing Ku-brick's "The Shining" as "a great big beautiful car with no engine inside it," was even more direct and specific:

"I tried very hard to get War-ner Bros. and Stanley not to cast Jack Nicholson," King said, complaining that instead of a slow metamorphosis into madness, Nicholson's Torrance seemed mad from the git-go.

"Jack [Nicholson] didn't think he was crazy from the beginning, and Stanley didn't think he was crazy from the beginning," King recalled, adding that "it was just everybody in America who went to see the movie thought he was crazy.

Look at those eyes and you see Randall Patrick McMurphy [Nicholson's character in `One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'].

"So you say, `Okay, the guy's crazy as a s---house rat, he's going to get his whole family up there [to the closed-for-winter Overlook Hotel] and kill 'em' with the result that there's no mor-al struggle at all. I wanted them to cast Michael Moriarty or Jon Voight. They wouldn't."

The Kubrick version, in my opinion, is a gorgeous and very powerful horror film until the last few minutes, full of large and small unforgettable set pieces pieces that, by and large, have little to do with King's book.

There's the sound of little Danny Tor-rance riding his bicycle around the intermittently carpeted hotel hallways, and the ghoulish twin girl ghosts he encounters. Nich-olson's "Heeeere's Johnny!" fire-ax attack. Danny's wiggling little finger and his possessed "Tony" voice. There's also the hedge maze, the blood-filled elevator, the "red-rum" warning, the woman in the bathtub, and, for a writer, perhaps the most horrific image of all: the reams of manuscript on which Torrance, instead of toiling on a work of art, has been busy typing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

Amazingly, the TV version duplicates almost none of this, except for its own (very different) version of Tony and an even more frightening bathtub apparition.

Instead, King presents scares that made the book, but not the original movie: the topiary, the wasp's nest, the wind-up figures, the hissing boiler, the croquet mallet, the masked ball. And with such a strong emphasis on the child-abuse and substance-abuse subtext, ABC's "The Shining" is close to a completely different experience.

De Mornay's Wendy Torrance is a stronger character, and she gives the TV version's best performance. Weber, from "Wings," doesn't quite deliver the goods the way a better actor might have, and young Court-land Mead, as the Torrance's psychic son, Danny, too often seems to be playing make-believe.

Director Mick Garris ("Stephen King's The Stand") and producer Mark Carliner mount this production nicely, even filming it at the original Stanley Hotel (in Estes Park, Colo.) that inspired King to write the novel.

This ABC "Shining" delivers one terrific scare it's in Part 2, and you'll know it when you see it and enough sustained suspense to keep you interested throughout.

It's also much more focused on the everyday horror of living with an alcoholic someone who, under the influence, becomes a completely different person.

The only times this "Shining" miniseries disappoints are when the special effects fail (the topiary animals are a disappointment, and the snapping firehose looks like a leftover Pac-Man effect from "The Langoliers"), and, as usual with a King horror story, when the story reaches its unsatisfactory climax.

But for big-event sweeps-month television, ABC's "Stephen King's The Shining" will do nicely.

It's fun to compare to Kubrick's version, and to King's original novel. And, what's most important, it's fun to watch.

Summary: Three years after Stephen King wrote his horror novel "The Shining,"about a man who takes his family and becomes winter caretaker of a resort hotel with a haunting and haunted history, director Stanley Kubrick made a memorable movie version of it. Jack Nicholson starred as Jack Torrance, the former alcoholic overtaken by demons, and Shelley Duvall played his wife. King wrote the original screenplay adaptation for Ku-brick, but Kubrick re-jected it and penned his


He merrily informs me that it happens as a result of having too small a pair of running shoes. Nasty things can happen if you let your toes bang into the end of them over long distances. The result? Your toes go purple, then black, and then will eventually fall out. Lovely.

Lucky for me then that I am here to be measured for new trainers. Runners' Need (www.runnersneed.co.uk) have a nifty device in their stores: a treadmill, with a camera attached, to analyse your running gait.

I over pronate on my left side (possibly due to a skiing accident I had a couple of years ago, never again. . .) and have flat feet, so he recommends shoes with added arch support.

He also advises going for a half size bigger than you normally take, if you intend to run long distances.

Anything to avoid mouldy feet.

Summary:
Catalina Stogdon, the deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph's Life supplement,
  finds out that she needs new trainers, as she prepares for the Bupa Great
  South Run.


Friday, May 5th 2006, 9:11AM

'AN AMERICAN HAUNTING' Horror movie based on a popular legend about the haunting of a Tennessee family by a poltergeist in the early 1800s. With Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Ward. Directed by Courtney Solomon (1:24). PG-13: Intense scenes. At area theaters. 2.5 Stars.

Courtney Solomon's "An American Haunting" has a built-in problem for a horror movie: It's based on a popular early 19th- century legend billed as the only "recorded case of a spirit causing the death of a human being."

For anyone aware of this poltergeist tale, or who bothers to look it up, the victim's identity will come as no surprise, and a horror movie without a surprise is no horror movie at all.

Even those who go in cold - as I did - will quickly narrow the list of potential victims, so the inevitable death scene has very little impact.

Having said that, there are jolts galore in a movie stuffed with the basic tricks of the evil-spirit trade - banging Ânoises in the attic, slamming doors and windows, spinning clocks, shaking beds, Ârabid beasts, disappearing children and the Âoccasional moment of eyeball-rolling possession.

The wheels of this far-fetched yarn, recalled in notes found by a child living in the same house more than 200 years later, are set in motion when John Bell (Donald Sutherland), the patriarch of a Tennessee farm family, is convicted by his church elders of having taken advantage of a widowed neighbor in an 1817 land deal.

Unsatisfied by her church victory, Kate Batts (Gaye Brown) curses Bell and his family, promising particular grief for him and his blossoming teenage daughter Betsy (Rachel Hurd-Ward).

Before long, Bell; his wife, Lucy (Sissy Spacek); their son, John Jr. (Thom Fell); their Bible-bearing, brandy-gulping family friend (Matthew Marsh), and schoolteacher Richard Powell (James D'Arcy) are trying to drive away the invisible spirits that drag Betsy around by the hair and smack her across the face.

Despite its short, 84-minute running time, "An American Haunting" repeats these scenes so many times you'll wish Solomon veered from the source Ânovel and killed off a few more people, just for variety. Instead, he's relying on the purported truth of the story - which inspired the much more daring "Blair Witch Project" a few years ago - to lure moviegoers who are either willing to suspend their disbelief or are convinced the story is more history than legend.

Old pros Sutherland and Spacek are certainly convincing, but young Hurd-Wood, Wendy Darling in P.J. Hogan's "Peter Pan," steals the show as a kid whose parents don't have the sense to move her out of a haunted bedroom.

Summary: 'HAUNTING': SPIRITED TRY 'AN AMERICAN HAUNTING' Horror movie based on a popular legend about the haunting of a Tennessee family by a poltergeist in the early 1800s. With Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Rachel Hurd-Ward. Directed by Courtney Solomon (1:24). PG-13: Intense scenes. At area theaters. Courtney Solomon's "An American Haunting"has a built-in problem for a horror movie: It's based on a popular early 19th- century legend billed as the only "recorded case of


BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA MOLLOY with Baird Jones

Friday, November 15th 1996, 2:01AM

Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to sue Esquire magazine for depicting him as a Nazi. The mag's December issue features a computer-generated picture of the action hero wearing a German officer's uniform and giving a "Heil Hitler" salute. It's meant to be a poster for a fictitious movie dubbed "Saturday Night Fuhrer."

"We consider the photo to be libelous," says Schwarzenegger's lawyer, Marty Singer. "My client has told me to file a lawsuit. We need to see the actual issue and evaluate it."

Esquire editors argue that the picture is obviously comical. It illustrates a story in which Jeannette Walls reports that Paramount is having trouble finding a director for a Schwarzenegger project called "With Wings as Eagles" because it's perceived, according to Walls' report, as the "nice-Nazi movie."

Even though Schwarzenegger would play a German officer who "fights for the good guys," Esquire reports, "anything that casts a German officer in a good light makes people sort of queasy."

Schwarzenegger's spokeswoman says, "This is the first I've heard about any nervousness concerning the film."

His lawyer, Singer, tells us Schwarzenegger "is not committed to doing this film. If he were, the photograph is not a true depiction of what he stands for in the film."

Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Weisenthal Center, tells us he has reviewed the "Wings" script with Schwarzenegger. In the script, says Hier, Schwarzenegger "kills half the S.S." Hier notes that, in reality, "there were very, very few good people that would take on the S.S. ... but lots of things in Hollywood are fiction."

Hier said that the Weisenthal Center, at Schwarzenegger's request, established that the actor's father was a Nazi party member, but that "he was guilty of no crimes." Schwarzenegger, who has donated generously to the Center, has been extremely sensitive to insinuations that he ever held any admiration for Hitler.

In 1993, he won an apology and damages from biographer Wendy Leigh, who suggested as much. Esquire editor Ed Kosner said the mag "stands by the story."

"I don't think it's funny to be accused of being a Nazi," said Singer.

Another pair of eyes is trained on the Walt Disney Co. fishbowl. Simon & Schuster has signed up James Stewart Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "Den of Thieves" and "Bloodsport" to chronicle the intrigues of Michael Eisner, Michael Ovitz and the rest of the corporate Mousketeers.

News of the deal should be of particular interest to Robert Sam Anson, who was signed by Stewart's editor, Alice Mayhew, to do a Disney book, only to see it dumped by S&S in 1993. S&S claimed Anson was behind schedule. Anson charged in a lawsuit that S&S overlord Martin Davis had ordered it killed because of how Davis and Eisner were portrayed.

Since then the suit has been settled, Davis is out, and Anson has taken his book to Pantheon, which is due to publish it next year. Also giving Stewart competition will be Tony Schwartz, who's working on an authorized bio with Eisner.

Clint Eastwood likes to claim that his gray hair is actually blond, but the actor brushes off suggestions that he's a romantic lead. Wednesday at a public chat at Congregation Rodeph Sholom sponsored by the 92nd St. Y, Eastwood remembered, "When I was doing `Bridges of Madison County,' I said to myself, `This romantic stuff is really tough. I can't wait to get back to shooting and killing."

What's a power woman to wear when 299 other power women are showing up at the Rainbow Room to, well, power-lunch?

Sure, Patricia Duff Perelman wore a very understated brown hound's-tooth and many guests came in dark pantsuits, but why not stand out? Prosecutor Linda Fairstein admitted there's "quite a little" bit of wardrobewarring that goes on at the annual Citymeals-on-Wheels benefit, where Anita Hill, Diane Sawyer, Carol Higgins Clark, Jessye Norman and others strutted their stuff.

Fairstein parried nicely with a muted purple-and-yellow Escada suit, while many armored themselves in red, including MacAndrews and Forbes veep Kay Wight, decorator Chessy Rayner, Girls Inc. director Isabel Stewart and former commissioner on aging Janet Sainer, 78, in red leather.

Betsy McCaughey Ross, as is her wont, went in the other direction with a lilac suit, but songwriter Denise Rich blew them all off the stage in a tight hot-pink number. Male spies Mike Nichols, Lew Rudin and Jerome Kirn were there, but they had to pay $10,000 each for the privilege.

Quite a coup: "Saturday Night Live" has scored Evander Holyfield to appear on the show tomorrow night. He joins another brave lad, Robert Downey Jr., who's hosting the show in the midst of drug rehab. ...

The boardgame Starcrossed, launched at FAO Schwarz the other night, connects movie to movie and actor to actor. A portion of the proceeds go to Christopher Reeve's charity, the American Paralysis Association. Speaking of Reeve, our characterization of a "near panic" among audience members when he suffered a spasm at his New School appearance Monday was a bit strong.

Najma Akta, the young Indian classical singer with possibly the most beautiful voice in the world, has been doing more than laying tracks on Robert Plant's album. The beauty and the former Led Zeppelin singer are in love. ...

AmFAR director Dr. Mathilde Krim, Tuesday at the premiere of "The English Patient," a benefit for the AIDS research organization: "AmFAR provided the funds to research the effects of protease on the virus. Without this research, [protease] inhibitors could not have been created." Protease inhibitors, when used in combination with other drugs, have the strongest results so far in battling AIDS.

Summary: Arnold Schwarzenegger is threatening to sue Esquire magazine for depicting him as a Nazi. The mag's December issue features a computer-generated picture of the action hero wearing a German officer's uniform and giving a "Heil Hitler"salute. It's meant to be a poster for a fictitious movie dubbed "Saturday Night Fuhrer.""We consider the photo to be libelous,"says Schwarzenegger's lawyer, Marty Singer. "My client has told me to file a lawsuit. We


ATHENS - As Greece tries to reach a debt-swap agreement with its private creditors, the country’s prime minister suggested yesterday that the three leaders in his fractious coalition were prepared to back additional austerity measures and reforms needed to receive a second bailout.

Prime Minister Lucas Papademos had sought agreement among the coalition partners on the broad outlines of a deal with private creditors to erase $130 billion of debt as well as a recovery plan suggested by the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund, collectively known as the troika.

“We are in absolute agreement as regards the continuation of negotiations and the positions that we will support,’’ Papademos said, referring to talks between government officials and the troika.

Athens also reported progress over the weekend between Greece’s political leadership and Charles Dallara of the Institute of International Finance, the bankers’ lobby representing most investors, over how much of a loss the private sector creditors would be willing to accept on their bond holdings.

On Saturday, bankers and officials involved in the discussions who were not authorized to speak publicly say that bondholders have made significant concessions with regard to the interest rate, or coupon, that the new Greek bonds would carry.

Having insisted previously on an average rate above 4 percent, creditors now seem willing to accept a rate below 4 percent for the 30-year bonds - perhaps as low as 3.6 percent.

The discussions were expected to continue through the weekend, and officials said some type of announcement could come within days.

The statements yesterday by Greece’s technocrat prime minister suggested that he had overcome some of the objections of the party leaders - his Socialist predecessor George Papandreou, the conservative leader Antonis Samaras, and the right-wing leader Giorgos Karatzaferis - to tough new austerity measures proposed by the troika, including wage cuts in the private sector and further reductions to pensions.

Still, any potential new measures could face a struggle to pass the Parliament, where many lawmakers remain resistant to unpopular measures.

Papademos said the alternative to the completion of talks on the crucial debt swap and on a second bailout for Greece was a potentially catastrophic default.

“The unity of the political forces and their commitment to support the necessary changes are an essential demonstration of our credibility, will boost the effectiveness of economic policy and will allow us to negotiate better conditions,’’ the prime minister said before preparing to fly to Brussels, where he is to face the scrutiny of his European Union counterparts at a meeting that begins today.

The talks with private creditors have broken down twice before, largely because the International Monetary Fund and European leaders have pushed for a larger debt reduction in light of Greece’s worsening economic outlook, so there is the possibility that these negotiations will founder, too.

Summary: As Greece tries to reach a debt-swap agreement with its private creditors, the country’s prime minister suggested on Sunday that the three leaders in his fractious coalition were prepared to back additional austerity measures and reforms needed to receive a second bailout. Prime Minister Lucas Papademos had sought agreement among the coalition partners on the broad outlines of a deal with private creditors to erase $130 billion of debt as well as a recovery plan suggested by the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, collectively known as the troika.


(CBS/AP) GENEVA - Swiss prosecutors say a painting seized in Serbia has been confirmed as a stolen masterpiece by French impressionist Paul Cezanne.

Zurich prosecutors said Thursday that the E.G. Buehrle Foundation certified that the painting is Cezanne's "The Boy in the Red Vest."

The painting was worth $109.6 million when it was stolen along with three other works from the private Buehrle collection in 2008.

Two paintings by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh were recovered shortly after the heist. The whereabouts of the fourth, by Edgar Degas, is still unknown.

Monet's "Poppy field at Vetheuil" and van Gogh's "Blooming Chestnut Branches" were discovered undamaged in a car parked at a mental hospital in Zurich soon after the robbery. The heist was conducted by three armed and masked men who witnesses said spoke German with a Slavic accent.

Serbian police arrested three people overnight in connection with the robbery. They said police raids and the arrests in the capital, Belgrade, and in the central city of Cacak were conducted in coordination with police from several European countries.

Belgrade's B-92 TV said the arrested men include the leader of the gang that carried out the heist, and 1.5 million euros, or $1.9 million, in cash and firearms were found in their possession.

Art experts have suggested the robbers took advantage of a low-security museum without knowing about the paintings or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known stolen art works.

The other painting still missing Degas's "Ludovic Lepic and his Daughter," is worth about $11 million, or 8 million euros.

The robbers took the first four paintings they reached when they raided the museum shortly before closing time on a Sunday. Although the most valuable painting was among the ones they took, they left behind the second most precious picture in the room, Cezanne's "Self Portrait with Palette," insured for $98 million, or 75 million euros.

Summary: Swiss confirm seized painting is Cezanne's "The Boy in the Red Vest" which was lifted from a museum in 2008


TripAdvisor Inc., the Newton-based online travel-recommendation and booking service spun off from Expedia Inc. in December, soared the most in five months after quarterly sales and profit exceeded some analysts’ estimates. The stock, up 69 percent this year, was the top performer on the S&P 500 Wednesday. Profit excluding certain items was 38 cents a share. Revenue rose to $183.7 million.

Summary: TripAdvisor Inc., the online travel- recommendation service spun off from Expedia Inc. in December, soared the most in five months after reporting first-quarter sales and profit that exceeded some analysts’ estimates.


The president of our local board of education sends her children to the public elementary schools, but when they get to high school, she moves them to private schools. Isn't it her ethical obligation either to send her children to the schools she sets policy for and espouses as so wonderful or to step down from the board? JoAnne Manse, Rutherford, N.J.

It is not. It is the obligation of board members to strive mightily to make the public schools so good that even parents with the means to opt out choose to remain. If the public schools are not yet that good, the president may honorably send her kids elsewhere  indeed, her duty as a parent compels her to. Even where a public school is excellent, parents may seek programs it does not offer  religious instruction, for example.

Enrolling her own kids at a school she administers can give a board member intimate daily insight into how her policies are working out, a real advantage in doing her job. Yet voters must select board members not on the basis of where they send their kids, but on how well they manage the schools. And remember: some excellent educators have no kids at all.

Ultimately, a board member can home-school her kids for all I care (as long as she doesn't do it in my home); if she is savvy, dedicated and effective, she gets my vote.

I am a smart veterinary student, and my husband is an uncommonly intelligent engineer. We have degrees from prestigious universities. However, diabetes and heart disease run in my family, and my husband has Crohn's disease and a congenital heart problem. If we had three kids, we would contribute to overpopulation, but perhaps (even despite the medical issues) marginally increase the quality of that population (aren't I pretentious!). May we ethically have more than two children? Alison Cornwall, Davis, Calif.

Implying that one social class is more entitled than another to have children tiptoes toward the goofball eugenics that should be an ugly anachronism. Even as a matter of nurture, not nature, those who attend "prestigious universities" have no greater moral right to reproduce than those at community colleges. Or no college. In fact, one might argue that it is in nobody's interest to replicate Harvardians. And by "one" I mean me, and by "Harvardians" I mean Robert McNamara. Or do I mean Henry Kissinger? Or is it the jealousy talking?

If there is a strong chance of your passing on a serious malady to your children, you might forgo having (but not adopting) kids. How great a chance? That's something for you and your husband to discuss with your doctor.

There are, as you suggest, economic and social arguments against having a third child, but they need not automatically preclude your doing so. What's critical is that in the country as a whole, and on the planet as a whole, the fertility rate does not exceed the replacement level, which in the United States is just over two kids. Some families will have one or no kids, and thus others may choose to have three. One key factor in achieving this global average is to raise the standard of living for all. Families in wealthier places like the United States or Western Europe tend to be smaller. (Other significant factors include the empowerment of women and increased access to education.)

If you are committed to not increasing the population, to not risking passing on a serious health risk and to having a big family, consider adoption. It's not just DNA that determines how kids turn out.

Send your queries to ethicist@nytimes.com or The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 229 West 43rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10036, and include a daytime phone number.

Summary: Public-education property; wisdom of procreation.


Nov 21st 2012, 8:21 by N.G. | SEATTLE

THINK about preparing for a family holiday to Disney World and a spreadsheet is not the first thing to spring to mind. But heeding advice from a relative, Lois Mentrup consulted the office database software to manage her recent vacation to the Orlando resort. She was warned that if she didn’t, she (and her children) would end up missing the best attractions.

Ms Mentrup is not alone. A simple online search pulls up scores of spreadsheets to help manage a trip to the amusement park. Some offer pre-selected itineraries, packed with activities. Others let users create their own. The character finder spreadsheet lists 150 Disney characters and where they are likely to be found.

Another category helps people decide if meal plans offered by Disney make sense for a family. One invites visitors to enter information like the number of adults and children in their family, the length of their stay and how often they are likely to dine out and spits out estimated money saved and a benefit-cost ratio (including a "normalised" version, where one of the ratio's figures is reduced to one). And since most restaurants in the resort require reservations (popular ones must be booked 180 days in advance), another spreadsheet may be required to keep track of those. There are even packing spreadsheets, lest visitors forget their sunblock.

Such meticulous planning would be to little avail if allowances had to be made for standing in the notoriously long lines for the different rides. Fortunately, assiduous planners can take comfort from Disney's testing of a new system that allows people to sign up for a Fastpass, which lets them show up at an attraction at a designated time and skip the line, from their computers. Until now, Fastpasses were only available HOW? AT THE GATE?

The proliferation of spreadsheets requires some managing. Though no spreadsheet is known for managing Disney World spreadsheets it is not uncommon to see parents lugging around binders—or, increasingly often, tablet computers—detailing the family's itinerary.

All this may sound more like work than a holiday, but many visitors seem not to mind. They often save for years to make a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Disney World. Expectations are sky high. Ms Mentrup echoes the sentiments of a mother she chatted with on the monorail in the park. “It’s not a vacation,” she says. “It’s at trip.”

Summary: THINK about preparing for a family holiday to Disney World and a spreadsheet is not the first thing to spring to mind. But heeding advice from a relative, Lois...


The public-address announcer at the Metrodome has a quirky habit when the Vikings pocket a first down. He announces the play's essential information - player involved, yardage gained, new line of scrimmage - and shouts, "And that's another Minnesota Vikings ..."

Then he abruptly stops, allowing the purple-clad crowd to complete his sentence by screaming, "First down!" It's gimmicky and mostly meaningless - except many spectators probably became hoarse Sunday.

Just as the 49ers resurrected their franchise on the strength of a stout defense, they absorbed their first loss of the season because of defense. They didn't play much, really, leaving Alex Smith and his offense standing on the sideline for large chunks of San Francisco's 24-13 defeat.

"The defense didn't play up to its standards today," cornerback Tarell Brown said.

So is this reason for 49ers fans to panic? Hardly. It's one game in September, in a noisy bubble-covered building, against an offense with one of the NFL's best running backs in Adrian Peterson and one of its most underrated quarterbacks in Christian Ponder.

Relax, people. Dashon Goldson doesn't usually commit costly penalties. Donte Whitner doesn't usually drop a gift-wrapped interception. There's nothing to suggest this will become a weekly happening.

Sunday's improbable pratfall still illustrates the thin line between 13 wins and 13 losses in the NFL. The 49ers won that many games last season, stamping themselves as a Super Bowl contender. The Vikings lost that many, sinking deeper into irrelevance.

Those perceptions spilled into this season, naturally, and nothing happened in the season's first two weeks to change them. The 49ers looked impressive, again. The Vikings seemed mediocre, again.

Then, out of nowhere, came this game - with Peterson dancing for nice gains, Ponder channeling his inner Fran Tarkenton and the 49ers suddenly without answers on defense. They surrendered three touchdown drives of 67 yards or longer. Each of those drives took 11 plays or more and consumed 6:44 or more on the clock.

The Vikings finished with 25 first downs (hence, the PA guy's act became more than a bit redundant), the most the 49ers have allowed in a regular-season game in nearly three years.

Smith and his offensive friends could be forgiven for wondering, "Our turn yet?"

More numbers: The 49ers relinquished 146 yards rushing, the most they have allowed in the Jim Harbaugh/Vic Fangio era and more than they allowed in their first two games combined (127). San Francisco led the NFL in rushing defense last season, at 77.2 yards per game.

The problem stretched deeper. The 49ers put absolutely no pressure on Ponder - zero sacks and only two quarterback hits - and seldom acted like one of the league's best, most ferocious defenses. Late in the game, Fangio called some blitzes in a futile, belated attempt to cause havoc.

"We didn't get out to a good start," Goldson said. "We got off to a slow start. Give credit to those guys. They did a good job preparing. ... We've just got to come out next week, learn from our mistakes and don't let it happen again."

The defense had chances for atonement Sunday, after its uncharacteristically meek first half. The 49ers could have reasserted their superiority late in the third quarter, down 17-13, but Minnesota put together the last of its clock-draining drives (aided by a questionable helmet-to-helmet penalty on Goldson).

Even more telling was a sequence in the fourth quarter, after Andy Lee's punt stuffed the Vikings at their 2-yard line with 9:02 left. The moment screamed for an elite defense to squish Ponder and Co. right then and there, to give the offense a short field.

On second down, Peterson bounced outside for 20 yards, creating room for Minnesota to breathe. Three plays later, Ponder floated a wayward pass toward Whitner - standing on the 35-yard-line, with plenty of fake grass between him and the end zone once he made the interception.

That's exactly the type of play the 49ers made last season.

And that's exactly the type of play they didn't make Sunday.

"I just dropped it," Whitner said. "My hands are terrible. ... That's a play I have to make. That play can change the momentum of the game. I take full responsibility for blowing it."

Whitner's candor extended to his wider appraisal of Sunday's loss. He dismissed any suggestion the 49ers overlooked the Vikings - 9-23 the past two seasons, if you're counting - but he also acknowledged the 49ers showed unusual lethargy.

"I don't think the energy level was where it normally is," he said, "but we were physically ready to play."

Now they head to Youngstown, Ohio, with a week to rediscover their energy before facing the Jets in New Jersey. Also worth noting: Arizona won again, to move to 3-0 and take sole possession of first place in the NFC West.

It's only September, sure, but Sunday reminded the 49ers that the ride to January can include unexpected potholes.

Moss' dismal return: Randy Moss got a hearty welcome in his return to Minnesota, but caught only three passes for 27 yards.

Gore's light duty: Frank Gore averaged 5.3 yards per rushing attempt, yet had only 12 carries. B11

Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rkroichick

Summary: The public-address announcer at the Metrodome has a quirky habit when the Vikings pocket a first down.  [...] he abruptly stops, allowing the purple-clad crowd to complete his sentence by screaming, "First down!" It's gimmicky and mostly meaningless - except many spectators probably became hoarse Sunday.  "The defense didn't play up to its standards today," cornerback Tarell Brown said.  Sunday's improbable pratfall still illustrates the thin line between 13 wins and 13 losses in the NFL.  The 49ers won that many games last season, stamping themselves as a Super Bowl contender.  The Vikings finished with 25 first downs (hence, the PA guy's act became more than a bit redundant), the most the 49ers have allowed in a regular-season game in nearly three years.  The 49ers relinquished 146 yards rushing, the most they have allowed in the Jim Harbaugh/Vic Fangio era and more than they allowed in their first two games combined (127).  The 49ers put absolutely no pressure on Ponder - zero sacks and only two quarterback hits - and seldom acted like one of the league's best, most ferocious defenses.  Late in the game, Fangio called some blitzes in a futile, belated attempt to cause havoc.  Three plays later, Ponder floated a wayward pass toward Whitner - standing on the 35-yard-line, with plenty of fake grass between him and the end zone once he made the interception.


When I wrote a cover story last August about the plight of the honeybees, I didn’t think I’d still be talking about it half a year later. Yet this afternoon I went down to Washington to address a meeting of the National Garden Club—and the topic, of course, was honeybees. I wish I’d had better news to offer. Scientists still don’t know exactly why rates of honeybee loss have been so high in recent years, though there has been some promising research identifying new viruses. Beekeepers are still under tremendous economic pressure to keep their hives going in the face of colony collapse disorder (CCD). And the country, as I wrote last year, is still inhospitable to honeybees, lacking the wild spaces and flowers that feed them.

But on that last bit, at least, there’s some good news. This week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a $3 million program to provide assistance to farmers and ranchers in the Midwest interested in helping out honeybees by planting bee-friendly forage in and around their plots. That includes reseeding pastures with alfalfa, clover and other plants that are good for bees—and for livestock as well. Ranchers will also be able to draw on the money to build fences and make other changes that allow them to move their livestock from pasture to pasture, to prevent the vegetation from getting worn down. The idea is to turn the farms back into a buffet for honeybees.

The states covered will be Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and both North and South Dakota, chosen because 65% of the country’s estimated 30,000 commercial beekeepers store their hives there for at least part of the year. (Commercial beekeepers are an itinerant lot, moving their colonies from state to state as they chase pollination contracts.) Commodity crop farmers will be able to use the money to plant bee forage along the borders of their fields—vital, given that the spread of monocultures and soybeans offer very little nutrition for bees on their own. Such higher quality food will help honeybees battle the toxic mix of pesticides and parasites that have been wearing down their populations, as the USDA’s David Epstein told the AP:

You can think of it in terms of yourself. If you are studying for exams in college, and you’re not eating properly and you’re existing on coffee, then you make yourself more susceptible to disease and you get sick.

A $3 million outlay by itself won’t be enough to stop the onslaught of colony collapse disorder. But like the growth in rooftop and backyard beekeeping—even in crowded cities like Los Angeles and New York—it will help.

(MORE: Can Urban Beekeeping Stop the Beepocalypse?)

Summary: A new program at the USDA will pay farmers and ranchers to plant bee-friendly crops. It's about time