Deasy wants 30% of teacher evaluations based on test scores









L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced Friday that as much as 30% of a teacher's evaluation will be based on student test scores, setting off more contention in the nation's second-largest school system in the weeks before a critical Board of Education election.


Leaders of the teachers union have insisted that there should be no fixed percentage or expectation for how much standardized tests should count — and that test results should serve almost entirely as just one measure to improve instruction. Deasy, in contrast, has insisted that test scores should play a significant role in a teacher's evaluation and that poor scores could contribute directly to dismissal.


In a Friday memo explaining the evaluation process, Deasy set 30% as the goal and the maximum for how much test scores and other data should count.





In an interview, he emphasized that the underlying thrust is to develop an evaluation that improves the teaching corps and that data is part of the effort.


"The public has been demanding a better evaluation system for at least a decade. And teachers have repeatedly said to me what they need is a balanced way forward to help them get better and help them be accountable," Deasy said. "We do this for students every day. Now it's time to do this for teachers."


Deasy also reiterated that test scores would not be a "primary or controlling" factor in an evaluation, in keeping with the language of an agreement reached in December between L.A. Unified and its teachers union. Classroom observations and other factors also are part of the evaluation process.


But United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher expressed immediate concern about Deasy's move. During negotiations, he said, the superintendent had proposed allotting 30% to test scores but the union rejected the plan. Deasy then pulled the idea off the table, which allowed the two sides to come to an agreement, Fletcher said. Teachers approved the pact last month.


"To see this percentage now being floated again is unacceptable," the union said in a statement.


Fletcher described the pact as allowing flexibility for principals, in collaboration with teachers, first to set individual goals and then to look at various measures to determine student achievement and overall teacher performance.


"The superintendent doesn't get to sign binding agreements and then pretend they're not binding," Fletcher said.


When Deasy settled on 30%, his decision was in line with research findings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has examined teacher quality issues across the country. Some experts have challenged that work.


The test score component would include a rating for the school based on an analysis of all students' standardized test scores. Those "value-added" formulas, known within L.A. Unified as Academic Growth Over Time, can be used to rate a school or a teacher's effectiveness by comparing students' test scores with past performance. The method takes into account such factors as family income and ethnicity.


After an aggressive push by the Obama administration, individual value-added ratings for teachers have been added to reviews in many districts. They make up 40% of evaluations in Washington, D.C., 35% in Tennessee and 30% in Chicago.


But Los Angeles will use a different approach. The district will rely on raw test scores. A teacher's evaluation also may incorporate pass rates on the high school exit exam and graduation, attendance and suspension data.


Deasy's action was met Friday with reactions ranging from guarded to enthusiastic approval within a coalition of outside groups that have pushed for a new evaluation system. This coalition also has sought to counter union influence.


Elise Buik, chief executive of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said weighing test scores 30% "is a reasonable number that everyone can be happy with."


The union and the district were under pressure to include student test data in evaluations after L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled last year that the system was violating state law by not using test scores in teacher performance reviews.


A lawsuit to enforce the law was brought by parents in Los Angeles, with support from the Sacramento-based EdVoice advocacy organization.


If the "actual progress" of students is taken into account under Deasy's plan, "it's a historic day for LAUSD," said Bill Lucia, the group's chief executive.


All of this is playing out against the backdrop of the upcoming March 5 election. The campaign for three school board seats has turned substantially into a contest between candidates who strongly back Deasy's policies and those more sympathetic toward the teachers union. Deasy supporters praise the superintendent for measures they say will improve the quality of teaching. The union has faulted Deasy for limiting job protections and said he has imposed unwise or unproven reforms.


In the upcoming election, the union and pro-Deasy forces are matched head to head in District 4, with several employee unions behind incumbent Steve Zimmer and a coalition of donors behind challenger Kate Anderson.


Anderson had high praise for Deasy's directive, saying it struck the right balance and that teachers and students would benefit.


Zimmer said that although he understands that principals need guidance, "I worry about anything that would cause resistance or delay in going forward. I hope this use of a percentage won't disrupt what had been a collaborative process."


howard.blume@latimes.com



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The Quirky World of Competitive Snow Carving Comes to California



The weekend at Northstar ski resort in Truckee, California, is beautiful, sunny, and in the 30s. For eight teams of snow carvers from around the world, though, it’s terrible — the melty snow is sloppy, hard to carve, and even dangerous.

Teams of three from Finland, Japan, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. were selected from more than 40 applicants for the inaugural Carve Tahoe, a five-day competition to hew works of art from 14-foot-high, 20-ton blocks of snow. But despite the bad snow, the teams rely on decades of experience, handcrafted tools, and creative techniques to fashion their massive sculptures. The team members are sculptors and artists and designers, but also doctors and lawyers. Though they spend weeks each year carving, nobody makes a living doing it.


“Everyone seems to have their own method of doing things,” says Team Wisconsin’s Mark Hargarten. “It’s amazing how different they are.”


The Wisconsin team uses a grid system for their carving — a Native American wearing an eagle costume, its feathers turning to flames, called “Dance of the Firebird.” The polyurethane model they built is scaled so 1/2 inch equals one foot on the finished snow sculpture. They cut a copy of the model in four, and covered each section with clay, sectioned in 1/2 inch increments. They etch corresponding lines in the snow, one foot to a side, and they peel off one piece of clay, carve the part of the sculpture they can see, and move on to the next.


“You never get lost using the method,” says Dan Ingebrigtson, a professional sculptor from Milwaukee. “Three or four guys can work from different angles, and meet in the middle.”


Wisconsin’s got several other strategies behind their carving as well. From the south, it looks like they haven’t even started; they left the southern side of the block intact to protect the rest of it from the sun, and the wall has been decimated by the heat. More than 20 percent of its thickness has melted by Sunday night, three days in. After the sun goes down, the team is hollowing out the interior of the structure, so it will freeze faster overnight.


Other teams are relying on nighttime freezing as well. A team partly from the U.S. and partly from Canada carves spires from blocks they removed from the sculpture, and plans to attach them to the top of their sculpture, “The Stand,” which incorporates four interwoven trees. They’ll use melty snow pulled from the middle of the block right when the sun goes down to cement the tops onto the trees, says team member Bob Fulks from the top of a stepladder as he cuts away at the sculpture with an ice chisel.


Fulks’ team is leaving Tahoe after the competition to go straight to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, for another competition, where he anticipates no problems with warm weather.


“It’s a good gig, you can travel all over the world doing it,” he says. “You go around and see the same people.”


Many of the carvers know each other from previous competitions.


“We’ve sculpted with almost everybody here before,” says Team Idaho-Dunham’s Mariah Dunham, who is working on “Sweet House (of Madness)” with her mother, Barb. The creation is a beehive, with the south side as the exterior, and the north side (intentionally placed out of the sun) as a representation of the comb, including hexagonal holds that perforate all the way to the hollow interior.


Though Carve Tahoe is new, snow carving is not. Many of the sculptors have been at it for more than 20 years, traveling around the world and meeting and competing against many of the same people — though each competition demands unique new designs from all the sculptors. Kathryn Keown discovered snow carving while Googling something completely different, and decided she wanted to host an international event.


“First we fell in love with the sculptures, then we fell in love with the sculptors,” says Keown, who founded the competition with Hub Strategy, the ad agency where she works.


Keown contacted several ski areas before Northstar, but the resort was on board right away; its owner, Vail Resorts also owns Breckenridge, where one of the biggest and most prestigious snow carving competitions is held.


But Keown wanted to commit to the design of the competition, not just the sculptures. Applicants submitted their designs last summer, and Keown enlisted Lawrence Noble, chair of the School of Fine Art at the Academy of Art University to help choose modern, complex, realist designs. She wanted no artsy, kitschy snowmen.


Then she chose a design-friendly logo and judges. In addition to Noble, the panel of judges features a sushi chef from Northstar, two interior designers, a photographer from nearby Squaw Valley, and Bryan Hyneck, vice president of design at Speck, which makes cases for mobile devices and was one of the event’s sponsors.


“The level of complexity and sophistication in this type of sculpture is just amazing,” says Hyneck, who has judged industrial and graphic design competitions, but never snow carving. “It’s amazing how organic some of the shapes can be.”


As a judge, Hyneck says he’ll focus on the craft and the execution of the sculptures, and how the sculptors use particular techniques to take advantage of the snow’s properties. But he adds that subject matter, point of view, message, and relationship to a theme are all important points as well.


“Anybody that is really going to push the limits of the capabilities of the media is going to get a lot of my attention,” he says.


For some, like the Germans, that means suspending massive structures made completely of snow. Their sculpture, titled “Four Elements”, features four large spires encircled by a tilted disc. Despite a trickle of melted snow dripping off the bottom edge, one — or even two — of the German carvers frequently stand atop the sculpture, using saws or chisels to shape the towers.


Sunday evening, after the sun has gone down and the temperature dropped, Josh Knaggs, bearded, with a cigarette in his mouth, is sitting in the curve made by the largest bear from the Team Idaho-Bonner’s Ferry sculpture, “Endangered Bears.” Wearing a blue event-issued jacket, he’s brushing out the hollow loop made by mama and papa bear.


Three days later, the judges award Knaggs and his team third prize, with Japan’s modern work, “Heart to Heart” coming in second and Germany’s gravity-defying “Four Elements” taking first. The teams disperse, and after a few more sunny days, Northstar tears down the structures before they get too soft and fall — all except the German piece, which can’t bear its own weight and collapses after judging is complete. But the ephemeral nature of the snow is part of what attracts the competitors.


“It’s for the moment, and it’s a beauty all in itself, creating something that’s gonna be disappearing, you know, it’s okay that it disappears,” says Team Truckee’s Ira Kessler. “We are making it for the moment.”


All Photos: Bryan Thayer/Speck


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Epic regrets Lil Wayne lyric about slain civil rights figure






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Epic Records has apologized to the family of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder spurred the U.S. civil rights movement, over a graphic reference by rapper Lil Wayne and promised to delete the lyrics upon its release, the company said on Thursday.


Epic Chairman L.A. Reid told the family it was regretful that a remix of the song “Karate Chop” by rapper Future, in which Lil Wayne likens the beating of African-American Till to sex, had been leaked on the Internet.






“He (Reid) apologized to me and our family and stated the song is being pulled,” said a post on the Facebook page of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation on Wednesday. Mobley, who died in 2003, was Till’s mother.


The song reportedly first appeared online over the weekend.


“Mr. Reid stated the song was leaked out and he had not heard the lyric,” the statement added. “He is a man of integrity that values our family’s legacy and wouldn’t allow such a heinous usage of Emmett Till’s name or dishonor his memory.”


The foundation, which was founded by Till’s cousin Airickca Gordon-Taylor, said that it had yet to hear from Lil Wayne.


Reid, an African American, is one of the music industry’s highest-profile executives and was a judge on the Fox singing competition “The X Factor” for two seasons.


Till, from Chicago, was beaten and murdered in 1955 at the age of 14 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the village of Money, Mississippi, where he was visiting family.


An all-white jury acquitted two white men of Till’s murder, sparking national outrage. The trial is credited with mobilizing the civil rights movement and drawing attention to racial injustice and violence in the American South.


Epic Records called the song an “unauthorized remix” and promised to delete the reference from the official version.


“Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version,” the record company said in a statement.


Epic Records is owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a division of Sony Corp.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jackie Frank)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand





As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.




A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.


“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”


Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.


Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.


The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”


While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.


“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”


Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.


“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”


Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.


“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”


For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.


“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”


“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.


That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.


Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.


Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.


“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”


Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.


As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.


“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”


She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.


“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”


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'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius weeps as he faces murder charge









JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee revered in South Africa for overcoming his disability to compete in the London Games last year, wept in court Friday as he faced a murder charge in connection with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend.

During the proceedings in Pretoria, Gerrie Nel, one of the National Prosecuting Authority’s most senior advocates, said he would argue the killing of model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp was premeditated murder, the most serious category of offense under South African law.


Nel is known for prosecuting high-profile cases, including winning the conviction of former police chief and Interpol boss Jackie Selebi on corruption charges.


Pistorius, nicknamed the "Blade Runner" because of the carbon-fiber prosthetic legs he uses to compete, did not enter a formal plea and was remanded into custody at Brooklyn police station in Pretoria until Tuesday, when his bail application is to be heard.








Under South African law, a suspect charged with such a high-level offense would have to prove exceptional circumstances to be granted bail.


In a packed courtroom, members of Pistorius' family struggled to pass through a media scrum and to find seats. The hearing coincided with "Black Friday," a day when people were being urged to wear black to protest rapes and violence against women.


[Updated, 8:35 a.m. Feb. 15: The family and Pistorius' management company later issued a statement denying that the athlete had murdered his girlfriend, saying: "The alleged murder is disputed in the strongest possible terms."


Some details of Pistorius' argument and the state's case are expected Tuesday.]

The famed athlete's court appearance came as South African media reported that he shot Steenkamp, his girlfriend of several months, four times through a bathroom door.


Under South African law, a person who fatally shoots an intruder has to prove he or she had a reasonable fear that the intruder posed a real threat to his or her life.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the world, with killings of women by intimate partners the leading cause of female homicide in the country. About 57% of female homicide victims were killed by their partners in 2009, according to a report last year by the Medical Research Council.


One-third of female homicides were committed by partners with a history of prior violence against their partners, according to the report.

Friends of Steenkamp and Pistorius mourned the incident on social media.

"Drained, confused, I just can't wrap my head around things," one of Pistorius’ close friends, Alex Pilakoutas, posted on Twitter.


Darren Fresco, who described himself as one of Steenkamp’s best friends said he was hoping to wake from a nightmare and hear her infectious laughter again.

"We were just goofing off the other day talking to each other in only the way that we could to each other. My heart is on the verge of exploding with the pain of such a sudden loss of one of my best friends," Fresco, who said he was one of the last people to exchange tweets with Steenkamp, posted on Facebook.

ALSO:

Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge

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Iranian general reportedly assassinated while traveling from Syria


robyn.dixon@latimes.com





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Why Almost Everyone in Russia Has a Dash Cam



How is it possible that a dozen different motorists around the Russian city of Chelyabinsk were able to capture video of a massive meteor flying through the sky? Because almost everyone in Russia has a dash-mounted video camera in their car.


The sheer size of the country, combined with lax — and often corrupt — law enforcement, and a legal system that rarely favors first-hand accounts of traffic collisions has made dash cams all but a requirement for motorists.


“You can get into your car without your pants on, but never get into a car without a dash cam,” Aleksei Dozorov, a motorists’ rights activist in Russia told Radio Free Europe last year.



Do a search for “Russia dash cam crash” in YouTube — or even better, Yandex.ru, the county’s equivalent of Google — and you’ll find thousands of videos showing massive crashes, close calls and attempts at insurance fraud by both other drivers and pedestrians. And Russian drivers are accident prone. With 35,972 road deaths in 2007 (the latest stats available from the World Health Organization), Russia averages 25.2 traffic fatalities per 100,000 people. The U.S., by comparison, had 13.9 road deaths per 100,000 people in the same year, despite having six times more cars.


A combination of inexpensive cameras, flash memory and regulations passed by the Interior Ministry in 2009 that removed any legal hurdles for in-dash cameras has made it easy and cheap for drivers to install the equipment.


And it’s turned into an online phenomenon.


YouTube content policing means some of the most disturbing videos get pulled from U.S. video sites almost immediately, but as Marina Galperina reported at Animal New York last year, sites like the Ru CHP LiveJournal community are filled with disturbing videos of profanity-laden fist-fights, massive crashes and gruesome deaths, all captured on camera and shared for the world to see.


But then there are times like today, when dash cams catch a once-in-a-lifetime meteor falling from the sky, from every possible angle — something that couldn’t have happened just a few years ago.



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Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie venture into winemaking






(Reuters) – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have gone into the wine business, helping to produce a rose called Miraval from their French estate and putting their names on the label, wine website Decanter.com reported.


The movie star couple have been working with French winemaker Marc Perrin starting with the 2012 harvest, the website said. The Miraval wine will be on the market in March, and white wines will begin arriving by the end of this summer.






“They … want to ensure they are making the best Provence wines they can,” Perrin told Britain-based Decanter.com. on Wednesday.


“They were present at the blending sessions this year, and are relooking at everything from the installations in the winery – where we have already switched to stainless steel tanks – to reworking the labels across the range of wines,” he added.


The back label of the Miraval wine carries the names Jolie-Pitt and Perrin.


Pitt and Jolie began renting Chateau Miraval in Correns, southern France, about four years ago and later bought the property, which has about 148 acres of vines.


The Miraval wine was formerly called Pink Floyd because the British rock band recorded their 1979 album “The Wall” in a studio on the estate, Decanter.com said.


Pitt last year unveiled a high-end collection of furniture that he helped create with designer Frank Pollaro. He has also worked with architects to create affordable quality housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.


(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Xavier Briand)


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Well: The Well Flu Quiz

What surface is the most friendly to the flu virus? Where’s the best place to stand when you’re talking to a sick person? And how are Australians curbing germs in schools?
To find out these answers and more, take the Well flu quiz.

With contributions from Laura Geggel and Tara Parker-Pope.

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Economix Blog: What Makes Manhattan Cost So Much?

You’ve probably heard the stat before: The cost of living is twice as high in New York as it is in the rest of the country. In the Council for Community and Economic Research’s latest cost of living report, we find out exactly what that means, and what the biggest distortions are.

The council collects price data from 307 urban areas. It found that for the first three quarters of 2012, the after-tax cost for a professional/managerial standard of living in Manhattan was 225.4 percent of that for the nation. That made Manhattan once again the most expensive place to live. In second place was Brooklyn (178.6 percent of the national average), followed by Honolulu (167 percent), San Francisco (163.4 percent) and San Jose, Calif. (153.4 percent).

By far, the biggest culprit in driving up Manhattan’s cost of living was housing. The organization’s index of housing costs is 455.2 percent of the national average. The other cost of living categories were also higher in Manhattan than in the rest of the country, by the cost differential was not nearly as great.

CategoryManhattan Price as a Percentage of National Average
Composite225.6%
Grocery149.9%
Housing455.2%
Utilities129.0%
Transportation123.5%
Health129.4%
Miscellaneous148.5%

Here is a selection of the average price data from some of the 60 specific categories they track:

ItemManhattan Average Price
National Average Price
Chunk Light Tuna$1.53$0.99
Whole Milk$2.34$2.26
Soft Drink$2.00$1.56
Apartment Rent$3,902.10$869.83
Dentist Visit$106.18$84.93
Lipitor$189.42$178.23
Pizza$10.88$8.99
Toothpaste$4.08$2.52
Dry Cleaning$13.70$11.01
Man’s Dress Shirt$40.91$26.05
Movie$13.33$9.19
Veterinary Services$99.53$45.53

As with any cost-of-living index, the comparisons are imperfect. For example, some of the items that the Council for Community and Economic Research includes in its index are much pricier in Manhattan than elsewhere, but probably don’t enter Manhattanites’ daily expenses too frequently — things like tennis balls, bowling or even gasoline.

There’s another major issue when comparing costs of living in different cities: a lot of the amenities of various cities are not captured by the prices of individual goods. Stores and restaurants are open later in New York, for example. There are probably more top-notch restaurants in Manhattan than just about anywhere else in the United States. These amenities might push other prices (like rents, or for that matter goods sold in stores that have to pay high rents) higher, so that it’s not a true apples-to-apples comparison to look at prices in Manhattan against those in Buffalo or Toledo. Economists disagree about how to adjust for these factors when calculating cost-of-living comparisons.

One new paper by Rebecca Diamond (a Harvard Ph.D. student who is one of the stars on this year’s economic job market) tries to take into account the value of these hidden higher amenities. Her research suggests that when you weigh rising amenities against rising costs in some of the highest-skilled cities in America, it actually turns out that higher-skilled people who have access to these better amenities have an even better standard of living than the standard cost-of-living adjustment would show. She also finds that welfare inequality between higher-skilled and lower-skilled workers is greater than the already-wide wage gap alone suggests.

Another recent paper (by Jessie Handbury of Wharton) also tries to take the relative tastes of rich versus poor people into account. It finds that New York is indeed an expensive place to live if you’re poor, but in a way is actually a relatively cheap place to live if you’re rich and have standard rich-person tastes (e.g., Whole Foods might be the only place in town for to buy organic free-range chicken in a place like Little Rock, Ark., whereas there’s more price competition for high-end food in New York).

One final note: The pricing figures from the Council for Community and Economic Research are different from those in the Consumer Price Index reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The bureau’s monthly report reflects spending patterns for all urban consumers and for urban wage earners and clerical workers, and has data from only a couple of dozen broad metropolitan areas (as opposed to the 307 geographically narrower urban areas).

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Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge









JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who made history last year as the first double amputee runner to compete in the Olympics using prosthetic blades, will spend the night in jail Thursday after he was charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend at his house, prosecutors said.


The National Prosecuting Authority said Pistorius would remain in custody until his hearing Friday, when police intend to oppose bail.


Reeva Steenkamp, a 30-year-old model, died after being shot several times in the head and arm in Pistorius’ house in an upscale suburb in Pretoria.








PHOTOS: Pistorius in the London Olympics


Pistorius was ushered from the home by police Thursday morning with a gray hoodie covering his head and obscuring most of his face.


South Africans were in shock about the accusation against Pistorius, who became a hero during his long battle for the right to compete in the Olympics. After a controversy on whether the blades he uses to walk and run gave him an advantage in races, Pistorius was granted the right to compete in the London 2012 Olympic Games.


South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of murder and violent crime, and many South Africans keep guns at home to guard against intruders.


The Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld suggested that Pistorius mistook his girlfriend for a burglar and killed her accidentally.


However, a police spokeswoman, Brig. Denise Beukes, said police were “surprised” at reports the killing was accidental, adding that that version hadn’t come from police, according to the South African Press Assn.


"I confirm there had been previous incidents of a domestic nature at his place,” said Beukes, adding that police couldn’t comment on the decision to oppose bail.


Beukes said police had interviewed neighbors who heard sounds at Pistorius’ home earlier in the evening, and also at the time the incident reportedly took place.


Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, said his son was sad. But the older Pistorius said he didn’t know the facts.


“I don’t know nothing. It will be extremely obnoxious and rude to speculate,” he said in a radio interview. “If anyone makes a statement, it will have to be Oscar.”


An advertisement for Nike, one of Pistorius’ major sponsors, was removed from his official website Thursday. It had shown the athlete in a green lycra athletic suit and the slogan, “I am the bullet in the chamber."


ALSO:


Six arrested in Acapulco rape case


Iranian general reportedly assassinated while traveling from Syria


British case of new virus suggests person-to-person transmission





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Animals' Love Lives Look a Lot Like Ours

For most of the 20th century, animals weren’t allowed to have emotions. Your dog didn’t actually love you—it (and it was an “it” back then) was just a stimulus–response machine conditioned to act a specific way in a specific situation. Scientists who said otherwise—that animals actually had minds capable of thoughts and emotions—were accused of “anthropomorphizing” and ridiculed by their peers. Even researchers as famous as chimp specialist Jane Goodall spent years sitting on evidence that animals could do more than just salivate at the sound of a bell.


But over time, that bias waned. Just consider the first sentence (and the title) of Virginia Morell’s new book, Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures: “Animals have minds.”


“Not so long ago,” she writes later, “I would have hedged these statements.” After six years of reporting in 11 different countries, the longtime science journalist arrived at the same conclusion that scientists like Goodall have known for a long while: that animals feel. And strongly, it turns out.


But how complex are these emotions? Fear and panic are one thing; but do animals lust, even love? We went to Morell for some answers. Animals might not celebrate Valentine’s Day, but their relationships still look a lot like ours. Here are some of her favorite examples.




Parrot porn, anyone? That’s what Morell was treated to in Venezuela, where scientists are studying the calls of green-rumped parrotlets. One of their racier findings? Little birds be bangin’ like mammals: pushing, clawing, clutching, thrusting. But that’s not all. These parrots lead soap opera–ready lives.


“They were very, very fun to watch,” Morell said.


In one of her favorite stories, a parrot widow gets remarried to a neighbor, only to have her new husband leave her a day later for his first wife. Bad General Parrotreus! All that drama is meticulously documented in a field log, which Morell calls “a parrotlet version of Desperate Housewives.”

Photo: Male (right) and female (left) green-rumped parrotlets. Ninoska Zamora/Flickr.

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Actor Steve Martin is first-time dad at age 67






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor, writer and comedian Steve Martin has become a dad for the first time at age 67 – and managed to keep it secret from the media for more than a month.


Martin and his second wife, Anne Stringfield, 41, “are new parents and recently welcomed a child,” a spokeswoman for the actor said on Wednesday.






The spokeswoman gave no details, including the sex of the child or the date of birth. But the New York Post cited unidentified sources as saying the baby arrived in December.


The multi-talented Martin, whose career as a writer and performer dates back more than 45 years, has played a father in movies such as “Parenthood,” Cheaper by the Dozen,” and “Father of the Bride.”


Martin, who has hosted the Oscars ceremony three times, married Stringfield, a former writer at the New Yorker magazine, in 2007. His eight-year marriage to British actress Victoria Tennant ended in divorce in 1994.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey: Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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U.S. Approves First Method to Give the Blind Limited Vision




The F.D.A. Approves a Bionic Eye:
The Argus II allows Barbara Campbell, who lost her sight 20 years ago, to see the world through patterns of light. Scientists hope it is the beginning of even more treatments.







The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a technology called the “artificial retina.”




With it, people with certain types of blindness can detect crosswalks on the street, burners on a stove, the presence of people or cars, and sometimes even oversized numbers or letters.


The artificial retina is a sheet of electrodes surgically implanted in the eye. The patient is also outfitted with a pair of glasses with an attached camera and a portable video processor. These elements together allow visual signals to bypass the damaged portion of the retina and be transmitted to the brain. The F.D.A. approval covers this integrated system, which the manufacturer calls Argus II.


The approval marks the first milestone in a new frontier in vision research, a field in which scientists are making strides with gene therapy, optogenetics, stem cells and other strategies.


“This is just the beginning,” said Grace Shen, director of the retinal diseases program at the National Eye Institute, which helped finance the artificial retina research and is supporting many other blindness therapy projects. “We have a lot of exciting things sitting in the wings, multiple approaches being developed now to address this.”


With the artificial retina or retinal prosthesis, a blind person cannot see in the conventional sense, but can identify outlines and boundaries of objects, especially when there is contrast between light and dark — fireworks against a night sky or black socks mixed with white ones in the laundry.


“Without the system, I wouldn’t be able to see anything at all, and if you were in front of me and you moved left and right, I’m not going to realize any of this,” said Elias Konstantopolous, 74, a retired electrician in Baltimore, one of about 50 Americans and Europeans who have been using the device in clinical trials for several years. He said it helps him differentiate curbs from asphalt roads, and detect contours, but not details, of cars, trees and people. “When you don’t have nothing, this is something. It’s a lot.”


The F.D.A. approved Argus II, made by Second Sight Medical Products, to treat people with severe retinitis pigmentosa, a group of inherited diseases in which photoreceptor cells, which take in light, deteriorate.


The first version of the implant had a sheet of 16 electrodes, but the current version has 60. A tiny camera mounted on eyeglasses captures images, and the video processor, worn on a belt, translates those images into pixelized patterns of light and dark. The processor transmits those signals to the electrodes, which send them along the optic nerve to the brain.


About 100,000 Americans have retinitis pigmentosa, but initially between 10,000 and 15,000 will likely qualify for the Argus II, according to the company. The F.D.A. says that up to 4,000 people a year can be treated with the device. That number represents people who are older than 25, who once had useful vision, have evidence of an intact inner retinal layer, have at best very limited light perception in the retina, and are so visually impaired that the device would prove an improvement. Second Sight will begin making Argus II available later this year.


But experts said the technology holds promise for other people who are blind, especially those with advanced age-related macular degeneration, the major cause of vision loss in older people, affecting about two million Americans. About 50,000 of them are currently severely impaired enough that the artificial retina would be helpful, said Dr. Robert Greenberg, Second Sight’s president and chief executive.


In Europe, Argus II received approval in 2011 to treat a broader group of people, those with severe blindness caused by any type of outer retinal degeneration, not just retinitis pigmentosa, although it is currently only marketed in Europe for that condition. In the U.S., additional clinical trials need to be completed before the company can seek broader FDA approval.


Eventually, Dr. Greenberg said, the plan is to implant electrodes not in the eye, but directly into the brain’s visual cortex. “That would allow us to address blindness from all causes,” he said.


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David Leonhardt, Washington Bureau Chief, Answers Readers’ Questions





David Leonhardt, Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, is answering readers’ questions about the economic landscape and President Obama’s prospects to enact the ambitious legislative agenda he laid out in his State of the Union address.




Mr. Leonhardt is the author of the e-book, “Here’s the Deal: How Washington Can Solve the Deficit and Spur Growth,” published by The Times and Byliner. Previously, he wrote the paper’s Economic Scene column.


Below are answers to selected readers' questions.




Q.
When the debt was the largest in history as a percent of GDP, in 1946, we had 27 years of mostly deficit spending. The debt in dollars doubled. But we had prosperity. Why don't we do that today?


— Len Charlap, Princeton, NJ


A. You're right that a country can have deficits and still pay down its debt, so long as the deficits are small enough and economic growth fast enough. And you're right that some government spending plays a crucial role in creating economic growth. The most important programs seem to be investments -- in education, scientific research, roads, bridges and the like -- that the private sector won't do on its own.


The Internet, the radio, the jet engine, much of biotechnology and the technique for extracting a form of natural gas known as shale gas all owe their beginnings to federal spending. This history is a major theme in "Here's the Deal."


But government spending and debt most certainly do not ensure prosperity. Federal debt is already high. The projections showing that annual deficits will fall in the next few years depend on some assumptions that may prove rosy. And as more baby boomers retire and health costs keep rising, projected deficits are projected to rise again, sharply, in coming decades.


As heartening as the recent progress on the deficit may be, the country still faces substantial long-term fiscal problems. If we don't deal with them, we are likely to have an economy that looks nothing like the prosperous economy after World War II.




Q.
Congressional Republicans recently decided against using the debt limit as a lever to force President Obama to enact spending cuts he wouldn't otherwise go along with. Is there any indication that Republicans will agree to a longer-term extension once the current limit is reached?


A. It's hard to know, but it's possible that the debt-ceiling fights will not continue. In the past, the extension of the debt ceiling tended to be an opportunity for the party that didn't hold the White House to grandstand about the deficit and debt. (President Obama, somewhat famously, did so in 2006.) In the end, though, the extension tended to pass without any concessions from the president.


In 2011, Congressional Republicans successfully negotiated such concessions from Mr. Obama. In recent months, he made clear that he would not negotiate over the debt ceiling again, citing the economic damage from the uncertainty over the last extension. Republicans have gone along, at least temporarily.


Polls suggest the last fight hurt Republicans more than Democrats, which suggests Republicans may ultimately agree to a long-term extension or simply a series of short-term extensions. On the other hand, they were indeed able to win some spending cuts in 2011, so some in the party continue to see the debt ceiling as a powerful tool.


The most cliched last line in journalism -- the kicker, as we say -- is: Time will tell. I can't think of another kicker here.




Q.
Why has the administration given so much focus to gun control in the past few weeks? With a Republican majority in the House and the fact that many Democrats would also vote against advanced gun control measures, would this kind of legislation have a chance of passing the House or the Senate?


A. Unlike past mass shootings, the killings in Newtown, Conn., shifted the national debate. Public opinion changed modestly, and Democrats who favor more gun control became more willing to push for it.


As you note, most Republicans and some Democrats oppose sweeping new measures, which is why an assault-weapons ban still seems unlikely. But some other measures may be able to win overwhelming support from Democrats and enough from Republicans to pass both the House and Senate. The two leading candidates are an expansion of criminal background checks on people buying guns and a new federal trafficking law to block criminal purchases.


A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 85 percent of Americans favor background checks. Support at so high of a level, combined with national attention to the issues, has the potential to create a majority in both houses of Congress.




Q.
The Wall Street macro indexes e.g. S&P500, DOW, are at or around historical highs. However I do not see corresponding growth in GDP let alone increase in employment rate to underpin this rally.
What is driving this and where is the money coming from? How does this benefit "middle America"?


— Arthur CHAN, Wilmington, DE


A. First, the indexes themselves are not at or near record highs when viewed properly. When adjusted for inflation, the Standard & Poor 500 index was more than 30 percent higher in 2000 than it is today. Including the value of dividends, the S&P was still about 5 percent higher in 2000 than now. And taking into investment costs, which nearly everyone pays, the gap would be substantially more than 5 percent.


I say this not to be an inflation nerd (though I am) but to make the point that the stock market is not in fact more valuable than it’s ever been. When Wall Street proclaims, “record high!” and we in the media repeat the claim, we’re presenting a false picture of reality. Stocks are still not as valuable as they were at the peak of the dot-com bubble.


Your larger point, though, is dead on. The S&P 500 (including dividends and inflation) is about 18 percent higher than it was five years ago, which is roughly when the recession began. The overall economy has not fared nearly so well. Gross domestic product was only about 2 percent larger at the end of last year than five years earlier. The unemployment rate is 7.9 percent, up from 5 percent five years ago.


For a complex stew of reasons – including, but not limited to, government assistance for the financial sector since 2007 – American companies and financial firms have recovered more quickly from the crisis than most of the rest of the economy.




Q.
What are President Obama's plans to lure high-tech manufacturing back to the United States?
He courts Silicon Valley and named Apple during his State of the Union, but Steve Jobs famously said manufacturing will never return for logistical reasons. Tim Cook, despite the return of a single Mac line, appears to have little desire to change the company's strategic plan.


A. My colleague Annie Lowrey responds:


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Dorner manhunt: Investigators work to ID charred human remains









After what LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called "a bittersweet night," investigators Wednesday were in the process of identifying the human remains found in the charred cabin where fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner was believed to have been holed up after trading gunfire with officers, authorities said.


If the body is identified as Dorner’s, the standoff would end a weeklong manhunt for the ex-LAPD officer and Navy Reserve lieutenant suspected in a string of shootings following his firing by the Los Angeles Police Department several years ago. Four people have died in the case, allegedly at Dorner’s hands.


Beck said he would not consider the manhunt over until the body was identified as Dorner. Police remained on tactical alert and were conducting themselves as if nothing had changed in the case, officials said.








PHOTOS: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer


The latest burst of gunfire came Tuesday after the suspect, attempting to flee law enforcement officials, fatally shot a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy and seriously injured another, officials said. He then barricaded himself in a wooden cabin outside Big Bear, not far from ski resorts in the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains east of Los Angeles, according to police.


"This could have ended much better, it could have ended worse," said Beck as he drove to the hospital where the injured deputy was located. "I feel for the family of the deputy who lost his life."


The injured deputy is expected to survive but it is anticipated he will need several surgeries. The names of the two deputies have not been released.


TIMELINE: Manhunt for ex-LAPD officer


Just before 5 p.m., authorities smashed the cabin's windows, pumped in tear gas and called for the suspect to surrender, officials said. They got no response. Then, using a demolition vehicle, they tore down the cabin's walls one by one. When they reached the last wall, they heard a gunshot. Then the cabin burst into flames, officials said.


Last week, authorities said they had tracked Dorner to a wooded area near Big Bear Lake. They found his torched gray Nissan Titan with several weapons inside, the said, and the only trace of Dorner was a short trail of footprints in newly fallen snow.


According to a manifesto that officials say Dorner posted on Facebook, he felt the LAPD unjustly fired him several years ago, when a disciplinary panel determined that he lied in accusing his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man during an arrest. Beck has promised to review the case.

DOCUMENT: Read the manifesto


The manifesto vows "unconventional and asymmetrical warfare" against law enforcement officers and their families. "Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," it said.


On Tuesday morning, two maids entered a cabin in the 1200 block of Club View Drive and ran into a man who they said resembled the fugitive, a law enforcement official said. The cabin was not far from where Dorner's singed truck had been found and where police had been holding news conferences about the manhunt.


The man tied up the maids, and he took off in a purple Nissan parked near the cabin, the official said. About 12:20 p.m., one of the maids broke free and called police.


FULL COVERAGE: Sweeping manhunt for ex-cop


Nearly half an hour later, officers with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife spotted the stolen vehicle and called for backup, authorities said. The suspect turned down a side road in an attempt to elude the officers but crashed the vehicle, police said.


A short time later, authorities said, the suspect carjacked a light-colored pickup truck. Allan Laframboise said the truck belonged to his friend Rick Heltebrake, who works at a nearby Boy Scout camp.


Heltebrake was driving on Glass Road with his Dalmatian, Suni, when a hulking African American man stepped into the road, Laframboise said. Heltebrake stopped. The man told him to get out of the truck.


INTERACTIVE MAP: Searching for suspected shooter


"Can I take my dog?" Heltebrake asked, according to his friend.





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Defense Nerds Strike Back: A Symposium on the Battle of Hoth



So. You guys have really, really strong opinions about the Battle of Hoth.


Many took issue with my argument that Hoth represented a military debacle for the Galactic Empire. Some questioned the (meta)factual premises of my case (are TIE Fighters even capable of in-atmospheric flight?). Others argued that Vader was deliberately trying to lose, rendering my essay myopic. Still others desired to travel back in time and physically accost my childhood self, so as to spare me the error of even thinking about Hoth. Anger, fear, aggression: the dark side are they.


My responses are less interesting than those that others can provide. So we at Danger Room widened the aperture and brought in six military nerds — soldiers, academics, bloggers — with a similarly abiding love for Star Wars. Some agree with me, most disagree with me, and all add keen insights, except for when they disagree with me. In any event, check out their thoughts on Hoth, for the Force is strong with them.



If Hoth was a defeat for Darth Vader, as Spencer Ackerman contends, it was a short-lived one at best. Thanks to well-conceived contingency plans, and a judicious use of nefarious private military contractors, Darth Vader was still well along the path to achieving his ultimate strategic objective: turning Luke Skywalker to the Dark Side of the Force, and finally overthrowing the Emperor. Of course, Vader’s agenda only tangentially marries up with that of the Imperial Forces at large, and is cross-purposes with that of the Emperor. Thus, Vader’s true objective in the attack on Hoth is not the destruction of the Rebel Alliance, but rather, capturing Luke. In many ways, Darth Vader is a one-man shadow government, who seeks to find and shelter the religious extremist responsible for the greatest terrorist act ever perpetrated against the Empire–all to further his own personal political agenda.


Luke Skywalker may have escaped to Dagobah, sure, but Yoda saves Vader the expense and hassle of having to train young Luke. In fact, Luke’s escape actually gives Vader plausible deniability when Emperor Palpatine confronts Vader via hologram on Luke’s paternity.


Vader’s true strategic failure comes not at Hoth, but at Bespin, when he fails to turn Luke to the Dark Side. By the next film, Vader’s been removed from field command, relegated to overseeing defense contractors working on yet another flawed and bloated acquisitions program. And of course, in Return of the Jedi, it’s Emperor Palpatine’s turn to take the offensive, using Luke to dispatch his weakened apprentice, and carry on the Sith legacy. In Star Wars, intergalactic civil war is little more than a vehicle to advance the grand plan of the Sith.


Major Crispin J. Burke is a US Army Aviator who blogs at Wings Over Iraq. Follow him on Twitter at @CrispinBurke.


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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.


Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.


A transcript of this interview can be found here.


Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.


Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.


This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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Media Decoder Blog: Time Warner in Talks to Sell Off Majority of Magazines

3:53 p.m. | Updated Time Warner, the $49 billion media conglomerate built on the foundation of the printed word, is in early talks with Meredith Corporation to sell its publishing division Time Inc., shedding itself of the vast majority of its magazines, according to three people briefed on the discussions who could not comment publicly on preliminary and private conversations.

The deal being discussed would allow Time Warner to hang onto three flagship magazines, Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, while selling the majority of its portfolio, including magazines like Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, Cooking Light and InStyle. The titles, which amount to essentially a women’s magazine company, make a good fit for Meredith Corporation, based in Des Moines, Iowa, and the publisher of such titles as Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal. Jack Griffin, a former chief executive at Meredith, served a brief and stormy reign as chief of Time Inc. before Laura Lang took over in January.

Meredith would also gain People magazine, the celebrity weekly and crown jewel of Time Inc.’s stable of 21 magazines.
But Meredith did not express interest in purchasing Time Inc.’s sluggish news titles, said a person briefed on the discussions.

A Time Warner spokesman declined to comment. News of the talks was first reported by Fortune, a magazine owned by Time Inc.

The talks come weeks after Time Inc. announced it would lay off 6 percent of its global work force of more than 8,000 employees during an industrywide decline in subscription and advertising revenue. Overall revenue at Time Inc. has declined roughly 30 percent in the last five years.

Time Warner’s history is rooted in Time, the weekly news  magazine founded by Henry Luce in 1923 on which the giant media conglomerate got its start. But lately the publishing company’s sluggish performance has stood in sharp contrast to the strong performance at Time Warner’s cable channels like HBO, TBS and TNT.

In the last several years, the company has tried to trim some assets unrelated to the television and movie production business. That included shedding AOL, Time Warner Cable, the Warner Music Group and the Time Warner Book Group.

Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, has denied reports that he would sell Time Inc. He frequently talks about the division’s strongest brands essentially as cable television channels and has aggressively mandated that Time Inc. make its magazines available on digital devices.

“They’re printing pages right now, but they’re also on electronic screens with moving pictures,” Mr. Bewkes said in a previous interview. He added that “a cable channel like TNT or TBS” is “pretty much the same as what People or Time or InStyle should do.”

The company’s exploration of a deal that would allow it to keep male-oriented titles like Sports Illustrated, Time and Fortune would let it maintain its name and historical roots.

“Time’s name is on the door. I think Jeff feels it would be better to hang onto it and not sell it for what would be a low price,” said a person briefed on Mr. Bewkes’s thinking who could not discuss private conversations on the record.

Ms. Lang, previously the chief executive of the digital advertising company Digitas, stepped in at a tumultuous time after Mr. Griffin was forced out after less than six months on the job. She hired Bain & Company, a consultancy based in Boston, to assess the business.

Many of  Time Inc.’s magazine titles have been struggling as more readers have been reading material online, and newsstand sales have dropped. Even titles like People, which long helped financially bolster Time Inc.’s less lucrative titles, has suffered. People’s newsstand sales declined 12.2 percent in the second half of 2012 compared to the year before, according to figures released last week by the Alliance for Audited Media. Its advertising pages dropped by 6 percent in 2012 compared to the year before, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Last month, Ms. Lang said she was cutting staff 6 percent, or about 480 people. Magazines like Time and People asked employees to take buyouts and said they would lay people off if they did not meet those numbers. Wednesday is the last day for employees to raise their hands for buyouts.

On a conference call with analysts last week, John K. Martin, chief financial and administration officer at Time Warner, said that “very challenging industry conditions weighed” on the company’s results.

The talks come as News Corporation prepares to sever its publishing assets, including newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, from its more lucrative entertainment division, which includes the cable channels FX and Fox News. The separation is expected to be complete this summer.

Christine Haughney, Michael de la Merced and David Carr contributed reporting.

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Guantanamo witness testifies on courtroom eavesdropping allegations









FT. MEADE, Md. -- Top officials at the terror detainee prison at the U.S. Naval Base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began testifying in a pretrial hearing Tuesday about courtroom security and allegations that the CIA or other U.S. intelligence officials are secretly listening to private conversations between defense lawyers and five accused Sept. 11 plotters.

First to the witness stand -- in fact the first substantial witness to testify in the military tribunal case that is the only prosecution in the 2001 terror attacks -- was Maurice Elkins, an Army veteran who is the director of technology for the new courtroom built next to the prison compound that houses 166 detainees.


In a crisp gray suit, Elkins testified that it would be almost impossible for any outside intelligence officials, known by the ambiguous acronym OCA for Original Classification Authority, to tap into the private defense conversations, and less likely they could record them.





But, he conceded, “I do not know what the OCA’s capability is.”


Yet while acknowledging that outside intelligence officials are indeed monitoring the proceedings should any classified information be inadvertently disclosed, Elkins added, “No entity in the U.S. government has ever asked me for recordings.”


Though Elkins was a defense witness, his testimony largely mirrored the government’s position that confidential defense conversations are not being picked up by the CIA or other intelligence agencies.


However, under questioning from David Nevin, an attorney for alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,  Judge James L. Pohl, an Army colonel, acknowledged that intelligence authorities could be listening in and recording.


When Nevin asked if it was possible the OCA was recording everything they were picking up, the judge stepped in and answered the questions. “Anything is possible,” he said. “Most witnesses would agree that anything in life is possible.”


Elkins put it this way:  "I wouldn't know OCA if I walked next to OCA on the street or played basketball with OCA.” He added,  “You’re asking me to assume they are recording, and I can’t answer that.”


The defense, however, filed an emergency motion to address the matter, claiming that covert intelligence officials are listening in on their private courtroom discussion, as well as to visits the lawyers have with their clients in the prison.


Also scheduled to testify Tuesday are Navy Capt. Thomas Welsh, the staff judge advocate at the prison, and Army Col. John Bogdan, the compound commander.


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Tim Cook on Innovation, Retail and Whether We'll See a Cheap iPhone



Tim Cook has never been more bullish about Apple’s ability to innovate, and he sees the company continuing to produce great products that deliver a killer user experience, thanks to Apple’s ability to meld hardware, software, and services into a single package. And on those days when things aren’t going so well, he just takes a trip to the Apple Store, an experience he likened to taking Prozac.


Cook held forth on all things Apple during an unusual public appearance at the Goldman-Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Tuesday morning, where he laid out an exceptionally bright picture of the company while responding to softball questions before an adoring audience. Not exactly the best place to glean any insights, but interesting nevertheless. During his hour-long chat, Cook discussed everything from the state of Apple retail, to the “Depression-era mentality” of maintaining mountains of cash to whether we’ll ever see an iPhone that’s actually affordable. While much of Cook’s statements were blatant cheerleading — an attempt to buoy investor confidence in his company after its dismal stock performance following its latest earnings call — he also let slide some telling tidbits.


Here are the five biggest takeaways from Cook’s interview, and why they matter.


This Is Tim Cook’s Apple


Perhaps the most notable thing about Cook’s interview was what wasn’t said. No one mentioned Steve Jobs. This is Tim Cook’s Apple now, and there’s no mistaking it.


When Cook spoke at the same event in 2012, just a few months had passed since the death of Steve Jobs, and so his role in the company and place in history was a hot topic. But Cook has been running the show for more than year now, leading one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, while pushing its success to new heights. He is, at last, emerging from Jobs’ long shadow. And he’s definitely stoked about it.


“I’ve never been more bullish about innovation at Apple,” he said at one point, a theme he’d return to twice during the interview with comments like, “I’m incredibly bullish on our retail stores” and “I’m incredibly bullish about the future,” Cook iterated at different points throughout the talk.


This comes as a bit of a contrast to the Apple CEO’s typical demeanor. Cook often comes across as more reserved than his predecessor, but today Cook showed more passion, fire, and confidence than we’ve seen in past earnings calls or media events. This isn’t a CEO toiling under the shadow of his old boss. This is Apple’s fearless leader in his element.


It’s about time. Since taking over as CEO, every move Cook, and Apple, makes has been scrutinized perhaps even more microscopically than in the past as weary investors look for any indicator of Apple’s downfall. And with competitor Samsung threatening Apple’s dominance in the smartphone space at every turn, he’s got to prove Apple’s still the market leader to the public too. Cook has to show that Apple is at the top of its game, and this sort of chutzpa is certainly a step in the right direction.


On Creating More Affordable Products


One of Apple’s continued challenges is making more affordable products without making cheaper products. The biggest example of this, and reason it needs to be done, is the iPhone, which at a baseline price of $650 is way too high for emerging markets like China, India, and Brazil. Apple wants to — and, in fact, must — make inroads into these regions, which is why the company is believed to be hard at work on an affordable iPhone, possibly made of plastic.


Asked about this issue, Cook reiterated Apple’s focus on developing great products, and pointed out another product line that began with a single, expensive option, and expanded to encompass models at a wide range of prices and functionalities. The iPod launched at $399, and today, you can get an iPod shuffle for a mere $49.


“Instead of saying ‘how can we cheapen this iPod to get [the price] lower, we asked, how can we do a great product?’” Cook said. So the team developed a product that could “excel at a very low price of $49, and appeal to a lot more people.”


On a similar front, critics historically asked Apple why it didn’t offer a sub- $1,000 Mac. “Frankly, we worked on this, but we concluded we couldn’t do a great product,” Cook said. What did Apple do instead? Why, invent the iPad.


For now, the iPhone 4 is offered for free on contract as the company’s budget iPhone offering. But based on Cook’s statements, and what we’ve seen from Apple in the past, it seems highly likely that Apple will eventually flesh out its iPhone lineup to encompass options at a wider range of price points, including a cheaper option.



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Well: Straining to Hear and Fend Off Dementia

At a party the other night, a fund-raiser for a literary magazine, I found myself in conversation with a well-known author whose work I greatly admire. I use the term “conversation” loosely. I couldn’t hear a word he said. But worse, the effort I was making to hear was using up so much brain power that I completely forgot the titles of his books.

A senior moment? Maybe. (I’m 65.) But for me, it’s complicated by the fact that I have severe hearing loss, only somewhat eased by a hearing aid and cochlear implant.

Dr. Frank Lin, an otolaryngologist and epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, describes this phenomenon as “cognitive load.” Cognitive overload is the way it feels. Essentially, the brain is so preoccupied with translating the sounds into words that it seems to have no processing power left to search through the storerooms of memory for a response.


Katherine Bouton speaks about her own experience with hearing loss.


A transcript of this interview can be found here.


Over the past few years, Dr. Lin has delivered unwelcome news to those of us with hearing loss. His work looks “at the interface of hearing loss, gerontology and public health,” as he writes on his Web site. The most significant issue is the relation between hearing loss and dementia.

In a 2011 paper in The Archives of Neurology, Dr. Lin and colleagues found a strong association between the two. The researchers looked at 639 subjects, ranging in age at the beginning of the study from 36 to 90 (with the majority between 60 and 80). The subjects were part of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. None had cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, which followed subjects for 18 years; some had hearing loss.

“Compared to individuals with normal hearing, those individuals with a mild, moderate, and severe hearing loss, respectively, had a 2-, 3- and 5-fold increased risk of developing dementia over the course of the study,” Dr. Lin wrote in an e-mail summarizing the results. The worse the hearing loss, the greater the risk of developing dementia. The correlation remained true even when age, diabetes and hypertension — other conditions associated with dementia — were ruled out.

In an interview, Dr. Lin discussed some possible explanations for the association. The first is social isolation, which may come with hearing loss, a known risk factor for dementia. Another possibility is cognitive load, and a third is some pathological process that causes both hearing loss and dementia.

In a study last month, Dr. Lin and colleagues looked at 1,984 older adults beginning in 1997-8, again using a well-established database. Their findings reinforced those of the 2011 study, but also found that those with hearing loss had a “30 to 40 percent faster rate of loss of thinking and memory abilities” over a six-year period compared with people with normal hearing. Again, the worse the hearing loss, the worse the rate of cognitive decline.

Both studies also found, somewhat surprisingly, that hearing aids were “not significantly associated with lower risk” for cognitive impairment. But self-reporting of hearing-aid use is unreliable, and Dr. Lin’s next study will focus specifically on the way hearing aids are used: for how long, how frequently, how well they have been fitted, what kind of counseling the user received, what other technologies they used to supplement hearing-aid use.

What about the notion of a common pathological process? In a recent paper in the journal Neurology, John Gallacher and colleagues at Cardiff University suggested the possibility of a genetic or environmental factor that could be causing both hearing loss and dementia — and perhaps not in that order. In a phenomenon called reverse causation, a degenerative pathology that leads to early dementia might prove to be a cause of hearing loss.

The work of John T. Cacioppo, director of the Social Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Chicago, also offers a clue to a pathological link. His multidisciplinary studies on isolation have shown that perceived isolation, or loneliness, is “a more important predictor of a variety of adverse health outcomes than is objective social isolation.” Those with hearing loss, who may sit through a dinner party and not hear a word, frequently experience perceived isolation.

Other research, including the Framingham Heart Study, has found an association between hearing loss and another unexpected condition: cardiovascular disease. Again, the evidence suggests a common pathological cause. Dr. David R. Friedland, a professor of otolaryngology at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, hypothesized in a 2009 paper delivered at a conference that low-frequency loss could be an early indication that a patient has vascular problems: the inner ear is “so sensitive to blood flow” that any vascular abnormalities “could be noted earlier here than in other parts of the body.”

A common pathological cause might help explain why hearing aids do not seem to reduce the risk of dementia. But those of us with hearing loss hope that is not the case; common sense suggests that if you don’t have to work so hard to hear, you have greater cognitive power to listen and understand — and remember. And the sense of perceived isolation, another risk for dementia, is reduced.

A critical factor may be the way hearing aids are used. A user must practice to maximize their effectiveness and they may need reprogramming by an audiologist. Additional assistive technologies like looping and FM systems may also be required. And people with progressive hearing loss may need new aids every few years.

Increasingly, people buy hearing aids online or from big-box stores like Costco, making it hard for the user to follow up. In the first year I had hearing aids, I saw my audiologist initially every two weeks for reprocessing and then every three months.

In one study, Dr. Lin and his colleague Wade Chien found that only one in seven adults who could benefit from hearing aids used them. One deterrent is cost ($2,000 to $6,000 per ear), seldom covered by insurance. Another is the stigma of old age.

Hearing loss is a natural part of aging. But for most people with hearing loss, according to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, the condition begins long before they get old. Almost two-thirds of men with hearing loss began to lose their hearing before age 44. My hearing loss began when I was 30.

Forty-eight million Americans suffer from some degree of hearing loss. If it can be proved in a clinical trial that hearing aids help delay or offset dementia, the benefits would be immeasurable.

“Could we do something to reduce cognitive decline and delay the onset of dementia?” he asked. “It’s hugely important, because by 2050, 1 in 30 Americans will have dementia.

“If we could delay the onset by even one year, the prevalence of dementia drops by 15 percent down the road. You’re talking about billions of dollars in health care savings.”

Should studies establish definitively that correcting hearing loss decreases the potential for early-onset dementia, we might finally overcome the stigma of hearing loss. Get your hearing tested, get it corrected, and enjoy a longer cognitively active life. Establishing the dangers of uncorrected hearing might even convince private insurers and Medicare that covering the cost of hearing aids is a small price to pay to offset the cost of dementia.



Katherine Bouton is the author of the new book, “Shouting Won’t Help: Why I — and 50 Million Other Americans — Can’t Hear You,” from which this essay is adapted.


This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 12, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Medical College of Wisconsin. It is in Milwaukee, not Madison.

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