Before the 49ers hosted the Seahawks in December at Candlestick Park, safety Donte Whitner was asked why the script could be flipped after Seattle had handily won the previous two matchups.

"First and foremost, we're at home," Whitner said. "We understand that it's a different ballgame when we're up there in their arena. We understand that when they come here, it's a lot more difficult for them. They don't have the crowd noise behind them to mess with our offense."

Whitner was right. The outcome was different. But six weeks after the 49ers' 19-17 win on Dec. 8, they'll have to prove they can do it at CentruryLink Field, the site of the two most lopsided losses of the Jim Harbaugh era, in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.

As anyone remotely interested in the much-anticipated meeting knows, the 49ers (14-4) have lost by a combined score of - say it all together now - 71-16 in their previous two visits to Seattle, where the Seahawks (14-3) have won 16 of their past 17 games, 10 by at least 10 points.

On Sept. 15, the 49ers lost 29-3 as quarterback Colin Kaepernick had a career-high three interceptions and a career-worst passer rating (20.1). The humiliating conclusion starred Seahawks cornerback and chief 49ers antagonist Richard Sherman, who celebrated a fourth-quarter interception by dancing with the SeaGals and playfully patted Harbaugh, his former college coach, on the rear after the final whistle.

Sherman then tsk-tsked those who predicted a 49ers win by referencing Seattle's 42-13 romp in December 2012.

"They might not have watched the last game that we played them," Sherman said. "I don't know what the score was. You guys know?"

Four months after Sherman's sarcastic query, 49ers defensive tackle Justin Smith was posed a question similar to the one fielded by Whitner in December. What's going to prevent another shellacking in Seattle?

"I just think we're playing better football," Smith said. "Defensively, we've done pretty well against them. The last time we went up there, we kind of lost it in the fourth quarter, but we're not too worried about that. We know what we have to do."

It's not pie-in-the-sky chatter. The 49ers, who trailed 5-0 at halftime in Week 2, do have legitimate reasons to believe they can overcome the NFC West champions and their raucous fans.

For starters, they won't be missing an integral ingredient. In the 2012 blowout in Seattle, Smith was sidelined with a torn triceps tendon and running back Marshawn Lynch headlined a rushing attack that collected 176 yards, the most allowed by the 49ers in two years.

In Week 2, the 49ers didn't have wide receiver Michael Crabtree, leaving Anquan Boldin as their only available wideout with more than 38 career catches. Kyle Williams, who was released in November, was the No. 2 wide receiver, which allowed Sherman to shadow - and silence - Boldin (one catch, 7 yards).

In December, Boldin and Crabtree combined for 10 catches and 133 yards as the 49ers' had some success against Seattle's lesser cornerback, Byron Maxwell. A 2011 sixth-round pick, Maxwell had an interception, but allowed five catches for 61 yards.

In the postseason, Boldin and Crabtree have taken turns posting 100-yard games, and tight end Vernon Davis has a touchdown in each contest.

"It's tough on defenses when you have two guys outside capable of having big games, and then you have Vernon inside matched up with linebackers," Boldin said. "So it gives defenses fits."

The victory over Seattle in December was part of a season-ending run that suggested the 49ers are this season's hot-at-the-right-time team. They have arrived in Seattle on an eight-game winning streak during which they've taken to the road to beat red-hot Arizona, overcome Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers in freezing conditions and clinically dispatched the Panthers, who had won 11 of their previous 12 games.

It's folly to attempt to attach much significance to Harbaugh's ever-fluctuating moods with the media, but he was particularly jocular Friday. Harbaugh happily fielded a question about a racehorse named after him and was pleased to hear the 3-year-old colt was an underdog in a race Saturday. Harbaugh has often said he finds being underestimated to be a competitive advantage and the 49ers will enter CenturyLink Field as 3 1/2-point underdogs with a tortured recent history in Seattle.

"Unless I've drastically misread our team," Harbaugh said, "we're ready to play."

When: 3:40 p.m. Sunday TV/Radio: Channel: 2 Channel: 40 /680, 1050, 107.7

Spotlight on: ILBs NaVorro Bowman and Patrick Willis. They can play a big role in limiting the Seahawks' two biggest offensive weapons: between-the-tackles RB Marshawn Lynch and fleet-footed QB Russell Wilson. In the 49ers' 19-17 win in December, Bowman sent a first-quarter message by whacking a scrambling Wilson, collecting a sack and forcing a fumble that rolled out of bounds. Such plays have left an imprint on Wilson, who said of Willis and Bowman last week: "I don't think they can get any faster. They can chase me down like that." The NFL's top tacklers in the postseason: Bowman (21) and Willis (19).

Injury notes: 49ers - CB Carlos Rogers (hamstring) is questionable, but expects to play in the nickel defense; FB Will Tukuafu (knee) is questionable. Seahawks - WR Percy Harvin (concussion) is out; LB K.J. Wright (foot) is probable.

THE 49ERS WILL WIN IF ...

They limit Lynch: Lynch has produced four of the top six rushing performances against the 49ers in the Jim Harbaugh era. In the past two games in Seattle, he's had 209 rushing yards and five total TDs.

They keep Wilson in the pocket: The Seahawks ranked 26th in passing yards per game, but were tied for 10th - with the 49ers and four other teams - in completions of 40-plus yards (10). Big plays result when Wilson extends plays and the secondary breaks down.

They commit fewer than two turnovers: They have committed seven turnovers in their past two trips to Seattle, including five in Week 2. Since 2011, they are 31-5-1 when they have fewer than two giveaways (5-6 when they don't).

THE SEAHAWKS WILL WIN IF ...

They don't let Gore get going: In the 49ers' past two wins against the Seahawks, Frank Gore has averaged 120.5 rushing yards. In their past two losses to the Seahawks, he's averaged 22 yards and 2.9 yards a carry.

The officials aren't flag-happy: Seattle's secondary employs an in-your-face style that straddles the line between inspired and illegal. The Seahawks were flagged for three defensive-holding penalties (one declined) in their December loss to the 49ers.

The 12th Man rattles the visitors: The Seahawks are an excellent team, but the environment is a big reason the worst two losses of the Harbaugh era have been in Seattle.

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

Summary: "First and foremost, we're at home," Whitner said.  [...] six weeks after the 49ers' 19-17 win on Dec. 8, they'll have to prove they can do it at CentruryLink Field, the site of the two most lopsided losses of the Jim Harbaugh era, in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday.  On Sept. 15, the 49ers lost 29-3 as quarterback Colin Kaepernick had a career-high three interceptions and a career-worst passer rating (20.1).  The humiliating conclusion starred Seahawks cornerback and chief 49ers antagonist Richard Sherman, who celebrated a fourth-quarter interception by dancing with the SeaGals and playfully patted Harbaugh, his former college coach, on the rear after the final whistle.  The 49ers, who trailed 5-0 at halftime in Week 2, do have legitimate reasons to believe they can overcome the NFC West champions and their raucous fans.  In the 2012 blowout in Seattle, Smith was sidelined with a torn triceps tendon and running back Marshawn Lynch headlined a rushing attack that collected 176 yards, the most allowed by the 49ers in two years.  In Week 2, the 49ers didn't have wide receiver Michael Crabtree, leaving Anquan Boldin as their only available wideout with more than 38 career catches.  Kyle Williams, who was released in November, was the No. 2 wide receiver, which allowed Sherman to shadow - and silence - Boldin (one catch, 7 yards).  A 2011 sixth-round pick, Maxwell had an interception, but allowed five catches for 61 yards.  In the postseason, Boldin and Crabtree have taken turns posting 100-yard games, and tight end Vernon Davis has a touchdown in each contest.  In the 49ers' 19-17 win in December, Bowman sent a first-quarter message by whacking a scrambling Wilson, collecting a sack and forcing a fumble that rolled out of bounds.  Injury notes: 49ers - CB Carlos Rogers (hamstring) is questionable, but expects to play in the nickel defense; FB Will Tukuafu (knee) is questionable.  Since 2011, they are 31-5-1 when they have fewer than two giveaways (5-6 when they don't).


Black Sabbath has always been more about heaviness than speed, more about inertia than velocity. And volume above all else. Not for them the shading of Led Zeppelin or the prowess of Cream. What Sabbath found was a sound — hard, dark, metallic — that they pursued with nearly obsessive focus. And as the curtain rose slowly in perfect counterpoint to the weighty groan at the start of “War Pigs” Monday night at the Comcast Center, that sound was in full force.

It helped that eight songs, nearly half the set, came from the band’s blueprint-establishing first two albums, as compared to their new album “13” (the band’s first No. 1 in the United States) providing only three numbers. But Sabbath’s formula has been so unchanging, in ways both laudable and not, that even the new songs were nearly indistinguishable from material 40 years older, down to the epic length and shifting complexity of “Age Of Reason.”

As the only nonoriginal member on stage, drummer Tommy Clufetos played with the animated enthusiasm of someone jazzed to be performing with his idols. Geezer Butler, meanwhile, made playing bass appear to be an intensely physical activity, even if that physicality was limited to just his fingers.

But there were two colossi onstage. Tony Iommi coaxed low, guttural noises out of his guitar with clarity and vision, although he couldn’t help but repeat himself occasionally. (That’s another downside to the formula.) During “Into The Void,” he took slow, deliberate steps across the stage as he hacked at his strings, giving him the air of someone striding with purpose.

Ozzy Osbourne, on the other hand, was uncomfortable to watch as he shuffled across the stage, clapped awkwardly, and gesticulated wildly.

Worse, he was notably off-key in a great many songs, including “Iron Man,” where he struggled to find his pitch from the start.

It was especially obvious during “Black Sabbath,” where the spare backing (substantially just three notes played ad nauseum) gave him nowhere to hide. But when Sabbath came together, as on the closing “Paranoid,” its sound had the weight of a thousand suns.

Despite being billed as the opener, Andrew W.K. simply acted as a preshow DJ. Even so, he tossed in tiny little head cocks and lip synching and air drums, not big enough to be obviously part of any act, just enough to be his limbic response to the Judas Priest, Metallica, and Misfits songs he blasted.

Summary: Black Sabbath has always been more about heaviness than speed, more about inertia than velocity. And volume above all else. Not for them the shading of Led Zeppelin or the prowess of Cream. What Sabbath found was a sound — hard, dark, metallic — that they pursued with nearly obsessive focus. And as the curtain rose slowly in perfect counterpoint to the weighty groan at the start of “War Pigs” last night at the Comcast Center, that sound was in full force. It helped that eight songs, nearly half the set, came from the band’s blueprint-establishing first two albums, as compared to new album “13” (the band’s first #1 in the United States) providing only three numbers.


Marcus needs help... a lot of it. He's been assigned to play baseball at his school's field day, and there's nowhere to hide at home plate. After modeling his moves for Will, Marcus is curious - will his fellow students merely make fun of him, or will there be grounds for a smackdown? That's when Fiona delivers big news: Marcus' dad, penguin researcher Hugh, is visiting from Antarctica for three whole days! On cue, Hugh's taxi pulls up, and he quickly proves himself to be a very strange man who doesn't know very much about his son. Even curiouser, he has a strangely inexplicable sexual hold over Fiona, who begs Will to come over for Hugh's penguin power point presentation. Will begs off. Dr. Sam might be getting off work early and it's looking like they might consummate their relationship. When Fiona pulls the Marcus card, Will caves and agrees to protect Fiona's virtue by allowing Hugh to sleep in his apartment. This is a decision he immediately regrets, since Hugh sleeps in the nude. It gets worse. In the middle of the night, the leather couch gets too sweaty, so Hugh jumps in bed with Will.

A sleeping Will is stroking Hugh's arm when he's woken by a knock at the door. Dr. Sam is all charged up, having just saved a man's life. She suggests they consummate to celebrate, and it's all systems go, until naked Hugh presents himself to announce that something in Will's bed gave him a rash. Could they do the deed on the couch? Dr. Sam excuses herself, much to Will's chagrin. Sensing Will's frustration, Hugh asks for an open dialogue, so Will advises him to spend some time helping Marcus prepare for field day.

The next day, overly pale Hugh and Marcus sunbathe in the yard, having deciding to forego preparing for field day, since there's no shame in failing at something as meaningless as a ball sport. Outraged, Will tells Fiona everything. Fiona insists Will doesn't understand the situation because he's not a parent. Nevertheless, Will maintains that if Fiona wants Marcus to have a closer relationship with his father, she's got to say something. Fiona gives it a shot, even putting Marcus' problems in penguin terms. Hugh comes around, and father and son have a swell time practicing batting and catching, though Hugh knows little more about baseball than his son.

Late that night, Fiona finds Hugh packing his bags. His regal male captain penguin has disappeared, and he has to return to Antarctica right away - he doesn't even have time to say goodbye to Marcus! Fiona follows Hugh out the door to lay down the line. She's not going to pretend that Hugh is a good dad anymore. Marcus deserves better. For his part, Hugh wishes he could do better, and he's sorry. The next morning, when Will finds his couch empty, he rushes next door to make sure Fiona didn't sleep with Hugh. Fiona tells Will the whole story; now all she can do is try to mitigate the soul-crushing blow Hugh's disappearance will deal on Marcus. Will doesn't think she should soften anything, but when Marcus runs in, he can't help painting Hugh as a mythical penguin hero. Most importantly, before he left, Hugh wanted Marcus to know that regardless of what happens on the ball field, he'll be proud of his son. In the stands, Fiona and Will are thrilled and amazed when Marcus gets his first base hit!

Summary: On the eve of a big school baseball game, Will steps in to help when Marcus' nutty dad steps out. Tony Hale and Adrianne Palicki guest star.


05/03/2014 at 09:45 AM EDT

's favor one too many times.

The actor was banned from playing blackjack at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on Tuesday night, a source confirms to PEOPLE.

After multiple wins, security caught Affleck, 41, counting cards and reportedly swarmed the table,

"The security said, 'We have to stop you because you're too good,' " the source tells PEOPLE.

Despite reports, Affleck was only banned from the blackjack table and not the entire casino. "The hotel was really nice and told him he could play other games," the source adds.

In a statement issued on Friday night, the establishment said, "Mr. Affleck, a valued guest of Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, is not banned from our property and is welcome back any time."

Affleck was reportedly in the city for a quick romantic getaway with his wife,

, before he heads off to Detroit, Michigan to

Summary: The actor was banned from blackjack and not the casino, a source tells PEOPLE


UPDATED 05/16/2014 at 03:25 PM EDT • Originally published 05/15/2014 at 02:00 PM EDT

The apartment building where the fall took place

Little Musa Dayib is being called a "miracle baby" after surviving a fall 11-stories from his apartment balcony in Minneapolis, Minn.

His father, Guled Ahmed, was playing with his children in the living room when he went into the kitchen, according to the

. Less than a minute later, his 3-year-old daughter ran to him and said, "the baby fell."

Guled looked over the balcony railing and saw his 15-month-old son lying on the ground. He then grabbed his daughter and ran down to him.

"My brother just stepped out in the kitchen and his little daughter opened the door. And his youngest son stepped out that quick and went through. Sometimes things happen," Abdirahim Ahmed told

. "My brother is terrified and I donât think he will be the same ever again."

Musa's small size is one of the main reasons he survived, according to doctors. According to wire reports, Musa suffered a broken spine and ribs, a punctured lung and a concussion, and is in critical but stable condition.

"Little [kids] are more flexible and don't break as easily as we do and he also fell in a very small patch of mulch," physician Tina Slusher at

. "It's definitely a miracle. It's God's gift to his family. Kids donât fall this far and make it often. Especially without a serious brain injury. You and I would've been dead."

Summary: Musa Dayib, 15-month-old toddler, survived an 11-story fall off of his apartment balcony


Have you ever heard a Supermarine Spitfire on a flyby? It's quite a thing, and largely because inside a Supermarine Spitfire sits a 27-litre Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine.

And while you might imagine fitting this magnificent piece of British engineering into many things to make them excellent, a design studio plans to do exactly that. Claydon Reeves is making a superboat, and in its superboat will sit a detuned RR Merlin V12. Tally ho!

Reeves' super-yacht is called the Aeroboat, and it is building just 12 of these 7,700kg luxury seafarers, with the design inspired by the "sleek lines of the famous Spitfire fighter", including an authentic air intake scoop, aircraft inspired switchgear and the shock-mounted forward seats, a nod to the Spitfire's own landing gear.

Then of course, there's the engine. Each of the 12 Aeroboats scheduled for production will be equipped with a reconditioned, fuel-injected Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 with “documented provenance”, detuned to around 1,100bhp and allowing for a potential speed of between 75 and 95 knots – that's around 86mph to 110mph. We think.

Though the engine is from a different era, the boat itself is all cutting-edge elegance: it's built using Kevlar, carbon fibre and lightweight wood veneers, can accommodate between four to six passengers and each vessel is configured to the individual's needs.

"The Aeroboat is Claydon Reeves' answer to anyone seeking a boat combining speed and contemporary elegance," CR tells us, "a heady combination of old-school romance and modern-day technology."

A model of the proposed Aeroboat, along with an actual Rolls-Royce Merlin V12 engine, will be on display at the Salute to Style party at the Hurlingham Club between 16-19 July. If you like what you see, best get down there.

In the meantime, here's the time Top Gear took on The Germans, arriving in – you guessed it – a trio of Spitfires.

A version of this story originally appeared on TopGear.com.

Summary: The British-designed yacht also derives its power from a V12 engine steeped in Rolls-Royce lore.


It was a sunny Sunday afternoon on California's world-renowned Venice Beach. Families were picnicking, while others swam and rollerbladed along the famous boardwalk.

Out of the blue, a slight darkening of the sky and the stark sound of thunder shocking the beachgoers.

A rare band of summer thunderstorms brought lightning, and at least four bolts struck along the beach.

A 20-year-old was confirmed dead, seven more taken to hospital in a serious condition, and others treated on the beach by paramedics,

The storm as it passed over California's Venice Beach.

Seven of those taken to hospital were adults while the eighth was a 15-year-old, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

A National Weather Service spokesman said at least four lightning strikes hit the Venice Beach area around 2.20 pm local time. He said strikes hit the water and the beach, but could not specify where.

A graphic released by the service showed an intense storm right over the Venice Beach area.

Witnesses speaking to the Los Angeles Times described scenes of panic as the sky darkened and lightning erupted shortly thereafter, accompanied by thunder and rain.

Giovanni Alonzo, 14, was fishing from a pier when he said his field of vision filled with white.

"I just saw a big old flash of light right over my head me then my hair was tingling and then there was this huge crash of thunder," he said.

He stayed on the beach and watched lifeguards, eight in a line, swim out in search of the swimmer who was seriously injured in the strike. "I've seen lightning," said Alonzo of Los Angeles. "But never that loud."

Roger Davis was quoted by the publication as saying that his house shook and that he heard explosions. When he ran outside, his neighbour -- a doctor -- was administering CPR to a victim, he told the paper.

Lifeguards assist one of the people injured in the freak lightning strike at Venice Beach. (AP)

July 28, 2014: One person has been killed, and 13 injured after being struck by lightning during a violent thunderstorm on a beach in California.

Do you have any news photos or videos?

Summary: One man was killed and at least eight, including a teenager, were hurt after lightning from a rare band of summer thunderstorms struck Venice Beach Sunday afternoon.


NEW YORK — Keurig Green Mountain says it struck a deal to make Kraft’s branded coffees, such as Maxwell House and Gevalia, for its single-serve brewing systems in the United States.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

Keurig, based in Waterbury, Vt., makes at-home brewing machines that let people make coffee one cup at a time. The company is working on a machine that would let people make cold, carbonated drinks at home, and has partnered with Coca-Cola.

Kraft had also announced a deal to distribute packaged McDonald’s coffee to supermarkets and other retailers. That deal will mean people will also be able to make McCafe drinks with Keurig machines.

Keurig rose 13.26 percent to $133.36.

Summary: NEW YORK (AP) — Keurig Green Mountain says it struck a deal to make Kraft’s branded coffees, such as Maxwell House and Gevalia, for its single-serve brewing systems in the U.S. The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.


The last time my father visited me in the States, he and my mother and I went for a long stroll around lower Manhattan. As we came to the Hudson River on the West Side, passing a dilapidated wooden pier, my father had a stirring of vivid though uncertain memory: it seemed to him that this was where he had disembarked as a small child, 80 years earlier, when he and his mother had moved briefly from London to America.

I'd forgotten he had lived here as a child, and now that I was living here myself I was curious to hear more details. Why had they moved? How long did they stay? Where was his father? Why did they leave? And anyway, wasn't his mother's family from Australia, not America?

My father was unable to answer any of these questions very satisfactorily: his origins were such a strange, sketchy, fantastical mixture of transnational comings and goings, of the bohemian and the bourgeois, the cosmopolitan and the provincial, the English and the "foreign", that he had never quite pieced them together.

Besides which, as an only child growing up in England, as the sole bearer of his Russian name, he had something altogether sui generis about him and wasn't terribly interested in his own prehistory.

Such information as he did pass down to me had more the quality of lore about it than history. Though he was not a self-mythologiser, his natural tendency was to concentrate things - his own biography included - into a few essential images. I have these in my head, as simple and colourful as the pictures in a child's book of legend.

His father, a cousin of the Bolshoi designer Leon Bakst, was a Jewish businessman from Königsberg, who died of fish poisoning when my father was five. His mother was a pianist whose career was cut short by crippling arthritis. She had grown up in Australia where she was the first woman motorist to run down a pedestrian. She had bouts of raving madness for which she had to be hospitalised and was arrested in Central Park for taking my father barefoot through the snow.

Back in London, she wore a silver whistle around her neck to summon her dog and also used it to summon my mother at cocktail parties when my father first brought her home. Her father had been a cigar manufacturer in Yorkshire, also Jewish, who had moved to Australia, where he had become the patron of the Heidelberg School of painters - the so-called "Australian Impressionists" - sending artists such as Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and Arthur Streeton to study in Europe. The artists called him "the Don" and put on a famous show in his honour, of pictures painted on the lids of cigar boxes (some of these hung in our house). The Don's brother, also in the cigar and patronage business, killed himself in the bath.

The first building to make an impression on my father was the William Butterworth chapel at Rugby, where he was sent to school. He was Jewish but not really, having been brought up with no sense of Jewish identity. He was English but not really, being Jewish. And he was Christian but not really, having lapsed almost as soon as he converted.

In the war he crossed over on D-Day, built airstrips with the Royal Engineers, and captured a German horse that was wandering around a gun emplacement filled with dead German officers. He used the horse to ride around airfield sites and began selecting the sites on the basis of where the nearest good stables were, which may or may not have affected the course of the invasion.

After the war he attended a modernist architectural conference in France where his hero, Le Corbusier, wrote "Bravo Lasdun" on a design he had submitted. Some years later, he had a rupture with Berthold Lubetkin, with whom he was working, which resulted in him setting up in practice on his own.

That's the sum of what I know about the first half of my father's life, and I can't vouch for its factuality. He was in his 40s when he married and had children. By the time we got to know him, his career was in full swing and his life, like his stories, had been reduced to an elemental simplicity. Family aside, he lived entirely for architecture.

He was consumed by its challenges, obsessed by its possibilities, overwhelmed by its demands. He saw architecture primarily as a sculptural art of space, form and light, with its social aspect always ancillary to that and the technological element of no interest at all. The creation of new, authentic forms, the striking of the "noble note", as he put it, of true architecture, "that can modify the consciousness of the user and the passerby" was by this time his exclusive preoccupation.

He had close advisers and collaborators, but no close friends. He had no "hobbies", almost no interests at all outside architecture, and other than classical music, the few that he did retain had been stripped down to a single, codified representation of themselves: one blues record surviving from a once rather serious interest in blues and jazz, one passage of Count Basie - dazzling but increasingly fragmentary - from his own piano-playing days, one judo throw left (for the amusement of his children) from his days as a black-belt instructor (he had taught in a prison until the authorities realised this might not be very sensible), one all-purpose night-club shuffle, and one preferred style of dressing - cardigan, knitted tie, cords.

He wasn't much of a reader outside his field, and despite his high-minded allegiance to modernism in architecture, he couldn't get on with modernism in books or on screen. Pulp thrillers were his favourite kind of fiction, and TV comedy - The Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise - was what he most liked to watch.

Related to this was a more general absence of "literariness" that he saw as a failing, or at least a disadvantage, and that formed a source of constant anguish to him. He believed the possession of a deep literary culture was a prerequisite for being taken seriously as an artist in England, regardless of one's field.

A purely visual, spatial intelligence, such as he had, was not enough: if you really wanted people in this country to understand and respect your work, you had to be able to explain it in words, and to do so in the urbane, hyper-literate manner favoured by the British intelligentsia. If anything, it was more important to write well than to design well, and there were several of his peers, he believed, who had built their careers entirely on the former.

In my opinion he wrote better, more perceptively and pithily, than any of them, but he remained agitated by the subject throughout his life, suspicious of all wordsmiths - intellectuals, critics, academics, journalists, even lawyers - but also chronically insecure about his lack, as he saw it, of their abilities.

My own gravitation towards words was peculiarly encumbered by his prejudices: all kinds of professions I might have pursued were effectively closed off to me by his violent aversion to them and by my filially uncritical absorption of this attitude. Poetry and fiction were okay because they were purely imaginative activities, and I like to joke, or half-joke, that I am the first person ever forced into poetry by his father.

He may have exaggerated the relative prestige of the verbal over the visual in English culture, but there were ways in which he really was not ideally suited for life as an architect - at least of the large-scale, high-profile public buildings that formed the bulk of his work. Temperamentally, he had a combination of qualities that in a sense could not have made such a career more of a struggle for him.

From his mother he seems to have inherited a certain volatility, not her out-and-out craziness, but a choleric mixture of high anxiety, irascibility under pressure, morbid self-absorption, incapacitating depression, and hypersensitivity to any perceived slight. A typical exchange I once jotted down in a notebook goes as follows:

My mother: "Lord X went round your building. He said he was very impressed by the conference room."

My father: "Oh dear. Did he hate the rest of the building?"

He was diagnosed depressive, even (though less certainly) manic depressive, hospitalised occasionally, and dependent on numerous medications all his life. But meanwhile he was jealously protective of his own identity as an artist, and it was simply impossible for him to cede or delegate any of the primary creative aspects of his work to other people, as most architects do. He kept his office tiny so that no part of the design process could ever be far from his personal control.

Given the more or less comprehensive vulnerability these traits bestowed on him, and the extraordinary amount of stress entailed in the kind of projects he worked on (often several at a time), as they moved through the political process, the design and planning stages, the brute realities of execution, and out into the roaring crossfire of public reaction, it is perhaps not surprising that he was more or less continually in a state of near-eruption or near-breakdown.

To the outside world he gave an impression of charm, exuberant confidence and high functionality. But at home, en famille, he was almost always in crisis, either lying prostrate in a dark room with the same gloomy piece of Brahms playing over and over on the stereo while he alternately brooded in silence and muttered about giving it all up to run a corner tobacconist, or else going off in what he called a "muck sweat" of stressed-out panic in which he would storm and fret and ventilate his various dreads and suspicions (some of them fully warranted, I hasten to add; others completely paranoid) concerning the fickleness of clients, the pusillanimity of politicians, the treachery of certain of his collaborators, the need to unleash his QC on this or that libellous journalist or broadcaster, and so on.

For a long time my mother was the only person to whom he fully revealed this side of his nature, the role required of her being to give it her tireless support and to keep its secrets, both of which she did heroically. Later, as my brother, sister and I grew up, we too were gathered into the great turbulent dramas of my father's life. Though he was unfailingly kindly with us - a sort of benign sea-monster he seemed to me as a child, with his purplish face and watery, thyroid-swollen eyes - he was also helplessly self-preoccupied.

Like some enormous planet, his gravitational field was simply too powerful for him to go far from himself for any length of time, and sooner or later every conversation returned to the subject of him: his ideas, his problems, the question of his reputation and immortality. Because he did somehow manage to be so sympathetic - almost more childlike than oneself in his unguarded egotism - and because the whole opera of his life was objectively and self-evidently more riveting than anything else I was exposed to, I was happy to be gathered in.

The National Theatre was the background of my childhood, or rather, it was the foreground. The travails of its 13-year-long saga concentrated what seemed to be all the most powerful tensions and personalities of the country at large into our household. What Harold Wilson thought, what Jenny Lee or some other minister said, what Laurence Olivier wanted, how the geography of the Thames and the skyline of London were to be accommodated and altered, whether the electricians' union would strike during construction, what to wear for the statutory lunch at Windsor Castle for individuals coming into the public eye - such were the factors determining the tone and texture of my father's life at that time.

I used to wonder about the "manic" part of his possible manic depression. There were never any of those wild, grandiose delusional outbursts one reads of in the lives of other manic depressive artists (Robert Lowell trying to ride the equestrian statues in Buenos Aires, for instance). But as I look back it occurs to me that with his reality - this tremendous agon thrusting him in and out of the various bastions of British cultural and political life, where the stakes were nothing less than the imposition of his own monumental buildings on to the English landscape and psyche - he had no need for delusion. There was nothing it could add.

At any rate there was no competing with his struggles. I never minded this, and I have been increasingly grateful over the years that my father was so unremittingly what he was. I certainly couldn't have asked for a better model for what it is to be fully engaged in one's work. Among other useful lessons, he demonstrated that it was normal, even desirable, to feel always somewhat out of one's depth. Though he was good at convincing others of his powers, he had tremendous doubts about them himself. Every job he took on plunged him into a new turmoil of anxieties, but aside from his little tobacconist fantasy, he never tried to make things easier for himself.

He never resorted to easy formulas, never strategically "chose his battles" as prudent policy recommends, but insisted on fighting them all. His oft-quoted remark to the effect that an architect's role was to give his client "not what the client thought he wanted but what he never could have imagined existed" could be applied to himself too: he wasn't satisfied with a job until it had brought forth something from himself that he could never have imagined existed.

Along with the turmoil was a huge capacity for delight. When he was satisfied with something, though he'd rarely admit it, you could feel a tremendous sense of joy radiating through him. It always gave me a lift to see him in this state. It made the sheer adventure of art seem at once heroic and somehow rather splendidly devilish too. This stayed with him right to the end.

I remember when construction was under way on his final project, an addition to the house he had designed for the Sainsbury family many years earlier, and he paid his first visit to the site. He had been characteristically gloomy at the prospect, but when he came back and I asked how the building looked, he said: "I think it's going to be alright." Even if I hadn't known that this was his way of saying he had been extremely pleased, I'd have guessed it from what he added a moment later, in a confidential voice: "You know James, there's something aphrodisiacal about the smell of wet concrete."

When I was at prep school, he used to send me private-view invitation cards for the various painters (always abstract) he approved of: John Hoyland, Ben Nicholson, Morris Lewis, Keith Vaughan, Prunella Clough. I treasured these mysterious images as other boys treasured the football cards they got from their fathers. They were his way of bringing me into his embattled world at that time.

Later, as it became clear that I was going to be irrevocably bookish, he enlisted me as a kind of in-house literary consultant. By then his career had passed its zenith: he was in the position of having to look for jobs instead of having to turn them away, and he was becoming increasingly obsessed with the process whereby artists are judged by posterity. I gave him essays by Eliot, Pound and Nietzsche, which he would underline and scribble over feverishly with his soft-leaded claw-grip pencil.

In the mid-70s, during my teens, he went into a prolonged depression. Modernism was out of favour, and concrete, his chosen medium, was a dirty word. The plum jobs were going to a new generation of architects, critics who had championed him were defecting to the postmodern or neo-traditionalist camps, strangers at parties would cheerfully tell him how much they hated this or that building of his.

Taxi drivers, unaware who their passenger was, would quote approvingly Prince Charles's jibe about the National Theatre looking like a nuclear-power station as they drove him along the Embankment. Princess Margaret set the royal seal on his plummeting self-esteem at some gathering where she beckoned him over to her sofa and said to him: "You poor man, what are we going to do about your flagging reputation?"

My role was now to supply him with examples of artists who had been forgotten or vilified in their own lifetimes, but achieved immortality after their deaths. Botticelli, I would tell him (he was only interested in the certifiably great), Borromini, Malcolm Lowry ("Who?"). He lay in darkness, listening to his Brahms, brooding on which of Pound's categories of artist he was going to turn out to have belonged to: the inventors, the masters, or the diluters.

His self-absorption began to seem more like a torment to him than just a character defect. He was aware of it, ashamed of it, and he made valiant (if unavailing) attempts to overcome it, trying hard to follow his children's lives at school and university, or to encourage my mother in her writing and drawing.

I remember a rare occasion where, spurred by his interest to talk about what I was doing, I found myself going on the attack, criticising him for the hypocrisy of calling himself a socialist while sending his children to private school, especially ones like my prep school, crawling with sadistic perverts. He listened with an expression of sincere remorse, fully accepted the criticism, but even as he was castigating himself, managed - and such was the tragi-comic cast of his narcissism that I felt amused even at the time, and sorrier for him than myself - to change the subject, guiltily but compulsively, to a letter to The Times that he wanted me to help him compose, complaining about a critical piece it had published on his work.

When he did land some new job during this period, he would announce fatalistically that this was going to be "the last building I'll ever do". As it turned out, he had a great many "last buildings", including one of his largest commissions, the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, and he was working right up to his death. But for a good 15 years he lived every day convinced that the bleak and ignominious end of his career was just around the corner.

Long and grim as that period was, it ended, and for the last years of his life my father achieved a degree of serenity none of us would have predicted. Partly this was just the mellowing of age and partly it was that he had lived long enough to see the tide turn again in his favour. A new generation of critics, with no axe to grind in the style wars of an earlier time, and no special animus against concrete, was treating his work to a new round of admiration. Retrospective exhibitions were organised and preservation orders slapped on most of his buildings. His old line about "last buildings" gave way to a new one: "I've had a pretty good innings on the whole."

It was a little odd, though pleasant, to hear him say this, given his remoteness from the kind of cricketing Englishman you might expect to use such a phrase. But on that note, his sense of himself as an embattled outsider, one that had thrown him into confusion when he was offered a knighthood in 1976 (first he refused it, then, on the urging of his office, he called back to change his mind), also seemed to be fading away. European modernism remained his personal aesthetic credo, but the English architects, Wren, Lutyens, above all Hawksmoor, were increasingly on his lips. And he sailed unprotestingly back to Buckingham Palace for a last tête-à-tête with royalty when he was awarded his Companion of Honour.

Above all though, his old keen receptiveness to new ideas and experiences, somewhat in retreat in his more difficult times, came back to the fore of his personality. This was a very particular kind of excitability - a thrillability I want to call it - that I associate almost exclusively with people of his pre-war generation. It seems to require a certain innocence or even naïveté, as well as a kind of inner atmosphere of austerity or frugality.

An encounter with anything of quality - a good painting, a good meal - is recognised as a piece of extraordinary good fortune and answered with a spontaneous, reciprocal warmth that is nothing like the bland gushing summoned (in my mind anyway) by the word "enthusiasm", but is nevertheless intense and powerfully communicative. In my father's case, it made people want to show him things, play him pieces of music, draw his attention to little-known paintings or buildings. If he liked them, his approval would validate them like nothing else.

On the same trip as our stroll around Manhattan, he and my mother came to Cape Cod with my family. We went whale-watching off the coast one day. None of us had seen a whale before. A large humpback began surfacing and diving near our boat. My father stood mesmerised at the railings. Suddenly the whale breached the waves, hanging vertical for an instant right opposite him, before smashing back down into the water and disappearing with a flourish of its winged tail. "Splendid," was all my father said, but that and the look of utter delight on his face remain with me as vividly as the whale itself. It was a kind of natural adequacy to the occasion, a way of being equal to what life had to offer.

One more memory: on an earlier visit he had come to our new house in upstate New York. I was wanting to make a small gravel path down a muddy slope that led between the driveway and the front door. I hadn't thought of this as an architectural project, but since my father was there I asked if he had any views on the matter.

The place had once had a quarry on it, and there were some enormous slabs of rough-cut bluestone lying around, which my father had been eyeing with quiet interest. "I suppose those would be too heavy for you to shift?" he asked, pointing at them. "Yes Dad, much too heavy." "Hmm. Pity." I should mention that although my father had designed buildings in many parts of the world, he'd never done anything in the States. I don't know if that was a sore point with him, but a few minutes later I found myself - I don't quite know how - wrestling these enormous stones into position like an Egyptian slave while my father stood over me, alternately imploring me not to strain my back, and gently ordering me to "move that just a couple of inches this way" then murmuring, "hmm, no, perhaps we should try it over there".

When we finally came to an end and I looked up the slope, I realised that what he had done was to create one of his beloved sets of strata, right there in the heart of the Catskills. The stepped pathway looks like a compact, bluestone version of the terraces on the National Theatre or Christ's College, Cambridge, half-sunk in the earth as if leading down to some grand subterranean chamber. I think of him every time I open my front door.

· This is an edited extract from an article which will appear in the winter issue of Modern Painters. To subscribe visit www.modernpainters.co.uk, email modernpainters@cisubs.co.uk, or telephone 0800 0852757.

Summary: Sir Denys Lasdun, who died two years ago, was one of the most celebrated and controversial figures in British architecture. His son, the poet James Lasdun, reveals that the pioneering designer of the National Theatre suffered from severe depression and was haunted by anxiety about his reputation


This is Architecture Week, a time to consider the wealth and wonder of our built world. In Britain today, our wealth is pumped into and expressed by an ever-increasing number of priapic schemes, real, projected and plain silly, for office towers that shoot their laddish loads high into our city skies uncritically supported by media, mayors and money men.

Hey, look, everyone, my tower's 500 feet tall. That's nothing, sonny boy; mine's 1,000. A thousand? Get serious, kiddo, I've got a 1,500-foot tower in my pocket. Know what I mean?

This weeing-up-the-wall architecture - designed and commissioned by those old enough to know better and given the nod by politicians and the wink by journalists - is coming to a city centre near you soon.

Should you find such Jack-the-lad design over-the-top, you will be offered screwball design instead. Presented as what-the-people-want in a "down-with-the-kids" manner, such playschool architecture - a dolly-mixture, of spotty, sugar-candy blobs, whirls and splodges - is designed, we are told, to challenge and redress the mufti of our tedious town - and crusty city-centres.

Both pricks and blobs are supported not only by big business, wannabe streetwise politicians and a sensation-hungry media, but by those nominally charged with looking after architecture and urban design in our name.

Only last week, an independent inquiry reported on the clash of interests at the heart of Cabe, the government's Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment. Sir Stuart Lipton, a property developer and Cabe's energetic first chairman, resigned in response to the report's findings. It was felt that Cabe has been too close to Sir Stuart's property company, Stanhope.

In fact several of Cabe's directors are on Stanhope's payroll, while others have business interests that could just possibly encourage lesser professionals than they to favour certain architectural projects over others. Neither Cabe nor its trustees are accused of impropriety, yet it has been hard to disassociate this New Labour quango from the concerns of big business and property development.

The truth is that Cabe is exactly the right architectural watchdog for New Britain, just as ambitious new offices in the guise of spotty blobs and prickly towers are ideal designs for our cities. Why? Because we are deeply, madly in love with money and fame, and these buildings are, increasingly, media-grabbing machines for making money. And, however hard we find to admit it, this is what most of us want: the kind of money that can offer us greater freedom of choice, ever bigger homes, cars with more gadgets, as-seen-on-TV food, branded goods and just more stuff generally, which has to be a good thing, doesn't it?

Every society, it is said, gets the architecture it deserves, and, so, I suppose we should be cheering from the chilled-out roof-gardens of our zig-zag new apartment blocks as our cities begin to resemble these universal aspirations in three painfully fashionable dimensions.

By the same logic, we will get bored with blobs, dissatisfied with towers in the shapes of carrots, cucumbers or prize marrows, just as, one day, we will get bored with the sheer amount of stuff cluttering up our homes. Does this matter? Nah. Just as the Romans might have said, "Forget the Parthenon, the Pantheon's in", ensuing generations (cooler, richer, hipper and more into popular culture than we can even dream of) will simply build a fresh load of weird, computer-generated money-making stuff. And then get bored with that.

And yet, what if, just for a moment during Architecture Week, we stopped and thought seriously about the world we are making in concrete, glass and steel. What, for example, if we were to get bored with pure sensation and sheer novelty, and crave civility, good manners and intelligence in new architecture instead? What then?

If you look hard enough, you will discover many British architects and those working with them, whether as engineers or clients, including developers and local authorities, working thoughtfully, and sometimes lyrically, on the design of the places we live, love and work in. There is, too, a place for well-designed and even flamboyant towers as there always has been from the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the spiral minaret at Samarra, to the highly charged temples of Cambodia, their frankly erotic counterparts in India, and on through medieval cathedrals, renaissance domes and Manhattan skyscrapers to Foster's unforgettable, if controversial, 30 St Mary Axe - aka the gherkin - in the City of London today.

The design of buildings and the making of cities are difficult arts and uncertain skills, shot through with political ambition, economic juggling and cultural sensibilities. Neither is the stuff of in-out lists or here today-gone tomorrow chatter. Both require informed debate; an ever-deepening knowledge of history - architecture is a continuum - fewer publicity pranks and less willy-waving.

I have a feeling, though, that the sexed-up neophiliacs among us will disagree and go, all the way, for the blobs and pricks. For this week, anyway.

· Jonathan Glancey is the Guardian's architecture critic

Summary: Our cities are being overrun by Jack-the-lad architecture, with the blessing of the media and politicians


The two-week pilots’ strike at Air France last month will cost the company over half a billion dollars, the airline’s parent group Air France-KLM SA AFLYY said in a statement Wednesday as it slashed its forecasts for the year.

The company said it expected operating profit for the third quarter to be between €320-€350 million lower, while a delay in bookings and a generally “unfavorable demand trend” for the current quarter could cost it another €150-€180 million.

“All of the above elements could have an impact of around €500 million ($613 million) on (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) for the 2014 year,” it said.

It wasn’t clear whether the company was including the latest scare over the ebola virus in its latest assessment of the “unfavorable demand” trend. Airline stocks have been among the hardest hit in Europe this week on the back of news that a nurse had contracted the virus in Spain, the first incident of it being transmitted outside of West Africa.

A spokesman wasn’t immediately able to comment on whether it had factored the ebola health scare into its forecasts.

Air France was only able to operate around half its flights while its pilots took action to stop the expansion of Transavia Europe, an in-house budget service that the management sees as the key to stopping losses of market share on short-haul routes to competitors such as EasyJet Plc and Ryanair Holdings Plc.

The dispute was only ended when France’s Socialist government dropped its support for management’s plans, alarmed at mounting losses and aware that European competition rules could stop it rescuing the company, forcing it into bankruptcy.

Passenger numbers on Air France flights in September fell 16% from a year earlier to 5.7 million (Transavia, meanwhile, is thriving: it carried 1.1 million passengers in the month, a rise of 10%).

The company had originally expected to post EBITDA, a basic measure of operating profit, of some €2.5 billion this year. That would just about have allowed it to post a net profit (after massive bills for depreciating its aircraft and servicing its debts). However it had already had to revise down its original forecast halfway through the year, as the Eurozone economy–and the French economy in particular–slowed to a standstill.

The strike and the general economic malaise have wiped out nearly 50% of the company’s value in the last three months. The shares were down another 3.2% in Paris by lunchtime Wednesday in response to the profit warning.

Summary: 14-day strike by pilots against in-house low-cost airline devastates traffic, outlook - and there's not even any mention of ebola risk.


Hedge funds are considered to be “alternative investments.” So is private equity. And venture capital. And sometimes so is real estate, timber and certain types of commodities.

A number of public pension systems have increased their exposure to “alternatives” in recent years, at the same time that they either have curtailed (or threatened to curtail) payouts to pensioners. The official line is that the former is to prevent more of the latter, but many critics believe Wall Street is getting rich at the expense of modest retirees.

Most of this debate has flown under the radar until the electoral season elevated it in certain states. For example, Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo is a onetime venture capitalist who significantly increased her state’s exposure to alternatives. She also raised the retirement age for state workers by 5 years, moved from defined benefit plans to hybrid models and suspended annual cost-of-living increases for retiree benefits. Now Raimondo is running on the Democratic ticket for governor, after having bested a pair of primary challengers. In Illinois, a former private equity executive named Bruce Rauner is the GOP nominee for governor, and is similar reforms to the very pension system that has invested in the firm that still bears his name. It also has become an issue in New Jersey, which was late to the alternatives game but has begun to play it full force. Not because there is a relevant statewide election, but because there is union interest in undercutting pension reformer Chris Christie’s possible presidential ambitions.

The situation in each state — including in ones I haven’t mentioned — is unique. The complaint, however, generally boils down to this: Alternatives have underperformed the S&P 500 in recent years, even though many alternative funds charge higher fees than would a public equities index fund manager. In other words, state pensions are overpaying for underperformance.

Great bumper sticker. Lousy understanding of investment strategies.

The simple reality is that not all alternatives are created equal. Some, like private equity, are more tightly correlated to public equities than are others. Some are designed to chase public equities in bull markets without collapsing alongside them (that’s where the name “hedge” name from). Real estate is largely its own animal. Same goes for certain oil and gas partnerships.

Lumping all of them together because of fee strategies makes as much sense as arguing that a quarterback should be paid the same as an offensive lineman. After all, they both play football, right?

To be clear, I’m not necessarily taking sides in the active vs. passive debate (although, as you can probably tell, I generally side with the former). After all, even Warren Buffett — who often is cited as a passive management advocate for public pensions — has been co-investing alongside a large private equity firm in recent deals for Heinz and Burger King. Again, it’s more complicated than good vs. bad, smart vs. stupid.

For those who want to criticize public pensions for investing in alternatives, be specific. New Jersey, for example, reported alternative investment performance of 14.21% for the year ending June 30, 2014. That trailed the S&P 500 for the same period, which came in at 16.99%. But that alternatives number is a composite of private equity (23.7%), hedge funds (10.2%), real estate (12.74%) and real assets/commodities (6.12%). The sub-asset class most tightly correlated to public equities actually outperformed the S&P 500 (net of fees).

Would New Jersey pensioners have been better off without private equity? Clearly not for that time period. Having avoided real estate or hedge funds, however, would be a different argument. But even that case is tough to prove until New Jersey’s relatively immature alternatives program experiences a bear market. For example, both hedge funds and the S&P 500 went red last month, but the S&P 500’s loss was actually a bit worse. Does that make up for years of the S&P 500 outperforming hedge? Likewise, should real estate performance receive an indirect bump from recent rises in venture capital performance, just because they are both “alternatives?”

Again, that’s a judgment call that should be based on voluminous data, rather than on knee-jerk anger that alternative money managers are getting paid while retiree benefits are getting cut. If alternative managers are helping to stem the severity of those cuts, then everyone wins. If not, then the state pension needs a change in policy. But, in either case, the specific alternative sub-asset classes should be analyzed on their own merits, rather than as one homogeneous bucket. Otherwise, critics may throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Sign up for Dan’s free daily newsletter on deals & dealmakers: GetTermSheet.com

Summary: Public pensions are under fire for 'alternative investments.' Like most political fights, this one has been oversimplified.


This post is in partnership with Entrepreneur. This story originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com

Many software entrepreneurs share a similar dream with little children — they want to be unicorns.

The unicorns that exist in the dreams of companies are just as rare as those that exist in fairy tales. Cowboy Ventures defines unicorns as U.S.-based software companies founded since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors.

I spoke with leaders of three unicorns about their success and their advice for hopeful startups. Here are their tips on how to become a member of the magical and rare species:

Unicorns are unique, and find new paths to explore.

This was the strategy Scott Dietzen, CEO of Pure Storage, an innovative flash storage company, used to bring the company to unicorn status. The company began by finding a large, ill-served market.

“In Pure’s case, we tackled the $100 billion enterprise data-storage market, in which the dominant product architectures are two decades old, and customer satisfaction with the legacy products is well below average,” Dietzen says.

The company next identified a disrupting factor that changed the game for those already in the market.

“For Pure, this was the transition from mechanical disk-based storage to solid-state flash memory,” he says.

The next step is to create a recipe for success that others try to copy.

Next, “identify a disruptor that changes the game on the market incumbents and craft a recipe for disruption that others will strive to copy,” he suggests.

Darrell Cavens, CEO of Zulily, an online retailer that curates a new selection of products each day, agrees that to create a unicorn, startups must break from the pack and challenge traditional knowledge.

“We ignored many of the naysayers who told us that we had to operate by the current conventions in ecommerce in order to be successful,” he says. “We had a hunch that there was another way that we could do ecommerce and when we saw customer passion we went all in with it.”

Waze, the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app, also reached unicorn status by looking at an old problem in a new way.

“Waze was a strong challenger of the traditional model of traffic analysis because we relied entirely on input from the community, not from road sensors or street cameras,” says Julie Anne Mossler, head of global communications and creative launch strategy at Waze.

Create magical connections with customers

To build a unicorn, the customer must hold the reins, driving major decisions and product development to meet their needs.

“Most of all, you need hugely delighted customers,” Dietzen says. “Customers can and should be your strongest advocates. They should teach you about the value that you’ve delivered to them.”

Listening to the customer was a major factor in the success of Zulily, Cavens says.

“We didn’t have a master plan, but we had an open mind about what we could do and when we saw that our customer was responding to the type of shopping we were offering, we continued to build the business around what she wanted,” he says.

Waze built their customers into the product from the start.

“We optimized the opportunity and the product so that users have a vested interest in its success — and made it as easy as possible for them to spread the word to friends and recruit additional editors,” Mossler says.

Unicorns don’t just find investors, but they find the right investors for the business.

“Fundraise before you need the money,” Dietzen suggests. “That ensures you have the opportunity to weigh alternative investors to ensure the best fit in terms of culture and long-term aspirations. You should strive to avoid investors that will want to sell, and find the ones that are in it for the long haul.”

Once entrepreneurs find investors that are a good match, they must focus on their needs to get them on board.

“You also must be very, very good at explaining why your product and company are the right long-term, investment-protecting choice for those customers,” he says. “Put yourself into your customers shoes to best make the case that will appeal to your buyer.”

The road to becoming a unicorn doesn’t end with funding. Entrepreneurs must plan for the scale of the business and keep up with the demands of a fast growing company.

“We have been averaging 400 percent annual growth since we entered the market,” Dietzen says. “You need to grow fast in big markets if you want to lead.”

Summary: Executives from three big tech companies share secrets about pushing into the rarified club of $1 billion businesses.


01/06/2015 AT 11:00 AM EST

with PEOPLE, New Mexico teen Kendal Sanders shares her remarkable story of recovery and forgiveness after being shot at school by a classmate.

"Sometimes it's like a blessing in disguise," says Kendal, now 14. "Like, everyone's saying I've built a stronger faith."

But it's come at a price she's still paying. Now an 8th grader at Berrendo Middle School in Roswell, New Mexico, Kendal was lingering in the gymnasium with other students before the first bell on Jan. 14, 2014, when gunfire silenced their chatter.

The second and third round of exploding shotgun shells fired by fellow student Mason Campbell, then 12, hit Kendal and Nathaniel Tavarez, then also 12, with hundreds of BB-sized lead pellets. Both still carry those pellets in their bodies and struggle with the aftereffects.

Mason was sentenced to juvenile detention lasting no longer than his 21st birthday after pleading no contest to three counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of carrying a deadly firearm on school premises. He randomly fired after writing in a journal that he'd been a victim of school bullying.

Kendal forgave her assailant and, last July, accepted his courtroom apology. And as she continues therapy to try and rebuild strength in an arm, back and leg hobbled by muscle injury, she stays focused on moving forward with purpose – and, hopefully, a return to playing her favorite sport, volleyball.

"We're a strong family, and we'll get through it," she says of her mom Nickie Portion, 42, dad Bert Sanders, 44, and sister Kailynn, 18. "This will never bring us down."

Summary: Kendal Sanders says her faith grew stronger after she was shot by her classmate


Ten banks have agreed to pay $43.5 million to settle allegations that they allowed their equity research analysts to solicit investment banking business and offer favorable research coverage to Toys ‘R’ Us when the toy retailer was planning an initial public offering in 2010.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s has levied fines ranging from $2.5 million to $5 million in the case. It is deemed a conflict of interest when banks use research analysts, or the promise of offering favorable research, to win investment banking business.

“The firms’ rush to assure the issuer and its sponsors that research was in synch with the pitch being made by their investment bankers caused them to overstep the prohibitions against analyst solicitation and the promise of favorable research,” said Brad Bennett, chief of enforcement at Finra.

In the documents supporting Finra’s fines, some colorful details emerged about the internal conversations between the research analysts and the investment bankers.

One analyst at Citigroup reportedly said “I so want the bank to get this deal!” after the analyst and investment bankers discussed the bank’s planned pitch to Toys ‘R’ Us. A Barclays analyst, meanwhile, wondered if the bank lost the business to, among other things, his “fumble,” Finra said. Toys ‘R’ Us did not award Barclays a leading underwriting position, and the bank declined to participate in the IPO.

The banks that were fined were the following: Barclays, Citigroup C , Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs GS , J.P. Morgan JPM , Deutsche Bank, Bank of America’s BAC Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley MS , Wells Fargo WFC , and Needham & Co. In settling the matter, all of the firms neither admitted nor denied the charges, but consented to Finra’s findings.

The deal that the banks were looking to jump on never materialized. Toys ‘R’ Us ultimately decided to withdraw its IPO in 2013, almost three years after initially filing plans to go public, citing unfavorable market conditions and a CEO change.

Summary: Banks allegedly allowed their equity research analysts to solicit investment banking business and offer favorable research coverage.


Updated FEB 04, 2015 10:32p ET

TEMPE, Ariz. -- Arizona State waited and waited for a big boom.

After missing out on several high-level undecided high school recruits that listed the Sun Devils among their finalist, coach Todd Graham's day of indecision was rewarded when 4-star Long Beach Poly defensive lineman Joseph Wicker committed to ASU on a live ESPNU broadcast.

"I love the defense they run," Wicker said. "Their head coach, he just kept it real for me and I love that."

Wicker, at 6-feet-2 and 275 pounds, was said to be leaning toward UCLA and was also considering Texas Tech. Scout ranks him as the No. 11 defensive end in his class.

"I don't know if I know a guy on tape that fits our scheme better than this guy," Graham said Wednesday afternoon.

Turns out, Graham already knew the surprise was coming.

Wicker's commitment to ASU came in the early hours of signing day. A phone call to Graham prompted a scream and a "happy dance."

"I can't show you the happy dance," the head coach said Wednesday. "That's for my wife only."

During his presentation of his recruiting class on signing day, Graham said Wicker was closer to 6'4. Arguably, the defensive tackle is the most important player in the class, one Graham said he had as the top target on his defensive tackle board.

"You look at our scheme and productivity, and JoJo really identified with (former ASU defensive tackle Will Sutton), except he's a lot taller," Graham said. "That was something I don't think anyone else could compete with."

While Arizona State began the day with 4-star running back Jaason Lewis holding firm with his commitment, it missed on a few players who entered Wednesday with ASU still on their short-lists. Corona del Sol High School linebacker Cassius Peat flipped from UCLA to Michigan State, while two Gardena Serra High School products, tackle Rasheem Green and linebacker John Houston, picked USC.

Those decisions were probably expected, but the Sun Devils also dealt with something that wasn't.

The most painful blow to the day to ASU's class was the news that Mountain Pointe High School's Paul Lucas flipped late in the process. An Arizona State commit heading into signing day, the versatile athlete, who can play running back or receiver, is headed to Oregon State to play for first-year coach Gary Andersen.

The Sun Devils, who are losing premier wideout Jaelen Strong to the NFL, also were unable to bring in a couple of highly ranked wide receivers.

Las Vegas Bishop Gorman High SChool receiver Cordell Broadus, the son of rapper Snoop Dogg, committed to UCLA after considering ASU, USC and LSU. Another 4-star receiver, Buena Park High School's Jaylinn Hawkins, picked California over the Sun Devils.

Terrell Chatman, a 3-star receiver from Baton Rouge, La., said he needed more time to consider his options that include ASU, Miami and TCU.

There's not much receiving depth in this class, save for Morie Evans, who is listed as a running back but might have the versatility to play receiver.

"We're looking for the right guys," offensive coordinator Mike Norvell said. "We weren't going to go out and just sign a body just to say we did."

Follow Kevin Zimmerman on Twitter and check back to FOX Sports Arizona for more on National Signing Day.

Summary: ASU football coach Todd Graham landed a surprise in 4-star defensive lineman Joseph Wicker


Snapchat is looking to raise as much as $500 million in a new funding round that would value the mobile messaging company at up to $19 billion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.

The latest valuation is a massive increase for the company, which Facebook FB offered to buy for $3 billion in late 2013. Snapchat’s previous funding round, completed late last year, valued the company at more than $10 billion.

Executives of the company, which allows its more than 100 million users to send messages that disappear after a few seconds, are in advanced talks with fund managers, the person told Bloomberg.

The investments being discussed would value Snapchat between $16 billion and $19 billion overall, Bloomberg reported.

Los Angeles-based Snapchat could not be reached immediately for comment.

The drastic increase in valuation comes as Snapchat continues to add to its active user base and extends its service. Last month it added videos and articles by mainstream media outlets such as CNN and ESPN, bringing Snapchat into closer competition with Facebook and Twitter TWTR .

It is also the latest evidence of a surge in venture capital financing for technology companies, that has produced some eye-popping valuations.

Even at $19 billion, Snapchat would only be the third-most valuable tech startup that does not trade its shares publicly. According to research firm CB Insights, Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is worth $46 billion and app-based taxi service Uber is valued at $41 billion.

Summary: Mobile messaging company looking to raise as much as $500 million in a new funding round, report says.


What Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the Senate antitrust panel about Google

As feared, the Senate hearings Wednesday on “The Power of Google: Serving Customers or Threatening Competition?” barely scratched the surface.

What Google GOOG did to Apple AAPL — copying Apple’s touchscreen operating system and offering it to Apple’s competitors for free — never came up. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) used much of their time to suck up to Google chairman Eric Schmidt, practically begging him to bring Google’s fiber-to-the-home experiment to their states.

But for viewers who stuck around for the full three-hour hearing (available on C-Span here), one message was clear: As Google has grown to achieve monopoly-scale control of Internet search, its mission has changed. Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman put it most succinctly:

“Let’s be clear. Google is no longer in the business of sending users to the best sources of information on the Web. It now hopes to become a destination site itself for one vertical market after another, including news, shopping, travel, and now, local business reviews. It would be one thing if these efforts were conducted on a level playing field, but the reality is they’re not.”

For me, the testimony of Yelp’s Stoppelman and Nextag CEO Jeff Katz was the most compelling, because it came from Web-based entrepreneurs who know all too well how the game is played.

Here’s the crux of the story Stoppelman told the senators:

“The experience in my industry is telling. Google forces review websites to provide their content for free to benefit Google’s own competing product, not consumers. Google then gives its own product preferential treatment in Google search results.

“Google first began taking our content without permission a year ago. Despite public and private protests, Google gave the ultimatum that only a monopolist can give: In order to appear in Web search, you must allow us to use your content to compete against you. As everyone in this room knows, not being in Google is equivalent to not existing on the Internet. We had no choice.”

Google softened its stance, according to Stoppelman, only after the FTC announced an antitrust investigation, the states’ attorneys general took notice, and the Senate antitrust committee proposed this hearing.

The text of Stoppelman’s written testimony is available here.

Summary: What Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman told the Senate antitrust panel about Google As feared, the Senate hearings Wednesday on "The Power of Google: Serving Customers or Threatening Competition?" barely scratched the surface. What Google did to Apple -- copying Apple's touchscreen operating system and offering it to Apple's competitors for free -- never came up. Amy…


GSO Capital Partners has agreed to sell Stolle Machinery, a Centennial, Colo.–based maker of metal containers, to Japan’s Toyo Seikan for $775 million. www.stollemachinery.com

Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has agreed to acquire business insurer Harleysville Group (Nasdaq: HGIC) for around $760 million, or $60 per share.

McGraw-Hill and CME Group reportedly are in talks to form a joint venture that would house both the S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Indexes.

GTCR has agreed to sell Graceway Pharmaceuticals, a Bristol, Tenn.-based maker of prescription creams and inhaled pharmaceuticals, to Galderma SA. No financial terms were disclosed.www.gtcr.com

Oracle said in a blog post yesterday that Autonomy PLC reached out about a possible acquisition, before agreeing to be acquired for $11.7 billion by Hewlett-Packard. The post came in response to comments by Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch, who said he had never seriously considered Oracle as an acquirer. www.oracle.com

Amtel Corp. (Nasdaq: ATML) has agreed to acquire Advanced Digital Design SA, a Spanish developer of power line communication solutions. No financial terms were disclosed. Sellers will include Adara Venture Partners. www.advanceddd.com

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said that it would not oppose SABMiller‘s proposed $10.15 billion buyout of Australian brewer Foster’s.

Sony Corp. has acquired Micronics Inc., a Redmond, Wash.-based maker of point-of-care medical diagnostics. No financial terms were disclosed. Micronics had raised VC funding from such firms as Southwest Michigan First, River Cities Capital Funds and Ardesta LLC. www.sony.com

Aton GmbH of Germany has acquired OrthoScan Inc., a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based maker of orthopaedic extremity imaging devices. No financial terms were disclosed. Orthoscan has raised VC funding from River Cities Capital Funds, Aphelion Capital and California Technology Ventures. www.orthoscan.com

Barclays Private Equity has agreed to sell FirstAssist Insurance Services, a British travel and protection insurance company, to Cigna (NYSE: CI). No financial terms were disclosed.www.firstassistinsurance.co.uk

Vantage Media LLC, an El Segundo, Calif.-based vertical performance marketing company, has merged with BrokersWeb, a provider of PPC advertising solutions for the insurance vertical. No financial terms were disclosed. Vantage Media has raised around $70 million in VC funding from Integral Capital Partners, Montgomery & Co., Scale Venture Partners and Tudor Ventures.

Aesculap, a unit of B. Braun, has acquire the assets of Aragon Surgical Inc., a Palo Alto, Calif.-based maker of RF electrosurgical instruments for tissue fusion and cutting. No financial terms were disclosed. Aragon Surgical had raised over $25 million in VC funding from firms like Bay City Capital, Integral Capital Partners, Delphi Ventures and Onset Ventures. www.aesculapusa.com

Renren Inc. (NYSE: RENN) has agreed to acquire 56.com, a Chinese video sharing site focused on user-generated content. The deal is valued at $80 million in cash. 56.com has raised around $30 million in VC funding from Steamboat Ventures, Susquehanna International Group, Adobe Systems, CID Group and Sequoia Capital. www.56.com

Wave Systems Corp. (Nasdaq: WAVX) has acquired Safend Ltd., a Philadelphia–based provider of endpoint data loss protection solutions. The deal is valued at approximately $12.8 million. Safend had raised VC funding from Elron Electronics Industries Ltd., Intel Capital and Walden Israel Venture Capital.www.wave.com

Nissinbo Holdings Inc., a Japan-based maker of cotton spinners, has agreed to acquire Luxembourg-based brake manufacturer TMD Friction Group for €440 million.

Wipro Ltd. of India may sell the five data centers and other computer hardware assets of Infocrossing, the U.S. subsidiary it acquired for $600 million in 2007. The deal could be valued at between $300 million and $400 million, with Citigroup managing the process. www.wipro.com

Investcorp has agreed to sell Accuity Holdings Inc., a Skokie, Ill.–based provider of online subscription-based data solutions for the financial services industry, to Reed Elsevier. The deal is valued at £343 million in cash. www.accuitysolutions.com

Go here for last week’s M&A

Summary: GSO Capital Partners has agreed to sell Stolle Machinery, a Centennial, Colo.–based maker of metal containers, to Japan’s Toyo Seikan for $775 million. www.stollemachinery.com Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has agreed to acquire business insurer Harleysville Group (Nasdaq: HGIC) for around $760 million, or $60 per share. McGraw-Hill and CME Group reportedly are in talks to form a joint venture that would house both the S&P 500…


TEMPE, Ariz. -- To understand new ASU basketball coach Bobby Hurley and to understand why the Sun Devils hired him, is to understand his path here.

From his championship-studded amateur career, to a car crash that eventually ended his NBA dream, to financial losses in horse racing that led to his emergence in the college coaching ranks and the quick ascension therein, it's all a part of Hurley.

There was little tact in Hurley's delivery on Friday when ASU introduced him as the successor to Herb Sendek. The 43-year-old doesn't shy away from reciting his accolades as player and coach, because he knows what drove him then does so now.

"I have a blue-collar background with my upbringing and nothing has ever come easy to me," Hurley said. "People always doubted my career as a player. They never expected I'd take it as far as I took it. There were questions about my experience coming into Buffalo and in two years we won a conference title for the first time in school history, and that's with a team projected to finish fourth in its division last year."

The man is confident. Why wouldn't he be after amassing a 115-5 record as a high school player, winning the 1991 and 1992 NCAA titles with the Duke Blue Devils and still holding the NCAA career assists record of 1,076?

For ASU, his personality fits after the mild-mannered Sendek's nine-year tenure came to a close last month.

"Our charge was to go out and find the best and the right fit for this program," ASU athletic director Ray Anderson said, "and the personality qualities that were required was that we wanted integrity, we wanted passion, we wanted fire in the belly, we wanted an unwavering dedication to provide high-energy to every task necessary to bring ASU men's basketball to the elite level."

The key there is Hurley's "fire in the belly" drove him to this point. ASU fans might worry that with too much success, his time in Tempe could be short-lived.

But Hurley called ASU "a destination job," with the facilities and the potential to succeed. He didn't shy away from addressing the rivalry with the Arizona Wildcats, where a similarly fiery point guard-turned-coach has built one of the country's elite programs.

"It takes two to tango," Hurley said of Sean Miller's Wildcats. "I live for those kind of games, as a competitor. I think I'm a top competitor."

Bobby Hurley addresses the Arizona State basketball team on Friday.

Hurley developed that from his father, Bob Hurley, who since 1972 has coached at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City, New Jersey. Afterward, Bobby lived college basketball's biggest rivalry: Duke-North Carolina.

Following the end of his NBA career and then his foray into the horse racing world, he dove head-first into the coaching ranks in 2010 at Wagner College, where his younger brother, Dan, gave him a seat on the bench. Bobby learned on the fly, moving with Dan to Rhode Island in 2012 before taking over at Buffalo. Hurley reportedly soured at returning to Buffalo when the school rubbed him the wrong way while making an offer on an extension, according to The Buffalo News.

The hurdles he must overcome at ASU begin with recruiting. On that front, he'll be joined by former Buffalo assistant and ex-North Carolina State player Levi Watkins. Hurley on Friday also announced he retained former Sendek assistant Stan Johnson, who could be a commodity as a West Coast recruiter.

And yes, Hurley is confident he can succeed despite facing the same questions as every other East Coast coach moving to Pac-12 country.

"My career as a player in college athletics and winning championships opens the doors for me," Hurley said. "I think my dad being a legendary high school coach that people know, I'd be able to pick up my phone and build and develop relationships with people I need to."

That will surely help when he knocks on high school coaches' doors. It's another matter for recruits, who at this point were born well after Hurley starred at Duke. Yet, the hire was sold on ASU freshman point guard Tra Holder, who admitted he only had seen Hurley on screen in the recent ESPN documentary, "I Hate Christian Laettner."

"We talked a little bit today and I'm really excited to see what he has to offer in terms of knowledge," Holder said. "I'm ready to learn."

In terms of style, Hurley promises tough man-to-man defense, emphasis on player development and a fast pace. He doesn't micro-manage the offense and wants his players to have the freedom to create.

The Sun Devils believe they can take on the personality of Hurley's chip-on-the-shoulder aggressiveness that feeds on any slights thrown his way.

"My expectations and other people's expectations are a little different," Hurley said.

Funny moment at news conference with Ray Anderson reminding Bobby Hurley to thank his parents, sitting right in the front row

When the season comes, it'll be time to see what Hurley can do in a bigger conference, with more resources and a team that should return talent from an 18-16 season. It's time to see what he can do with a life experience base that's truly unique amongst his peers.

"Everything I've seen has prepared me to provide these guys, I think, with a great structure to work and to develop as basketball players and people," Hurley said. "We want to bring in kids that are high character, that are going to work hard, that are going to develop in our program, that are going to get an education and that are going to compete for championships -- Pac-12 championships and we want to go to Final Fours."

Follow Kevin Zimmerman on Twitter

Summary: ASU basketball hired Bobby Hurley as its next head coach, and his fiery competitiveness, the Sun Devils believe, fits the bill.


Photo: Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Defensive line coach Jim Tomsula is introduced as the new head coach of the San Francisco 49ers during a press conference at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2015.

Defensive line coach Jim Tomsula is introduced as the new head...

Carlos Hyde of the 49ers celebrates a touchdown in the fourth quarter against Washington at Levi's Stadium on Nov. 23 in Santa Clara.

Carlos Hyde of the 49ers celebrates a touchdown in the fourth...

49ers Top 2015 Draft Needs:10. Offensive tackle – A back-up swing tackle is always a need. Jonathan Martin struggled in that role last season.

49ers Top 2015 Draft Needs: 10. Offensive tackle – A back-up swing...

9. Kicker – Phil Dawson has been awesome. He’s also 40. While he’s showing no signs of a fall off, the 49ers should consider a kicker in the late rounds.

9. Kicker – Phil Dawson has been awesome. He’s also 40. While...

8. Cornerback – This position is the most unsettled. Starters Chris Culliver and Perrish Cox are both unrestricted free agents and could leave. Tramaine Brock can’t seem to shake injuries and the team has the promising Dontae Johnson and two injured rookies from last year, Kenneth Acker and Keith Reaser.

8. Cornerback – This position is the most unsettled. Starters...

7. Pass rusher – Aldon Smith has his inner demons, and if they re-surface again, he could get suspended for a year. Also, he disappeared on the field at times last year. Ahmad Brooks' large cap number might make him expendable. Rookie Aaron Lynch is developing, but the team could use another player to plug in here.

7. Pass rusher – Aldon Smith has his inner demons, and if they...

6. Offensive guard – With Pro Bowl guard Mike Iupati fetching a big contract elsewhere, the team needs more competition for his replacement. The initial plan is for Marcus Martin and Brandon Thomas to vie for the spot. Both are young but have knee injury histories. Adding another player could provide needed depth.

6. Offensive guard – With Pro Bowl guard Mike Iupati fetching a...

5. Defensive line – Ray McDonald is gone and Justin Smith retiring, it leaves the 49ers without their two top defensive ends. They do have emerging players in Tank Carradine and Quinton Dial, plus the versatile Tony Jarod-Eddie, but they need much more than that.

5. Defensive line – Ray McDonald is gone and Justin Smith...

4. Quarterback – The 49ers are committed to Colin Kaepernick, but if he continues to regress, the team needs to groom another player. Also, all indications are Kaepernick will run more this season, making a viable young backup even more important.

4. Quarterback – The 49ers are committed to Colin Kaepernick, but...

3. Running back – With Frank Gore gone, a speed back could be an essential addition. Gore, Carlos Hyde and Kendall Hunter are all similar backs with average speed.

3. Running back – With Frank Gore gone, a speed back could be an...

2. Tight end – Vernon Davis’ precipitous fall off last year still remains a mystery. Yes, he had knee and back problems, but were his troubles deeper than that? Baalke, coach Jim Tomsula and quarterback Colin Kaepernick believe he will bounce back, but what if he doesn’t? The team needs insurance.

2. Tight end – Vernon Davis’ precipitous fall off last year...

1. Receiver – Even general manager Trent Baalke admitted that receiver was something the 49ers need to address. The team is unlikely to retain Michael Crabtree, and Stevie Johnson’s cap figure is $6 million next season. Even if Johnson stays, the 49ers could use an outside-the-numbers, down-field threat who could extend a defense.

1. Receiver – Even general manager Trent Baalke admitted that...

2015 schedule: 49ers will open by hosting Vikings in prime time

The 49ers will open the 2015 regular season in prime time.

The Niners will begin the Jim Tomsula era by hosting the Vikings on Sept. 14 on Monday Night Football.

Monday, Sept. 14, 5:30 p.m., ESPN

Will the 49ers actually face Adrian Peterson? One of the NFL’s best running backs is the subject of trade rumors and the Vikings have reportedly received interest from six teams.

Sunday, Sept. 20, 10 a.m., FOX

This will be a homecoming for Tomsula, who was raised in suburban Pittsburgh (West Homestead). His parents and other family members still live in the area. In fact, his uncle, Robert “Tic” Cloherty, served as the clock operator at Steelers games for many years before stepping away from the position after the 2013 season. A homecoming present: The Steelers will likely be without running back Le’Veon Bell, who is expected to serve a three-game suspenion to start the season.

Sunday, Sept. 27, 1:05 p.m., FOX

Tomsula has never lost to the Cardinals as the head coach of the 49ers … This time, of course, Tomsula won’t have the interim tag he carried in the 2010 regular-season finale. In addition, two Pro Bowl linemen - Mike Iupati and Darnell Dockett - will meet again after switching sides in the offseason. Iupati, now the Cardinals left guard, spent his first five seasons with the 49ers. Dockett, a 49ers defensive tackle, spent his first 10 seasons with the Cardinals.

Sunday, Oct. 4, 1:25 p.m., FOX

If Colin Kaepernick is enduring an early season slump, well, the Packers will arrive at just the right time. In three career starts against Green Bay - two in the postseason - Kaepernick has averaged 301 passing yards, 100 rushing yards and accounted for eight touchdowns. His record: 3-0. Perhaps Clay Matthews needs to take Jim Harbaugh’s advice and “come with some knuckles” this time.

Sunday, Oct. 11, 5:30 p.m., NBC

Another pick parade? The 49ers hope so. In their 16-10 win at East Rutherford last year, New York’s Eli Manning had the second five-interception game of his 169-game career. The good news for Manning: Chris Borland and Chris Culliver, who accounted for three of those picks, are no longer with the 49ers.

Sunday, Oct. 18, 1:25 p.m., CBS

It’s the HarBo … Um, no, it’s the John Harbaugh Aims To Beat The Team That Mutually Parted Ways (Wink, Wink) With His Little Brother Bowl. I know -- doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

Thursday, Oct. 22, 5:25 p.m., NFL Network

How is that new-look Geep Chryst offense coming along? If the 49ers score two touchdowns in this game against turkey-eating Richard Sherman and Co. (remember the last Thursday night game against the Seahawks at Levi’s?) it will represent progress. The 49ers have averaged 10 points en route to losing five of the past six games against their NFC West rivals (Combined score: Seahawks 147, 49ers 62). The Niners have scored five touchdowns during that stretch, while Sherman has four picks in those games.

Sunday, Nov. 1, 10 a.m., FOX

Recall the 49ers’ last meeting against the Rams? You’d probably like to forget. The 49ers’ most excruciating loss of the 2014 season was sealed when Kaepernick fumbled on a sneak on 3rd-and-goal at the 1-yard line in the final seconds. Final: Rams 13, 49ers 10.

Sunday, Nov. 8, 1:05 p.m., FOX

The last time the 49ers played the Falcons? It was the last game at Candlestick Park. The 49ers won that game in 2013, which gave them a 21-4-1 record in their final 26 regular-season games at the old stadium. Last year, they went 4-4 at Levi’s Stadium. This game will reunite 49ers quarterbacks coach Steve Logan with Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan, who had the same roles in 2007 at Boston College.

Sunday, Nov. 22, 1:25 p.m., FOX

Sunday, Nov. 29, 1:05 p.m., FOX

Sunday, Dec. 6, 10 a.m., FOX

Think Vic Fangio might want to stick it to his old employer? Answer: Y-E-S. The well-respected Bears defensive coordinator was a candidate for the 49ers’ head-coaching job and wasn’t about to stick around when he was passed over in favor of Tomsula, who worked under him for four seasons. Fangio’s defense will include former 49ers defensive tackle Ray McDonald.

Sunday, Dec. 13, 10 a.m., FOX

The 49ers will reconnect with an old friend during their visit to the “Dawg Pound:” Former safety Donte Whitner is entering his second year with Cleveland after three distinguished seasons with the 49ers. No telling if they the 49ers will see much of second-year quarterback Johnny Manziel, who spent part of his offseason in a rehab clinic after a disastrous rookie year. The 49ers could stay in Youngstown, Ohio, between these road games at Chicago and Cleveland.

Sunday, Dec. 20, 5:30 p.m., NBC

Five quarterbacks were selected ahead of Kaepernick in the 2011 draft and he’s acknowledged games against those QBs offer him a chance to send a you-should-have-selected me message. This will be Kaepernick’s first start against Andy Dalton, who was selected one spot ahead of him and has four fewer playoff wins (Kaepernick 4, Dalton 0).

Sunday, Dec. 27, 10 a.m., FOX

Unfortunately, the head-coaching Jims in this game (Tomsula and Caldwell) aren’t likely to replicate the postgame scene created by those other head-coaching Jims (Harbaugh and Schwartz) from the last time the 49ers visited Detroit. Just in case, however, 49ers PR man Bob Lange - who played a memorable break-it-up role in The Too-Hard Handshake Game - is still on staff.

Sunday, Jan. 3, 1:25 p.m., FOX

Aug 15: at Houston, 5 p.m.

Aug. 23: vs. Dallas, 5 p.m.

Aug. 29: at Denver, 6 p.m.

Sept. 3: vs. San Diego, 7 p.m.

Summary: The 49ers will open the 2015 regular season in prime time.                  The Niners will begin the Jim Tomsula era by hosting the Vikings on Sept. 14 on Monday Night Football.                  Here's the full schedule:                  WEEK 1                  VS. MINNESOTA                  Monday, Sept. 14, 5:30 p.m., ESPN                  Will the 49ers actually face Adrian Peterson? One of the NFL's best running backs is the subject of trade rumors and the Vikings have reportedly received interest from six teams.                  WEEK 2                  AT PITTSBURGH                  Sunday, Sept. 20, 10 a.m.


Kevin Deas as Claudius and Susanna Phillips in the title role of Boston Baroque’s “Agrippina.”

Back in 2005, Boston Baroque scored a noted success with its semi-staged production of Handel’s “Agrippina,” which Richard Dyer described in these pages as “the finest local operatic performance in several seasons.”

This weekend, one decade later, Martin Pearlman and his period instrument ensemble, fresh back from a tour of Poland, returned to this early Handel masterwork. A different director oversaw this new semi-staging but the performances were once again first-rate, bringing across the youthful vigor and marvelous invention of Handel’s score, a work that marked a pinnacle of his years in Italy.

We are told by Handel’s first biographer that audiences were “thunderstruck with the grandeur and sublimity” of Handel’s music at the premiere performances of “Agrippina,” in Venice in 1709-10. Never mind that Handel recycled much of the material of this opera from earlier works. Nothing in the finished score feels generic or retrofitted and aria after aria seems its own occasion.

The plot centers on the various machinations of Agrippina, who schemes to install Nero, her son from a previous marriage, on the throne to succeed her husband, the emperor Claudius, who is presumed drowned at sea. All is going grandly until Claudius shows up, back from the dead, having been saved by Otho, to whom he’s now promised the throne. More scheming ensues, and Agrippina’s wiles find their match in the cunning Poppea, who also knows how to play the various male characters like a theorbo.

For his semi-staging, director Mark Streshinsky amplified any hint of antics in the libretto, and added some of his own, often drawing peals of laughter from the audience, though at times one wished he might have tried harder to follow the lead of the music. The stately ensemble number near the start of Act II, for instance, was here milked for cheap laughs, as Claudius paraded down the aisle taking selfies with members of the audience.

But Streshinsky also elicited some wonderfully vivid performances on Saturday night, starting with Susanna Phillips in the title role, vocally riveting, dramatically confident and with power in reserve. Her “Pensieri voi mi tormentate,” in which this queen of deception movingly admits to her own fears, brought some of the evening’s best singing, with Phillips’s plaintive cries eloquently echoed by the solo oboe (Marc Schachman). Amanda Forsythe owned the role of Poppea, exuding feistiness, style, and gleaming tone. Countertenor David Hansen sang an extremely agile Nero, and Kevin Deas’s Claudius had both tonal depth and good comic instincts.

Otho is the only character whose intentions are pure, and as such, finds himself buffeted by the winds of ill intention all around. Marie Lenormand took on the role and seemed slightly underpowered in this company, but her singing was tonally rich and deeply felt. Douglas Williams, Krista River, and Mark McSweeney all did well in smaller roles. Save a few passing rough spots, the orchestra under Pearlman’s baton played with precision and unflagging energy. The conductor himself was occasionally drawn into the action onstage, and at one point, tellingly, he high-fived Phillips. This was her Boston Baroque debut, but after a performance like this, one imagines she’ll be back before long.

Summary: Director Mark Streshinsky elicited some wonderfully vivid performances in Boston Baroque’s “Agrippina,” starting with Susanna Phillips in the title role.