The Kno, a Tablet for the College Market - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com: "The Kno, a Tablet for the College Market
By MIGUEL HELFT
The Knokno.com
The success of the Kindle and iPad has sparked a slew of tablet-wannabes. Some are imitators, while others are trying to bring new ideas to the tablet and e-reader concepts.
The Kno, a dual-screen device aimed at the college market, falls in the latter category. The tablet/e-reader, which was first shown in public on Wednesday at the D8 technology conference in Southern California, allows students to view textbooks on its digital screens much as they would appear in their analog versions, with text, color images and graphics.
Kno, which is short for knowledge, was founded by Osman Rashid, who also founded Chegg, a fast-growing Silicon Valley start-up that allows students to rent textbooks. When I wrote about Chegg last year, I asked Mr. Rashid about the wisdom of starting a book-renting business in a world that was quickly embracing digital books. He said he had an answer to that but could not tell me yet. Kno, he hopes, is that answer.
“Students want to replicate this analog experience in a digital format,” Mr. Rashid said, while he demonstrated the Kno prototype on stage at D8.
The device has two, 14-inch screens, which are big enough to display two facing textbook pages without requiring students to scroll up and down to see the entire pages. It will also have a stylus that will allow students to take notes. It weighs about 5.5 pounds, with each slab of the tablet a little thicker than half an inch.
In addition to the ability to view textbooks, the Kno gives students a desktop full of tools to organize their college lives, like calendars and folders for each of their courses where they can view textbooks but also store notes and videos and highlight passages in the books.
Mr. Rashid said the company had deals with several large textbook publishers, including Pearson, McGraw Hill Education, Cengage Learning and Wiley, to make their texts available on the Kno.
The device is built on its own Linux-based operating system and supports a full browser, raising the question of whether students may end up using it to check in with their Facebook friends rather than listen to their lectures. It is powered by a NVidia Tegra processor and supports Flash.
It is hard to judge the Kno at this point, because it is a work-in-progress. Several of the features do not yet work. And during the demo, the device appeared to be slow. But then again, it is a prototype.
Kno plans to release a test version in the fall and begin selling it broadly before the end of the year. Mr. Rashid said the Kno would cost less than $1,000, but otherwise did not discuss pricing.
After the presentation, I played with the Kno for a few minutes. It felt very large and heavy, especially when compared with the thin iPad. But Mr. Rashid said to compare it not with an iPad, but rather with with a 20-pound backback containing textbooks, notebooks and a laptop, often a heavy, 15-inch or 17-inch device preferred by students.
The company is backed by venture capitalists and recently received an investment from Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen, who co-founded Netscape, joined the company’s board.
“The fact that they are targeting the textbook market is key,” Mr. Andreessen said in an interview by phone. The device, he said, “is no heavier or clumsier than a single textbook. And over time, all the components are going to get lighter.”
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Thursday, June 3, 2010
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com
Is Steve Jobs Big Brother? - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com: "Is Steve Jobs Big Brother?
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Robert WrightRobert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.
Tags:
Apple, iPad, iPhone, steve jobs
Steve Jobs is in the running for two trophies: comeback of the decade and villain of the year.
Last week Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile to resume leadership of a down-and-out Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones.
Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten, and some kinds of political commentary don’t make the cut. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Steve JobsJim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPad in January. Apple controls which applications are available on both the iPad and the iPhone.
Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon and congenital control freak — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.
One tech journalist puts the fear this way: “I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create.” It’s not a crazy fear, given that some industry analysts think Apple wants to become “the Internet’s cable TV company” — turning its iMachines into the dominant distributors of print, video and audio.
Still, it’s an unwarranted fear. The nature of the digital landscape makes it hard to be both a control freak and a global hegemon. And Jobs’s history suggests that he’ll choose control over power.
Rewind the tape to that 1984 ad. It heralded the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above anything Microsoft was offering. So why did Microsoft wind up dominating the operating system market? Because Jobs chose not to do what Microsoft did: license his operating system to computer makers. If you wanted Apple software, you had to buy Apple hardware.
Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product.
The Microsoft approach harnessed positive feedback. The more models of Windows computers, competitively priced, the more people would buy Windows computers. And the more Windows computers people bought, the more programmers would write their software for Windows, not Apple. And the more Windows software there was, the more attractive Windows computers would be. And so on. That’s how Windows wound up with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market.
With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing this positive feedback. He’s not licensing the operating system to other handset makers. There’s only one kind of iPhone — love it or leave it.
Meanwhile, Google is following a variant of the Microsoft strategy. It’s backing the Android operating system, which any handset maker is free to use. And lots of them are using it. There are more than a dozen Android models on the market, and in the first quarter of this year total sales of Android phones surpassed iPhone sales. This same logic can play out at the expense of the iPad, once lots of Android-based tablets come online.
All of this explains why some tech observers think that Apple, notwithstanding its stunning iPod-iTunes-iPhone-iPad-based comeback, is approaching its peak.
Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on world domination.
I mean, sure, all other things being equal, he might love to rule the world. So would I. But there are things he won’t sacrifice for that goal.
One is the high profit margins you get from being the only company that sells the hardware linked to a good operating system. But I think there’s something else at work, too, and it’s kind of admirable.
If you ask Jobs why he won’t let other companies build hardware for the iPhone operating system, he’ll say something to the effect that you get a smoother product, with fewer glitches, if one company designs both the hardware and the software.
That’s true, but it was true in the computer market as well, and Jobs’s smoother products confined Apple not just to a fraction of Microsoft’s market share but to a fraction of its market capitalization; his high profit margins didn’t make up for low sales. So what’s the rationale for repeating this exercise?
Maybe there’s no rationale that makes sense in dollars and cents. Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product. Yes, he wants to make money, but, beyond a certain point, he’ll trade off money for perfection.
I say this as someone who doesn’t share his vision of perfection. I own an iPhone, but various things about it annoy me, as I note in this rant. (I may trade it in for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog in the cell phone wars, but a thing of beauty.)
In the various things I don’t like about Apple products, the unifying theme is the subordination of functional elegance to visual elegance. For example: The iPhone looks real sleek with that curvy metal, but it sure is easy to drop on a screen-shattering slab of sidewalk!
In general, I admit, Apple’s functional elegance is impressive. Indeed, it’s a tribute to Jobs that when the functionality falls short, it’s almost always the result of a conscious decision to favor aesthetics — whereas design flaws in Microsoft products often reflect a failure of engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users.
Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs between functional and visual beauty as I would.
Some would say calling Jobs an artist is just a euphemistic way of calling him a control freak. And certainly an artistic temperament is a fussy temperament.
Still, being this kind of control freak is different from being the kind of control freak who wants to amass as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle expression. That kind of control freak would follow the Microsoft strategy to maximize market share and thus maximize the number of machines whose apps menu he could then satanically control.
Of course, maybe Jobs isn’t an artist at heart, and maybe he isn’t deeply driven to create the perfect product. Maybe he just thinks having a small market share but high profit margins is the way to make the most money — and his finicky design aesthetic is a byproduct of this strategy.
In either event, the world is safe from him. Apple’s information pipeline won’t be the only one, and it won’t be the biggest one. Whether for temperamental or strategic reasons, Jobs is too intent on control to wind up in a position to control us.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
By ROBERT WRIGHT
Robert WrightRobert Wright on culture, politics and world affairs.
Tags:
Apple, iPad, iPhone, steve jobs
Steve Jobs is in the running for two trophies: comeback of the decade and villain of the year.
Last week Apple’s market capitalization surpassed Microsoft’s — something that seemed impossible 10 years ago and really impossible 14 years ago, when Jobs returned from corporate exile to resume leadership of a down-and-out Apple. And some people think Apple’s best years lie ahead; iPads are selling like — well, like iPhones.
Meanwhile, though, Jobs stands accused of what in Silicon Valley is a capital crime: authoritarian tendencies. He’s long played hardball with journalists who reveal details about forthcoming products, and now he’s deciding what content people can view on the iPhone and iPad. Apps featuring even soft-core porn are verboten, and some kinds of political commentary don’t make the cut. Apple recently rejected an app from a political cartoonist — and then, embarrassingly, had to reconsider after he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Steve JobsJim Wilson/The New York Times Steve Jobs during the introduction of the iPad in January. Apple controls which applications are available on both the iPad and the iPhone.
Put these two Jobs profiles together — emerging infotech hegemon and congenital control freak — and you get a scary scenario: growing dominance of our information pipelines by a guy who likes to filter information. No wonder Jobs’s detractors have been making ironic reference to Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl ad, the one that implicitly cast the IBM-Microsoft alliance as Big Brother.
One tech journalist puts the fear this way: “I don’t want a single, Wal-Mart-like channel that controls access to my audience and dictates what is and is not acceptable material for me to create.” It’s not a crazy fear, given that some industry analysts think Apple wants to become “the Internet’s cable TV company” — turning its iMachines into the dominant distributors of print, video and audio.
Still, it’s an unwarranted fear. The nature of the digital landscape makes it hard to be both a control freak and a global hegemon. And Jobs’s history suggests that he’ll choose control over power.
Rewind the tape to that 1984 ad. It heralded the coming of the Macintosh operating system, which was head and shoulders above anything Microsoft was offering. So why did Microsoft wind up dominating the operating system market? Because Jobs chose not to do what Microsoft did: license his operating system to computer makers. If you wanted Apple software, you had to buy Apple hardware.
Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product.
The Microsoft approach harnessed positive feedback. The more models of Windows computers, competitively priced, the more people would buy Windows computers. And the more Windows computers people bought, the more programmers would write their software for Windows, not Apple. And the more Windows software there was, the more attractive Windows computers would be. And so on. That’s how Windows wound up with around 90 percent of the desktop operating system market.
With the iPhone, Jobs is again forgoing this positive feedback. He’s not licensing the operating system to other handset makers. There’s only one kind of iPhone — love it or leave it.
Meanwhile, Google is following a variant of the Microsoft strategy. It’s backing the Android operating system, which any handset maker is free to use. And lots of them are using it. There are more than a dozen Android models on the market, and in the first quarter of this year total sales of Android phones surpassed iPhone sales. This same logic can play out at the expense of the iPad, once lots of Android-based tablets come online.
All of this explains why some tech observers think that Apple, notwithstanding its stunning iPod-iTunes-iPhone-iPad-based comeback, is approaching its peak.
Why is Jobs choosing the same path that, last time around, kept him from conquering the world? I had puzzled over this for months until I had a conversation with tech-watcher Harry McCracken, who suggested a theory that seemed outlandish at first but is making more and more sense to me: Steve Jobs just isn’t bent on world domination.
I mean, sure, all other things being equal, he might love to rule the world. So would I. But there are things he won’t sacrifice for that goal.
One is the high profit margins you get from being the only company that sells the hardware linked to a good operating system. But I think there’s something else at work, too, and it’s kind of admirable.
If you ask Jobs why he won’t let other companies build hardware for the iPhone operating system, he’ll say something to the effect that you get a smoother product, with fewer glitches, if one company designs both the hardware and the software.
That’s true, but it was true in the computer market as well, and Jobs’s smoother products confined Apple not just to a fraction of Microsoft’s market share but to a fraction of its market capitalization; his high profit margins didn’t make up for low sales. So what’s the rationale for repeating this exercise?
Maybe there’s no rationale that makes sense in dollars and cents. Maybe Jobs is just intent on building the perfect product. Yes, he wants to make money, but, beyond a certain point, he’ll trade off money for perfection.
I say this as someone who doesn’t share his vision of perfection. I own an iPhone, but various things about it annoy me, as I note in this rant. (I may trade it in for a Palm Pre — the ultimate underdog in the cell phone wars, but a thing of beauty.)
In the various things I don’t like about Apple products, the unifying theme is the subordination of functional elegance to visual elegance. For example: The iPhone looks real sleek with that curvy metal, but it sure is easy to drop on a screen-shattering slab of sidewalk!
In general, I admit, Apple’s functional elegance is impressive. Indeed, it’s a tribute to Jobs that when the functionality falls short, it’s almost always the result of a conscious decision to favor aesthetics — whereas design flaws in Microsoft products often reflect a failure of engineers to put themselves in the shoes of users.
Maybe Jobs is basically just an artist. Maybe he wants above all to create products that are beautiful. And he succeeds, even if it costs him market share, and even if he doesn’t handle the trade-offs between functional and visual beauty as I would.
Some would say calling Jobs an artist is just a euphemistic way of calling him a control freak. And certainly an artistic temperament is a fussy temperament.
Still, being this kind of control freak is different from being the kind of control freak who wants to amass as much power as possible over information flow and then use it to stifle expression. That kind of control freak would follow the Microsoft strategy to maximize market share and thus maximize the number of machines whose apps menu he could then satanically control.
Of course, maybe Jobs isn’t an artist at heart, and maybe he isn’t deeply driven to create the perfect product. Maybe he just thinks having a small market share but high profit margins is the way to make the most money — and his finicky design aesthetic is a byproduct of this strategy.
In either event, the world is safe from him. Apple’s information pipeline won’t be the only one, and it won’t be the biggest one. Whether for temperamental or strategic reasons, Jobs is too intent on control to wind up in a position to control us.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Interesting Times: Israel Takes the Bait : The New Yorker
Interesting Times: Israel Takes the Bait : The New Yorker: "June 1, 2010
Israel Takes the Bait
Posted by George Packer
gaza_opt.jpg
The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. None of the extenuating qualifications raised by its defenders matters—that the death toll was lower than on an average day in Lahore or Mosul; or that the relief ship carried (in addition to an Irish Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor, and a best-selling Swedish novelist) a lot of Turkish Islamists who were ready for a fight; or that Hamas is at least as much to blame for the suffering in Gaza as Israel. The point-counterpoint in blogs and U.N. deliberations misses the realm where the meaning of this raid is playing out. The purpose of the convoy was not primarily to bring aid to desperate Gazans, but to call attention to the Israeli blockade and turn world opinion overwhelmingly against it—as Greta Berlin, a leader of the Free Gaza Movement, made clear before the ships set sail. By this standard, the incident could not have gone better.
The flotilla was bait, and Israel took it—a classic triumph of civil disobedience over state power. So it doesn’t really matter that the “humanitarians” on the ship immediately resorted to violence: what the world will remember is that Israel’s first impulse was direct confrontation with civilians bringing aid, regardless of the effects on either the ship’s passengers or its own reputation. This revealed a greater moral obtuseness than firing missiles into civilian areas in the middle of a war. It’s not always the bloodiest incidents that evoke the strongest reaction and bring the most lasting consequences. No one remembers that the death toll was zero during the May, 1963, civil-rights demonstrations in Birmingham. What everyone knows is that Bull Connor brought in the K-9 units and firehoses. King and his circle got the images they badly needed, the nation recoiled, and the tide turned for the civil-rights movement.
Sunday night’s incident showed again that the most powerful force in international relations today is neither standing armies nor diplomatic councils, but public opinion as shaped by media. The presence of an Al Jazeera crew on one ship proves that the pro-Gazans understand completely the main arena in which they’re operating. The American military learned this truth slowly and the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one else cared if it was insurgents dressed as ordinary men who triggered an attack; what always shaped the world’s judgment was footage of soldiers retaliating with overwhelming firepower. (The recent WikiLeaks video is a good example; Raffi Khatchadourian has more about WikiLeaks this week in the magazine.) For years, the military would release self-justifying (and often misleading) statements that only inflamed opinion and strengthened the hand of the insurgents. Over time, American soldiers learned that they had to care what the world—especially Iraqis and Afghans—thought. They started trying harder to avoid such incidents, and, when that failed, to control their effect by owning up faster to their own responsibility.
At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.
One more thought, about what the incident means for Obama’s foreign policy. His national-security strategy, released last week, is a perfectly good document—almost too unobjectionable in its laundry list of goals and its lack of priorities. But Israel’s attack on the convoy shows an essential weakness in Obama’s vision of international affairs. The document has a lot to say about threats and military superiority, but its emphasis is on coöperation. Obama’s strategy of engagement is based on the notion that America, its allies, and its opponents have certain mutual interests that self-interest will lead them to identify and embrace. This notion has not been borne out with Iran, where the rulers of the Islamic Republic believe that self-interest—their own survival—depends on a climate of perpetual crisis and permanent demonization of the U.S. and Israel. And it hasn’t been borne out with Israel, which has just acted in a way that blurs self-interest into suicide.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Israel Takes the Bait
Posted by George Packer
gaza_opt.jpg
The Israeli raid on a flotilla bound for Gaza was worse than a crime, it was a blunder. None of the extenuating qualifications raised by its defenders matters—that the death toll was lower than on an average day in Lahore or Mosul; or that the relief ship carried (in addition to an Irish Nobel laureate, a Holocaust survivor, and a best-selling Swedish novelist) a lot of Turkish Islamists who were ready for a fight; or that Hamas is at least as much to blame for the suffering in Gaza as Israel. The point-counterpoint in blogs and U.N. deliberations misses the realm where the meaning of this raid is playing out. The purpose of the convoy was not primarily to bring aid to desperate Gazans, but to call attention to the Israeli blockade and turn world opinion overwhelmingly against it—as Greta Berlin, a leader of the Free Gaza Movement, made clear before the ships set sail. By this standard, the incident could not have gone better.
The flotilla was bait, and Israel took it—a classic triumph of civil disobedience over state power. So it doesn’t really matter that the “humanitarians” on the ship immediately resorted to violence: what the world will remember is that Israel’s first impulse was direct confrontation with civilians bringing aid, regardless of the effects on either the ship’s passengers or its own reputation. This revealed a greater moral obtuseness than firing missiles into civilian areas in the middle of a war. It’s not always the bloodiest incidents that evoke the strongest reaction and bring the most lasting consequences. No one remembers that the death toll was zero during the May, 1963, civil-rights demonstrations in Birmingham. What everyone knows is that Bull Connor brought in the K-9 units and firehoses. King and his circle got the images they badly needed, the nation recoiled, and the tide turned for the civil-rights movement.
Sunday night’s incident showed again that the most powerful force in international relations today is neither standing armies nor diplomatic councils, but public opinion as shaped by media. The presence of an Al Jazeera crew on one ship proves that the pro-Gazans understand completely the main arena in which they’re operating. The American military learned this truth slowly and the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one else cared if it was insurgents dressed as ordinary men who triggered an attack; what always shaped the world’s judgment was footage of soldiers retaliating with overwhelming firepower. (The recent WikiLeaks video is a good example; Raffi Khatchadourian has more about WikiLeaks this week in the magazine.) For years, the military would release self-justifying (and often misleading) statements that only inflamed opinion and strengthened the hand of the insurgents. Over time, American soldiers learned that they had to care what the world—especially Iraqis and Afghans—thought. They started trying harder to avoid such incidents, and, when that failed, to control their effect by owning up faster to their own responsibility.
At one time, Israelis understood counterinsurgency much better than Americans, which is why U.S. officers looked to their Israeli counterparts for advice in the early years of the Iraq war. At one time, the Israelis understood that self-interest demanded subtlety, restraint, and attention to perception. As others have pointed out, these qualities have been disappearing from Israeli strategy and tactics, and the current right-wing government seems determined to isolate and destroy itself with the unbending principle of self-defense.
One more thought, about what the incident means for Obama’s foreign policy. His national-security strategy, released last week, is a perfectly good document—almost too unobjectionable in its laundry list of goals and its lack of priorities. But Israel’s attack on the convoy shows an essential weakness in Obama’s vision of international affairs. The document has a lot to say about threats and military superiority, but its emphasis is on coöperation. Obama’s strategy of engagement is based on the notion that America, its allies, and its opponents have certain mutual interests that self-interest will lead them to identify and embrace. This notion has not been borne out with Iran, where the rulers of the Islamic Republic believe that self-interest—their own survival—depends on a climate of perpetual crisis and permanent demonization of the U.S. and Israel. And it hasn’t been borne out with Israel, which has just acted in a way that blurs self-interest into suicide.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What? - ProPublica
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What? - ProPublica: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What?
by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica - June 2, 2010 2:40 pm EDT
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A Bernard Madoff New York Mets baseball jacket is displayed during a U.S. Marshals Service auction of personal property seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff on Nov. 13, 2009 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
When Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, he insisted he was the lone perpetrator, asserting that no one – not his family, not his colleagues, not his friends – knew of the fraud.
But an alternate narrative is emerging from the pile of Madoff-related civil suits and court motions that have been filed in the last two years – one in which a small circle of men played knowing, integral roles in the scheme, in some cases benefiting more from it than even Madoff himself.
The evidence for this remains largely circumstantial. These relationships were forged in the days before e-mail, and none of the cases has yet produced anything for public consumption that delivers insights into what these men were thinking. In the one instance in which a judge has ruled on allegations against some of the men, he dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.
But the men’s actions, as described in the court cases, appear to have furthered the scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the trustee charged with recovering money for Madoff’s victims have alleged that some of the men had expectations and influence far beyond what is typical for the usual investor. Most tellingly, the documents say that in at least one instance, and possibly more, these men helped keep the Madoff scam afloat, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of cash when it was on the verge of collapsing.
If this was a conspiracy – and the available information is by no means complete – it does not seem to have been one in which the perpetrators plotted together around a tavern table. Irving Picard, the trustee, has sued several of Madoff’s biggest beneficiaries, alleging they “knew or willfully ignored” that they were participating in a fraud. The suits are silent on the question of whether those involved coordinated or knew of one another’s activities, but they don’t need to demonstrate that to be successful.
Bernie Madoff
His scheme is alleged to have been helped by wealthy investors who "knew or willfully ignored" signs that it was a fraud.
Jeffry Picower, 67
This lawyer, accountant, and noted philanthropist is alleged to have reaped the most from Madoff's scheme – $7.2 billion. He died recently of a heart attack.
Carl Shapiro, 97
A Boston-based philanthropist who made a fortune in ladies fashion and allegedly as much as $1 billion from Madoff.
Stanley Chais, 83
A close Madoff friend for more than 50 years. He and his family are alleged to have withdrawn approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff.
Robert Jaffe, 66
Shapiro's son-in-law is believed to have funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff.
Maurice Cohn, 79
Madoff's former neighbor and business partner, he worked with Jaffe at a business called Cohmad, which allegedly did little else for investors beyond sending money to Madoff.
What these men undeniably shared were similar backgrounds and interests. Based largely in New York and South Florida, they moved through parallel milieus of affluent Jewish country clubs and synagogues. They were active in similar philanthropies and served on the boards of foundations, universities and yeshivas.
The cast of characters, spelled out mostly in complaints filed by the trustee and the SEC, includes: Carl Shapiro, [1] 97, a Boston-based philanthropist who made one fortune in ladies dresses and a larger one with Madoff; Robert Jaffe [2], 66, Shapiro’s son-in-law; Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, 79, a one-time Madoff neighbor turned business partner; Stanley Chais [3], 83, a close friend of Madoff’s for more than 50 years and one of his earliest investors; and Jeffry Picower [4], a lawyer and accountant, who recently died of a heart attack at 67.
None of these men has been charged criminally. Thus far, federal authorities have indicated in court filings that just one of them – Chais – is the subject of a criminal inquiry. A year ago, The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan was investigating at least eight investors, including Picower, Chais and Shapiro [5].
All have denied being anything but victims of Madoff’s [6].
Chais, Cohn and Jaffe have drawn considerable ire from investors for running so-called feeder funds that channeled huge sums into Madoff’s investment business. Jaffe alone funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff, according to the SEC. He worked with Cohn in a business called Cohmad – a contraction of Cohn and Madoff – that operated out of Madoff’s offices. Contrary to what some investors in the funds believed, it appears the men did little to manage the money beyond simply collecting it for delivery to Madoff.
Members of this circle not only did far better than other investors, who averaged 10 percent to 12 percent returns annually, they also had a highly unusual level of input into the nature of their returns.
According to the trustee’s complaint, there were several instances in which Picower or his associates contacted Madoff’s office, asking for specific monthly returns [7]. Over a five-year period in the late ’90s, two of Picower’s accounts [8] had annual returns ranging between 120 percent and 550 percent. A third had yearly returns as high as 950 percent.
Chais and his family consistently received yearly returns higher than 100 percent, far exceeding the gains realized by investors in his funds. Moreover, according to an SEC complaint [9], when Madoff told Chais he was switching to a new strategy that might show occasional short-term trading losses without interfering with net gains, Chais made a special demand to maintain the appearance of loss-free investments.
“Chais told Madoff that he did not want there to be any losses in any of [his] Fund’s trades,” the SEC complaint alleges [9]. “Madoff complied with Chais’ request. Between 1999 and 2008, despite purportedly executing thousands of trades on behalf of the Funds, Madoff did not report a loss on a single equities trade.”
Chais disputes the allegations [9], and his lawyer characterized the SEC’s complaint in a statement as “a distorted and false picture of Stanley Chais.”
“Like so many others, Mr. Chais was blindsided and victimized by Bernard Madoff’s unprecedented and pervasive fraud,” the statement said. “Mr. Chais and his family have lost virtually everything – an impossible result were he involved in the underlying fraud.”
Many of those in the circle took money from the scheme as fees rather than investment gains.
Cohmad officials reaped a total of $98.4 million in payments between 1996 and 2008, most of it labeled income from “account supervision,” according to the SEC [10].
Chais charged fees equal to 25 percent of each Chais fund’s net profit for calendar years in which profits exceeded 10 percent, according to the trustee. As profits exceeded 10 percent every year, Chais took in almost $270 million in fees from 1995 to 2008.
Though Madoff receives the lion’s share of the blame and/or credit for his scheme, it appears that several of his close associates profited more handsomely than he did. Shortly after he confessed, Madoff declared in court documents that his household net worth was about $825 million.
Picower, the biggest beneficiary of the scheme by far, took in $7.2 billion in profit, according to the trustee. Picower’s widow and the trustee are currently haggling over the exact amount of a multibillion-dollar settlement. Carl Shapiro and his family received more than $1 billion, the trustee charged in a court document filed last November in U. S. Bankruptcy Court.
Chais and his family members withdrew approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff, according to the SEC. This came on top of the hundreds of millions in fees Chais charged investors.
Chais’ lawyer denied that his client had any knowledge of the Ponzi scheme or that he had raked in the vast riches alleged. “Despite the astronomical numbers mentioned by the Trustee in his complaint, the bulk of the funds alleged to have been distributed to Mr. Chais were in fact distributed to his investors,” his statement said.
At key moments, Madoff’s investors came to the rescue to keep the scheme going. The first instance came in 1992, when the SEC shut down a feeder fund run by the accountants Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, then Madoff’s largest, accusing the pair of operating a Ponzi scheme. Avellino and Bienes admitted they had acted as unregistered investment managers, but insisted the money had been invested with Madoff, who promptly returned more than $300 million.
Ironically, the SEC mistook Madoff’s ability to raise that amount so quickly as proof that his business was legitimate and “the money was where we [the agency] would expect it to be,” a staff attorney told the SEC’s inspector general last year. Almost two decades later, investigators suspect Madoff may have tapped his circle to collect the cash while scrambling, with the help of his right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, to fabricate trading records, a scene detailed in the agency’s case against DiPascali.
Identifying precisely who helped Madoff repay Avellino and Bienes’ investors is currently an area of inquiry for law enforcement, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Despite his ever-growing network of feeder funds, Madoff had another liquidity crisis in November 2005. According to a federal complaint [11] filed against his employee Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s investor account had an end-of-day balance of about $13 million to cover about $105 million in wires scheduled to go out over the next three days.
Two days later, one of Madoff’s investors, identified in the complaint [11] as “Client A,” sent about $100 million in bonds to Madoff, which he used as collateral to secure a $95 million bank loan to continue the Ponzi scheme. The following January, Client A gave Madoff $54 million more in bonds, which were used as collateral for a $50 million loan.
Investigators have not revealed the identity of Client A, but a person close to the investigation said he was among Madoff’s group of longtime close associates.
The final bailout came toward the end of 2008, when Madoff was hit with a tidal wave of redemption requests from investors caught up in the larger financial crisis. Toward the end of 2008, he looked to Shapiro, who pitched in $250 million.
Shapiro and his family have said repeatedly through spokesmen that they were unaware of the true nature of Madoff’s business. The spokesman declined to comment on the $250 million.
No civil or criminal complaints have been filed against Shapiro, but a court filing by the trustee raised questions about the nonagenarian’s “contentions that he is a victim of Madoff’s scheme,” alleging “inconsistencies between Mr. Shapiro’s counsel’s account of the family history with Madoff and the records available to the Trustee.” The trustee is negotiating with the family to recover profits made over the years.
The emergency cash infusion failed. Just 10 days later, Madoff says he confessed to his sons that “it’s all just one big lie,” finally ending the scheme.
So far, efforts to hold Madoff associates accountable have met with mixed results.
Civil claims by the SEC [10] against Jaffe, Cohmad and Cohn were largely rejected by Federal District Judge Louis Stanton, who ruled in February that the agency had failed to prove they “knew of, or recklessly disregarded, Madoff’s fraud.” The judge left the door open for the SEC to refile its complaint by June 18, if it can strengthen its case.
Lawyers for Maurice Cohn and Cohmad released the following statement in response to the ruling: “As we have maintained all along and Judge Stanton agrees, the SEC's complaint supports nothing other than "the reasonable inference that Madoff fooled the defendants as he did individual investors, financial institutions and regulators."
If there were others involved in the Ponzi scheme, building federal or state criminal cases against Madoff’s circle may prove difficult. Though their relationships go back decades, most of their dealings were done verbally, and there isn’t a lot of correspondence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigations. Federal investigators are working with DiPascali to get a clearer picture of the degree of complicity of others in the scheme.
Illness and age also may become factors. Though a grand jury could consider charges against Chais by mid-June, he suffers from a rare blood disorder and is in and out of the hospital. Shapiro, too, is said to be in ill health.
The trustee is expected to file more lawsuits in coming months as the date approaches when the statute of limitations runs out.
Criminal cases brought against several former Madoff employees have already eroded the notion, lodged so powerfully in the public imagination, that Madoff worked alone, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former prosecutor. With each additional case, he said, it may well crumble further.
“I imagine the paradigmatic Ponzi scheme with the evil genius who keeps all the secrets to himself and engineers this massive crime, like most stick figures, will probably not hold true,” he said.
Write to Jake Bernstein at Jake.Bernstein@propublica.org [12].
Want to know more? Follow ProPublica on Facebook [13] and Twitter [14], and get ProPublica headlines delivered by e-mail every day [15].
The Madoff Circle: Who Knew What?
by Jake Bernstein, ProPublica - June 2, 2010 2:40 pm EDT
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A Bernard Madoff New York Mets baseball jacket is displayed during a U.S. Marshals Service auction of personal property seized from Bernard and Ruth Madoff on Nov. 13, 2009 in New York City. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
When Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, he insisted he was the lone perpetrator, asserting that no one – not his family, not his colleagues, not his friends – knew of the fraud.
But an alternate narrative is emerging from the pile of Madoff-related civil suits and court motions that have been filed in the last two years – one in which a small circle of men played knowing, integral roles in the scheme, in some cases benefiting more from it than even Madoff himself.
The evidence for this remains largely circumstantial. These relationships were forged in the days before e-mail, and none of the cases has yet produced anything for public consumption that delivers insights into what these men were thinking. In the one instance in which a judge has ruled on allegations against some of the men, he dismissed the charges for lack of evidence.
But the men’s actions, as described in the court cases, appear to have furthered the scheme. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the trustee charged with recovering money for Madoff’s victims have alleged that some of the men had expectations and influence far beyond what is typical for the usual investor. Most tellingly, the documents say that in at least one instance, and possibly more, these men helped keep the Madoff scam afloat, providing hundreds of millions of dollars of cash when it was on the verge of collapsing.
If this was a conspiracy – and the available information is by no means complete – it does not seem to have been one in which the perpetrators plotted together around a tavern table. Irving Picard, the trustee, has sued several of Madoff’s biggest beneficiaries, alleging they “knew or willfully ignored” that they were participating in a fraud. The suits are silent on the question of whether those involved coordinated or knew of one another’s activities, but they don’t need to demonstrate that to be successful.
Bernie Madoff
His scheme is alleged to have been helped by wealthy investors who "knew or willfully ignored" signs that it was a fraud.
Jeffry Picower, 67
This lawyer, accountant, and noted philanthropist is alleged to have reaped the most from Madoff's scheme – $7.2 billion. He died recently of a heart attack.
Carl Shapiro, 97
A Boston-based philanthropist who made a fortune in ladies fashion and allegedly as much as $1 billion from Madoff.
Stanley Chais, 83
A close Madoff friend for more than 50 years. He and his family are alleged to have withdrawn approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff.
Robert Jaffe, 66
Shapiro's son-in-law is believed to have funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff.
Maurice Cohn, 79
Madoff's former neighbor and business partner, he worked with Jaffe at a business called Cohmad, which allegedly did little else for investors beyond sending money to Madoff.
What these men undeniably shared were similar backgrounds and interests. Based largely in New York and South Florida, they moved through parallel milieus of affluent Jewish country clubs and synagogues. They were active in similar philanthropies and served on the boards of foundations, universities and yeshivas.
The cast of characters, spelled out mostly in complaints filed by the trustee and the SEC, includes: Carl Shapiro, [1] 97, a Boston-based philanthropist who made one fortune in ladies dresses and a larger one with Madoff; Robert Jaffe [2], 66, Shapiro’s son-in-law; Maurice “Sonny” Cohn, 79, a one-time Madoff neighbor turned business partner; Stanley Chais [3], 83, a close friend of Madoff’s for more than 50 years and one of his earliest investors; and Jeffry Picower [4], a lawyer and accountant, who recently died of a heart attack at 67.
None of these men has been charged criminally. Thus far, federal authorities have indicated in court filings that just one of them – Chais – is the subject of a criminal inquiry. A year ago, The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, reported that the U.S. Attorney's Office in Manhattan was investigating at least eight investors, including Picower, Chais and Shapiro [5].
All have denied being anything but victims of Madoff’s [6].
Chais, Cohn and Jaffe have drawn considerable ire from investors for running so-called feeder funds that channeled huge sums into Madoff’s investment business. Jaffe alone funneled more than $1 billion of investor money to Madoff, according to the SEC. He worked with Cohn in a business called Cohmad – a contraction of Cohn and Madoff – that operated out of Madoff’s offices. Contrary to what some investors in the funds believed, it appears the men did little to manage the money beyond simply collecting it for delivery to Madoff.
Members of this circle not only did far better than other investors, who averaged 10 percent to 12 percent returns annually, they also had a highly unusual level of input into the nature of their returns.
According to the trustee’s complaint, there were several instances in which Picower or his associates contacted Madoff’s office, asking for specific monthly returns [7]. Over a five-year period in the late ’90s, two of Picower’s accounts [8] had annual returns ranging between 120 percent and 550 percent. A third had yearly returns as high as 950 percent.
Chais and his family consistently received yearly returns higher than 100 percent, far exceeding the gains realized by investors in his funds. Moreover, according to an SEC complaint [9], when Madoff told Chais he was switching to a new strategy that might show occasional short-term trading losses without interfering with net gains, Chais made a special demand to maintain the appearance of loss-free investments.
“Chais told Madoff that he did not want there to be any losses in any of [his] Fund’s trades,” the SEC complaint alleges [9]. “Madoff complied with Chais’ request. Between 1999 and 2008, despite purportedly executing thousands of trades on behalf of the Funds, Madoff did not report a loss on a single equities trade.”
Chais disputes the allegations [9], and his lawyer characterized the SEC’s complaint in a statement as “a distorted and false picture of Stanley Chais.”
“Like so many others, Mr. Chais was blindsided and victimized by Bernard Madoff’s unprecedented and pervasive fraud,” the statement said. “Mr. Chais and his family have lost virtually everything – an impossible result were he involved in the underlying fraud.”
Many of those in the circle took money from the scheme as fees rather than investment gains.
Cohmad officials reaped a total of $98.4 million in payments between 1996 and 2008, most of it labeled income from “account supervision,” according to the SEC [10].
Chais charged fees equal to 25 percent of each Chais fund’s net profit for calendar years in which profits exceeded 10 percent, according to the trustee. As profits exceeded 10 percent every year, Chais took in almost $270 million in fees from 1995 to 2008.
Though Madoff receives the lion’s share of the blame and/or credit for his scheme, it appears that several of his close associates profited more handsomely than he did. Shortly after he confessed, Madoff declared in court documents that his household net worth was about $825 million.
Picower, the biggest beneficiary of the scheme by far, took in $7.2 billion in profit, according to the trustee. Picower’s widow and the trustee are currently haggling over the exact amount of a multibillion-dollar settlement. Carl Shapiro and his family received more than $1 billion, the trustee charged in a court document filed last November in U. S. Bankruptcy Court.
Chais and his family members withdrew approximately $200 million more than they invested with Madoff, according to the SEC. This came on top of the hundreds of millions in fees Chais charged investors.
Chais’ lawyer denied that his client had any knowledge of the Ponzi scheme or that he had raked in the vast riches alleged. “Despite the astronomical numbers mentioned by the Trustee in his complaint, the bulk of the funds alleged to have been distributed to Mr. Chais were in fact distributed to his investors,” his statement said.
At key moments, Madoff’s investors came to the rescue to keep the scheme going. The first instance came in 1992, when the SEC shut down a feeder fund run by the accountants Frank Avellino and Michael Bienes, then Madoff’s largest, accusing the pair of operating a Ponzi scheme. Avellino and Bienes admitted they had acted as unregistered investment managers, but insisted the money had been invested with Madoff, who promptly returned more than $300 million.
Ironically, the SEC mistook Madoff’s ability to raise that amount so quickly as proof that his business was legitimate and “the money was where we [the agency] would expect it to be,” a staff attorney told the SEC’s inspector general last year. Almost two decades later, investigators suspect Madoff may have tapped his circle to collect the cash while scrambling, with the help of his right-hand man, Frank DiPascali, to fabricate trading records, a scene detailed in the agency’s case against DiPascali.
Identifying precisely who helped Madoff repay Avellino and Bienes’ investors is currently an area of inquiry for law enforcement, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
Despite his ever-growing network of feeder funds, Madoff had another liquidity crisis in November 2005. According to a federal complaint [11] filed against his employee Daniel Bonventre, Madoff’s investor account had an end-of-day balance of about $13 million to cover about $105 million in wires scheduled to go out over the next three days.
Two days later, one of Madoff’s investors, identified in the complaint [11] as “Client A,” sent about $100 million in bonds to Madoff, which he used as collateral to secure a $95 million bank loan to continue the Ponzi scheme. The following January, Client A gave Madoff $54 million more in bonds, which were used as collateral for a $50 million loan.
Investigators have not revealed the identity of Client A, but a person close to the investigation said he was among Madoff’s group of longtime close associates.
The final bailout came toward the end of 2008, when Madoff was hit with a tidal wave of redemption requests from investors caught up in the larger financial crisis. Toward the end of 2008, he looked to Shapiro, who pitched in $250 million.
Shapiro and his family have said repeatedly through spokesmen that they were unaware of the true nature of Madoff’s business. The spokesman declined to comment on the $250 million.
No civil or criminal complaints have been filed against Shapiro, but a court filing by the trustee raised questions about the nonagenarian’s “contentions that he is a victim of Madoff’s scheme,” alleging “inconsistencies between Mr. Shapiro’s counsel’s account of the family history with Madoff and the records available to the Trustee.” The trustee is negotiating with the family to recover profits made over the years.
The emergency cash infusion failed. Just 10 days later, Madoff says he confessed to his sons that “it’s all just one big lie,” finally ending the scheme.
So far, efforts to hold Madoff associates accountable have met with mixed results.
Civil claims by the SEC [10] against Jaffe, Cohmad and Cohn were largely rejected by Federal District Judge Louis Stanton, who ruled in February that the agency had failed to prove they “knew of, or recklessly disregarded, Madoff’s fraud.” The judge left the door open for the SEC to refile its complaint by June 18, if it can strengthen its case.
Lawyers for Maurice Cohn and Cohmad released the following statement in response to the ruling: “As we have maintained all along and Judge Stanton agrees, the SEC's complaint supports nothing other than "the reasonable inference that Madoff fooled the defendants as he did individual investors, financial institutions and regulators."
If there were others involved in the Ponzi scheme, building federal or state criminal cases against Madoff’s circle may prove difficult. Though their relationships go back decades, most of their dealings were done verbally, and there isn’t a lot of correspondence, according to a person with knowledge of the investigations. Federal investigators are working with DiPascali to get a clearer picture of the degree of complicity of others in the scheme.
Illness and age also may become factors. Though a grand jury could consider charges against Chais by mid-June, he suffers from a rare blood disorder and is in and out of the hospital. Shapiro, too, is said to be in ill health.
The trustee is expected to file more lawsuits in coming months as the date approaches when the statute of limitations runs out.
Criminal cases brought against several former Madoff employees have already eroded the notion, lodged so powerfully in the public imagination, that Madoff worked alone, said Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia Law School and a former prosecutor. With each additional case, he said, it may well crumble further.
“I imagine the paradigmatic Ponzi scheme with the evil genius who keeps all the secrets to himself and engineers this massive crime, like most stick figures, will probably not hold true,” he said.
Write to Jake Bernstein at Jake.Bernstein@propublica.org [12].
Want to know more? Follow ProPublica on Facebook [13] and Twitter [14], and get ProPublica headlines delivered by e-mail every day [15].
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Videogames train you for lucid dreaming? - Boing Boing
Videogames train you for lucid dreaming? - Boing Boing: "Videogames train you for lucid dreaming?
David Pescovitz at 8:52 AM Friday, May 28, 2010
Images Salvador-Dali-The-Dream1
Can playing videogames train you as a lucid dreamer? Psychologist Jayne Gackenbach thinks so, according to work she presented at this week's Games for Health Conference in Boston. For several years, Gackenbach, a researcher at Grant MacEwan University, studied similarities in skills between gamers and individuals who have learned to control their dreams. She also looked at how videogame-play seemed to affect nightmares. From LiveScience (painting is Salvador Dali's 'The Dream'):
'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' said Gackenbach. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams....'
Finding awareness and some level of control in gamer dreams was one thing. But Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the 'threat simulation' theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer.
'What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,' Gackenbach explained. 'They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms.'
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
David Pescovitz at 8:52 AM Friday, May 28, 2010
Images Salvador-Dali-The-Dream1
Can playing videogames train you as a lucid dreamer? Psychologist Jayne Gackenbach thinks so, according to work she presented at this week's Games for Health Conference in Boston. For several years, Gackenbach, a researcher at Grant MacEwan University, studied similarities in skills between gamers and individuals who have learned to control their dreams. She also looked at how videogame-play seemed to affect nightmares. From LiveScience (painting is Salvador Dali's 'The Dream'):
'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' said Gackenbach. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams....'
Finding awareness and some level of control in gamer dreams was one thing. But Gackenbach also wondered if video games affected nightmares, based on the 'threat simulation' theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares would help organisms hone their avoidance skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation.
To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. She found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer.
'What happens with gamers is that something inexplicable happens,' Gackenbach explained. 'They don't run away, they turn and fight back. They're more aggressive than the norms.'
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Tarvuism - The official international internet website for the Tarvuist faith
Tarvuism - The official international internet website for the Tarvuist faith: "Join Us!
Thousands of people just like you are becoming Tarvuists every day. Now's your turn. Join us....
Say 'Hebbo' to Tarvuism!
Why not take a look at some of our exciting web pages? Click on the Tarvupedia to read our online Tarvuist encyclopedia, learn all about Tarvu, chat to other Tarvuists in our Tarvuist forum, and find out how you too can become a Tarvuist.
Watch our film below and see what people say about Tarvuism.
“...And Tarvu created the Universe, and then the other Universe, and He was tired but happy. For He had created...creation.” (The Tarvunty, Qu*st*ons, 1-2, vv.2)
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for the meaning of life and existence. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? But thanks to Tarvu - Lord and Master of the Universes - mankind can find the answers to all of life's questions.
Tarvu - creator of Universe A and Universe B (we live in Universe B) - came to Earth over 3,000 years ago as a tiny baby boy. After landing in the oceans, and swimming with Oobu the holy octopus, Tarvu came ashore and lived amongst men and women so that he could teach them 'to live'. Soon his Word spread, and that Word became Tarvuism.
Tarvuism is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world, with over 1 billion followers in over 150 countries - from afar as Iceland to Timonia - speaking as many languages. As Tarvu said 'Every land is nice, and everyone who lives there is nice too'. (Chronicles of Amzamiviram, Cpt 44).
Tarvu's teachings - in the holy book, The Tarvunty - show man and woman the path to true righteousness. His Word points to a unifying vision of the purpose of existence (or 'mdfitty numnum') and lead, ultimately, to a Tarvunian paradise.
Praise Tarvu!
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Thousands of people just like you are becoming Tarvuists every day. Now's your turn. Join us....
Say 'Hebbo' to Tarvuism!
Why not take a look at some of our exciting web pages? Click on the Tarvupedia to read our online Tarvuist encyclopedia, learn all about Tarvu, chat to other Tarvuists in our Tarvuist forum, and find out how you too can become a Tarvuist.
Watch our film below and see what people say about Tarvuism.
“...And Tarvu created the Universe, and then the other Universe, and He was tired but happy. For He had created...creation.” (The Tarvunty, Qu*st*ons, 1-2, vv.2)
Since the dawn of time, mankind has searched for the meaning of life and existence. Who are we? Why are we here? Where are we going? But thanks to Tarvu - Lord and Master of the Universes - mankind can find the answers to all of life's questions.
Tarvu - creator of Universe A and Universe B (we live in Universe B) - came to Earth over 3,000 years ago as a tiny baby boy. After landing in the oceans, and swimming with Oobu the holy octopus, Tarvu came ashore and lived amongst men and women so that he could teach them 'to live'. Soon his Word spread, and that Word became Tarvuism.
Tarvuism is one of the oldest and largest religions in the world, with over 1 billion followers in over 150 countries - from afar as Iceland to Timonia - speaking as many languages. As Tarvu said 'Every land is nice, and everyone who lives there is nice too'. (Chronicles of Amzamiviram, Cpt 44).
Tarvu's teachings - in the holy book, The Tarvunty - show man and woman the path to true righteousness. His Word points to a unifying vision of the purpose of existence (or 'mdfitty numnum') and lead, ultimately, to a Tarvunian paradise.
Praise Tarvu!
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
Rushfield Babylon (Gary As I Knew Him)
Rushfield Babylon (Gary As I Knew Him): "Gary As I Knew Him
In 1984 Gary Coleman came to Crossroads School, where he enrolled in my class.
Of all the schools in the world, Crossroads was probably the one were Gary probably had the greatest chance of living anything resembling a normal life, given the liberalisness of the school meant that people generally didnt get beaten up for being short, etc and the school’s showbiz connections where every third parent was Barbara Streisand meant that he was not the spectacle he might have been elsewhere.
But that was not much of a chance. Even given all that, he was still Gary Coleman, at that time - with Strokes nearing the end of it’s run, the highest paid TV star on Earth, and not in any way shape or form anything resembling a normal kid. So despite it being Crossroads, the gawking and spectacle of his presence was not minimal.
And it soon became clear that while he wanted very much, fairly desperately in fact, to enjoy some of the trappings due to a “normal kid” he was completely without any experience in how to behave with people his age.
Of all the bad hands people have been dealt in life, of the people who I have known up close, compared to the starving in Mongolia, Gary had as about a rotten combination as anything I’d seen. I won’t give the details, but there was very much a horrifying tragedy about his life, a desperation that I think at age 16, was too big for us his classmates to comprehend or take in.
This was a kid who had been shoved on stage before he knew what the stage was; who had been farmed out by his parents to a network that used this child and his instant catch phrase as their trained seal while entirely depriving him of the life of a normal child. At this phase, Strokes had moved from NBC to squeeze once last season’s worth of blood out of it on ABC. We didn’t know then how the parents were systematically pillaging the fortunes their son was bringing in, but I do recall a sorta uncomfortable feeling about his father coming to pick him up in a massive, I believe Rolls Royce every day. And then there were his health problems which kept him in more pain than any of us knew and ultimately forced him to drop out before graduation.
But despite all this, there was this sense of some incredibly energetic mind trying to do things, striving, searching for his way, as all teenagers are, but with far fewer guideposts. On one end of the spectrum was the day he came to school dressed in an elaborate and impressive astronaut’s uniform. On the other end, he was writing screenplays - something back then that teenagers didn’t really do - which he carried around in his briefcase, spinning plans for a writing/directing career.
Given all that he had to deal with, its not surprising that he was never able to find the way through all the clutter of his life, the baggage of being Gary Coleman, to live out his dreams. How many of us after all do, with far less clinging onto us.
The last time I saw him was a few years after high school in a video store in Westwood. Strokes was long over by then, and he was buying up a huge selection of movies to watch, and clearly didn’t have anyone to watch them with him. I wish I could say I reached out a hand to an old classmate, but again, we were young and selfish, and too new at life to understand how his hyperactive clinginess was born from a real tragedy not just like a nerd being annoying.
As I grew older and watched now from afar, the reports his life get stranger and stranger, it became more clear how much what had happened in those days had cost him; to have your childhood stolen by our nation’s major industry when you are very young, small, ill and fragile, how does one recover from that and ever just “be normal”, particularly when you remain, long after the show has ended and the money is gone, such a recognizable figure, someone who, where ever you go will live with being a character that you never were given the chance to pick. Sadder still to think, from the very little glimpse I got, that there were real dreams in there that would never find their way to the light.
Even in death, as we can see on twitter today, the joke of being Gary Coleman is what the world sees first.
Rest in Peace, Gary. And hope that you’re now in a place where the road is for you and you alone to choose.
- Sent using Google Toolbar"
In 1984 Gary Coleman came to Crossroads School, where he enrolled in my class.
Of all the schools in the world, Crossroads was probably the one were Gary probably had the greatest chance of living anything resembling a normal life, given the liberalisness of the school meant that people generally didnt get beaten up for being short, etc and the school’s showbiz connections where every third parent was Barbara Streisand meant that he was not the spectacle he might have been elsewhere.
But that was not much of a chance. Even given all that, he was still Gary Coleman, at that time - with Strokes nearing the end of it’s run, the highest paid TV star on Earth, and not in any way shape or form anything resembling a normal kid. So despite it being Crossroads, the gawking and spectacle of his presence was not minimal.
And it soon became clear that while he wanted very much, fairly desperately in fact, to enjoy some of the trappings due to a “normal kid” he was completely without any experience in how to behave with people his age.
Of all the bad hands people have been dealt in life, of the people who I have known up close, compared to the starving in Mongolia, Gary had as about a rotten combination as anything I’d seen. I won’t give the details, but there was very much a horrifying tragedy about his life, a desperation that I think at age 16, was too big for us his classmates to comprehend or take in.
This was a kid who had been shoved on stage before he knew what the stage was; who had been farmed out by his parents to a network that used this child and his instant catch phrase as their trained seal while entirely depriving him of the life of a normal child. At this phase, Strokes had moved from NBC to squeeze once last season’s worth of blood out of it on ABC. We didn’t know then how the parents were systematically pillaging the fortunes their son was bringing in, but I do recall a sorta uncomfortable feeling about his father coming to pick him up in a massive, I believe Rolls Royce every day. And then there were his health problems which kept him in more pain than any of us knew and ultimately forced him to drop out before graduation.
But despite all this, there was this sense of some incredibly energetic mind trying to do things, striving, searching for his way, as all teenagers are, but with far fewer guideposts. On one end of the spectrum was the day he came to school dressed in an elaborate and impressive astronaut’s uniform. On the other end, he was writing screenplays - something back then that teenagers didn’t really do - which he carried around in his briefcase, spinning plans for a writing/directing career.
Given all that he had to deal with, its not surprising that he was never able to find the way through all the clutter of his life, the baggage of being Gary Coleman, to live out his dreams. How many of us after all do, with far less clinging onto us.
The last time I saw him was a few years after high school in a video store in Westwood. Strokes was long over by then, and he was buying up a huge selection of movies to watch, and clearly didn’t have anyone to watch them with him. I wish I could say I reached out a hand to an old classmate, but again, we were young and selfish, and too new at life to understand how his hyperactive clinginess was born from a real tragedy not just like a nerd being annoying.
As I grew older and watched now from afar, the reports his life get stranger and stranger, it became more clear how much what had happened in those days had cost him; to have your childhood stolen by our nation’s major industry when you are very young, small, ill and fragile, how does one recover from that and ever just “be normal”, particularly when you remain, long after the show has ended and the money is gone, such a recognizable figure, someone who, where ever you go will live with being a character that you never were given the chance to pick. Sadder still to think, from the very little glimpse I got, that there were real dreams in there that would never find their way to the light.
Even in death, as we can see on twitter today, the joke of being Gary Coleman is what the world sees first.
Rest in Peace, Gary. And hope that you’re now in a place where the road is for you and you alone to choose.
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