Coaches loved Fran Crippen for quite a number of reasons. He was always on time, almost always in a good mood. He was vocal, he was motivating, he was enthusiastic. He was attentive and responded exceptionally well to a challenge. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Fran was not just his willingness to suffer but an actual desire to do so. He bought into the benefits of suffering. He thought there was something inherently good in punishing parts of his body that most mortals don’t know exist. Tough didn’t quite cut it – we were all tough, to varying degrees above normal – and it wasn’t simply that he had an enormous capacity to hurt himself. It was that Fran saw something spiritually beneficial to suffering in the water. He believed in pushing past pain -- "Tired is not a word in my vocabulary," he used to joke, not really joking -- to discover what lay beyond it.

When I heard on the morning of Oct. 23, 2010, that Fran had drowned earlier that day while swimming in a 10-kilometer open water race in the United Arab Emirates, I was shocked and devastated beyond description. After the initial denial, however, when the questions as to what must have happened started, I felt relatively sure that I understood. Fran had swum in both hot and cold water before. He knew well the dangers of both and I knew that in October, the UAE was going to be hot and the water extremely warm. People were going to pass out, or at least have to quit for fear of doing so. I was quite familiar -- and comfortable -- with the fact that Fran had the capacity to push his body past the point at which it could continue, for whatever reason (the autopsy simply reported "over-exertion"), to sustain consciousness. That capacity was part of what made him who he was. It is something that I understood instinctively and it was one of the ties that bound me so closely to Fran. The fact that he died out in the Gulf of Oman, surrounded by people but ultimately alone, save for the motivation that drove him, is the hardest thing I have had to bear thus far in my life. The only solace I have is the assumption that Fran was in the middle of doing what he does best when he went down: pushing to get through to the other side of whatever pain he was in, just for the simple, beautiful sake of doing so.

For Fran, that country beyond pain was where character is formed. Like any role model worth his salt, Fran expected the teammates he respected (yes, that distinction is important) to suffer at least as much as he was suffering. Fran was a believer in the transformative powers of sport that our University of Virginia coach Mark Bernardino relentlessly expounded, and Fran operated under the assumption that one’s ability to cope with the travails of daily life fluctuates in direct proportion to one’s willingness to work through hurt. He didn’t preach this belief, and the extent of his discussion about it was usually limited to such commentary on complaint as, “How bad can it be? You just swam nine grand in two hours. Deal.” His faith was a sunrise type of faith, a given knowledge of the laws of the universe, and his respect for it showed in his red face and heaving chest, his anticipation of practice and his enthusiasm for every underdog story, no matter how lame or stilted.

Above anyone else on earth, Fran respected the person who overcame, who triumphed by making do, and the more severe the obstacles, the greater his admiration. He was not alone in this, of course, and neither was his favorite-movie list -- Rocky, Braveheart, Gladiator, Prefontaine, Cinderella Man -- by any means unique. But more than most people, Fran applied the principle of triumph-through-struggle to everyday life, every day. Should people (like him and me and the majority of those we swam with) not have grand or tragic obstacles to overcome, they could and should find something they could approach with the zeal of the underdog. Fran poured into workouts and races all the knowledge, all the laughter, all the inspiration and insight and unanswered questions he accumulated throughout his days, and in the fires of determination and perseverance, he forged a character as exceptional and formidable as any I have had the honor of knowing.

No matter what event one swims or trains for, competitive swimming is one of the most physically demanding sports out there. Any activity that allows you to inhale 7,000 to 9,000 calories a day and not gain an ounce of weight that isn’t muscle is physically taxing in the extreme. Swimming also requires a rather unique frame of mind. It demands its participants enter a completely different medium, and once the swimmer is submerged, he is disconnected from the normal world, the only outer stimuli being the muffled roar of moving water and an endless black line on the bottom of the pool. Although individuals assemble into teams in college and for international meets, the practice of swimming, especially distance swimming and absolutely marathon swimming, is an experience of intense isolation. There are no headphones and no changes in scenery, few verbal and no physical interactions with others, and for the most part, all swimmers must rely almost exclusively on their own interior motivation to challenge themselves and improve.

There are, however, mental and physical differences between sprinters and distance swimmers, and these differences can be vast. The shorter events in the pool -- the 50-meter freestyle and the 100-meter stroke events -- require explosive power over the course of roughly 20 to 50 seconds. The world’s best in these events are master technicians who focus all of their attention on myriad details and judge miniscule distances while traveling at absolute fullest force (see, for instance, the video of Michael Phelps’ 0.01-second victory over Milorad Cavic in the 100-meter butterfly at the 2008 Beijing Olympics). Sprinters train for this volatile precision by swimming extremely fast a few times a week, developing fast-twitch muscle on dry land and refining technique. Distance swimmers -- the 800-meter and 1,500-meter freestyles were Fran’s specialties and are the longest events in the pool -- train to develop “easy speed” and an autonomic ability to sustain pace over long periods. Single “sets” within two- to three-hour workouts are often longer than 5,000 meters and only a fraction of practice time is spent on the wall, at rest. The skills imperative to distance swimming require ridiculous numbers of repetitions and massive amounts of yardage to perfect, which in turn requires a mental attitude that is equal parts perseverance and masochism.

These latter two Fran had in spades. He was one of, if not the, hardest trainer I ever met. From my first workout with Fran in 1999 on, we were fast friends in no small part because we recognized in one another a similar drive: We were competitive with each other, but we were each much more so with our own selves. I often failed a confrontation with the prior day’s pain, but Fran very rarely did, and his exclusively forward progress allowed him to do things in workouts that were all but unparalleled elsewhere in the country and matched by only a handful of guys across the globe. Fran would hear of a legendary, “unbeatable” set, usually from his Germantown Academy coach Dick Shoulberg, and would do it as soon as possible. He never failed any of these self-administered tests and he never just went through the motions of doing them. He excelled at them. Nor did he talk about them afterwards, in either complaint or braggadocio. He collected swim sets and physical feats like smart investors do money – quietly, constantly and with an eye towards perpetual increase rather than the achievement of a specific goal.

Even after the worst performances in the hardest workouts, Fran reminded us that we endured such things because we loved the sport. So essential to his character was Fran's belief in the necessity of personal growth through hard work that he judged people and meted out respect (sometimes grudgingly, depending on a person’s sense of humor) based on how much one had or seemed to be willing to overcome. And he had no time for weaklings. Of all Fran’s faults, this was the most obvious, for he had a bevy of coarser names for weaklings and wasn't shy to use them. To be around Fran for any length of time was to undergo his assessment of your character and either enjoy or suffer the results. His good opinion could buoy a sinking heart, and I’ve seen his appreciation of guys grow over the course of a season as they learned how to train. But his disapproval could be withering, for there was nothing so pathetic in his eyes, such "a waste of oxygen," as those who, upon watching them work out and looking into their eyes afterwards, Fran was sure did not believe in pain. Because Fran worked harder than anyone, profited greatly from this exertion and maintained the happiest-go-lucky attitude I've ever encountered while doing so, his example was impossible not to follow.

This was part of the reason he became such a presence on the open water scene so quickly and had such an impact there. OWS, as open water swimming is referred to by those in the know, is a culture unto itself. It is rich in tradition, lore and -- most appealing to Fran -- unsung heroes. Eccentrics, they were called, by those who knew of their forays. Oddballs. A bit off, all of them, to be out there alone. What about seals and jellyfish and boats and sharks? Wind and currents and waves and the cold? And oddest of all, what do they think about for all that time? How boring open water swimming must be!

For the most part, there is little to no gear. Suits and goggles and Gu packs aside, the constituents of OWS are simply a stripped-down human being and a large body of water. Nonetheless, men and women from all walks of life have historically gone down to some humble shoreline, en masse and alone, to step off terra firma and plunge into often jaw-clatteringly cold water. They take to the river, lake, or ocean and swim, without stopping, for hours and sometimes even days on end. And until just a few years ago, they would simply crawl out of the water at the other end, dress and rejoin the multitudes. Any recognition would be in-house and minimal.

Every once in a while, a great feat would be recognized and celebrated. Crossings of the English Channel in record time or by minor celebrities, the aging, or the handicapped may make headlines. An especially long swim may gather a few thousand spectators at the finish line. But in an age when even the most obscure sports are being overrun by sponsors and over-inflated by hype, OWS continues to be comprised primarily of individuals drawn to traverse large bodies of water for rewards more internal than external, and their incredible feats of human endurance more often than not go unnoticed by anyone but eyewitnesses. Most OWS events are more celebration and communion than competition, a gathering of those like-minded "oddballs" who share a deep appreciation for what marathon swimming demands. Medals and awards at most OWS events are more of a bestowal of respect from the group to one of their own, a placing of laurels in the best traditional sense, than they are a victory over foes.

It was this old-school vibe, this cult of pure human exertion and the community of spirit around it, that attracted Fran to OWS. The majority of events take place in relatively calm bays and harbors, while others are held in rather more dicey conditions. Many swims are from point A to B, across a channel or along a shoreline, especially if a single-direction current or "sweep" is particularly strong. The majority of races, though, are set up around a course. Large (7-8’) buoys are arranged in a basic pattern -- usually a rectangle or triangle -- one lap around which is a certain fraction of the race’s total length. For instance, the course for the 10K at the 2010 Pan Pacific Games was set up in Long Beach Marine Stadium, a poured-concrete saltwater channel behind the harbor. Two parallel, one-kilometer strings of small buoys ran down the length of the channel. A feeding platform -- several precarious plastic floating docks bound haphazardly together -- doubled as the Start/Finish line. Swimmers began in between the two lines of buoys, swam half a kilometer to a large marker, turned, swam one kilometer back, passing the feeding platform halfway, turned at another large buoy at the opposite end of the lines, and swam another half kilometer back to the feeding platform. This being one two-kilometer “lap,” the swimmers proceeded to swim four more. These races take typically between a hundred minutes and two hours, depending on the conditions. Swimmers will stop briefly for nourishment at the feeding stations, but otherwise they are swimming, between 85 and 100 percent effort, the entire time. Physically, this means burning an estimated 2,000 calories. Mentally, between strategy, focus and determination, the 10K is somewhat akin to a NASCAR race.

Fran also saw in marathon swimming a new opportunity. He competed in his first 10K on something of a lark; he was already swimming in the 2006 Pan Pacific Championships in Victoria, British Columbia, and there was an open spot to swim the 10K. Fran placed second. Very quickly, he decided that if he was at his best at the end of a five-hour workout and only getting going in a 15-minute mile race, perhaps these 2-hour, 10K races, in which he was already near the top, were the way to go.

He took to OWS like, well, the fish that he was. He moved from his hometown of Conshohocken, Pa., where he’d gone to train after graduating from the University of Virginia in 2006, to Mission Viejo, CA. He was offered a spare bedroom in a host family’s home and integrated himself into their lives as if it were the most natural thing ever. He trained under coaching legend Bill Rose of the Mission Viejo Nadadores, taught lessons to little kids and coached age group swimming, hung out on Orange County beaches and traveled the world swimming. He would go with Coach Rose to some Caribbean island, swim a 10K and afterwards put on a clinic for local kids before heading out for “a taste of the local night life.” He was, to repeat his favorite cliché, which he did constantly, “living the dream.” The 10K was on the lineup at the 2008 Olympics for the first time in Olympic history, and Fran was determined to make the team. Competition was not very deep in the U.S. field, and Fran was considered by many to be a shoe-in. Unfortunately, he missed an Olympic berth by one spot.

This time, Fran was fazed by failure. He road-tripped home to Conshohocken, the long way through New Orleans and Florida, and seemed resigned to hanging up his suit. He was “thinking about the future,” he’d tell me with mock seriousness from up and down the East Coast, where he tooled around visiting friends, going to UVA swim meets and watching the Phillies on the road. In September, Fran found out he could weasel his way into the NYC Marathon, and started to train for that. He felt 26.2 miles was no big deal for him, and when I talked to him four days before the race, he said he’d been slacking and had only run three times over the previous couple weeks.

"Twenty-six miles is a long way," I said, skeptically.

"Eh, it won't be that bad," he answered with typical downplay. "I ran to the Art Museum and back this morning, just to see how a long-ish run felt."

"The Art Museum? That's way down the city. Where'd you run there from?"

"There's a trail along the Schuylkill [River]. It's only like 11 miles from my house to the Rocky Steps, door to door. So I ran there and back. No big deal, I’ll be fine."

And fine he was. "It wasn't too bad," he wrote in an email to me a couple days afterwards. "I wasn't trying to break world records." He told me his legs started to hurt around mile six, but then he passed a guy with no arms and told himself "it was go-time." So he ramped it up, kept smiling and crossed the finish line in 3:17. He called the NYC marathon "pretty much the coolest thing ever" and decided he was going to run it every year until “I’m the oldest person ever to run it and then run it another decade after that. For good measure.” In 2009, he ran a 2:58.

Last November, his sister, Maddy, ran in his stead.

I don’t know for sure, but I imagine running that marathon was a turning point for Fran. Whatever the case, he decided he wasn’t done as an athlete, and came the first of the year 2009, he was back in the water. It was as if he'd never gotten out of shape. Within a couple months, Fran competed in the 2009 World Championship Trials, just to see where he was standing. He made the trip and went on to take bronze in the 10K at Worlds in Rome that summer. The rest of that year (and for the rest of his life), Fran was on the OWS circuit full-time, garnering medals in races all over the world, participating in events and clinics, and campaigning for what he saw as vital adjustments to the safety of OWS races. Fran had always been a well-known figure within USA Swimming, but over the final 18 months of his life, he became something of an international figurehead. He was funny, confident and photogenic, and he embraced his role as FINA's poster child of marathon swimming.

Fran represented a new era of open water swimmers: elite pool swimmers entering directly into the upper echelons of OWS. Unfortunately, OWS athletes and racing styles have evolved much faster than the event infrastructure. With a peloton of a dozen swimmers jockeying for position in and out of buoy turns and across multiple-kilometer straight-aways, it is not feasible to have one boat per swimmer, as was the practice in years gone by, but neither is it sufficient to have a handful of onlookers sprinkled around the course.

The latter is what seems to have happened in Fran's case. The day before the race, the venue was changed and the already-feeble support infrastructure was rendered still more pathetic. The air around the course was over 100 degrees and water in the Gulf of Oman was in the high 80s. Fran reported being tired and not feeling well at the last feeding station, about 8k into the race, but not surprisingly, he pushed on. An official reportedly saw Fran within the final 500-meter stretch of the triangular course; he had his head up, apparently looking in the wrong direction. The official then looked away, and the next time anyone saw Fran was nearly three hours later, when a search and rescue diver brought his body back to the boat.

One of the hardest parts about the aftermath of Fran's death has been avoiding the assignation of blame. The fact of the matter is that whatever physical malfunction caused Fran to stop swimming and slip under the surface of Gulf of Oman was an accident and is, ultimately, the only “reason” there is that he died. The tragedy is that in all the moments that followed, up until "too late" was reached, absolutely nothing was done for him. In fact, it was half an hour or so after the race before Fran was missed and the frantic search ensued, and it was another two hours before Fran was found. None of the individuals involved in the search for Fran or the recovery of his body were at fault, and my heart goes out to all those who were there and had to deal with being in such close proximity to that horror. The mechanisms that misaligned and allowed the momentary glitch in Fran’s body to become a tragedy are much bigger than any one person, yet we all wanted someone or something to pay for having hurt us by taking Fran away. How could this happen?

Some of the criticism following Fran's death has come from people implying that Fran himself was at fault for his body failing him. These people call for athletes to be more responsible for themselves and their "health" during competition. The problem is that very few athletes – none that I’ve ever known – who have the discipline, drive and mindset to be as good as Fran was would ever allow themselves to be dissuaded, independent of the competition, by possibly dangerous conditions. They are there to compete. Stronger still than the social instinct is the competitive drive, and except in the face of the most extreme conditions imaginable (under which the Gulf of Oman that day did not qualify), I cannot imagine one person, let alone a favorite, backing out of a race that everyone else is competing in. The pressure to compete is higher when there is money to be won, and even higher yet when you are trying to make a living winning circuit purses.

Backing out once the race has begun is in many ways even harder. During the race, the same indicators of overexertion -- muscle cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, tunnel vision, etc. -- are par for the course when you are pushing yourself towards the limits of human endurance. Heat exhaustion, hypothermia, hypoglycemia, etc., by their very nature affect awareness, judgment, and thought processing, and deny athletes the ability to recognize their deteriorating condition. This is particularly true of long-distance events in any discipline, in which athletes consciously, if not intentionally, train through such states in order to recognize them and deal with them appropriately. This loss of focus is further exaggerated in the water, where you don't have gravity and a hard surface to let you know your motor skills are out of whack, and it’s difficult to tell when your vision is blurring, your skin is becoming clammy, your sweat is coming out all wrong, your mouth is dry, or you are displaying any number of the other signs that your body is trying to quit. At this point, your ability to be responsible for your own condition, for raising a protest or calling it quits, is severely compromised.

Worse yet, in open water, no matter how crystal clear your lagoon may be, when a swimmer passes out, he disappears from sight. Should a marathon runner collapse or a cyclist pass out, support sees where the athlete falls and can go directly to that person. Worst of all, when you pass out in the water, you start breathing water. That runner or cyclist who loses consciousness has the comparative luxury of lying unconscious on a hard surface, breathing air and beginning immediately to recoup while support realizes what's happened and makes its way over.

Whatever the case, overexertion should not kill a man as strong as Fran. Stumble across an interview with Fran on the Internet – they aren’t hard to find – and you will find him laughing about crippling muscle cramps, vomiting and loose bowels during races, about walking weak-kneed and wobbly from the water, about dehydration and hypoglycemia so severe during workout that he had to consciously fight to retain consciousness. These things were funny to him, and they are funny to everyone who has experienced them as a direct result of concentrated and purposeful physical exertion. Essentially, however, they are funny because we have survived them, have gone through them and can laugh about these failures of what we otherwise like to consider our superior, flawless bodies. Like disaster survivors or veterans, athletes who have literally run until they dropped connect with one another through humorous anecdotes of various instances that reminded them, however fleetingly, of their own mortality. Never short on competition, such banter is often heavily laden with superlative -- "I was absolutely certain I was going to die"; "my heart basically just stopped working, it just quit"; "I was mid-drown" -- but is not entirely off-base.

But underlying an athlete's pushing the physical envelope is the assumption that the trail, hill, hippodrome, lake, river or ocean is under supervision and essentially safe. Fran was not out swimming alone in some remote body of water, tempting fate. He was taking part in an event on a controlled course sanctioned by an international governing body whose primary purpose is purportedly to provide a safe stage for the world’s elite to compete upon. While there is of course no amount of preparation that could preclude fatal accidents from ever occurring in any scenario, the disastrous mismanagement that preceded the event in the Gulf of Oman expose not only the responsibility such governing bodies have, but also the absolute trust athletes put in their hands. No one in such a precarious position as a swimmer in open water should go missing, for several hours, out from under the noses of the very people who are ostensibly there to guard his life against such an accident.

The need to increase the presence of doctors, trained medical staff and knowledgeable support personnel at open water venues was one of Fran's personal missions. Besides the clinics he taught internationally, Fran also worked with men and women in many different areas of the swimming world -- writing emails just days before his death -- to improve open water swimmers' representation, improve the lifeguard-swimmer ratio and generally bolster the precautions that were (not) taking place in a standardized way across OWS. Fran was intimately familiar with the dangers of pushing past one’s comfort zone into the farthest edges of limitation, and was therefore passionately invested in establishing sufficient safeguards against the very oversights that eventually cost him his life.

The rather brutal irony is that it took Fran's very death to demonstrate how flawed the current safety situation was and has been for a long time. The fact of the matter is that no amount of letter writing throughout the rest of Fran’s life would have precipitated the activity that has taken place in the wake of his death: two separate investigations are ongoing; an OWS Athletes Bill of Rights is being compiled; and international safety conferences have been convened. The Crippen family has established the Fran Crippen Elevation Foundation to encourage safety advocacy, support budding OWS stars and develop international fellowship. In early April, FINA updated its rules and regulations for the 10K World Cup, and last week released its Task Force report concluding its investigation into Fran’s death.

Amid all this, there have even been calls for a general hiatus from marathon swimming events until a consensus can be reached on standard safety practices. This is not feasible and it is far from what Fran would have wanted. He loved swimming, everything about it, and he worked tirelessly to spread that love amongst every group he had the opportunity and, as he saw it, the distinct pleasure to work with. Fran was undoubtedly a showman -- he loved the camera and microphone, the adulation, winks and smiles -- but he felt he had a responsibility to use whatever platform he was given to share his love of the sport, his concern over the safety of its athletes, and, on a broader scale, his belief that anyone willing to work can achieve any dream they may have.

Fran Crippen would have turned 27 last Sunday. When a light like his is taken out of the world, people try to make sense of what they are suddenly missing. And the fact that so many people -- international fans and even strangers -- recognized Fran's lightness suggests to me how rare it is. The person with whom I shared the hardest things I've ever done is gone, and it is only now, through the lens of the last six months, that I can see that Fran had a hand in developing whatever aspects of my character I consider relatively admirable. Since Fran died, it feels as if there are pieces missing, that there's one less of the "us" and the "our" that give my life meaning.

What is especially poignant about the continuing efforts to reform open water swimming and the progress already being made in that direction -- both of which are taking place in Fran Crippen's very name -- is that the final failure of his body is being turned into a lasting and important success. And while Fran would bristle at the idea of him as any kind of martyr, the hard work being put into making something of Fran’s memory is absolutely the greatest possible tribute to him. At the same time, it is the very least we can do for a man who showed us, with a wide smile and by perpetual example, that the very best thing we can do in life, for our own happiness and for the good of those around us, is to push through every difficulty, no matter how painful.

-- Ian Prichard, a six-time NCAA All-American swimmer (UVa '04), writes, teaches, works and lives in Ventura, California. Email him at Ian.Prichard@gmail.com.

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Summary: Coaches loved Fran Crippen for quite a number of reasons. He was always on time, almost always in a good mood. He was vocal, he was motivating, he was...


So, will it be like that symphony where, in the last movement, the musicians carry candles and walk off one by one, leaving only a percussionist to bong the final crack of doom? Are architects and designers shutting down their iMac studio displays and walking towards the horizon?

Actually, no. Times of constraint have historically stimulated architecture and design. The profession of consultant designer began in America's Great Depression when a team of cheerful opportunists led by Raymond Loewy, Henry Dreyfuss and Norman Bel Geddes persuaded consumers that life would not be complete without a streamlined, chrome wastebin, so America designed itself out of recession and back into consumerised prosperity.

But there will be changes in our expectations. Every so often, an academic article appears in the Harvard Business Review which attempts to show how fashions in women's hemlines (up or down) and men's facial hair (on or off) can be seen as measures of economic health. It's not pure science, but it's an interesting speculation. In moments of hardship, we feel modest. In periods of prosperity, we feel exuberant. Or, just possibly, it's the other way around.

Other economists argue that we only ever get changes in architecture and design after new sources of energy are discovered. Take a very long view of history and you'll see that's correct: wind, steam, coal, electricity, oil and atoms all have their expressions in great architecture and design movements.

But now that the energy is running out, what are we to make of the condition of architecture and design? The world is suffering from a mass psychogenic malaise: we have - for the time being - lost the future. So everyone everywhere is in psychological retreat.

Architecture and design, the practical arts, are much more closely related to the economy than music or novels. You don't need wealth to write a novel; history shows that poverty is a positive stimulus to literature. Yet the architecture and design of the last century can only be properly understood as the economy made visible. During America's pomp in the 1950s, the now stricken General Motors used to trail prospective automobile designs, known as "concept cars" no matter how empty-headed they might have been, at national roadshows called Futuramas. Alas, all our futuramas are now in the trashcan of history along with GM.

In postwar Italy, the ricostruzione (politically mandated reconstruction) gave architects and designers in Milan an opportunity to build and make new national symbols. The marvellous Vespa scooter is typical. It was actually designed to mobilise the lethargic workers, although its characteristic step-through frame was to allow women, priests and anybody else not wearing the trousers to mount the vehicle while retaining modesty. All that colourful plastic disegno of the 1950s and 60s was trade promotion via applied art.

The International Commercial Vernacular Glass Box (ICVGB) began when Lever Brothers, the detergent and edible fats multinational, built its green, glass headquarters on New York's Park Avenue in 1952. Unilever, as it is now known, is struggling and rumoured to be facing break-up.

Meanwhile, no one will regret the passing of the ICVGB, now facing a recession all of its own. Until very recently, it seemed absolutely proper that Rawleigh Warner, former CEO of Mobil, would travel the world in his bizjet with his architect as hand baggage, making sure that every filling station in every part of the planet looked absolutely identical. It was called "corporate identity". And at just the moment Mobil's ambitions had been realised, someone made the case for context, particularity, national identity and appropriateness.

We have had it with that version of corporate identity. So our straitened times will find their own expression in architecture and design. There is no better barometer of where we are than the restaurant. To mangle Brillat-Savarin's aphorism, tell me where you eat and I will tell you what you want to be. Eating out is a lesson in taste in both senses. Visiting a restaurant has always been as much a tutorial in interior design as it is gastronomy, although the two are closely related.

It was her horrified reaction to the grey rissoles and beige soup served in postwar British restaurants that inspired Elizabeth David to hymn the voluptuous colours and flavours of the south; her book Mediterranean Food was the result. Published the year before the Festival of Britain, Mrs David's book was more influential than the South Bank. It introduced Britain to Europe; little more than 10 years and Terence Conran's Habitat was selling the batteries de cuisine needed to make ratatouille and terrines.

Just the other day, Tony Schlesinger, owner of fast-food chain Spudulike, was showing me pictures of his latest shops and I started thinking how marvellous that such quality of design - bright and optimistic - is now in the factory outlet and shopping-mall mainstream. Spudulike will not win Pritzker Prizes for architecture, but its approach is evidence of changed basic assumptions.

But what of the uncertain future? Two nearly simultaneous London restaurant openings suddenly seem very significant, not for the food, but for what they tell us about our expectations in architecture and design. The first is Bob Bob Ricard, the second is Princi. Both are in Soho, an area that has been a restaurant laboratory for 200 years.

Bob Bob Ricard is the work of David Collins, the London-based Irish interior designer who is the darling of Madonna and all who sail with her. Collins is big-budget. He designed Restaurant Gordon Ramsay and is rightly admired for his glorious reworking of the Wolseley in Piccadilly, where his well-exercised preference for glitter, gilt and glazing suits the luxo-kitsch Viennese concept. But at Bob Bob Ricard, the stencil has shifted and blurred.

At street level, it is a bizarre combination of Norman Rockwell-style American diner with vinyl banquettes, plus terrazzo, perhaps from a Cannes fish restaurant, antiqued mirror ceiling, real as well as metaphorical brass. Something about it that made me write "Directoire" in my notebook. There are buzzers on the tables which light up numbers at the bar so your champagne order can be promptly served. It is opulent and a bit creepy. Downstairs is a crepuscular bar with dark-red leather booths.

Bob Bob Ricard has been fastidiously executed to the wrong plan. It feels foreign and weird, like putting chilli dipping on foie gras. Just around the corner is Princi, an all-day bakery and bar which is foreign, but feels right. After all, this is Soho. "Spirito di Milano" it says in the window. Princi is a concept lifted from Lombardy by Alan Yau. It was Yau's Wagamama (designed by John Pawson) that introduced us to communal, artisanal resto-cool. Princi takes it on.

It is airy, handsome and smart without being demanding. Furniture is by Poltrona Frau, uniforms by Armani. There is firewood made decorative and there are baskets. There is no applied decoration, but the materials speak for themselves: polished limestone, glass and rough-hewn pillars where you stand with a caffè. A contemplative water feature drips along one side of the room. Here - in design terms - is the elemental symbolism of earth, water, fire.

Restaurant consultant Nick Lander recently speculated that we will not be using the word "restaurant" for very much longer because it suggests levels of waste, redundancy, expense and frou-frou that are inappropriate. Princi offers a credible alternative.

Brillat-Savarin also said that eating is the supreme pleasure because it consoles you for the loss of all the others. That's true, but it would be unsettling today to eat in a complicated and expensive restaurant populated by burping customers with grease running down their chins and liveried flunkies chasing their 15 per cent. And it would be financial suicide to invest in one.

We may be more liberal about hemlines and facial hair, but we are becoming stricter about vulgar excess. It's a truly terrible moment for investors in gilt, chandeliers, marble and lacquer. And a great one for believers in good proportions, honest materials, modesty and decorum. Our home economy might needs be austere, but austerity does not have to be ugly or boring.

I promised myself never to use "zeitgeist" except ironically, but only one of the two restaurants mentioned here captures the spirit of the age. The great thing about our new constraints is that both mediocrity and excess are now intolerable. Quality in architecture and design will, however, make everyone better off.

Pre-crunchCar Range Rover in black: imperiously comfortable, wantonly greedy.Corporate architecture Mirror-glass tower with pseudo-Norman Foster details and a PR-invented name inspired by nursery-school metaphors.Restaurants Angry telly chef, faux-French food, rising cloches, Michelin stars, great expense.Shops Westfield mall: godless, heathen, ugly, gross, wasteful, inappropriate.Living 56-inch home cinema with Sonos integrated internet radio system.

Post-crunchCar Toyota iQ: brilliant packaging makes status attributes of intelligence and responsibility.Corporate architecture Earth-bermed, biodegradable eco-cave made of salvaged materials compacted on-site; leafy succulents cover roof.Restaurants Refectory tables, wood-burning oven, no reservations.Shops A new generation of corner shop. (Take a look at Italo, Bonington Square, London SW8).Living "Annie", a chair made from a salvaged supermarket trolley (www.reestore.com).

Summary: Economic reality is making companies think anew about design - and restaurants are among the most visible results, says Stephen Bayley


Sea of words ... Bethan Huws's False Teeth, 2009, at Nayland Rock shelter in Margate, Kent. Photograph: Charles Duprat

A quick survey of Bethan Huws's work suggests that she's an artist who is hard to keep up with. Over the past couple of decades, her work has included architectural interventions (adding floors to otherwise empty galleries), films, sculptures, performances and watercolours – conceptual art with a humanising wit.

In 1993 she produced the Artangel performance and film Singing to the Sea, where The Bistritsa Babi, a choir of Bulgarian grandmothers, improvised an eerie song in tune with the wind and the crash of waves on a Northumberland beach. And for her delightful Table of Feathers from 2007, she coated a tabletop with erect quills: as if flights of fancy were pouring from the sky and our only hope of capturing them was the written word. She is known for her quirky text works, stencilling on walls or using old-fashioned black noticeboards with movable letters. One cheeky piece reads Piss Off I'm a Fountain, challenging doubters like Duchamp's famed urinal.

It's tempting to see Huws's artistic wanderlust extending to her life. She was born in Bangor, north Wales in 1961, before studying at the Royal College in London, and she has lived in Paris and Berlin since the early 1990s. While she all but vanished from the UK art world, she's exhibited widely in Europe, including representing her homeland at the 2003 Venice Biennale.

Wales is a place Huws continually returns to in her work. Since 1983, she has been fashioning tiny boats from reeds, like those she made as a child with her father in the rush fields; one no larger than a fingernail occupies a glass display case in her current London show – her first in 20 years.

What unites Huws's protean output is her interest in translation – not least because she grew up speaking Welsh as her first language. Like her hero Duchamp, she mines the slippery bond between things and language, text and thought. A miniature boat might take us on a mental journey, or the wind become a song.

Why we like her: In 2009, Huws stencilled the words False Teeth on to the windows of an original seaside shelter in Margate (apparently where TS Eliot wrote some lines from The Waste Land), inviting us to imagine its 26 panes as a pretend set of teeth.

Homeboys: Huws cast Welsh luminary actor Rhys Ifans in her surreal comedy of puns, The Chocolate Bar, after a mutual friend, Gruff Rhys, the lead singer of Super Furry Animals, introduced them.

Where can I see her? Bethan Huws: Capelgwyn is at Whitechapel gallery, London until 18 March.

Summary: Skye Sherwin: A versatile Welsh artist whose conceptual art has a humanising sense of wit


HOUSTON— Increasing workers’ earning power and offering Hispanic-owned companies easier access to funding that can be used for growth can help improve the social and economic status of Latinos in the United States and across Latin America, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim says.

In a speech at the annual conference of the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders, Slim spoke on how to better the plight of Hispanic workers and Latino-owned businesses.

Slim, ranked by Forbes magazine as the world’s second-richest person, with an estimated net worth of $72 billion, suggested establishing investment firms dedicated to working with small- and medium-size Latino businesses.

He also said that following recent economic crises, countries need to focus on strengthening the middle class as well as health care and education.

‘‘What is important is that people earn more and that more middle classes are formed,’’ said Slim, who owns America Movil, a cellphone service provider in Latin America.

Slim also reiterated his recent proposal for a three-day work week. He said the idea would mean longer work hours and delaying retirement until 70 to 75 years old. But he said it would mean people having more free time with their families or for personal enrichment.

Last week, Slim’s foundation unveiled Acceso Latino, a free website to provide Hispanics access to information about education, health care, job training, culture, and other areas.

There are more than 53 million Hispanics in the United States, or 17 percent of the population, according to census figures. Slim said this makes the US Hispanic population larger than the populations of many Latin American countries.

Martin Cabrera, chief executive of a Chicago investment firm, said there are already multibillion-dollar pension funds that have investment arms that provide financing to startups and other companies. But ‘‘the amount of business they are doing with Latino [companies] is close to zero,’’ he said.

Cabrera said Slim can use his influence to start a dialogue with pension funds and their investment arms to get them to see the potential of investing in Hispanic-owned businesses.

Cabrera added that these funds and investment firms can also bring ‘‘management and experience to help’’ Hispanic-owned businesses grow and ‘‘get them to the next level and even possibly be the Latino Facebook or the Latino Google.’’

Summary: Increasing workers’ earning power and offering Latino-owned companies easier access to funding that can be used for growth and expansion can help improve the social and economic status of Latinos in the United States and throughout Latin America, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim told religious and community leaders Sunday.


08/27/2014 AT 08:25 AM EDT

this week, and he told

about the time he and a friend had a little fun at the expense of a Sundance Film Festival audience.

Cera planted his friend in the audience and had him ask a fake question as a prank.

"I said to him, 'Okay, raise your hand to ask a question, and if they call on you, say, 'I have a two-part question for Michael.' "

"'The first part is, 'When is the last time you saw your son Amos,' and the second part is, 'If you're so sure he's not your son, why won't you take the DNA test?' " (Obviously, Cera does not have a son.)

Cera said that there was complete silence in the room after his friend asked the hoax question, and after he faux-brushed the question aside, the crowd turned on his friend. Letterman, for his part, said Cera should be banned from Sundance for life.

, follows Cera and some friends as they search for a legendary hallucinogen – it's currently out on DVD. Watch the full clip from Cera's interview below.

Ilya S. Savenok / Getty

Summary: Cera planted a friend in the audience to ask the question – the audience turned on the man afterwards


A few weeks ago I found myself on the eighteenth floor of the historic Merchandise Mart building in downtown Chicago, surrounded by dozens of anxious journalists awaiting a press conference for Motorola’s new phone. We were in a room splashed with vivid hues and packed with chairs of varying shapes and sizes, arranged in a semi-circle pattern. A nearby wall had a graffiti-like mural that read, somewhat perplexingly, “We want more” and “Thank you.” At the front of the room was a makeshift stage flanked by two televisions. A giant Ma Batwings “M” was plastered on each display.

Welcome to the new, Lenovo-owned Motorola—it’s surprisingly like the old one.

As I waited for the proceedings to begin, I reflected on how much Motorola, long a stalwart of the U.S. electronics industry, had impacted my life. Sure, most people associate the name with the pioneering radio giant it once was. But, owing to the nature of cellular technology and mobile phones, Motorola has played an integral part in many people’s daily lives. For example, in high school I had a job selling cell phones, and I recall Motorola’s StarTAC being a tough sell. (It had a steep price tag.) Still, I was able to move inventory, a sign of things to come. Years later, I worked for Verizon Wireless, where I found myself bewildered at how well the Motorola Razr still sold well a full two years—eons in technology—after it arrived on the market. For much of my life, Motorola was a giant in technology. That’s not quite the case today.

(In 2011, the company split into a mobile devices business, Motorola Mobility, and an infrastructure business, Motorola Solutions. They share only a name; Motorola Mobility, after a brief period under Google, is now owned by Lenovo.)

But back to the event at hand. Rick Osterloh, the newly-appointed president of Motorola Mobility, took the stage wearing a smart watch on his left wrist. “Choose to have the freedom to choose,” he declared. It would turn out to be the day’s theme. Osterloh and company went on to introduce two new phones, the Moto X and Moto G, that could be customized front to back. They introduced a highly-anticipated Google Android-based watch, the Moto 360, which came in different colors and with various bands. Finally, they showed off the Moto Hint, a futuristic Bluetooth headset, available in an assortment of colors and materials.

The new Moto X, in particular, was notable because it was the company’s second shot at introducing a market-moving device. The first model of the phone, the company’s flagship model, launched in late 2013. It was Motorola’s attempt to lay claim to a new supremacy—the handset was competitive, customizable, affordable, and assembled in the United States. Despite always-on voice commands and an all-day battery, the phone never gained traction, and always seemed to be on sale. When his presentation was over, I pressed Osterloh on why the phone’s price seemed to be in a constant flux. “We learned a lot about what it took to succeed in the premium smartphone business when we launched the Moto X,” he told me. “For us, we found the sweet spot was about one- to two-hundred dollars below Samsung and Apple.” As such, the new Moto X retails at $499 without contract, about $150 lower than comparable Apple or Samsung devices.

Another theme that echoed during the presentation was that of “Pure Android.” Awash in a sea of customized versions of Google’s Android mobile operating system, Motorola has chosen to take the foundation of code Google releases to its partners and leave it mostly untouched. The company sees it as a point of differentiation. It touts it as a “Vanilla Android” experience, perhaps the first time in the history of blinking, buzzing consumer electronics in which “plain” was equated with “preferred.” The result, it says, is a faster, leaner device that’s capable of receiving major software updates sooner than the more customized phones on offer by every other manufacturer.

Steve Horowitz, Motorola’s senior vice president of software, was insistent that the company’s restrained tweaks to Android could not be matched by any competitor. “One of things that I like, frankly, are features that people don’t even know are features,” he told me. He’s referring to a new feature in which you merely wave your hand over the phone’s display to silence an alarm or incoming call, rather than press, tap, or swipe as on other phones. “It’s almost like a natural gesture—’Oh, stop it,’ and it just works,” he said. It’s a neat parlor trick.

Whether such subtleties are enough to send the masses back to the store and pay a premium for a Motorola device remains to be seen. The company continues to be in transition, and that narrative has hijacked most everything related to the products it makes. Its new and highly touted Texas assembly plant is expected to close as final assembly moves to China, Lenovo’s home. The Midwestern company is still recovering from its whirlwind marriage to (and divorce from) that beacon of Silicon Valley, Google. And the Lenovo deal isn’t even expected to close until 2015, leaving it in limbo for the rest of the year. If its executive team can put all the corporate drama behind it and focus once again on making compelling devices—Droid, anyone?—they could very well take advantage of a lot of latent goodwill for the company, at least in the U.S.

Motorola has the freedom to choose. Now it just needs to do it.

“Logged In” is Fortune’s personal technology column, written by Jason Cipriani. Read it on Fortune.com each Tuesday.

Summary: With the new Moto X, Moto G, and Moto 360, Motorola wants to give consumers "the power to choose." What it desperately needs is for them to choose the "M."


Quantopian, a Boston company that has developed a platform for investors to build, test, and execute trading algorithms, said Thursday that it has secured $15 million in Series B financing.

The financing is from lead investor Bessemer Venture Partners, along with existing investors Khosla Ventures, Spark Capital, and Wicklow Capital.

Bessemer Venture Partners partner Rob Stavis will join Quantopian’s board of directors. Bessemer Venture Partners has an office in Cambridge.

Including the new Series B money, Quantopian said it has raised $23.8 million to date.

Plans call for the company to use the new financing to develop the Quantopian Managers Program, a hedge fund that allocates capital to the top-performing quants in the community.

“We now allow quants to put their money where their minds are through the seamless integration of writing algorithms, backtesting, and live trading,” John Fawcett, Quantopian founder and chief executive, said in a statement.

Summary: Quantopian, a Boston company that has developed a platform for investors to build, test, and execute trading algorithms, has secured $15 million in Series B financing.


FORTUNE — Tucker Twitmyer has left energy-focused venture capital firm EnerTech Capital Partners after a 10-year run, Fortune has learned. His next stop will be as a senior vice president with alternative investment management firm Franklin Square Capital Partners.

Twitmyer was one of four partners listed on EnerTech’s fourth fund, which closed last September with $120 million in capital commitments. He also was one of the few EnerTech staffers based in Philadelphia, as the firm has shifted much of its focus to Canadian startups (around a 50/50 split).

“We now have three offices in Canada, and are focusing a lot of our energies here,” explains EnerTech managing director Wally Hunter. “We’re not planning to add someone to the partnership specifically to replace Tucker, but we did promote Dean Sciorillo to director and he’ll be handling a lot of our U.S. portfolio.”

Managing directors also Scott Ungerer and Bill Kingsley will work on U.S. transactions.

Hunter adds that the firm wishes Twitmyer well, and says the two could partner on future transactions if an EnerTech portfolio company is in need of debt financing. So far, the new EnerTech fund has made four investments, with another three in the pipeline. It also signed a strategic partnership with the Hydro-Quebec Research Institute.

Twitmyer has not yet responded to a request for comment. He originally joined EnerTech in April 2002, and led such deals as Advent Solar, OwnEnergy, Enerwise and FuelQuest.

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Summary: Energy-focused venture capitalist joins Franklin Square Capital.


FORTUNE — Apple’s AAPL iPhone may be approaching saturation in North America, but Latin America is wide open territory.

Brazil is particularly interesting. It’s the largest country on the continent (pop. 200 million) and it’s demonstrated an appetite for iPhones despite prices that are the highest in the world. Due to stiff import duties, an unlocked iPhone 5s that sells for $649 in the U.S. costs 2,799 reais ($1,174) in Brazil.

Still, the estimated 1,700 Brazilians who gathered Saturday at Rio de Janiero’s Village Mall for the opening of the first Apple Store in South America didn’t seem to be suffering from sticker shock. And when Foxconn’s new Brazilian factories start churning out iPhones that aren’t subject to import taxes, those prices could come down dramatically.

“Rio is an amazing city,” CFO Peter Oppenheimer told a local news outlet by telephone. “And we want the store running for the FIFA World Cup and the Olympics in 2016.”

LINK: Conheça a primeira Apple Store no Brasil: Village Mall.

Summary: Apple plants its flag in Brazil in advance of the FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.


This post is in partnership with Time. The article below was originally published at Time.com

Spotify’s CEO on Tuesday aired his frustration with Taylor Swift’s critique of the streaming music service, arguing that his company’s revenue sharing agreements ensure that musicians get paid for their work and serve as a bulwark against online piracy.

“We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it,” wrote CEO Daniel Ek in a post on Spotify’s official blog. Ek said that Spotify had paid a total of $2 billion to music labels and their associated artists since Spotify launched in 2008, a sum he argued wouldn’t exist had fans downloaded the music through pirated websites.

Ek’s defense came in the wake of pop artist Taylor Swift’s widely publicized decision to pull all of her music, save one song, from the streaming service last week. Swift has previously criticized Spotify’s payments to musical artists — which average less than a penny per played song — as inadequate compensation for artists.

“When I hear stories about artists and songwriters who say they’ve seen little or no money from streaming and are naturally angry and frustrated, I’m really frustrated too,” Ek wrote in the post. “We will do anything we can to work with the industry to increase transparency, improve speed of payments, and give artists the opportunity to promote themselves and connect with fans.”

Summary: Music streaming service responds after the pop star pulled most of her music last week in an apparent dispute over artist payments.


Hortonworks, a Silicon Valley-based open-source platform for storing and analyzing big data, this afternoon filed for a $100 million IPO. It plans to trade on the Nasdaq under ticker symbol HDP, with Goldman Sachs GS listed as left-lead underwriter.

Here are some quick takes after skimming through the company’s S-1 filing:

1. Don’t get too bogged down by the bottom-line: Hortonworks is not a profitable company. In fact, its losses are growing — from $48 million during the first nine months of 2013 to $88 million during the first nine months of 2014 (revenue over same periods were $16 million vs. $33 million). But software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies, particularly young ones, don’t make a traditional financial argument to Wall Street. Instead, they tell prospective investors to focus on a non-GAAP measure called billings, since that also includes the amount of revenue that the company is contractually obligated to receive shortly (i.e. deferred revenue). For Hortonworks, gross billings climbed from $24 million to $53 million over those 9-month periods. So if you were to substitute “gross billings” for revenue, the loss curve flattens out a bit. (Note: This is not an editorial endorsement of elevating billings — simply an acknowledgment that investors generally have endorsed the practice.)

2. Take the over: Hortonworks is not planning to raise $100 million, despite the headline number on its S-1. That’s simply a placeholder. And, for context, companies almost never put a placeholder that’s higher than the anticipated amount.

3. 2014 issue: Hortonworks previously filed confidentially with the SEC, via a 2012 JOBS Act provision. If it wanted to actually list in calendar 2014, this was basically its last week to make the S-1 public (due to a combination of holidays and regulatory waiting periods). So don’t be surprised to see this one go out before the end of December.

4. Like looking in a mirror: Last week we wrote about Confluent, a new open-source software startup launched by a group of LinkedIn engineers who raised first-round funding from both LinkedIn GS and venture capital firm Benchmark. Well, Hortonworks is an open-source software startup launched by a group of Yahoo YHOO engineers who raised first-round funding from both Yahoo and Benchmark.

5. Cap table: Yahoo still holds a 19.6% stake in Hortonworks, while Benchmark has 18.7%. Other smaller shareholders include Index Ventures, Teradata TDCQ and Hewlett-Packard HPQ .

6. Peanut gallery: Just last month, a senior executive for Hortonworks rival Cloudera said that Hortonworks “will not survive as a long-term business” because its open-source business model is “undependable.” Got to think that Hortonworks is intentionally pushing out into the public markets before Cloudera, in part so that it can try to define the market for Wall Street before Cloudera tells a story in which Hortonworks is an afterthought.

Sign up for Dan’s daily newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Hadoop platform HortonWorks plans to hit the public markets before rival Cloudera.


FORTUNE — Wearable computers may be a market worth as much as $6 billion by 2016, but for now it’s a category with more hype and little substance.

Early users of Google GOOG Glass device, often agree on one thing: It’s got great potential but needs a lot of work. Voice recognition for commands is still buggy, and the industrial design resembles a Star Trek prop. Meanwhile, attempts at other wearable accessories like the Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch haven’t been well-received. The devices are still pretty limited in terms of what users can do, and in Samsung’s case, the device only works with a small number of phones — all Samsung SSNLF , of course. And, outside the fitness market, few devices are priced low enough to be competitive. (Google Glass could retail for between $250 and $600 when it arrives later this year, according to the New York Times.)

Anthony Wood, CEO of Roku, is less than enthusiastic about the hardware category. “Watches in particular strike me as being particularly geeky — something I’d have wanted to play with as a kid,” he says.

Forrester Research analyst JP Gownder says wearables are experiencing a “hype bubble,” comparing the market to the Internet of 1999. “It took many failed experiments like Pets.com before we found real business models associated with the Internet,” says Gownder. He says the same goes for wearable computing companies. “Most of them don’t have good business models, and most consumers don’t know why they’d be buying these things.”

MORE: 5 lessons from survivors of the dotcom crash

Where wearables aren’t scarce is fitness. No less than 10 different vendors, including Nike (NKE), Fitbit, and Jawbone have wristbands that track different activities like running and sleep. “In fitness, 2013 was kind of a mess,” admits Gownder, who argues their business-to-consumer (B2C) approach is a small, limited market. “It’s people who are fitness fanatics, people who are overweight, and people who are quantified selfers,” referring to the trend of people obsessively tracking their steps, sleep, and other movements.

But perhaps it’s the B2C part that’s the ill fit? Box CEO Aaron Levie, underwhelmed when he tried Glass late last year, argues the marketing around it is all wrong. He thinks it should be repositioned for the industrial or enterprise worlds. Says Levie: “Think about what very low-cost, hands-free computing can do for the health care industry, or what it could do for production, for somebody who’s doing repairs of engines.”

Maybe enough of those geeks could make the view of Google Glass a little more rose-colored.

Summary: Wearable technology is supposed to be the next hot thing but has barely made a dent in the consumer market.


01/09/2015 AT 07:00 AM EST

We recently brought you the story of Kohlsen Fisher; the lil'est, most devoted Flyers fan, whose

of a Penguins jersey gave us one of the last (and best) viral moments of 2014.

But the story didn't end there! Dean Fisher uploaded this clip of an intense care package the Flyers delivered to Kohlsen after they'd got wind of the video. Flyers captain Claude Giroux sent Kohlsen a signed jersey – and a ton of other Flyers gear – and best of all, an invite for his family to come meet Giroux and the team at a game.

If only someone would reward our virulent hatred for those damn Shelbyville Shelbyvillians from

. Matt Groening, we'll be expecting our Springfield Isotopes jersey in the mail soon.

Summary: Kohlsen Fisher's strident hatred of the Penguins has been duly rewarded


Janice Ruhter and Jerry Rice

02/11/2015 AT 12:50 PM EST

The house seemed to have everything a growing family could want.

Located in an upscale suburb, the Spanish-style home featured a huge backyard and a school right up the street. When it went on the market in 2011, Janice Ruhter and husband Jerry Rice were one of eight families who bid on the property. When they won, they were elated.

But their happiness soon turned to terror as unexplained things began to happen. The house was placed for sale on real estate websites. Dozens of traveling missionaries knocked on their front door. Their mail was stopped. Neighbors received bizarre valentines from Rice.

And then things took a dark and dangerous turn. One terrifying day, a man showed up at the front door, lured by an online ad soliciting men to have sex with Ruhter when her husband wasn't home.

The young couple was clearly being targeted by someone intent on making their life miserable. But who? They had no known enemies and lived an exemplary life; he is a middle school special-ed teacher, she is a lab scientist at a children's hospital.

"I started freaking out," Ruhter tells PEOPLE exclusively. "How far was this person going to take it? I didn't feel safe."

Rice and Ruhter were shocked when they learned who was behind the crime: Kathy Rowe, a 53-year-old married mom of a 16-year-old disabled daughter. She had been one of the other people who bid on the house.

When it was sold to the Rices, "I was heartbroken," Rowe tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview.

Make that heartbroken – and angry. "Once a month," she says, "I would be up all night and I would think, 'Wouldn't it be funny to do this?' "

Kathy Rowe with her defense attorney Brad Patton

U-T San Diego / ZUMA

Only no one was laughing. Rowe was arrested and charged with soliciting rape and sodomy, identity theft and harassment. In 2014, she pleaded guilty to a felony stalking charge. She was sentenced to home detention and probation. She has been ordered to stay away from her victims for 10 years.

With the harassment behind them, Rice and Ruhter are trying to piece their lives back together. "We would love to forgive her," says Rice, "but I don't think she has really apologized for the full scope of what she did against us."

To see more of Kathy Rowe's exclusive interview, tune in to

, airing Friday, Feb. 13, 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

Summary: "I didn't realize they'd be scared to death," the perpetrator tells PEOPLE


03/09/2015 AT 04:30 PM EDT

Siahj "Cici" Chase had the perfect response after a boy called her ugly at school. In a video posted by the 4-year-old's mom, Sonya, the little girl, who hails from Nassau in the Bahamas, reveals that a classmate was mean to her at school earlier that day. "A little boy said I look ... ugly," she says. Her mom replies, "And what did you say?" "I said, 'I didn't come here to make a fashion statement. I came here to learn, not look pretty,' " Cici told her mom. "The little boy said I look bad and I said, 'Did you look in the mirror lately? Bye bye, see you later, you're making me mad.' " At home Sonya likes to read Cici motivational books at bedtime to instill good values in her. "She's a very smart girl, she's not your normal 4-year-old," Sonya tells PEOPLE. "Her response was so mature, I couldn't believe it!" And the little girl wouldn't take back what she said, either. "I feel good and happy," Cici tells PEOPLE. Sonya hopes that one day she can create a platform that inspires kids to be able to deal with not just bullying, but other situations as well. "I want to share what I've shared with Cici," Sonya says. "I want to make kids feel like they can do anything and that it's on the inside that matters."

Summary: "I came here to learn, not look pretty," Cici says in the viral video


03/23/2015 AT 11:45 PM EDT

has a type: women who perform in rather unusual birth scenes.

FKA Twigs, the British singer who

with Pattinson earlier this month, has released the music video for her newest single, "Glass & Patron."

The video has Twigs, 27, sporting a pregnant belly, and about a minute in, she gives birth to ... a scarf. It's a rather pretty scarf, all the colors of the rainbow, and soon enough it's enshrouding some male dancers as they writhe about. Twigs directed the video herself.

It's left up to the viewer how to interpret this.

It so happens that Pattinson's ex-girlfriend,

. It's a coincidence, of course, but when Pattinson finally does become a father, he may find the whole process a lot less bizarre than what he's been prepared for.

Summary: The British singer's video for "Glass & Patron" has her sporting a baby bump – and then it gets weird


Among the financial commentariat, there’s quite a bit of worry that the most important post-crisis regulations will be whittled away in the coming years, setting us up for another meltdown.

A recent New York Times editorial, for instance, fretted about loopholes in the Dodd-Frank financial reform and expressed concerns that an increasingly powerful Republican Party may attempt to repeal portions of the law and disband regulatory bodies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Much of this coverage focuses too much on the political rhetoric at the expense of the people who actually perform the work of financial regulation; the ones who will be the best and last line of defense against another financial crisis.

Janet Yellen, speaking on Wednesday at the Institute for New Economic Thinking with IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, calmed fears that shifting political winds will deter the Federal Reserve’s enthusiasm for regulation. In her opening remarks, the Fed chair reiterated her commitment to shrinking the biggest banks and enforcing capital requirements to reduce the possibility of future government bailouts of irresponsible financial institutions.

Yellen gave a nod to the potential benefits a well-developed financial sector can bestow on a society, but she also cited research that shows that a bloated financial sector can harm the broader economy. These statements, paired with comments last year in which she argued that the preponderance of too-big-to-fail banks is still a problem, should allay any concerns that the nation’s most powerful financial regulator has softened up on Wall Street. As her co-panelist Lagarde said in her remarks, “we need to build a financial system that serves society and not one that serves itself.”

Yes, the financial industry is powerful. It spends big money in Washington to sway legislators to dial back on regulations that might crimp profits. But as political scientist Francis Fukuyama has shown in his research on how democracies function, it’s often much more important to pay attention to bureaucrats than politicians when evaluating how well governments function. A strong, independent bureaucracy can often rise above the political fray and do what’s best for a nation. Fukuyama has expressed concern about the quality of public administration in the United States, citing evidence from the Volcker Commission, which showed that the morale and effectiveness of the federal workforce has been weakening over the past two generations.

But the Federal Reserve might prove the exception to this trend. Janet Yellen will be chair until at least 2018, while other members of the central bank have consistently reiterated their commitment to maintaining intense scrutiny of big banks. Even someone like former Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, who leans right on topics like monetary policy, was a vocal advocate for radical regulatory moves, including forcibly breaking up America’s largest banks.

The banking industry will continue to do its best to protect itself from regulation. And it’s reasonable to worry that the Fed, and especially its regional banks, are sometimes too cozy with the banks it regulates. But recent reports that the Fed is implementing reforms to prevent its employees from taking jobs at the banks they supervise is just another sign that the central bank is taking this problem seriously.

Summary: During a discussion with IMF head Christine Lagarde, the Fed chair reiterated her commitment to shrinking Wall Street's influence


Buried within Tesla Motors’ hour-and-fifteen-minute earnings call earlier this month was the nugget that the electric automaker TSLA plans to use two different variations of lithium-ion batteries for its two different grid battery products.

The news could easily be dismissed as just a bit of battery geekery, but there’s more to it than that. It suggests that Tesla is not just increasing how many types of batteries it uses in its products, but that it has the ability to produce both models at its planned battery “gigafactory.” The batteries could influence how the facility is designed.

But before we understand how much this could affect Tesla’s factory, let’s take a step back to explain the nuts and bolts of battery making and why Tesla wants to do this.

Most traditional lithium-ion batteries that are found in devices like cell phones are made using a cathode that’s a mixture of lithium cobalt oxide. The structure of a battery is made up of two electrodes—a cathode (positive) and an anode (negative)—and a medium, called the electrolyte, through which the electric charge flows. Lithium ions move back and forth between the cathode and the anode when a lithium-ion battery charges and discharges.

The cathode part of the battery is the place where traditionally the lithium-ion battery industry can tweak the energy and power density—or how much energy and power can be stored per volume. (Power is basically how quickly the energy can be taken out and put to work.) Different material combinations can make the battery able to store more energy or produce more power, and likewise make the battery more or less stable. (The energy created in a battery is, by its nature, volatile.)

The batteries that Tesla has been using, sourced from Panasonic, for its Model S electric car are mostly likely a lithium-ion battery with a cathode that is a combination of a lithium, nickel, cobalt, aluminum oxide. The battery industry calls this an “NCA battery” and they’ve been around—and made by Panasonic—for many years.

Typically, lithium-ion NCA batteries use a combination of 80% nickel, 15% cobalt and 5% aluminum. It’s unclear what mix Tesla and Panasonic’s battery combination is. (The anodes in these traditional lithium-ion batteries is usually a graphite combination, which acts as a host for the lithium ions.) The addition of the aluminum to the NCA battery makes it more stable.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on the company’s earnings call that Tesla will be using a high energy lithium-ion NCA battery for its new grid battery. Similar to the one it uses in its cars, the grid battery is intended for use by utility companies for back-up power. These are the batteries that, when used in a big battery “farm,” could replace so-called peaker power plants, the “dirty” and expensive power plants that utilities use only when grid demand peaks, such as during a sweltering summer afternoon. (The Tesla website describes this as the back-up battery with a capacity of 10 kilowatt-hours and a price of $3,500.)

In contrast, Musk said that Tesla will use a lithium-ion battery with a nickel, manganese, cobalt oxide cathode for its grid battery. Called an NMC battery, it’s meant to be used for daily cycling for a home, business, or certain types of clean power. “There’s quite a lot of manganese in there,” Musk said. (The Tesla website specs for this battery are 7 kWh battery for $3,000.)

Many traditional NMC batteries use one-third equal parts nickel, manganese, and cobalt. Again, it’s unclear what the combination of Panasonic and Tesla’s version is.

The choice of these two batteries makes sense for what Tesla wants its customers to do with the batteries. The back-up battery is intended to offer a lot of energy, quickly, to smooth out that “heat wave” grid peak without using a peaker plant. It’s like when someone driving a Tesla Model S punches the accelerator.

On an electrical grid, these type of events rarely happen—but they do. A back-up battery doesn’t need to be charged and discharged on a regular daily basis, just when it’s really needed. Tesla says its battery has 60 or 70 cycles—charge and discharge—per year.

Musk optimistically says that the lifetime of that battery is 1,000 to 1,500 cycles, or “maybe 15 years calendar life.” Those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt—they are likely based on a situation in which the battery isn’t always using its full capacity.

Tesla’s daily charging grid battery, on the other hand, is meant to offer more reliable sustained charging every day. If you paired this battery with a utility’s solar energy farm, the batteries would be expected to store the energy from the solar panels during the day to potentially be used at night.

The daily battery can have a lower energy density, but it needs a longer cycle life—that is, it needs to be able to be charged and discharged many more times than the backup battery. The daily battery has a 5,000 cycle life, Musk said on the call, and a similar lifespan as the back-up battery—but again, take those numbers with a grain of salt.

An NCA battery typically has a shorter cycle life and a higher energy density (and less stability). An NMC battery generally has a longer cycle life, more stability, and less energy density.

Princeton University assistant professor Dan Steingart says the materials for most NMC batteries are generally slightly cheaper than for NCA batteries—there is more nickel and less cobalt used in the NMC battery. (Cobalt is more expensive than nickel.) But an NMC battery also typically has a lower cost of energy because of the ability of an NMC battery to cycle with more stability than an NCA battery.

Remember: The more a battery is charged and discharged, the shorter the battery’s lifespan. But battery life can be extended if the batteries are not charged and discharged to 100 percent of their capacity. If the battery is charged at only half of its level, it can last much longer.

Steingart points out that to get the kind of life cycle that Tesla’s NMC battery plans for, it could be charging and discharging at under 80% of its capacity, and perhaps even down to somewhere between 50% to 70% depth of discharge. To get the type of lifespan for the NCA battery that Tesla wants, the company could be doing 80% to 85% depth of discharge. For NMC and NCA batteries in general, Steingart notes: “It’s a tricky dance of what the material is and how far you discharge and how you spec it out to be.”

Another reason why Tesla can use two different batteries for its two grid products is because its main battery supplier, Panasonic, makes these types of batteries at low costs. (As do others, such as Samsung SDI.) Since Tesla plans to build the first grid battery products before the Gigafactory is up and running—assembling them in Fremont similar to the way it makes its cars now—it can just buy these in the traditional way, from a vendor.

But if Tesla decides to keep this model of two different battery types and implements them into the construction of the Gigafactory, it could fundamentally alter the way Tesla builds its factory. On Tesla’s earnings call Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel said both batteries could be built in the Gigafactory and confirmed that Tesla will have multiple lines operating in the facility.

“If one is nickel cobalt aluminum, and the other is nickel manganese, cobalt, that’s fine. The processes after that is identical,” said Straubel. Musk added that the packs would “look the same at the module and pack level”—just differ at the battery cell level.

Adding complexity to manufacturing processes typically adds costs. If there are two types of battery cells, then the total production of each cell type is naturally half of what it would be if the factory was just producing one cell type. That could be important because the Gigafactory is looking to lower battery costs through economies of scale that come with very large volumes.

But Tesla is well known for innovating around fundamental manufacturing, too, so it’s hard to tell just how much complexity would be added with two cathode chemical mixtures. Though battery manufacturing isn’t just about swapping one chemical mixture for another, sometimes different batteries need to have materials loaded in differently to optimize the power of the battery.

Tesla has also long said that it intends to be flexible if other battery chemistries and types—including advanced next-generation batteries—emerge on the market that are better than the standard lithium-ion batteries. Having two lines, with different chemical mixtures in there at the start, could ultimately be a way for Tesla to remain flexible to accommodate potentially inevitable future tech advancements.

That Tesla is looking to make NMC cells (the type used for the daily battery) in the Gigafactory, and not just NCA cells, could also signal that Tesla might want to make batteries for other applications or as a supplier to other car makers. NMC batteries are the types more commonly used in plug-in hybrid cars.

Even though Tesla is a public company, it still tends to act as a nimble fast moving startup. It could change course or decide to not build one type of battery if it so chooses. Whatever it chooses, the decision could have ramifications far beyond the Gigafactory’s walls.

Summary: Here's everything you ever wanted to know about battery chemistry, Tesla Motors, and its impact on the planned Gigafactory.


THE two-story brick-fronted building at 153 East 69th Street has never been a very conventional presence in mid-Manhattan. Its fanciful loosely Romanesque facade looks not unlike that of a number of carriage houses on the Upper East Side built, as this one was, in the 1880's.

But No. 153 was no ordinary carriage house: its interior stretched way back into the block to embrace a private, enclosed riding ring, a space 50 feet square in which James Stillman, the original owner, would watch his children practice their horsemanship.

That was not the only unusual aspect of this carriage house: for many years in its more recent history the great interior space housed the studio of the painter Mark Rothko.

There is no easy connection from horses and Rothkos to the latest phase of the house's history save for the fact that it brings 153 East 69th Street no closer to the ordinary. On Tuesday, in the presence of Sachi Zuzuki, wife of Prime Minister Zenko Suzuki of Japan, and Soshitsu Sen XV, head of the Urasenke school of tea ceremony in Kyoto, the house was dedicated as the New York center of the Urasenke Tea Ceremony Society.

It is a place in which the ancient rituals of the Japanese tea ceremony are practiced and taught. To do so the society has created within the huge space that once held horses and Rothko's canvases a reproduction of a 17th-century Japanese teahouse. It is, the society says, ''the largest and most authentic tea complex outside of Japan.''

The complex is something of an architectural marvel - a true Japanese house, constructed inside a New York City building by a crew of eight Japanese workmen over the last four months using only materials brought from Kyoto. The project took two years to complete, from the time when Richard Danziger, a New York lawyer and now the president of the New York Urasenke Society, helped the group purchase the carriage house.

Mr. Danziger hired Jeremy Lang, a New York architect, to supervise the renovation and to design an entry and reception rooms in a style that is Western yet sympathetic to Japanese traditions; the architect T. Neghishi of the Urasenke Design Studio in Kyoto was in charge of the tea complex itself.

The result is a project that is as moving as it is unusual. To walk through it is to experience a gradual and carefully controlled passage from the Western culture of the New York streetscape to the Japanese culture of the ancient tea ceremony.

The orange brick facade of the carriage house has been cleaned and restored, but not otherwise changed; once inside, however, Mr. Lang's entry, a subtle blend of wood, plaster and slate, begins to hint at the Japanese esthetic without directly imitating it.

Beyond the entry rooms is the Japanese teahouse. A complex of small one-room structures built around a central garden courtyard, it has the air of a small, very private village. The ceiling is 38 feet high, held up by metal trusses that quietly recall the building's 19th-century origins; a light monitor in the center brings in natural light, and the overall effect is of a great Western tent set over the little complex of Japanese buildings.

The tea ceremony, which can last from 20 minutes to four hours, is a ritual as concerned with matters spiritual and philosophical as with nourishment, and the intent of the teahouse is to establish a soothing and calm background for the ceremony.

The ritual involves hospitality as well. There are precise roles for the host, for an honored guest and for other guests, and the arrangement of the various rooms around the garden courtyard is done with that in mind.

There are four tearooms of varying sizes plus two small pantries in the teahouse itself; a large teaching kitchen is in the American entry end. The teahouse section is not a direct copy of any existing Japanese teahouse, but it is intended to resemble the sort of private teahouse that a prosperous 17th-century merchant might have built for himself as a means of indicating his social status and holding the tea ceremony on his own.

As a result, each of the four tearooms is slightly different, to accommodate not only groups of different sizes but also variations in mood - a slightly different ceremony might be conducted in each.

The rooms are remarkable for their serenity and strength. There is a certain weak version of the Japanese esthetic that, thanks to the Japanese food boom, has become widespread as a style of restaurant design around New York; the teahouse resembles it only slightly. It is of classical Japanese design without the corruption of 20th-century commerce. The rooms are graceful, calm and absolutely taut; they do not seem to have a wasted element, and yet they do not seem austere.

Indeed, the teahouse is a reminder of how limited the Western concept of luxury as softness and quantity is. These rooms are not soft - they are hard; they are not filled up - they are quite spare. Yet never do they feel cold or austere; they are rich and deep and serene in a way that little Western architecture is ever able to be.

The rooms are walled with panels, and there is a grid of wood to most of the panels. There are tatami mats on the floor, and the delicate scale of the rooms is intended to be viewed from a seated position on the floor; views from room to room, or niches containing flowers, are placed at a level so as to be appreciated from the floor, for example. Natural light comes in from the monitor in the carriage-house roof, but inside the tearooms the structure of the enclosing building is never visible: one is entirely in a classical Japanese world.

The grids give a wonderful, almost uplifting sense of balance between horizontal and vertical forces, between being pulled in one way and being pulled in another. But we feel not so much pulled, in fact, as set right in our place.

There is a sense of order here in this tiny complex that seems to confirm our place in the universe. This is an architecture that seems to be human-centered at its very essence, an architecture that could not be conceived to exist without a human being in the middle of it.

This sense of balance continues through the spatial qualities of the teahouse. Unlike Western architecture, in which the space so often feels either carved out of a great, solid mass or molded so elaborately that the walls surrounding it become irrelevant, here the sense of space and the sense of the structure itself exist in balance.

The tearooms are constructions, made of classical materials lovingly and meticulously assembled, and they yield within themselves remarkable interior space. We sense in the Urasenke tea center a kind of space that has no precise parallel in Western architecture - an interior space that is at once powerful and graceful, at once absolutely strong and completely lyrical.

Illustrations: photo of courtyard inside the carriage house photo of facade of carriage house


Assemblymen Frank J. Barbaro of Brooklyn, candidate for the Democratic nomination for Mayor, and John A. Esposito of Queens, candidate for the Republican nomination, were asked by The New York Times for their views on major issues confronting New York City. Following are their replies on transportation: Barbaro: 'Westway Trade-In'

A transit system that provides safe, accessible, efficient and relatively low-cost travel is essential to the City's physical and economic health.

The system we have now is not working. Its riders cope with unpredictable and sharp fare increases, broken doors, loose tracks and stuck trains. With further declines in service, we run the risk of losing both riders and business from the city.

Reform of the mass-transit system depends on rational financing, improved management, better maintenance and efficient long-term planning. First, we must get the money available from a Westway trade-in and apply it to ready-to-go capital projects. I will not waffle on Westway, setting different conditions each day, proposing new unresponsive authorities to fund it, attempting to bond it outside the purview of the State Legislature.

I will work with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to identify projects on which this money could be spent. I will convince the Governor and Washington to use the Westway money for a more modest road and at least $1.2 billion of mass-transit capital investment. Shifting the Tax Burden

I will work with the State Legislature to put the whole system on a sound fiscal basis, meeting its capital and operating costs with new and more progressive taxes. I support a transit system funded with a payroll tax or through an income-tax surcharge that shifts the burden to those earning over $40,000 a year; with such a tax all those who benefit from the City's having mass transit pay to maintain it.

The M.T.A. is a non-accountable authority. It must be brought into more direct contact with its ridership. I would urge creation by the Legislature of a 15-member M.T.A. board elected from districts based on population. I recognize that an elected board is subject to political pressures and temptations. Still, it would have more sensitivity to service complaints, greater concern for dangerous working conditions, and unwillingness to accept non-answers from the bureaucracy, more openness to the press and enhanced credibility.

In the interim, my appointees to the M.T.A. will be riders and professional transit experts determined to hold the M.T.A. accountable. I will show just what a Mayor can do with ''only four appointees,'' developing with my appointees an agenda for action and then using this agenda to evaluate the performance of management.

I will not resort to the union-busting and attacks on workers that have characterized the Koch administration. I will look to increase the numbers of maintenance personnel, track cleaners and transit police; rhetoric is no replacement for the loss of trained individuals who do essential work. I will plan with the workers for their maximum productivity, enlisting their expertise in revamping bus routes and putting the yards and barns in shape to do more bus and car overhauls.

I will promote a ''humane transit program'' structured to make improvements first in those areas that create the greatest nuisance for riders. I would require that all public-address systems be fixed immediately, that maps and signage be improved, that stations display information regarding the anticipated frequency of trains. I would aim to get doors working, restore air-conditioning, experiment with a bus-subway transfer and restore the Sunday half-fare and the 24-hour half-fare for seniors. Traffic Analysis Needed

We need a complete analysis of traffic patterns and traffic problems in New York. We must alleviate the alarming midtown congestion that is destructive to our economy. We need a comprehensive plan with specific goals, a timetable for action and a system for evaluation. I would anticipate including in that plan more crosstown streets closed to car traffic, more exclusive bus lanes, and targeted P.V.B. enforcement against violations that impede the movement of traffic.

I will not allow the inequities of the taxi system to continue for yet another four years. I will appoint a mix of riders, consumer advocates, cabdrivers and owners to reconstitute the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Increases and surcharges will not be approved with no evidence. I will explore the development of a new license or medallion system for cabs that provide service in the outer boroughs, tighten up on emission-control standards, oppose horse-hiring and urge the adoption of Council legislation that requires full doubleshifting of fleet cabs.

One of the reasons it is hard to do business in New York is that we lack a rail freight system. The Port Authority has had forever a mandate to construct a rail freight tunnel under the Hudson. I will demand that the authority sell the World Trade Center and use its profits to build the connection; it is estimated that this will remove 2,000 trucks from New York each day, cut back on congestion and pollution and help retain jobs. I will commit my administration to planning for these rail linkages and building the required freight yard facilities throughout the city.

The subways are an underground disaster. On July 8, 9 and 10, Esposito voted in Albany to keep the fare from going to $1 - that is, to keep it at the recently M.T.A.-enacted 25 percent increase to 75 cents - all without voting for a destructive increase in the sales tax, which was not really necessary.

Koch was nowhere to be found in Albany during this difficult legislative period. His image however was to be found in the ''Mickey Mouse'' photo quiz of The Daily News.

During the 1980 transit strike (remember how the people suffered and how much business revenues and taxes were lost) - Koch was playing his usual shell-game role of scapegoating - while Governor Carey was taking the brunt of getting the transit system again rolling. Some objective observers, according to one report, think that Koch had provoked the strike and/or prolonged it by his antiunion posturing for the television cameras.

Hopefully, the Legislature's recent action will improve the M.T.A. plant structure and hold the current fare at 75 cents for a long period of time. We must never lose sight of the fact that taxpayer dollars are being collected and spent in the financial bailout. More Police Personnel

The M.T.A. must improve productivity and decrease the overtime for those going on pension. Graffiti, perverts and criminals must be cleared out of the system through a substantial increase of police personnel regardless of cost.

A super-duper highway built in the riverbed of the Hudson River, which even the residents of Manhattan do not want and which provides no benefits to the taxpayers living in the outer boroughs should have been scrapped four years ago. Esposito will throw the Westway plan in the nearest garbage pail and will begin building the boulevard immediately with whatever Federal trade-in funds are available.

Any individual should be aghast at the back-and-forth positions taken by Koch on this issue over the last four years. Look at what he is doing right now! Incredible! Four years completely wasted.

You can make New York City first without it being the biggest. You can solve all the most complicated problems by the most simple solutions. It takes a person of substance to do this - not an imagemaker or an actor.

A complete overhaul of the entire administrative and political structure of the M.T.A. The M.T.A. leadership will have to develop participative management techniques to give labor a part of the opportunity and responsibility for decision-making.

Illustrations: photo of Frank J. Barbaro photo of John A. Esposito


06/04/2015 AT 06:30 PM EDT

Fitted t-shirt clinging to toned muscles, sculpted blonde hair and those blue eyes sparkling in the afternoon sun ... It already makes for one really sexy photo shoot, but put

in front of his airplane, a sleek Cirrus SR22T Xi that he'll use to fly himself to a private show later on, and the result is almost too hot to handle.

To anyone taking in the scene, it has a certain James Bond quality to it. But to the man living it – PEOPLE Country's Hottest Guy – it's really just another day. In fact, the photoshoot isn't even the most exciting part of his day.

That honor goes to this morning's activity: snuggling up on the couch

– Evie, 6, Jordan, 4, and

, 19 months – and watching

together for the very first time. "I kept thinking, 'Wow, is this really happening?' " Bentley, 39, tells PEOPLE excitedly. "Talk about a major moment!"

A Sunday morning spent reading the paper together, maybe drinking some mimosas, alone and talking until noon. That would be pretty amazing. Married couples with kids will understand.

To be able to temporarily clone

and me so we could be with our kids, but then also get more alone time.

Honestly, I sleep best wearing nothing. But with kids, I've learned to sleep with underwear very close by, if not wrapped around one of my feet, so I'm ready to go if something happens. I remember somewhere in his 70s, my dad started wearing a nightgown – like an old-school grandpa gown! I can see how that might be somewhere in my future.

Bentley kicks off his Sounds of Summer tour Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Summary: "A Sunday morning spent reading the paper together, maybe drinking some mimosas, alone and talking until noon," says Bentley, asked his idea of a perfect date


Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard

06/09/2015 AT 09:40 AM EDT

may have found another spy-lady counterpart in an upcoming romance-drama.

, 39, is in negotiations to join the

actor, 51, in an untitled period film, directed by Robert Zemeckis.

Written by Steven Knight, the screenplay will follow Pitt and Cotillard as two assassins who fall in love during a mission to kill a German ambassador during World War II.

After the pair marries in the film,

, Pitt learns that his wife is a double agent working for the German government – and he must assassinate her, too.

The movie is expected to shoot in 2016 in Casablanca, London and Canada.

Cotillard recently wrapped the Justin Kurzel-helmed

. The Shakespearean classic earned praise at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

, a drama written by and costarring wife

. This is the couple's first collaboration since 2005's

. It hits theaters in November.

He is also set to star in the Netflix original movie

, a satirical comedy that premieres next year.

Summary: The World War II project will follow Pitt and Cotillard as assassins who fall in love while trying to kill a German ambassador