Read MoreEinhorn: Tech bubble brewing, shorting momentums

In the case of high-frequency trading, computers that can execute trades in microseconds detect orders from other, slower computers and are able to trade ahead of them. That drives future trades higher, and HFTs then sell and pocket the difference between the lower price they paid and the higher future trades. The entire process can take place in less than a second. Lewis' book alleges that HFT firms make billions off front-running.

Greenlight said it believes that those issues "don't significantly impact us." But, as a countermeasure, the firm said it supports new alternative trading platform IEX. Greenlight said it holds a small stake in the exchange, which has styled itself as a safer place to trade for investors worried about HFT front-running.

"We believe that the best response for any investors that are worried about fast computers taking advantage of them is to ask that their orders be routed to IEX," the letter said.

Summary: Greenlight Capital supports IEX and holds a stake in it.


Demand for car loans has been a key area of credit growth in the past three months, even though overall enthusiasm for taking on new debt is waning.

Credit data provider Veda's consumer credit demand index grew 2.6 per cent in the September quarter compared with a year earlier, buoyed by a 5.4 per cent increase in personal loan applications.

Credit card applications declined 0.2 per cent.

"The index, while still positive, has trended downward throughout 2016," Veda general manager for consumer risk Angus Luffman said on Tuesday

Credit demand rebounded in July following the federal election, but was softer throughout August and September.

Veda reported a similar dynamic for business credit last week.

The index historically provides an early indication of movements in consumer spending and retail sales.

Tuesday's release of the weekly ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index is another indicator of future retail spending.

The index edged down by a more modest 0.3 per cent last week, ending several weeks of wild swings.

The minutes of the Reserve Bank's October 4 board meeting are also due, the first central bank gathering under new governor Philip Lowe.

That meeting left the cash rate at a record low 1.5 per cent.

Summary: Credit demand was propped up by applications for car loans in the September quarter, but overall interest in taking on new debt continues to decline.


Photo: Ross D. Franklin, Associated Press

San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly talk with quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly talk with quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly and his bench watch as the Arizona Cardinals kick a game winning field goal during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz. The Cardinals won 23-20. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

San Francisco 49ers head coach Chip Kelly and his bench watch as the Arizona Cardinals kick a game winning field goal during the second half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz.

GLENDALE, AZ - NOVEMBER 13: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers runs past defensive end Calais Campbell #93 of the Arizona Cardinals during the fourth quarter of the NFL football game at University of Phoenix Stadium on November 13, 2016 in Glendale, Arizona. Arizona won 23-20. (Photo by Chris Coduto/Getty Images)

GLENDALE, AZ - NOVEMBER 13: Quarterback Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers runs past defensive end Calais Campbell #93 of the Arizona Cardinals during the fourth quarter of the NFL football game at

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) makes a fist as he is booed by fans after an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz. The Cardinals won 23-20. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) makes a fist as he is booed by fans after an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, Sunday, Nov. 13, 2016, in Glendale, Ariz. The Cardinals won

49ers turn attention to big challenge in Brady, Patriots

If nothing else, the 49ers showed they can hang with a solid team Sunday. Their losing streak reached eight after a 23-20 defeat to Arizona, last year’s NFC West champions but hardly a powerhouse this season at 4-4-1.

Now here comes the powerhouse, led by an angry Tom Brady.

This time, the 49ers (1-8) must try to hang with an elite team. Brady and his New England Patriots (7-2) visit Santa Clara this week, fresh off a rare and stinging loss Sunday night against Seattle.

“It doesn’t get any easier,” 49ers head coach Chip Kelly said in his weekly news conference Monday. “We’re going against one of the best quarterbacks to ever play the game. It’s a huge challenge. Our guys were talking about it yesterday, and it obviously has their attention.”

As was the case after Sunday’s game, Kelly found the safe middle ground: not satisfied with absorbing another loss but acknowledging his team made progress against the Cardinals. Most notably, the 49ers allowed only 80 yards rushing — a monumental achievement for the NFL’s worst run defense entering the game.

Colin Kaepernick and Co. offered an uneven performance on offense, getting only 28 yards rushing from their running backs (Kaepernick gained 55) but producing enough in the passing game to put together a game-tying touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter.

“We’re still a ways away,” Kelly said. “Twenty points in a game isn’t enough in this league. We need to score more than that.”

Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick

Summary: Brady and his New England Patriots (7-2) visit Santa Clara this week, fresh off a rare and stinging loss Sunday night against Seattle.  “It doesn’t get any easier,” 49ers head coach Chip Kelly said in his weekly news conference Monday.  Most notably, the 49ers allowed only 80 yards rushing — a monumental achievement for the NFL’s worst run defense entering the game.  Colin Kaepernick and Co. offered an uneven performance on offense, getting only 28 yards rushing from their running backs (Kaepernick gained 55) but producing enough in the passing game to put together a game-tying touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter.  Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.


Humans, take a look at the valley where some of your future relatives might live should mankind find a way to settle on Mars.

The European Space Agency has released a fascinating flyover of Mawrth Vallis, a 600km long fissure that has been pinpointed as a potential habitable location on the red planet.

The four-billion-year-old ravine measures up to 2km deep (slightly deeper than the Grand Canyon in the US), and research of surface conditions indicate it could possibly be a source of potential water.

Although just an animation, the highly detailed footage has been produced using real data from incredible high resolution cameras on board Mars Express, a space mission with an objective to learn more about our neighbouring planet.

The aerial trip starts at the mouth of Mawrth Vallis and extends into the vast plain of Chryse Planitia.

From there, our journey continues to take a winding course into the heavily cratered Arabia Terra highlands, north of the Martian equator.

Numerous impact craters and light and dark deposits can be seen. The light, layered sediments are an indication that liquid water existed in this region, scientists believe.

Mawrth Vallis (Mawrth is the Welsh word for Mars) has been shortlisted as a potential landing spot for a rover to land and drill into the planet's surface fort further research and its potential suitability to sustain life.

Oxia Planum, Aram Dosum and Hypanis Vallis are the three other suggested landing sites for ExoMars currently under consideration.

© Nine Digital Pty Ltd 2016

Summary: Humans, take a look at the valley where some of your future ancestors might live should mankind find a way to settle on Mars.


Emerging from customs at St Pancras International station last night, I found myself looking up at two colossal sculptures. Paul Day’s nine-metre bronze statue of a kissing couple loomed up in all its detailed smoochiness. Higher still, suspended from the roof, soared Ron Arad’s wave-like Thought of Train of Thought.

To their supporters and critics these may seem to be very different works of art – Arad’s cutting edge abstraction versus Day’s figurative statue – but seeing them with the eyes of a traveller who’d just cleared the UK border, they both spoke of national self-confidence: bold and brassy, a bit vulgar, and very loud.

If our art says anything about us, the vogue for public art in Britain since the 1990s may be interpreted by historians as a symptom of the patriotic mood that led to Brexit. I know, the standard explanation for this year’s vote to leave the EU is that it’s all about the frustrations of voters who feel “left behind”. But actually, leaving a larger economic entity suggests a lot of national self-regard or pride, a belief that we can easily go it alone. The very “elite” that most resists this referendum result has done a lot to build up the national self-image through sheer cultural exuberance. Brexit consummates the bigging-up of Britain that has been the dominant cultural tone of the last quarter century, from Cool Britannia to the London Olympics. Didn’t the masses realise we were being ironic about all those union jacks in art and pop?

Public art is very much part of the cocksure cultural revival that has transformed modern Britain. From Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North to the Tower of London poppies, art on an often epic scale has captured imaginations and expressed local, civic and ultimately patriotic pride – and has accidentally, unknowingly done its bit to make Britain a Brexit nation.

An exhibition currently on at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds reveals just how different today’s enthusiasm for public art is from the attitudes that prevailed in 1970s and 80s Britain. In 1972 a venture called City Sculpture Projects put large-scale sculptures by contemporary artists including William Turnbull and Liliane Lijn into city centres across Britain. The most striking, and perhaps most likely to be popular today, was Nicholas Monro’s five-metre-high statue in Birmingham of King Kong with huge outspread arms.

When after six months the cities had an option to buy the works and make them permanent, not a single one took up the offer. So while it generated plenty of debate, much of it negative, City Sculpture Projects totally failed to seed a revival of public art.

That was because Britain in the 1970s hated itself. Economically decaying and politically crippled, the Britain of that time found its true cultural expression in the nihilism of punk or the black comedy of Fawlty Towers. Not in the pride of public art. Public art, which is expensive, monumental and usually affirmative, is the natural self-expression of a cohesive and expansive community. Look at the public art that dominates the British landscape and you will find that most of it comes from intensely patriotic periods – times very unlike the self-loathing 70s. Monuments such as Nelson’s column in London, the Marquess of Anglesey’s column near Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, and the Wellington monument in Somerset were all erected in the early 19th century to remember Britain’s victories in the Napoleonic wars. The statues of Queen Victoria found in many city centres embody the confidence of the British Empire at its zenith. In a much bleaker way, the war memorials erected everywhere in Britain after 1918 reflect a nation united in sorrow and loss.

The divided and depressed Britain of the 1970s conformed to this rule negatively, by turning down the offer of contemporary art to enliven its unloved cities. So what does it mean that public art is so much part of our culture today? The sculpture we put up tends to be celebrated as subversive. Contemporary art on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is supposedly a modern riposte to the traditional pomp of Nelson’s Column, reflecting new attitudes and a new Britain. But look at it in a wider perspective and we actually have more in common with the creators of Trafalgar Square than we think. They had pride and so do we.

Today’s investment in public art reflects and shapes a sense of community and Britishness. The grandeur of our public statuary is a visible symbol of national confidence. After a day in Paris, the two colossal sculptures at St Pancras seemed very British, very Brexit and strangely awful.

Summary: In the 1970s, public sculptures were derided or ignored. Today’s celebratory projects tap into the same nationalistic confidence that saw us vote to leave the EU


There are, inevitably, vaginas. Of course there are; it wouldn’t be a show about the 1970s feminist avant-garde without them. But the vaginas are not the central focus of the new exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery showcasing 48 international female artists over 200 major works from the Verbund collection. There is, after all, more to feminist art than the vagina; though curator Anna Dannemann does confess that she enjoys watching men’s reactions as they round the corner and are confronted with Judy Chicago’s 1971 work Red Flag – a close-up study of a crimson tampon being removed.

There’s a certain kind of man who will read the previous sentence and bristle. What is it about women questioning and exploring their own bodies that some find so offensive?

The answer, I believe, is agency – the demand for which is feminist artistic practice’s perennial cri de coeur. Chicago’s photograph is aptly named; it is a confrontation that highlights just how radical some of these works were and continue to be, even today, in this TMI era of social media.

The exhibition is well timed; this summer the world watched as a woman on a beach in the south of France was made to remove her clothing as men with guns stood over her, and the policing of women’s bodies by men continues to be protested internationally. Earlier this week a photograph of an older Polish woman went viral. She was protesting the country’s proposed anti-abortion legislation, and her sign read: “I can’t believe I still have to protest this fucking shit.” Looking at the work of the 1970s feminist avant-garde provokes the same emotions.

Women are still grappling with the same issues that prevail in this thematically organised exhibition: the confines of the domestic sphere, the objectification and sexualisation of our bodies, cultural notions of beauty, and stereotypical gender roles. Running throughout is also the demand to be taken seriously as artists in an industry that venerates the male and excludes the female from the canon. Mary Beth Edelson’s Some Living American Women Artists/Last Supper, 1972 makes the point neatly and playfully at the start of the exhibition. Indeed, many of the artists have their tongues placed firmly in their cheeks. Penny Slinger’s Wedding Invitation 2, which shows a bride posing, legs apart, while wearing a wedding cake, is absurdly hilarious, though not a look I’d recommend you replicate for your own special day.

Much of the art examines women’s relationships to their own bodies, so naturally there is female nudity throughout. I loved Hannah Wilke’s series, where she starts off as Mary Magdelene standing on a plinth swathed in yards of fabric, and gradually strips until she becomes a half-naked Jesus in high heels. Of male nudity, there is just one example. Lili Dujourie’s 1977 untitled series shows a naked man on the wooden floor of an apartment. At first glance you might think you were looking at one of the traditional female nudes that have long been the subjects of male artists. The so-called femininity of the poses and the length of the model’s hair (it was the late 1970s after all) denote a woman, leading to questions about how artists have chosen to depict the body throughout art history. It is rare to see a male figure look so fragile and so beautiful.

Dannemann’s curation strikes a good balance between the light and the dark. The humourof artists such as Edelson and Slinger complement the anger and despair of some of the other works. It’s quite an achievement considering the mockery of “angry feminists” of the time.

Flicking through an old Spare Rib of my mother’s, I once came across an editorial headlined: “Why is this magazine so depressing?” You could not ask the same question of this show, though it quite rightly includes some works that punch you in the gut. Most affecting was Leslie Labowitz and Suzanne Lacy’s 1977-78 performance In Mourning and In Rage, a response to coverage of LA’s “Hillside Strangler”, a man who raped and murdered 10 young women. The public ritual they created in order to pay them tribute and demand action is profoundly affecting. “I am here for the rage of all women!” one says, and you feel it. The female victims of murder and sexual violence continue to be presented to the media in a grotesquely titillating manner. A photograph of a woman is still highly likely to make the front pages provided she is sexy, or dead. Preferably both.

Summary: From the wearable oven to the all-female Last Supper, this hard-hitting and hilarious collection of feminist avant-garde photography still packs a punch


Shipping costs aren't the only thing weighing on retailers' digital profits this holiday season.

As operations become more complex for companies doing business both online and in store, out-of-stocks, overstocks and returns are costing retailers $1.75 trillion a year — a number that's only moving higher.

What's more, as retailers struggle to get a read on how much merchandise they have and where it's located, many are falling short on their promise to make it easy for shoppers to pick up their online orders in store. As a result, these businesses are likely to miss out on future sales from consumers whom they've disappointed in the past.

A man drives a forklift full of supplies at a store on Aug. 17, 2010, in Los Angeles. Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

"This is the time of year when it really becomes acute," said John Squire, CEO of retail analytics firm DynamicAction.

According to a study commissioned by his company and conducted by IHL Group, "out-of-stocks" accounted for $634.1 billion in lost retail sales for the year ended in the spring — 39 percent higher than in 2012. Likewise, overstocks contributed $471.9 billion in lost revenue, up 30 percent from three years prior. When a retailer has too much merchandise, it cuts into its margins.

This Is the Biggest Threat to Retail Sales Growth

The slide in performance comes as retailers are struggling to utilize the mounds of customer data they've acquired over the past few years and accurately forecast demand. Further complicating things is that as consumers buy more online, it's getting even harder for retailers to keep tabs on inventories.

Overstocks, in particular, are expected to be a big issue this holiday season, as a delay in cold temperatures has left retailers with too many jackets and boots. The industry has already warned that this will lead to severe markdowns toward the end of the season, eating away at their profits.

"You can only imagine what retailers have ahead of them as they try to manage this overstock problem that they have," Squire said.

While margins are expected to contract even further as the season progresses, they're already taking a hit. According to separate analysis by DynamicAction, retailers ahead of Black Friday were already selling about 21 percent fewer items at full price than they did at the same point in 2014.

On the flip side, a separate study by the GT Nexus, a supply chain platform, found that 75 percent of U.S. adults have come across an unavailable product in stores over the past year, with 63 percent encountering that issue online. As a result, the majority of these frustrated shoppers decided to shop at another retailer or buy nothing at all.

Where Wal-Mart, Target Are Falling Short

This shortage intensifies over the holiday season. Data from Adobe's Digital Index found that 35 percent of online sales volume went toward retailers' Thanksgiving Day door-buster deals, leading to "a lot more out of stocks" on Black Friday than the firm expected.

Items that were either out of stock or running low included Hasbro's Pie Face game and the 7-inch 8-gigabyte Amazon Fire, Adobe said.

Scot Wingo, executive chairman and founder of ChannelAdvisor, said retailers are particularly concerned about having deep enough inventories on peak shopping days, so that they don't disappoint consumers who woke up early for deals.

"That's what retailers are spending a lot more time on," he said.

They're also spending time working out the kinks in their "buy online, pickup in store" capabilities. According to a recent study by JDA Software Group, nearly 40 percent of consumers who have elected to use this service have encountered issues with the store's employees along the way. The most commonly stated problem was that workers took a long time, or were unable, to find an order in the store or computer system.

Meet the Holidays' Big Retail Spenders

Along with these issues, returns are also placing a bigger strain on retailers. Because many online purchases are made without a shopper seeing the product in person — meaning they aren't totally certain of its color or fit — returns are already 9.3 percent higher this holiday season compared with last year, according to DynamicAction.

Exacerbating the issue is the fact that many online shoppers, who are unsure of their size, will place multiple orders and return what doesn't fit. And retailers, who are trying to capture a larger share of online sales, are making it easier — and cheaper — for shoppers to return these items. Returns accounted for $642.6 billion in lost sales for the year ended in the spring.

"We're seeing higher returns and more profitable product coming back in those returns," Squire said.

Summary: Out-of-stocks, overstocks and returns are costing retailers $1.75 trillion a year as they attempt to overcome complex merchandise-tracking issues.


In recent years, somewhere between endless Tinder swipes and countless OkCupid matches, the dinner date has fallen by the wayside.

As online dating surges in popularity, few millennials have the time, money, or desire to sit with a stranger over a long meal. Only 7 in 10,000 messages in a recent OkCupid IAC survey suggested “grabbing some dinner” and a somewhat less scientific survey this reporter conducted of several dozen actively dating 20-somethings found that dinner has become a highly taboo first date. Last month, Moody’s Investors Service slashed its operating-profit growth forecast for the restaurant sector. (This appears to complement another trend noted by market researcher NPD Group that suggests 57 percent of meals in the US are eaten alone.)

There’s good reason why people don’t want to sit through a meal with a stranger for an hour, or often longer. One singleton this reporter spoke to called it her “worst nightmare,” and another said the idea of sitting through an unspecified number of hours of food, drinks or dessert makes her anxious. A recent article in Cosmopolitan detailed “Why First-Date Dinners Suck,” listing similar reasons: The date category is antiquated, the time frame of the event is too long if there is no chemistry, and eating is too “intimate.”

Dating online can be more miss than hit, even when you see the photo beforehand, so there is a risk that the dinner will feel even longer. “In theory, I like the dinner date, but nearly every time I’ve gone on one as a first date I feel like I’m trapped with somebody who got stale after the first 15 minutes,” said Christine Victoria Waller, a 35-year-old childhood educator who lives outside New York City. “For beginning dates, I prefer a cocktail someplace nice, with the option of it turning into dinner if we are feeling it.”

Online dating has been instrumental in this shift toward more casual outings like coffee or drinks, said April Masini, a relationship and etiquette expert. Location-based apps like Tinder and gay dating app Grindr have made the number of potential partners endless and the prospect of buying dinner for all of them impossible. In large cities like New York and Los Angeles, a dinner tab for two at a midprice restaurant can be well over $50, not including wine and aperitifs. Even for a casual dater going on one or two dinners a week or a month, the costs quickly add up.

Don’t miss: 10 biggest online dating photo mistakes

“Online dating creates an enormous number of first dates in a short period of time,” Masini said. And if you’re playing the field? You could end up having five dates a week or even five dates per weekend. This gives people on budgets good reasons to back away from pricey dinner dates “and to embrace less expensive and less time-consuming beverage dates,” she added. Given that studies suggest so many people lie on dates, it makes sense to make the first date a kiss-and-run.

There is a major upside to skipping dinner and going straight to coffee, too. Rejection after a coffee or drink feels less painful than one after an all-out dinner date on a Saturday night, Masini said. It’s also probably easier to “ghost” someone after a coffee — that is, not call them back — than a romantic evening where you have to spend time sharing so many intimate details of your life over a starter, entree and dessert. In the marathon structured dating world facilitated by these apps, too many failed outings like these can be demoralizing. Drink dates also allow the serial dater to fit in multiple dates in one night, if they want.

It’s also usually harder on the man’s wallet, studies show. Three-quarters of about 1,000 people asked in a 2014 survey by personal finance site NerdWallet favored men picking up the check after dinner, with only about 20 percent preferring to go Dutch and an anomalous 4 percent saying men shouldn’t pay the bill. According to MarketWatch reporter Emma Court: “I’m paraphrasing Jane Austen — but only just. Sure, women have made tremendous gains since the famous first line of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was published, but some of the same dynamics still stubbornly persist in heterosexual relationships today.”

Other romantics say the dinner date could make a comeback as people dating online grow tired of the endless swiping and seek more intimacy. “There is going to be a trend of getting out of this digital deluge and having real-life experiences,” said Brad Grossman, the founder of Zeitguide, where he advises business leaders on cultural and economic trends. This offers an opportunity for new platforms to emerge that take online dating to the next level, he said, partnering with apps to provide dinner and date deals and ideas. Indeed, Meetup.com caters to people who want to do more than have a quick drink or even hookup, although they focus more on group activities.

For those who do their research and feel sure that the relationship could have a future, it’s worth giving dinner a shot. Already some millennials see the value in old-fashioned dinner dates — like Elizabeth Whitney, a New York-based educator who describes herself as “heteroflexible” (that is, she considers herself heterosexual, but is open to dating members of the same sex).

“It’s not about the meal — more about the time investment,” she said. “If I’m unsure or uncomfortable about meeting someone for dinner, it means most likely I’m not feeling them as much as I should have.”

This article originally appeared on Marketwatch.

Summary: In recent years, somewhere between endless Tinder swipes and countless OkCupid matches, the dinner date has fallen by the wayside. As online dating surges in popularity, few millennials have the ti…


The DNA of Dog Dirt

Twenty-five hundred tons. That's how much manure was produced every day by the 200,000 horses that moved people and goods around New York City in the late 19th century. Much of the manure went uncollected, which posed a terrible problem. (This is to say nothing of the horse urine, the deafening clatter of hooves or the carcasses left to rot in the street.) The manure was so widespread and smelly and unsanitary that brownstones were built with their entrances on the second floor so that homeowners might rise above it.

Like so many seemingly overwhelming problems, this one was resolved, quite painlessly, by technology. The electric streetcar and then the automobile led to the disappearance of the horses, and with them went their dung.

Most of the animal dung produced in today's New York comes from our dogs. (Estimates of the dog population vary widely, but one million is a good guess.) All their poop doesn't just lie there, of course. In 1978, New York enacted its famous (and widely imitated) "pooper scooper" law, and the city is plainly cleaner, poop-wise, than it was.

But with a fine of just $50 for the first offense, the law doesn't provide much financial incentive to pick up after your dog. Nor does it seem to be vigorously enforced. Let's pretend that 99 percent of all dog owners do obey the law. That still leaves 10,000 dogs whose poop is left in public spaces each day. Over the last year, the city ticketed only 471 dog-waste violations, which suggests that the typical offender stands a roughly 1-in-8,000 chance of getting a ticket. So here's a puzzle: why do so many people pick up after their dogs? This would seem to be a case in which social incentives - the hard glare of a passer-by and the offender's feelings of guilt - are at least as powerful as financial and legal incentives.

If social forces get us most of the way there, how do we deal with the occasional miscreant who fails to scoop? After all, a walk through just about any New York neighborhood confirms that compliance with the law is hardly complete. The Parks Department, meanwhile, which conducts regular cleanliness checks of parks and playgrounds, says that dog poop accounts for 20 percent of its "cleanliness failures." Dog poop is plainly far less of a nuisance than horse manure ever was. But if you are, say, a parent who walks two kids to school every day and tries to keep all three of you from experiencing that telltale soft smush of a misstep, it is a nuisance nonetheless.

With horses, the solution was simply to eliminate them. Might there be a way to get rid of dog poop without getting rid of the dogs? It might help for a moment to think of a dog as if it were a gun. Using laws to eliminate guns has proved extremely difficult. A given gun lasts a very long time, and as with dogs, guns are widely loved. But getting rid of guns should never have been the point of gun control; the point, rather, ought to be getting rid of the misuse of guns - that is, the use of guns in crimes. Consequently, the most successful policies are those that directly punish misuse, like mandatory prison sentences for any crime involving a gun. In California and elsewhere, such measures have substantially reduced gun crime.

Similarly, the problem in New York is not so much with dogs per se. So perhaps attending to the real problem - their poop - will prompt a solution.

Here's an idea: DNA sampling. During the licensing procedure, every dog will have to provide a sample of saliva or blood to establish a DNA file. Then, whenever a pile of poop is found on the sidewalk, a sample can be taken to establish the offender's DNA. (Because stomachs and intestinal walls shed so many cells, poop is in fact a robust DNA source; during a murder trial in Indiana in 2002, the defendant was convicted in large part because the dog poop in his sneaker tread linked him to the scene of the crime.) Once the fecal DNA is matched to a given dog's DNA file, the dog's owner will be mailed a ticket. It might cost about $30 million to establish a DNA sample for all the dogs of New York. If people stop violating the law, then New York has spent $30 million for cleaner streets; if not, the $30 million is seed money for a new revenue stream.

Unfortunately, there's a big drawback to this plan. In order to match a pile of poop with its source, you will need to have every dog's DNA on file - and in 2003, the most recent year on record, only 102,004 dogs in New York were licensed. Even though a license is legally required, costs a mere $8.50 a year and can be easily obtained by mail, most dog owners ignore the law, and with good reason: last year, only 68 summonses were issued in New York City for unlicensed dogs. So even if the DNA plan were enacted today, most offenders would still go unpunished. In fact, it stands to reason that the typical licensed dog is less likely to offend than the typical unlicensed dog, since the sort of owner who is responsible enough to license his dog is also most likely responsible enough to clean up after it.

How, then, to get all of New York's dogs licensed? Instead of charging even a nominal fee, the city may want to pay people to license their dogs. And then, instead of treating the licensing law as optional, enforce it for real. Setting up random street checks for dog licenses may offend some New Yorkers, but it certainly dovetails nicely with the Giuliani-era "broken windows" approach to low-level crime.

Before you dismiss the entire dog-DNA idea as idiotic - which, frankly, we were about to do the moment it popped into our heads - consider this: it turns out that civic leaders in Vienna and Dresden have recently floated the same idea. (Indeed, one Vienna politician cited Mayor Giuliani as his inspiration.) Closer to home, an eighth-grade girl in Hoboken, N.J., has also proposed the DNA solution. During a meeting last year of the Hoboken City Council, Lauren Mecka, the daughter of a police captain, argued her dog-poop case. "While adults like yourselves are appalled and disgusted by the sight of the uncollected dog poop that adorns our parks and sidewalks," she said, "it is children like myself and younger who run the greater risk of contact and exposure. We're the ones who ride our bikes, throw our balls and roll our blades on the city's sidewalks. And we're the ones who have our picnics, stage our adventures and carry out our dragon-slaying fantasies on our parks' grassy lawns."

The council, Mecka says today, didn't seem to take her proposal seriously. Why? "They dismissed it, basically, because I was a 12-year-old kid."

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt are the authors of "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." More information can be found at www.freakonomics.com.

Summary: Can technology keep New York City scooped?


Tuesday, September 2th 2003, 7:12AM

The new horror flick "Jeepers Creepers 2" butchered the competition at the box office this holiday weekend, ending two weeks at the top for rival screamfest "Freddy vs. Jason."

It was a record $18.5 million Labor Day opening for "Jeepers Creepers 2," the gruesome, low-budget tale of a winged creature that drops in to feast on human prey every 23 years.

The film already made back its $17 million in production costs.

The original flick set the previous Labor Day record in 2001 with earnings of $15.8 million.

Still clawing away at each other, gore-loving archrivals Freddy and Jason sank to No. 7, pulling in $8.1 million.

"Freaky Friday," the comedy starring Jamie Lee Curtis, jumped two spots to second place, with earnings of $11.7 million, while the action film "S.W.A.T." fell one slot to third place, taking $10.5 million.

Kevin Costner's Western "Open Range" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," starring Johnny Depp, tied for fourth place, with $10.2 million.

The Disney pirate adventure has reaped $274.4 million in treasure during its eight weeks in theaters.

The weekend's top movies, based on studio estimates.

weeks released this weekend. to date.

1 Jeepers Creepers 2 1 $18.5M $18.5M.

2 Freaky Friday 4 $11.7M $90.0M.

3 S.W.A.T. 4 $10.5M $102.4M.

4 Open Range 3 $10.2M $42.9M.

4 Pirates of the Caribbean 8 $10.2M $274.4M.

6 Seabiscuit 6 $ 8.2M $103.7M.

7 Freddy vs. Jason 3 $ 8.1M $ 73.4M.

8 The Medallion 2 $ 5.7M $ 16.4M.

9 Uptown Girls 3 $ 5.2M $ 30.1M.

10 My BossÂ Daughter 2 $ 4.5M $ 11.6M.

Summary: The new horror flick "Jeepers Creepers 2"butchered the competition at the box office this holiday weekend, ending two weeks at the top for rival screamfest "Freddy vs. Jason."It was a record $18.5 million Labor Day opening for "Jeepers Creepers 2,"the gruesome, low-budget tale of a winged creature that drops in to feast on human prey every 23 years. The film already made back its $17


Opinion by JOHN STOSSELSept. 9, 2009

I wish President Obama would say to Congress: Members of Congress, I ask you to address our fiscal emergency.

In this July 20, 2009 photo, President Barack Obama talks about his plan for health care reform...

In this July 20, 2009 photo, President Barack Obama talks about his plan for health care reform following a roundtable discussion with health care providers, during a visit to Children's National Medical Center in Washington. The teddy bear in the background is the hospital logo. Time is running out for a two-party compromise on health care as a bipartisan group of six Finance Committee senators considers a new proposal that might be the last, best hope for an overhaul agreement.

In 1964, President Johnson won a landslide victory -- quite similar to mine. His election also brought liberals into Congress. The next year, they created the first government-run health care plan: Medicare. They meant well, but unfortunately, this was the height of fiscal irresponsibility. I know Medicare is popular with the elderly. Of course it is. Everyone likes getting free things. But it is unsustainable.

Retirees believe that their Medicare bills are paid from a "trust fund" that was created with deductions from their paychecks. But this is a politician's lie.

In truth, our predecessors spent every penny of those contributions immediately. They spent them on wars and pork that helped them get re-elected. The money for current retirees' health care is taken from today's workers.

This Ponzi scheme worked for a while. But then more people had the nerve to live longer. The average life span increased from 71 to 78 years. When Medicare began, there were five workers for every Medicare recipient. Now there are only four. And by 2030, the Board of Medicare Trustees expects there to be just 2.4. Unless millions of new young workers suddenly arrive from some other planet, there is no way that there will be enough workers to pay the Medicare benefits that we politicians have promised. Medicare's unfunded liability is $37 trillion -- yes, trillion. It's a scam. We politicians should be ashamed of what we promised our constituents.

We locked up Bernie Madoff for less.

Therefore, today I apologize for defending the absurd health care bills that have emerged from your committees -- proposals that would add trillions of dollars of additional debt to an already unsustainable system.

Instead, I propose that we raise the Medicare eligibility age. I propose that wealthy seniors receive Medicare only until they recover as much money as they paid in. After that, you rich people should pay for your own damn health care.

Summary: John Stossel on Obama's speech tonight.


Seven months ago, ABC News' "20/20" began following the journey of a young woman named Ashley. The story below describes the early days of our profiling of Ashley, in March and April of 2010.

Outside of Minneapolis, Minn., 21-year-old Ashley sits in the furnished basement of her high-end suburban home, a room that she calls her "dungeon."

"I'm literally just rotting," she said, "There's nothing I can think of that's good in my life right now."

Ashley lives the life of a full-time junkie, smoking as many as 100 hits of heroin a day. Her life is consumed by the multiple trips she takes into the city every day to get her fix, and a desperate search for the more than $100 a day she needs to pay for her addiction.

"It's the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning, its the last thing I think of when I go to bed," she said, "It's just what my life is revolved around."

Watch the full story on "20/20" tonight at 10 p.m. ET

Life wasn't always like this for Ashley. She was a good student in high school and college, and hoped to one day become a social worker.

"She's a beautiful girl and she just had so many dreams," her mother, Cheri, recalled. "And then it all just disappeared."

Ashley experimented with drugs during her freshman year of college, and she regrets that one day, she tried smoking hash with a friend. After a few weeks of using the drug, her friend came clean; the drug that they'd been smoking was actually heroin.

"He was addicted to this, and he wanted somebody else with him to share it," Ashley said.

By the time she realized the truth, Ashley was hooked. Over the next year, she dropped out of school and quit her part-time job as she sank deeper into addiction.

Heroin is a drug that has haunted our country for generations, but in recent years it has posed an increasing threat to American youth. Since 2007, the number of heroin users in the U.S. has nearly doubled, and half of all first-time users are younger than 26 years old, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

Summary:
It's a nightmare that no parent wants to face: discovering that your child has fallen prey to the deadly pull of heroin.
On this week's 20/20, Chris Cuomo follows the journeys of three young people caught in the powerful grip of heroin addiction. In the course of eight months of reporting, 20/20 was aided by Caron Treatment Centers, which has provided treatment for addicts and their families for more than 50 years.


By BILL BELL Daily News Staff Writer

Friday, January 28th 2000, 2:12AM

Elizabeth Zeller was sitting on a mat in the waiting room of Bellevue Hospital's pediatric center, reading "Let's Go for a Ride" to a half-dozen toddlers.

Looking on, like an approving godmother, stood Linda van Schaick.

"I know it looks like they're learning to read," she said, "but they're not. They're learning to love books."

Good thing, too, because these young patients were at least two or three years from their ABCs.

The program is called Reach Out and Read, and van Schaick is, in fact, its godmother - or, as her business card puts it, program director. And its founder at Bellevue.

There are several unusual things about Reach Out and Read, one of several programs sponsored by Children of Bellevue Inc., a 50-year-old nonprofit organization that provides quality-of-life services to pediatric patients and parents - most of them on welfare.

For one, every child will go home with a new book, presented personally by his or her doctor. Doctors make getting a new book part of the child's regular checkup.

For another, parents will get a pep talk from doctors on the value of reading to their children.

"We don't ask the parents to report back," said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, the program's medical director, "but we know from two studies that the program works, that it helps in their emotional and intellectual development."

Reach Out targets kids ages 6 months to 5 years and introduces them to books even before they see the doctor. Volunteers like Zeller, a Dreyfus Corp. junior executive from the upper East Side, read stories while children and parents wait for their appointments.

"I do this on my lunch hour every couple of weeks," said Zeller, one of nine Drey- fus volunteers. Other volunteers include retirees, pre-med students from New

York University, actors and authors.

Dreyfus gives $50,000 a year to the program and encourages employees to volunteer. Scholastic, publisher of, among many other titles, the Harry Potter series, donates thousands of books - but no Potters, because these kids are too young.

Hundreds of hospitals around the country - 24 of them in New York - offer Reach Out programs, but the first one was launched a decade ago in Boston.

Van Schaick heard about it several years ago and thought it was a great idea. "But we were doing something else at the time," she said.

Then, five years ago, the Boston Medical Center donated $6,000 to Children of Bellevue to start Reach Out.

Van Schaick, 51, was a natural as founder. She had been involved in Bellevue's pediatric programs since 1972, the year she received a master's degree in infant and toddler development and parenting from the Bank Street College of Education.

She already had a degree in anthropology from the State University of New York at Albany - "at the time, it made sense."

"Bellevue hired me to change its pediatric recreation program to a child development program," she said. "And after that, there was always something more to do."

Born in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and reared in Elmont, L.I., van Schaick grew up in a family that read a lot. Her father was a dentist, and she was one of four children. Today, all four work in some area of medicine, and two are doctors.

"Learning to read is like learning to walk and talk," she said. "It takes time and practice."

It also takes books. Typically, a doctor will give away 45 books a week, a Bellevue total of 15,000 or so a year, which is covered by publishers' gifts, purchases by van Schaick - about $20,000 worth per year - and book drives ("gently used copies, please").

"Usually, children come in every six months," she said. "So by the time they are 5, they have a library of 10 beautiful new books."

Van Schaick lives in Montclair, N.J., with her son Alex, 15, and yes, she said, she read to him when he was young.

She also joined a Montclair book club, but she didn't last long. "It wasn't for me," she said. "I didn't quit the reading, I just quit the club."

So what books are best at what age? Linda van Schaick and Dr. Alan Mendelsohn suggest the following:

6 months: "What Do Babies Do?" by Debby Slier (Random House).

9 months: "I Am a Baby," by Elizabeth Hathon (McClanahan).

12 months: "Mommy and Me," by Neil Ricklen (Simon & Schuster).

15 months: "This is Me," by Lenore Blegvad (Random House).

24 months: "Clifford's Bathtime," by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic).

30 months: "More, More, More, Said the Baby," by Vera Williams (Scholastic).

3 years: "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," by Eric Carle (Scholastic).

4 years: "The Snowy Day," by Ezra Jack Keats (Scholastic).

5 years: "Corduroy," by Dan Freeman (Scholastic).

Summary: Winning kids over to books By BILL BELL Daily News Staff Writer Elizabeth Zeller was sitting on a mat in the waiting room of Bellevue Hospital's pediatric center, reading "Let's Go for a Ride"to a half-dozen toddlers. Looking on, like an approving godmother, stood Linda van Schaick. "I know it looks like they're learning to read,"she said, "but they're not. They're learning to love books."Good thing, too, because these young patients were


A self-proclaimed imitator of Michael Jackson's dance moves, will Roshon Fegan have an advantage over the other contestants on

Only time will tell, but there's no doubt that Disney's

star, 20, is one talented fella.

Also highly skilled in songwriting, singing and acting, Fegan is a quadruple threat.

Here's what else you need to know about him:

's family. After meeting son Jaden at Dylan and Cole Sprouse's birthday a few years ago, Fegan and the young actor became "really good friends." The Disney star has nothing but praise for Jaden, who he tells

Money and cars aren't Fegan's topics of choice when it comes to writing lyrics. The hip-hop fan much prefers empowering rhymes about education. "If you believe, you can also achieve. Stay in school 'cause that's what's cool," he raps on

Like many of his fellow Disney stars, Fegan, who has 156,352 followers, uses Twitter as a place to connect with fans and promote new material. Formerly known as @YaBoyRo based on his nickname, he now goes by

Known as the "Romix Swag Version," Fegan

an electro mix of Adele's Grammy Award-winning hit. In his 5:42 clip, he plays bits of the song, while showing some of the process that went into creating the mix.

Fegan and a few of his peers met the First Lady earlier this month when she came out for Disney's Magic of Healthy Living and Let's Move campaigns. He

a photo of the exciting interaction that included a warm embrace from Mrs. Obama.

Have a question for Disney star and DWTS contestant Roshon Fegan? Send it to @peoplemag on Twitter with #Roshon and it could appear PEOPLE.com!

Summary: The quadruple threat can sing, dance, act and play music


OAKLAND, Calif. — Barbara Dane has lived a life full of glowing superlatives. The noted jazz critic Leonard Feather famously branded her “Bessie Smith in stereo.” Ebony magazine, in its first-ever feature on a white woman, way back in 1959, called Dane “startlingly blonde,” a “pale-faced young lady’’ who could help keep the blues tradition alive.

But her most enduring title is one she doesn’t deserve. At 85, Barbara Dane is one of the true unsung heroes of American music, a singer and activist who is often relegated to footnotes in the history books.

Summary: Barbara Dane has lived a life full of glowing superlatives. The noted jazz critic Leonard Feather famously branded her “Bessie Smith in stereo.” Ebony magazine, in its first-ever feature on a white woman, way back in 1959, called Dane “startlingly blonde,” a “pale-faced young lady’’woman’’who could help keep the blues tradition alive. At 85, Barbara Dane is one of the true unsung heroes of American music, a singer and activist who is often relegated to footnotes in the history books.


George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America

Illustrated. 404 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.

For research purposes, Henry Wiencek paid a visit to George Washington's Mount Vernon and immersed himself in that tourist attraction's re-enactment of slavery. The hands-on farm supervisor soon had him thumping at a pile of straw with a flail. ''This was one method of threshing,'' writes Mr. Wiencek (whose earlier books include ''Mansions of the Virginia Gentry'' and ''Plantations of the Old South''). ''Instantly, the tedium of the task became obvious -- the same motion in the same place in endless repetition. I could not imagine doing this from the early dawn to the late dusk of a summer day.''

In his revisionist new book about Washington, Mr. Wiencek examines the first president's own dawning comprehension of what slavery entailed. And the process of fathoming Washington's moral evolution is not a simple one. As the least candid of Founding Fathers (''then, as now, no one could quite tell how he made up his mind about something,'' Mr. Wiencek writes), he did not leave the kinds of diaries or letters that have made John Adams, Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin such hits as historical subjects. But Mr. Wiencek, threshing and all, rises to the challenge of turning Washington's very furtiveness into a source of fascination.

''An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America'' is not a book packaged with high praise from other historians. Instead, a full page of text on the back cover is devoted solely to articulating Mr. Wiencek's complex overview. However lionized Washington was as a military leader, he was far more wishy-washy where slavery was concerned. His path to enlightenment regarding race was something other than a hero's journey.

In no other realm was he so susceptible to pressure, nor was he faced with such intractable resistance to change (not least of it from his wealthy, self-interested wife). In no other realm did he behave as badly. (When he needed dentures, he was not above trying to appropriate slaves' teeth.) His final redeeming gesture -- leaving a will that freed slaves -- cannot be seen as a simple, bold stroke. It makes sense only in the larger, richer context that Mr. Wiencek's book vividly creates.

''An Imperfect God'' follows Washington from a difficult childhood (his father's early death would prefigure his own) to a marriage that brought him great privilege and responsibility. ''He came of age, and learned to be a master, on a racial borderland where the definitions and boundaries of race were dangerously fluid,'' Mr. Wiencek writes. This book offers many glimpses into the ways in which intertwined black and white family histories revealed the monstrousness of slavery-sustaining laws.

By nature, Washington was sufficiently prim to have copied out a document entitled ''Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.'' (Among these rules: ''Talk not with Meat in your Mouth'' and ''Kill no Vermin as Fleas, lice ticks &cc in the Sight of Others''). He also kept a record entitled ''Where & How My Time is Spent.'' For a man of this temperament, any slaves' reluctance to hold themselves to similar standards was infuriating. As a younger man, Washington could complain about matters like ''the deception with respect to the Potatoes.'' He could also be party to a slave raffle, documented by Mr. Wiencek, in which children could be won as prizes.

The breaking up of slave families for reasons of profit was, by Mr. Wiencek's account, the first outrage to penetrate Washington's self-interest. He traces Washington's first awareness of this to time he spent in Williamsburg, Va., witnessing slave auctions held in response to an owner's embezzling. ''In modern terms, it was as if the collapse of a Wall Street brokerage, due to the malfeasance of its officers, had led to the sale of the children of the cleaning staff to pay the debts of corporate vice presidents,'' Mr. Wiencek writes.

And as a leader of soldiers, Washington was acutely aware of the importance of black soldiers even as he waffled over the question of their eventual freedom. ''George Washington won the Revolutionary War with an army that was more integrated than any military force until the Vietnam War,'' Mr. Wiencek maintains. His book offers evidence that the role of black soldiers under Washington's command was under-reported simply because it was taken for granted.

Rather than a debunking account, ''An Imperfect God'' is one that measures the slow growth of Washington's willingness to change. The author, with a great interest in genealogical research, points to many instances in which the situations of Washington's own real and alleged family members (including West Ford, whose possible identity as Washington's illegitimate son is explored but rejected -- he may instead have been a nephew) could not help but provide impetus for change.

One of the most strange and compelling stories included here is that of Ona Judge, a slave who escaped the Washington household and brought out the dissembling side of the president who supposedly could not lie. When Washington resorted to illegal means to pursue this woman, he concocted the idea that she had been stolen away by a Frenchman. This notion, Mr. Wiencek reveals, may have come from a popular novel that Martha Washington read.

''An Imperfect God'' has its own imperfections. However painstaking Mr. Wiencek is in some regards, he can be imprecise and even self-contradictory about minor matters. (Did Washington meet the black poet Phillis Wheatley, or only correspond with her? The book acknowledges uncertainty, then uses the word ''met'' anyhow.) But about the bigger picture, this much is clear: Washington changed. And the force of his moral and intellectual progress can now be understood more deeply than ever before.

Photo: Henry Wiencek (Photo by Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Summary: AN IMPERFECT GOD  George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America  By Henry Wiencek  Illustrated. 404 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $26.      For research purposes, Henry Wiencek paid a visit to George Washington's Mount Vernon and immersed himself in that tourist attraction's re-enactment of slavery. The hands-on farm supervisor soon had him thumping at a pile of straw with a flail. ''This was one method of threshing,'' writes Mr. Wiencek (whose earlier books include ''Mansions of the Virginia Gentry'' and ''Plantations of the Old South''). ''Instantly, the tedium of the task became obvious -- the same motion in the same place in endless repetition. I could not imagine doing this from the early dawn to the late dusk of a summer day.''


Lake Street Dive was ready for its close-up, which came courtesy of YouTube rather than Mr. DeMille.

The band’s performance video of the Jackson 5 hit “I Want You Back” generated Internet buzz shortly after Lake Street Dive posted it on YouTube in May to promote its covers EP, “Fun Machine.” The sass ’n’ class clip shows singer Rachael Price, bassist Bridget Kearney, trumpet player and guitarist Mike Olson, and drummer Mike Calabrese delivering a smoky soul rendition of the tune outdoors on a Boston neighborhood sidewalk. To date, the video has been seen more than 500,000 times, and got a little help when actor Kevin Bacon tweeted the clip.

But unlike a lot of Web sensations, Lake Street Dive had substance behind the flash.

“The video definitely sparked things, but we had eight years of touring together by that point and our show was polished. So anyone who came to see us live after seeing the video could see that we had a lot to back it up,” Price says.

The members of Lake Street Dive met while students at the New England Conservatory and played around the city for several years before relocating as a group to New York City. But the fan base here is still sizable, so much so that Lake Street Dive decided that if it was going to return to its old haunt the Lizard Lounge, it would have to be done as a four-night stand to accommodate demand. The band also plays one show at the Narrows Center for the Arts in Fall River on Friday.

Lake Street Dive fuses two currently popular trends — retro soul and string-band folk. But it’s not a straight-up Adele-meets-Avetts sound.

“Some of what we do is definitely trendy right now, but these have always been core elements in the band,” says Price. “When we formed, we had no guitar. Mike [Olson] was just playing trumpet.”

But as the band developed, it got its pop chops, putting catchy hooks into the smartly arranged jazz, soul, and roots elements the members brought into the band.

“We hadn’t settled on a sound when we started. After three or four years we decided to be more soulful and funky. I always sang jazz and soul, so that’s where I was most comfortable,” Price says.

Kearney’s rustic bass plucking, Olson’s bright horn parts (he still plays the trumpet even now with the band’s more pronounced guitar parts), and Calabrese’s full-bodied drumming work interesting details into the band’s R&B/pop foundation.

This unorthodox hodgepodge opened a variety of doors in 2012. The band fit into the folksy vibe of Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” and recently completed dates with progressive bluegrass band Infamous Stringdusters. In a couple of weeks, Lake Street Dive will be out with Yonder Mountain String Band — more pickers — then team with soul legends Mavis Staples and later Lee Fields.

“No one knows exactly what kind of band to put us with, but the bluegrass shows have been fun,” says Price.

And fun is important to this band. The Lizard series, for example, will have Boys Nights and Girls Nights. The guys’ nights will feature opener Madam Macadam, a side project for Olson and Calabrese. The gals’ nights will feature the Fundies, a band with Price and Kearney. And neither opener sounds like an echo of Lake Street Dive.

“We’re insatiable when it comes to learning about music and exploring music. I think part of being a musician is exploring other sides of your musicianship,” says Calabrese. “It’s a good way to cleanse your palette.”

Calabrese and Olson formed Madam Macadam with Will Graefe and Matt Meyer from Miss Tess and the Talkbacks (friends from Jamaica Plain as well as Signature Sounds record-label mates) and the band tips more toward fuzzed-out rock.

Kearney and Price join Crooked Still fiddler Brittany Haas and singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy in the Fundies. The band released a country-flavored EP in the summer.

“When we started, we had a lot of playfulness, but ultimately that alone wasn’t satisfying, not to the extent that we wanted to take the band,” Calabrese says. “It was the songs then that became the focus. We became way more serious about arrangements and vibe, and honing the sound.”

But Calabrese assures, “we still play around a lot.”

While “I Want You Back” became a calling card for Lake Street Dive, the band’s originals are impressive in their own right. “Hello? Goodbye!” finds its groove in samba; “Funny Not to Care” is ethereal blues; and “Don’t Make Me Hold Your Hand” offers fresh soul-pop. The band has an album’s worth of new songs to play alongside these concert staples. That new record will be out this year and much touring will ensue.

While Lake Street Dive’s material makes it a good fit on many different bills, there’s one in particular Calabrese would like to see happen.

“I fantasize about the day we open for Bonnie Raitt and she and Rachael sing together,” he says.

And it’s a fantasy that actually seems to make a lot of sense.

At: Narrows Center for the Arts, 16 Anawan St., Fall River.

Friday, 8 p.m. Tickets: $18-$20. 508-324-1926, www.narrowscenter.org. Also at the Lizard Lounge, 1667 Massachusetts Ave.,

Cambridge, Wednesday and Thursday, 8:30 p.m. with Madam Macadam; next Friday and next Saturday, 8:30 p.m. with the Fundies.

Tickets: $15 per night. 617-547-0759, www.lizardloungeclub.com


'This is Holland," a sales assistant tells me, as I scan bookshelves generously stocked with English as well as Dutch works. "We are not so religious. Yes, we have more mosques now - but we have also a lot of empty churches." And here's a great thing to do with such atmospheric yet dormant spaces. I'm in central Maastricht, standing in what must be one of the finest bookshops in the world. That's quite a claim. Yet who could fail to be thrilled by this extraordinary venture?

Selexyz Dominicanen - a store created from a merger between the town's Bergman's bookshop, the Academische Boekhandel, and the Dutch Selexyz bookshop chain - is housed in the thrilling setting of a 13th-century Dominican church. This haunting building was once part of a friary knocked about over the centuries by various invading armies. Right up until last Christmas, in possibly its strangest incarnation, it was being used by the citizens of Maastricht as a glorious, or possibly inglorious, indoor bike pound. As for the Dominicans, they were driven out by Napoleon in 1794. After a brief spell as a parish church, this magnificent Gothic prayer hall - it has no tower or transepts, in keeping with the rules of the clerical order that built it - was turned into nothing holier than a warehouse.

Today, the church, consecrated in 1294, could hardly be more popular. The beautifully restored building is an attraction in its own right, and yet the installation of a towering, three-storey black steel bookstack in the long, high nave, together with a fashionable if somewhat noisy cafe in the choir, works extraordinarily well. Church and bookshop look as if they might have been made for one another.

As more European churches become redundant, we need to dream up new uses for them. Happily, books and churches have always gone together: in the beginning, as St John tells us, was the Word; the word was, in time, written down in books. At first, these were mighty tomes read by priests alone. Such was their value that, at the time this church was built, they were chained to vaulted library walls.

The bookshop installation here is by the Dutch architects Merkx + Girod, founded in 1998 and led from Amsterdam by Evelyne Merkx and Patrice Girod. The dominant new element in the church is the high-rise bookshelf structure stretching up to the stone vaults. Popular books are kept on lower shelves, while academic, esoteric and theological works are kept closer to heaven. These are reached by stairs within the sleek, well-made bookstack, although there is also a lift.

Views from the top shelf along the nave of the church are nothing short of uplifting, while just above your head are the faded remains of ceiling paintings from around 1337; in a very different style, there are others by the artist Jan Vessens, depicting saints and sinners and episodes from the Bible, dating from 1619. It is rare to get so close to such paintings anywhere, let alone in a bookshop. What other store can boast ceiling paintings dating back so far?

The sheer scale of the black steel bookstack was necessary for two reasons. One was that a spread of shelves along and across the nave would have detracted from its character; the more worldly reason was that Selexyz needs 1,200 sq m of selling space to make the shop's finances add up. Given that the church has a floor area of just 750 sq m, the only way to go was up. The bookstack, though big, is not one great, irredeemable slab. You can walk through and up it, and it frames views of the nave on both sides beyond it. The bays of the nave are also neatly lined with bookshelves, so what you see through the bookstack are rows of books beyond rows of books.

It has some similarities with a normal bookstore, though. The most popular works, the bestsellers and the ones on special offer, are stored on low tables, set about with minimalist modern chairs, on either side of the main bookstack. All this works well, and no sin is committed against the fabric or the spirit of the church.

The one booming note that, inevitably, brings the core values of the 21st century to life and distracts from the great theological works stacked up on the high shelves is that of the hissing of coffee machines and the clanking of china cups. Dominican plainchant has clearly given way here to orders for cappuccinos and the gurgling of hot milk as it is frothed to make the drink that takes it name from the garb of Capuchin monks.

The central feature of the cafe is a long, cruciform table lit by a lamp suspended from the stone vaults in the guise of a modern halo. In centuries gone by, such cheekiness - a table in the shape of the crucifix - would have been seen as blasphemous. Today, it seems fine, as does the offer of a glass of red wine from the chic bar. Despite its cafe and the large numbers of people who come here, the atmosphere is not unruly. Bookshops, except those in popular museums and galleries, tend to be a little hushed, and this one does seem to calm the nerves.

It would be a fine thing if the store promoted interest in the extraordinary, if often overlooked, wealth of Maastricht's churches. Surely anyone with any curiosity will wonder what lies beyond the doors of the churches beyond the bookshop friary? Maastricht boasts such wonders as the Romanesque Church of Our Lady, which looks and feels like a fairytale fortress (the city is said to have been besieged at least 21 times), and St Servatius, a glorious marriage of calm and rounded Romanesque and flamboyant and pointed Gothic design.

Merkx + Girod has been involved in remodelling a number of historic buildings in the Netherlands, including Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh Museum. It has also designed numerous shops and restaurants, including the cafe in Rem Koolhaas's congress hall in Rotterdam, and is currently busy on interiors for the Hermitage Amsterdam. This outpost of the St Petersburg institution, due to open later this year, is housed in the beautiful Amstelhof, a classical, soft-red-brick building built in the 1680s by Hans Petersom, the city architect, as a nursing home for elderly women. It could easily be by Christopher Wren.

But the Maastricht bookshop is Merkx + Girod's finest work. And its transformation is, I think, a lesson to us all. Yes, we need to think up new uses for old churches, but we must also consider ways of converting them without altering their venerable fabric. A church is a prayer set in stone, and even if we do not use them as they were intended, their very presence is reassuring and comforting, reminding us that there is more to life than getting and spending, trade and toil. The Dominican church in Maastricht strikes just the right note. Its architects deserve a blessing.

Summary: Is this the world's finest bookshop? Jonathan Glancey on a new life for an old church


BERLIN "Seinfeld," the most popular sitcom in America, has just died on German television, where viewers prefer vintage episodes of "Hogan's Heroes.

" Munich-based network Kabel 1 tried scheduling "Seinfeld" in an early-evening slot, but with poor results. "The ratings went as low as 1%, which is not acceptable," said Nickolas Paalzow, head of programing at Kabel 1. "The humor is simply too American. 'Seinfeld' takes place in a world most Germans cannot relate to.

" Yet "Hogan's Heroes," which touches the nerve of Germany's World War II past, has found an audience in the same time slot. "It would not have worked 20 years ago, but now people have enough distance that they can laugh about that time," Paalzow said. The sitcom runs back-to-back with "MASH," and Paalzow said he believed audiences appreciate "the anti-war message" of the two series. Variety Not on the run Paul McCartney has to be shaking his head a little bit. In 1989 and 1993, he embarked on world tours to support new records, and while the tours were widely hailed, neither record sold especially well. Now his latest new record, "Flaming Pie," is looking like a genuine hit and he has no tour to push it along (partly because he's staying home to be with wife Linda as she fights breast cancer). So McCartney is systematically working the press, which this week means a twofer with NBC a three-parter on the morning "Today Show," with Matt Lauer doing the interview, and a Thursday-night spot with Conan O'Brien (12:35 a.

m.). Picking O'Brien for his only late-night date is classic McCartney looking for the audience where he has the most to gain. A young crowd, like O'Brien's, is less likely than a Leno or Letterman viewer to know or care that he was once a Beatle. These are sit-down interviews (not musical performances), and both Lauer and O'Brien flew to Britain to tape them. David Hinckley Travel tribute to Kuralt Cable's Travel Channel pays tribute tomorrow night to one of TV's great wanderers, with a prime-time airing of six old episodes of "On the Road With Charles Kuralt.

" The CBS newsman, who died July 4, spent 13 of his 37 years at the network as a motor-home vagabond, wandering the back roads for CBS' "Evening News.

" The half-hour compilation shows will air on the Travel Channel from 8 to 11 p.

m., and showcase some of Kuralt's most beloved TV essays. Among them: The 50th wedding anniversary (and family reunion) of Alex and Mary Chandler, Mississippi sharecroppers who sent all nine of their children to college (1978); Jethro Mann of Belmont, N.

C., who bought bikes for every kid in town (1983), and the story of P. Stevens Potter, a Nebraska lawyer whose hobby is selling hot dogs at football games (1986). "Very few journalists have touched the heart of this country like Charles Kuralt," said Bahnson Stanley, general manager of the Travel Channel. "We want to honor his inimitable spirit, his self-effacing style and his enduring love of the road less traveled.

" As noted here yesterday, cable's A & E channel is also marking Kuralt's passing, Saturday night at 8, with a quickly assembled edition of "Biography.

" Scott Williams Dot's all . . . Cable's Court TV will offer coverage of today's hearing of the Nevada Athletic Commission about Mike Tyson, 12:15 p.

m. . . . HBO has given a 13-week renewal to "The Chris Rock Show," with new episodes scheduled to air Friday nights beginning Sept. 12. The late-night talk-comedy-variety series debuted in February with a five-week run. Earlier this week, Rock was picked to host the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 4, live from Radio City Music Hall . . . With Tiger Woods cranking up the heat for golf, CBS Sports has just signed a seven-year contract extension for the PGA Championship, one of the four stops on the PGA's Grand Slam. The network began covering the PGA Championship in 1991 and already had signed one renewal, due to expire next year. The tourney is played each August and will be televised this year from the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaronec k. . . . Tonight at 10, ABC's "PrimeTime Live" and reporter John Quinones look into an Iowa City police-shooting death last year. Eric Shaw was in his studio, talking on the telephone to his business partner, when police burst in and fatally shot him. So far, none of the officers involved has been tried or reprimanded. . . . That red M & M better known as comedian Jon Lovitz appears on Charles Grodin's CNBC talk show tonight at 11. Janeane Garofalo is also on the show. . . . CNN says the Pathfinder probe's Mars landing on the Fourth of July produced its highest ratings for the holiday in a decade, peaking with a household audience of 1.

4 million from 8-8:30 p.

m. . . . Cable's USA will air Francis Ford Coppola's crime classics "The Godfather" and "The Godfather II" over four consecutive nights, starting July 22, and then offer up the revised nine-hour chronological version that he made for TV in 1977. S.

Summary:
BERLIN  "Seinfeld," the most popular sitcom in America, has just died on German television, where viewers prefer vintage episodes of "Hogan's Heroes."
  Munich-based network Kabel 1 tried scheduling "Seinfeld" in an early-evening slot, but with poor results.
  "The ratings went as low as 1%, which is not acceptable," said Nickolas Paalzow, head of programing at Kabel 1. "The humor is simply too American. 'Seinfeld' takes place in a world most Germans cannot relate


Johnny Manziel, the biggest star entering this year’s NFL Draft, is coming to an advertisement near you.

And when he appears in commercials sipping Gatorade — or perhaps Powerade, or maybe Muscle Milk — the Heisman quarterback will make his pitch on a contract negotiated by Fenway Sports Management, the marketing arm for the parent company of the Red Sox.

In landing Manziel, who picked up the nickname Johnny Football while starring at Texas A&M, Fenway Sports Management added its most high-profile individual client Tuesday since partnering with basketball icon LeBron James and his marketing company, LRMR Management, in 2011.

Fenway Sports Management and LRMR will represent Manziel jointly, with the goal to help him transcend sports and become a global brand in the mold of James, who has acted as an informal adviser to Johnny Football since he became the first freshman to win the Heisman Trophy, college football’s top honor, in 2012.

Mark Lev, managing director of Fenway Sports Management, said Manziel’s relationship with James facilitated the deal. Bradley Beckworth, an attorney for Manziel, added that the quarterback wants to emulate James’s business success.

For Fenway Sports Management, signing Manziel represents a widening of its portfolio, which is composed mostly of franchises under the Fenway Sports Group umbrella — including the Red Sox, Liverpool Football Club, and Roush Fenway Racing — and companies that advertise with those teams, such as Dunkin’ Donuts, JetBlue Airways, and Gulf Oil.

John W. Henry, principal owner of Fenway Sports Group, also owns The Boston Globe.

In addition, representing Manziel is a chance for Fenway Sports Management to flex its full marketing muscle by building an athlete’s brand from the ground up.

“LeBron was an international sports icon and a global celebrity before we got involved,” said Lev. “Johnny needs to perform on the football field, and that’s really where the focus is now. But providing he does that there’s huge upside for him from a business standpoint.”

Lev added that inking Manziel is not a signal that Fenway Sports Management plans to regularly represent athletes, though the company might pursue relationships with other stars who double as “blue-chip brands.”

Many draft pundits predict that the 21-year-old Manziel, known as a dynamic playmaker on the field and a lightning rod off it, will be among the first players chosen when NFL teams select eligible amateurs in May.

Fenway Sports Management’s work for Manziel will be confined to pursuing off-field business opportunities in the media and entertainment industries, and endorsements. The quarterback has hired separate firms to handle football contract negotiations and public relations.

The firm could prove particularly helpful in promoting Manziel abroad, as it has for James. Fenway Sports Management brokered a deal with Dunkin’ Donuts that made the four-time NBA most valuable player a spokesman for the coffee-and-doughnut chain in Asia, for instance. A business relationship between Liverpool FC and Tencent Holdings, a Chinese company with media subsidiaries, led to James becoming a spokesman for the NBA 2K online video game, Lev added.

Fenway Sports Management receives a commission on deals it negotiates for James, but the Manziel referral exemplified Red Sox chairman Tom Werner’s statement at the outset of the James partnership that “we can open doors for LeBron, and LeBron can open doors for us.”

The opportunity for international exposure is what drew James to collaborate with Fenway Sports Management, the star has said, though he and business partner Maverick Carter had a marketing company of their own. James also received a minority stake in the Liverpool club as part of the 2011 deal.

In its annual ranking of the world’s top-grossing athletes last year, Forbes magazine estimated that James earned $42 million in endorsements — more than twice what he made playing for the Miami Heat — in 2012, his first full year in partnership with Fenway Sports Management.

Manziel has said in interviews that he has leaned on James for guidance, especially during periods of intense scrutiny, such as when he was investigated by the NCAA before last season on suspicion that he accepted impermissible payments for autographing memorabilia. The NCAA found evidence only that Manziel had allowed his name to be used for commercial purposes, a lesser violation, and he was suspended for the first half of one game.

Manziel also has a reputation for socializing, with visits to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and Mexico on spring break documented on social media. Last spring, he closed his Twitter account in an effort to keep his personal life more private.

The challenge for Fenway Sports Management will be to convince companies that the gifted but unpredictable Manziel is a wise choice to represent their brands, said Stephen A. Greyser, a sports marketing specialist at Harvard University.

“The question will be, if you’re a company that’s looking for an endorser, do you want to be ahead of the pack with Johnny Manziel, who may turn out to be a better Tim Tebow but not a big-time star in the NFL?” Greyser said.

Summary: Johnny Manziel, the biggest star entering this year’s NFL Draft, is coming to an advertisement near you. And when he appears in commercials sipping Gatorade — or perhaps Powerade, or maybe Muscle Milk — the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback will make his pitch on a contract negotiated by Fenway Sports Management, the marketing arm of the Red Sox’s parent company. In landing Manziel, who starred at Texas A&M, Fenway Sports Management on Tuesday added its most high-profile individual client since partnering with basketball icon LeBron James and his marketing company, LRMR Management, in 2011. Fenway Sports Management and LRMR will represent Manziel jointly, with the goal to help him transcend sports and become a global brand in the mold of James, an informal adviser to the QB.


Jamshed walks out of the gates of the Kasturba Niketan Colony—a gated community in South Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area, populated mostly by Afghan medical tourists like him. He passes an Afghan grocery store, and heads onto the street outside, glancing at Afghan pharmacies and advertisements for rented accommodation written in Dari, one of Afghanistan’s two official languages.

He stops at a roadside nanwayee (Afghan bakery), to buy bread from men in khet partug (Afghan trousers) and walks into Mazaar, one of the many restaurants in the area that serves authentic Afghan food, where he sits gratefully at a table. He has spent the entire day at a Delhi hospital, where his brother is being treated for a brain tumor.

“There are big hospitals in Afghanistan too,” says Jamshed. “But the medicines are mostly fake.”

Delhi’s Little Kabul, as the Lajpat Nagar district has come to be known as in recent times, is testament to Afghanistan’s spiraling medical crisis.

Last week, a report by international charity Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) said one in every five of the patients interviewed had a family member or close friend who had died within the last year due to a lack of access to medical care. Aid money can’t always fix the problem. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recently revealed that construction defects, and a lack of water, staff and and power, meant that the Salang Hospital in Parwan province was unable to function properly, despite the fact that over half a million dollars had been spent on it.

“Many Afghans continue to struggle to access basic and emergency medical care due to insecurity, distance, cost and the fact that many health facilities do not function adequately,” Benoit De Gryse, MSF Country Representative in Afghanistan told TIME.

(MORE: The Woeful State of Afghan Healthcare)

All this would explain why the numbers of Afghans heading to India for medical treatment is rising. The Indian embassy in Kabul issued 32,200 medical visas in 2013, up from 26,500 in 2012.

“If you have a heart attack and if you are rich you go to London,” says Ajay Bakshi, CEO of Max Hospitals, which clocked 6000 Afghan patients in 2013. “If you are middle class you go to India.”

Few Afghans can afford the sums involved. For most, coming to India means mortgaging property, taking out a loan, or getting sponsorship. Nabiulla Wajekh works in the Afghanistan army as a registration officer. His daughter was born with a hole in her heart and a charity paid for her treatment in Delhi. Even so, the family has had to burn through money for living expenses, with Wajekh spending his meager monthly salary of $300 in two weeks.

“Who wouldn’t want to be able to walk into a hospital in his own country to get well?” he asks.

Although medical treatment would be cheaper and nearer in Pakistan or Iran, political instability in the former, and harassment by the authorities in the latter, means that many Afghans prefer India, which lays out a welcome mat.

India introduced medical visas for Afghans in 2005 and Indian hospitals have been eager to tap this new revenue stream. Many have websites in Dari and Pashto, and separate payment and service desks for Afghans. They offer prayer rooms, Halal food and Afghan cuisine. Almost all hospitals provide interpreters free of charge.

“There’s no huge financial investment in this,” says Max Hospitals’ Bakshi. “But it helps in establishing an emotional connect. It makes them feel taken care of.”

India has a strategic interest in establishing those connections. It has invested heavily in the rebuilding of Afghanistan with $2 billion in aid, seeking to win economic influence, boost security and gain a link to Central Asia. The booming medical tourism industry is a valuable projection of Indian soft power that Afghans are all too aware of. Even the medical professionals.

“Afghanistan at the moment cannot cope with healthcare,” says Mohammad Naim, who came to India to treat his uncle’s stomach cancer. His job? Surgeon, at the Mazaar-e-Shariff government hospital in northern Afghanistan.

Summary: With healthcare in their own country in a parlous state, Afghans who can afford it go overseas for treatment


WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday it will hold a public meeting in October to review the risks of psychiatric and behavioral side effects with Pfizer’s antismoking drug Chantix.

The agency said it will convene its panel of psychiatric drug experts to discuss the pill’s risks and how to best manage them.

Since 2009 Chantix has carried the government’s strongest safety warning — a ‘‘black box’’ label — because of links to hostility, agitation, depression, and suicidal thoughts. The warning was added after the FDA received dozens of reports of suicide and hundreds of reports of suicidal behavior among patients taking the smoking-cessation drug.

At that time, the FDA also required Pfizer to conduct additional studies to determine the extent of the side effects.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer said Friday that the company recently submitted new data to the FDA designed to establish the drug’s safety compared with placebo and other antismoking therapies.

Summary: WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday it will convene a public meeting in October to review the risks of psychiatric and behavioral side effects with Pfizer’s anti-smoking drug Chantix.


A federal judge in Michigan ordered that longtime U.S. Representative John Conyers be put on the ballot in August after election officials said he was ineligible because many of his necessary nominating petitions were disqualified.

The officials said the Detroit Democrat could not be on the primary ballot because the people who gathered signatures for him weren’t registered voters or listed a wrong registration address, leaving him more than 400 short of the necessary number of petitions.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman overturned the officials’ decision after civil rights activists and Conyers’ lawyers argued that the law setting requirements for people gathering signatures was unconstitutional, the Associated Press reports. A similar law in Ohio was struck down in federal court in 2008.

Conyers, 85, has been in Congress since 1965 and has consistently won re-election, at times with more than 80 percent of the vote, including in 2012. He is a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus and, if re-elected, would be the longest-serving member of congress.

Summary: The judge overturned election officials' decision after hearing arguments from the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.


Martial Raysse, one of the major artists of the second half of the 20th century, is the only French nouveau réaliste for whom the term "pop" is as apt as it is for Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein in the US, Sigmar Polke in Germany and David Hockney in Britain.

Had he enjoyed the support of collectors and museums in his home country, in the same way as the above did, he would not have had to wait till the age of 78 for the Pompidou to stage a retrospective of his work . However grand and marvellous the exhibition may be, such recognition comes scandalously late. It has certainly been an uphill struggle for French artists in France over the past 50 years. Indeed, there was a time in the 1980s when Raysse was regarded as passé in the Paris art world.

Yet there are few artists for whom the word modern is more fitting. Raysse finds his ideas, subjects and methods in the present. From the outset, his principles were clear. In 1957 he assembled objects made of plastic, groceries, bottles and brushes, turning them into reliquaries for the consumer society, which philosopher Roland Barthes was analysing at that very moment in Mythologies.

He went on to colour photographs, recycle paintings and portraits, drawing on advertising cliches and film erotica. His irony, dexterity and exuberance soon reached a peak of intensity. Raysse, in this guise, was like Ingres revisited by Godard, with the Grande Odalisque and Pierrot le Fou daubed in colour, or the Bain Turc re-enacted at St Tropez. Neon tubes proved ideal for drawing the outline of a mountain, writing "Snack" in the middle of a painting, or composing a parody sign.

Raysse Beach, in 1962, was an "installation" before the word existed in artistic parlance, with real sand, fake swimsuit adverts, a real jukebox and a dolphin rubber ring, 30 years before Jeff Koons started using inflatable toys. Raysse made his first stab at film-making in 1964, with an updated version of the tale of Susanna and the Elders. Two years later, he produced Jesus Cola, followed by Camembert Martial in 1969 and the prodigiously inventive Grand Départ, with faded, diluted colours and a soundtrack in several languages, part of which was scrambled.

It was the story of a guru, a hippy environmentalist community, fear of the end of the world and departure for some otherworldly paradise. It was topical then and it still is. But Raysse was neither a chronicler nor a realist and increasingly espoused allegory, symbol and myth. Several actors in the Grand Départ wore animal masks and the women were draped in toga-like tunics, unless, of course, they were naked.

At the same time he cut shapes out of Perspex, reduced the face to just a few graphic signs, and scattered others, representing crosses or stars, in the surroundings. In so doing he made the connection between pop art and Minimalism, both of which were by-products of contemporary western society and much less contradictory than many claimed.

Raysse was one of the few French artists of the period to be genuinely international. He worked in Nice, Paris and Los Angeles, showing in the US, Italy, Germany and Japan. He could have yielded to success, and gone on doing a particular brand of art and selling it at high prices. Instead, seized by doubt, he stopped. "I was a well-known painter," he said in 1972. "Now, I'm a penniless film-maker. Having decided to use the techniques of my time, I started from scratch. And to what a reception ..."

He failed to produce a film to equal the prophetically named Grand Départ. So he began again. He shunned big cities and galleries, and broke with his earlier life. The devil became a hermit. Things that might be guessed at before – his taste for allegory, his love of fables – became more apparent. Ancient myths invaded the paper which he painted, tore up and pieced together again. In his world each figure – nymph, minotaur, monster, sage or loony – had one or more meanings, playing a part in various symbolic systems.

In the mid-1980s he produced his first large-scale distempers on canvas and his first bronzes . The titles and subject matter – The Spring, Childhood of Bacchus, George and the Dragon – showed Raysse staking a claim as a renovator of big paintings, picking up the legacy of Poussin. But it is not what we see in the final part of the exhibition, devoted to the last two decades.

Whether he paints, generally using acrylics, draws, sculpts or reuses various objects and debris, he displays qualities far removed from classicism: a sense for burlesque and parody, a penchant for outrage and satire, a bitter, sacrilegious humour. Much more in tune with Shakespeare than Racine, closer to Dix and Picabia than to Poussin, he peoples his works with buffoons and clowns, outrageously made up women, lecherous old men, dizzy drunks and downcast divinities.

La Fin des Haricots (End of the Road) is a burlesque version of Leda and the Swan, with a shameless, impotent old man standing in for the former. Poissons d'avril (April Fools) brings together Lars von Trier loonies or George Romero zombies with a backdrop of flowers. It is also a throwback to Grand Départ, much as his current portraits of young women are reminiscent of the way he played with female images in the past.

The frieze, Ici Plage, is the 2012 version of Raysse Beach. It features a crowd of flirts, exhibitionists, fashion victims and pitiful philanderers. On the right-hand side a character in pink trousers hiding behind an umbrella is running away; on the left, a women is trying in vain to hide behind a fence; in the background a man is disembowelling a corpse. This is no beach, more like the first circle of hell.

At times it is hard to look at these crude paintings, with their chromatic dissonances, brutal attitudes and expressions. But the violence with which the subject matter is addressed makes sense. Raysse does not hesitate, not now or in the past. There is no compromise, nothing to temper his fury. He takes his idea as far as it will go, and his idea is that humankind is a tragicomical masquerade. It is hard to fault him on that point.

Martial Raysse is at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, until 22 September

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from Le Monde

Summary: Pompidou Centre plays host to nouveau réaliste artist who explored similar avenues to Hockney, Lichtenstein and Warhol • Gallery – Martial Raysse retrospective at the Pompidou


FORTUNE — When the Federal Reserve launched its stimulative bond buying program — otherwise known as quantitative easing — in 2008, many economic observers were certain it would lead to high and uncontrollable inflation.

What these observers didn’t understand, however, was that while the Fed can buy bonds and lower interest rates, it’s actually private banks that are responsible for creating most of the money in circulation. Theoretically, cheap money should lead to an increased demand for loans, but that’s not what happened. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, as the saying goes.

The best metric for understanding this phenomenon is a called the “velocity of money.” Velocity is the rate at which money changes hands in the economy, and it is a good gauge of how the private sector is responding to the Fed’s low-interest rate incentives.

MORE: How a national sales tax could solve America’s inequality problem

As you can see, velocity fell off a cliff right around the time the Fed embarked on its stimulus, explaining why the U.S. economy hasn’t experienced an uptick in inflation. But according to a just-published research note from Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Wells Capital Management, the trend in money velocity is about to reverse, and inflation will rise along with it. Writes Paulsen:

Currently, many are focused on the Federal Reserve as they begin tapering their quantitative easing program and are trying to gauge how long before the Fed begins raising short-term interest rates. However, the most important monetary event during the rest of this recovery may not even involve the Fed. In our view, monetary policy will be primarily defined from here by if, when, and how fast money supply velocity rises.

He gives us four reasons why the velocity trend is about to turn around:

1. Bank lending and consumer borrowing are on the rise: Consumer debt rose by $241 billion in the last quarter of 2013, the largest quarterly increase in six years. And as Paulsen writes, “after being lethargic during much of 2013, total U.S. bank loans since late last year have risen at one of their strongest paces of the recovery.”

2. Rising prices: While overall inflation has been quite tame, commodity prices have been rising quickly in recent months. Here’s a chart showing the most recent trend in commodity prices. If this is the start of a much more pronounced rise in prices, it could be a signal that velocity and overall inflation will soon rise as well.

3. Private sector GDP growth has accelerated: Paulsen argues that the “best signal suggesting improved money velocity is accelerating economic activity.” Though the Commerce Department just revised its estimate of 2013 fourth-quarter real GDP growth down to 2.4% from its previous estimate of 3.2%, the second-half average was still a healthy 3.25%. Furthermore, if you take out the contracting government sector, GDP growth looks even healthier. “In the last two quarters, nominal private GDP [growth] has increased from about 4% a year ago to about 7%,” Paulsen points out.

MORE: American debt explosion: The good, the bad, and the ugly

4. Private-sector money velocity is already increasing: Just as we’re seeing economic growth in the private sector outpace economic growth overall, we’re seeing the same thing with private-sector velocity of money.

As you can see, by stripping out the effects of public sector contraction, the change in velocity in the private sector has already turned positive. And if Washington pivots from the budget-cutting of the past several years, the public sector will soon cease to be a drag on the economy going forward.

We usually associate inflation with poor economic outcomes. But a little bit of inflation can be a good thing — a sign that the economy is operating at full capacity and that people are confident. And there’s finally reason to believe we might be getting a bit more of it in the coming months.

Summary: Restrained lending has kept a lid on inflation, but that may be about to change.