Son of Nick Van Exel sentenced to 60 years on murder conviction

Nick Van Exel was taken 37th overall by the Lakers in the 1993 draft. (Vince Compagnone / Los Angeles Times / February 2, 2013)

By Eric Pincus

February 2, 2013, 7:06 a.m.

Sad news for a former Lakers All-Star. Nickey Maxwell Van Exel, the son of Nick Van Exel, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for murder in Texas on Friday.

The 22-year-old was found guilty Thursday of shooting Bradley Bassey Eyo in 2010.

Nick Van Exel was selected by the Lakers with the 37th overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft.

Before the arrival of Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant in 1996, Van Exel was the team's leader and go-to player.

Van Exel played with the Lakers until 1998, then was traded after an All-Star season for Tony Battie and the draft rights to Tyronn Lue.

He is currently on staff with the Atlanta Hawks in player development.

ALSO:

Lakers top Minnesota for first road win of 2013

Dwight Howard flying home for nonsurgical PRP procedure

Short list of players who fit within Lakers disabled player exception

Email Eric Pincus at eric.pincus@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EricPincus.

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The World's Tweets Light Up the Globe in Stunning Live Visualization

It’s simple, but lovely. Web designer Franck Ernewein‘s real-time Twitter visualization, Tweetping, drops a bright pixel at the location of every tweet in the world, starting as soon as you open the page.

The result is a constantly changing image that grows to look like a nighttime satellite shot, bright spots swarming over the most developed areas. But Ernewein has packaged it all in a subtly interactive visualization that avoids distracting the viewer while still imparting a great amount of information.

Meanwhile, a selection of tweets are projected, along with latest hashtags and mentions, all while tracking total tweets, words, and characters. The length of the two gray lines on the display represent the number of characters and words in each tweet.

Though it’s one of the most beautiful, Tweetping is far from the first to display geotagged tweet information; coders have built sites to display election tweets, adjustable parameter maps, and even 3-D visualizations.

Tweetping even represents Antarctica, but not the ISS. And there’s no pause button; like Twitter itself, Tweetping’s data accrues incessantly; there’s no off switch but the back button.

Nathan Hurst is learning how to make some things, knows how to fix some others, and is already pretty good at breaking everything else. He has written for Outside and Wired, traveled in Africa, and tweets as @NathanBHurst.

Read more by Nathan Hurst

Follow @NathanBHurst on Twitter.

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Filmmaker cries censorship as Italy political documentary blocked

ROME (Reuters) – A British filmmaker said on Friday he was a victim of censorship after a leading museum cancelled the Italian premiere of the documentary “Girlfriend in a Coma”, which is highly critical of Italy‘s political and economic situation.

The museum where the film was to have been shown on February 13 cancelled the showing and said it could not be held until after the country’s elections on Feb 24-25.

Former Economist magazine editor Bill Emmott, who made the film with Italian Annalisa Piras, called the decision by the Museum of 21st Century Art (MAXXI) a product of “censorship and stupidity”.

MAXXI, run by a foundation overseen by the culture ministry, said it could not be host to activity that can be seen to have political connotations ahead of the elections.

“This is not censorship,” a spokesperson said. “After the elections, the film can be shown here.” The election date has been known for nearly two months.

Emmott was for 13 years the chief editor of the Economist magazine, which published covers highly critical of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, including a famous 2001 cover which read: “Why Silvio Berlusconi is Unfit to Lead Italy”.

“I am shocked. I would not have been shocked if this had happened during the government of my good friend Silvio Berlusconi, but the culture ministry doing this now is astonishing,” he told Reuters by telephone from Jamaica.

The MAXXI is run by a foundation which is funded by the culture ministry.

The film, which has already shown in New York, Miami, Brussels and London, paints a picture of what the authors say is the country’s moral, social and economic decline over the past 20 years since Berlusconi came to power.

“What this decision reflects is a very cautious mentality that wants to hide the reality of the situation of Italy and seeks to stifle debate about the causes because they might be too revealing,” Emmott said.

The film addresses political corruption, media monopoly and corporate power. Among those interviewed are caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti, filmmaker Mario Moretti, anti-Mafia writer Roberto Saviano, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, former European Commissioner Emma Bonino and author Umberto Eco.

Emmott said he and the producers would lodge a protest with the culture ministry.

“If it is not shown at the MAXXI, we will arrange for it to be shown somewhere else,” he said.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella, additional reporting by Alberto Sisto; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Media Decoder Blog: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits

8:30 p.m. | Updated

The longest-serving president of any of the three network news divisions, Steve Capus of NBC News, stepped down from his position on Friday, six months after Comcast restructured its news units in a way that diminished his authority.

Pat Fili-Krushel, chairwoman of the NBCUniversal News Group, said in a brief telephone interview on Friday that she would “cast a wide net” while searching for a successor to Mr. Capus. In the interim, the leaders of the news division will report directly to her.

Ms. Fili-Krushel became Mr. Capus’s boss last July when Steve Burke, the chief executive of NBCUniversal, consolidated all of NBC’s news units — NBC News, the cable news channels MSNBC and CNBC, and its stake in the Weather Channel — under a new umbrella, the NBCUniversal News Group. Mr. Burke asked Ms. Fili-Krushel, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to run it, while keeping Mr. Capus and the heads of the other units in place.

Ms. Fili-Krushel worked early in her career at HBO and Lifetime. A veteran of the Walt Disney Company, where she helped program ABC, and  Time Warner, where she was an administrator, she is by her own admission not a journalist.  But now she is, by default, the highest-ranking woman in the American television news industry — not just at the moment, but in the history of the medium. The heads of the news divisions at ABC and CBS are men, as are the heads of the Fox News Channel, CNN, and Bloomberg.

Ms. Fili-Krushel has kept a low public profile, but has been a forceful presence behind the scenes, recently moving from her office on the 51st floor of 30 Rockefeller Center, near Mr. Burke’s, to a new one on the third floor, where NBC News is based. On Friday, she said she had spent her first six months “learning, listening and getting to know the players here.” She called the News Group an “unbelievably strong organization.”

Though Mr. Capus’s exit saddened many at NBC News on Friday, it came as little surprise. He had previously reported directly to Mr. Burke, but after the restructuring he reported to Ms. Fili-Krushel, and he made no secret of his unhappiness with the change. His contract had a clause that allowed him to leave in the event that he no longer reported to Mr. Burke, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement at NBC, and he decided to exercise that right after months of contemplation. The people insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized by the network to speak publicly.

Mr. Capus told Ms. Fili-Krushel of his intent to leave last Friday. It is likely that he would have left sooner, but a series of major news stories kept him busy late last year — including Hurricane Sandy, the presidential election and the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Mr. Capus also oversaw the network’s response to the kidnapping of Richard Engel and an NBC News crew in Syria last month.

“It has been a privilege to have spent two decades here, but it is now time to head in a new direction,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff members on Friday afternoon.

Mr. Capus guided NBC through a revolutionary time in news-gathering and distribution. He maintained the news division’s profitability, managed tensions between NBC News and its increasingly liberal cable channel MSNBC, and fostered new business ventures like an in-house production company and an annual education summit. Last year, he unwound an old deal with Microsoft to give the news division complete control over its Web site, now named NBCNews.com, for the first time.

Ms. Fili-Krushel wrote in a separate e-mail to staff members that “NBC News is America’s leading source of television news and Steve has been a big part of that success.”

NBC News is the producer of the most popular evening newscast in the country. But its single biggest source of profits, the morning show “Today,” fell to second place last year, behind ABC’s “Good Morning America,” for the first time since the 1990s. The decline caused widespread anxiety inside the news division and speculation that Mr. Capus would be relieved of his duties.

Inside NBC, both Mr. Capus and the executive producer of “Today,” Jim Bell, received much of the blame for the botched removal of Ann Curry from “Today” last June, which worsened the show’s already tenuous position in the ratings. Ms. Fili-Krushel was put in charge just a few weeks later.

Mr. Bell was replaced at “Today” last fall and is now the executive producer for NBC Olympics. Savannah Guthrie is now the co-host of “Today,” and Ms. Curry is a national and international correspondent for the network, but is rarely seen. Mr. Capus’s exit was seen by some at the network as the last shoe that had to drop.

In his e-mail to staff members, Mr. Capus called it an “extremely difficult decision to walk away,” noting that he started at NBC as a producer 20 years ago this month. He did not make any mention of what he would do next. “Journalism is, indeed, a noble calling, and I have much I hope to accomplish in the next phase of my career,” he wrote.

“Today” continues to lose to ABC’s “Good Morning America” among total viewers, but lately it has won a few weeks in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet.

“NBC Nightly News” has more successfully fended off ABC’s “World News,” despite an aggressive push by ABC. Mr. Capus said, “NBC News has grown in all key metrics — from ratings and reputation to profitability.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/02/2013, on page B2 of the NewYork edition with the headline: In Wake of Restructuring, NBC News President Quits.

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Edward Koch dies at 88; outspoken mayor led New York City comeback

Edward I. Koch, a Greenwich Village lawyer who became mayor of New York in the late 1970s and led the city out of one of its worst financial crises by stabilizing the budget and restoring its swagger, has died. He was 88.

Koch died early Friday of congestive heart failure in a Manhattan hospital, his friend and spokesman, George Arzt said. Koch had been hospitalized Monday, a day before a documentary about him, "Koch," premiered in New York City. He had complained of trouble breathing and other ailments, and it was the latest of several hospitalizations for the former mayor in recent months.

For most of his adult life, Koch had lived alone in an apartment off Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. It's where he departed the morning he rode a public bus to City Hall to be sworn in as the 105th mayor and where he returned 12 years later, at age 65, after a disastrous fourth run to keep the job he clearly relished and worked hard at. Voters had finally tired of his infatuation with himself and his racially divisive rhetoric; but far from retiring, Koch spent the rest of his life out of public office but never out of public view.

He juggled almost a dozen jobs including law partner, columnist, author, radio show host, playwright, movie reviewer, public speaker and appeared relentlessly in the media, a shtick-artist with one of the most recognizable New York accents in the world. When he wasn't bellowing at opponents on political round tables, he was hawking everything from diet aids to soft drinks in advertisements and popping up in screen cameos playing always himself, the quintessential New Yorker, alongside Carrie and the girls in episodes of "Sex in the City" or with Big Bird in "The Muppets Take Manhattan."

He was pivotal in a September 2011 upset that put a Republican into the heavily Democratic congressional district that had been held by Rep. Anthony Weiner, who had been forced to resign in a "sexting" scandal. Koch helped catapult Republican Bob Turner to an unlikely victory in the special election to replace Weiner after he endorsed Turner to show his anger with President Obama's Middle East policy. "Ed Koch was enough to turn this around," Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf said after Turner's win.

For his 86th birthday, New York's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg, renamed the Queensboro Bridge linking Manhattan to Koch's home borough of Queens after him, saying the bridge – now officially known as the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge -- was like Koch: "a resilient, hard-working New York City icon."

"He was a great mayor, a great man, and a great friend," Bloomberg said in a statement Friday after Koch's death. "In elected office and as a private citizen, he was our most tireless, fearless, and guileless civic crusader. Through his tough, determined leadership and responsible fiscal stewardship, Ed helped lift the city out of its darkest days and set it on course for an incredible comeback."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo echoed the sentiment. "No New Yorker has -- or likely ever will -- voice their love for New York City in such a passionate and outspoken manner than Ed Koch," said Cuomo. "New York City would not be the place it is today without Ed Koch's leadership over three terms at City Hall."

City flags were ordered flown at half-staff.

"He was the epitome of New York--loud, funny, opinionated, smart," said Arzt, a former reporter who became Koch's spokesman in City Hall and had lunch with him every Saturday after he left, along with 10 other alumni of the administration. "Ed was very much a straight shooter, a champion of the middle class, a moderate Democrat akin to a Harry Truman. He defied categories."

In fact, Koch loved to enrage liberals by doing and saying the unthinkable--endorsing Republican politicians (John Lindsay, Rudolph Giuliani, George W. Bush) and their beliefs (the death penalty). But Koch also held fast to many liberal values. A civil libertarian, Koch made one of his first executive orders when he became mayor to add sexual preference to a citywide ban on job discrimination.

He not only never shied away from controversy, he invited it; unlike successors Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, he enjoyed confrontation. He once wrestled an egg-throwing heckler to the floor before the police could move in.

Altogether Koch wrote (mostly co-authored) 15 books, including eight autobiographies, two children's books and multiple mystery novels starring himself as the detective. He also regularly reviewed movies and restaurants, and at last count had more than 6,200 followers on Twitter (@mayoredkoch).

Really, Koch would opine to whomever, whenever, never mincing words: Movie tickets were too expensive; the United Nations, after an anti-Israel vote, was "made up of gangsters, cutthroats and piranhas"; a Puerto Rican mayoral rival was a "poverty pimp"; Sarah Palin was likable "but she scares the hell out of me." He never lost interest in his absolutely favorite subject—himself. "How'm I doin'?" was his trademark question.

The only topics that remained off limits were his heroic service as an infantryman in World War II—he was awarded two battle stars—and his sexuality. A lifelong bachelor, Koch refused to delve into rumors of his homosexuality. "I ran in a total of 24 elections and won 21," he once told the New York Times. "I will not be a coward and say I am straight or I'm gay, because it's no one's business. I got where I am today not because of sexuality or gender but because people thought I was the best at what I did...."

In recent years, though Koch appeared to mellow, seeking reconciliation with many of his former rivals, he refused to yield when it came to standards for public service. As recently as the summer of 2010, at age 85, he ginned up a campaign called "New York Uprising" to reform state government. Despite a history of heart disease that left him with two pacemakers and a degenerative spinal disorder that caused the once-strapping 6-foot-1 former mayor to be stooped in old age, he embarked in a rented Jeep on a campaign-style press tour around upstate New York to shame reluctant legislators in their home districts to signing a pledge to "clean up Albany."

"I didn't willingly take this on," he told reporters. "I was waiting for someone else to do it.... It's only after six months or a year of going to every breakfast, lunch and dinner, where all they talked about is the dysfunctional Legislature ... I'm thinking somebody is going to stand up and challenge this in some form. But nobody did. So I said to myself, 'Well, if nobody will, I will.' "

This was shortly after Koch, ever the showman, revealed he'd finalized plans for his funeral and penned his gravestone epitaph about his love of his religion, Judaism, his city and his country.

In 2011, when the Queensboro Bridge was renamed, the former mayor enthused: "It's not a beautiful bridge. It's a workhorse bridge. It's craggy and shaggy, and I'm craggy and shaggy." He also hinted that he wouldn't mind if Newark Airport was renamed for him: E.I.K, he said, "kind of rhymes with J.F.K."

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The Decades That Invented the Future, Part 11: 2001-2010

Today's leading-edge technology is headed straight for tomorrow's junk pile, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Everyone loves the latest and greatest.

Sometimes, though, something truly revolutionary cuts through the clutter and fundamentally changes the game. And with that in mind, Wired is looking back over 12 decades to highlight the 12 most innovative people, places and things of their day. From the first transatlantic radio transmissions to cellphones, from vacuum tubes to microprocessors, we'll run down the most important advancements in technology, science, sports and more.

This week's installment takes us back to 2001-2010, when the U.S. was attacked, the iPhone was introduced to the world and social media took over.

We don't expect you to agree with all of our picks, or even some of them. That's fine. Tell us what you think we've missed and we'll publish your list later.

“Every once in awhile a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Steve Jobs said when he unveiled the first iPhone at the Macworld Expo in 2007. He was right. The iPhone was and is revolutionary. It did change everything.

The iPhone, hell, smartphones in general, are so ubiquitous now it’s easy to forget it was just six years ago when the iPhone first said hello. But the iPhone was the first device that challenged our expectations of what mobile devices can, and should, do. It was the first device that took the mobile phone from something ugly, unreliable, and unwieldy to something elegant, intuitive, and sexy.

It was the first handset to have a multitouch screen, visual voicemail, and its own browser that could access any web page, not just WAP versions of pages. You could store up to 16 GB of music, photos, notes, and e-mails on one device. Wi-Fi and EDGE (and later 3G) capabilities meant you could stay connected no matter where you went. By putting e-mail, web-browsing, and maps at our fingertips it changed not just how we communicate but how we consume information.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s responsible for the robust app ecosystem we have today. The iPhone jumpstarted the now billion-dollar mobile-apps industry. It was a full year after the iPhone came out when the first third-party apps were introduced. But what started off as just 500 apps quickly spawned into the multi-billion dollar industry of hundreds of thousands of apps we have today.

Photo: Carl Berkeley/Flickr

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Roseanne Barr to Star in, Produce New Series for NBC

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – NBC is betting on the up-again-down-again Roseanne Barr, signing the television icon to an overall deal that calls for her to develop a show she will star in and produce for the network. She will executive produce the series with Steven Greener, with whom she collaborated on “Roseanne’s Nuts” for Lifetime.

As part of the deal, Barr also will guest star in a three-episode arc on NBC’s “The Office” as talent agent Carla Fern. She will help Andy Bernard (Ed Helms) pursue the career in show business he has always dreamed about. That arc begins filming this week.

Barr came close to scoring a new show with NBC just a year ago. The network picked up her “Downwardly Mobile” to pilot last January but never ordered it to series. A multi-camera comedy starring Barr as a trailer park operator, it would have re-teamed her with “Roseanne” co-star John Goodman.

“Roseanne” aired on ABC for close to a decade, and was one of the top TV shows in the country for most of those years, winning her an Emmy and a Golden Globe. TV Guide named it one of the 50 greatest TV shows of all time in 2002, and it helped turn Barr, at its inception a stand-up comedian, into a TV star.

In the show’s final year, she tried to launch a Roseanne Conner spin-off, but wasn’t able to pull it off. She then segued into her own talk show, which lasted two years, before returning to stand-up comedy and taking assorted TV and film roles, making her big-screen debut in 1989s “She-Devil” with Meryl Streep.

In 1990 she performed a controversial, loud and screechy “Star-Spangled Banner” before a baseball game between the San Diego Padres and the Cincinnati Reds.’

She is represented by Paradigm.

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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DealBook: Ex-Peregrine Chief Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison

8:33 p.m. | Updated

A prominent futures-industry executive was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Thursday for embezzling from clients and misleading banks for two decades.

Russell Wasendorf Sr., the chief executive of the now-defunct brokerage firm the Peregrine Financial Group, stole more than $215 million, money that a judge said is likely never to be recovered.

Dressed in orange prison garb, his wrists and ankles shackled, Mr. Wasendorf sat expressionless as Judge Linda Reade of the United States District Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, handed down the maximum sentence recommended by the government.

“The lengthy prison sentence imposed today is just punishment for a con man who built a business on smoke and mirrors,” said Sean Berry, acting United States attorney in Cedar Rapids.

Mr. Wasendorf’s penalty is the latest in a string of stiff sentences handed down by judges for financial crimes. Bernard L. Madoff received 150 years for perpetrating the largest Ponzi scheme ever uncovered. Allen Stanford is serving a 110-year term after being convicted of swindling investors of nearly a $7 billion. Thomas J. Petters got a 50-year sentence for defrauding investors of nearly $4 billion.

Given the extremely lengthy sentences and advanced age of some of the defendants, many of these terms are largely symbolic, intended to reflect the gravity of the crimes and the need for retribution.

The fraud carried out by Mr. Wasendorf, 64, took place more than 1,000 miles from Wall Street, in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Federal regulators discovered the crime last summer after local police found Mr. Wasendorf unconscious in his car in Peregrine’s parking lot, a hose running from the exhaust pipe into the passenger compartment. He left a detailed suicide note explaining his crimes.

Mr. Wasendorf stole millions of dollars from his customers at Peregrine, which also did business as PFGBest, by using laser printers and software like Photoshop and Excel to make near-perfect replicas of account statements from US Bank. He duped regulators by supplying them with a false post-office box address for sending forms to the bank, which he would then intercept and send back on forged US Bank letterhead.

Mr. Wasendorf said that he acted alone, keeping his scheme from his approximately 240 employees by being the only Peregrine employee with access to customers’ accounts. No one else, including his son, Russell Wasendorf Jr., who worked at the firm, has been charged in the case.

“With careful concealment and blunt authority, I was able to hide my fraud from others at P.F.G.,” he wrote in his suicide note.

Mr. Wasendorf’s fraud shocked the financial world, coming just months after the implosion of MF Global, a commodities and futures brokerage firm where about $1 billion in client money disappeared. The scandal raised questions about oversight failures in the futures industry. Futures brokerage firms like Peregrine match buyers and sellers of contracts for commodities, charging a small commission for the service.

Peregrine’s clients — and Mr. Wasendorf’s 13,000 victims — including speculators betting on the price of orange juice and farmers who use such contracts to protect themselves from large price fluctuations.

The case also stunned Cedar Falls, a town of 40,000 perhaps best known as the home of the University of Northern Iowa, the college where Mr. Wasendorf, an Iowa native, earned his degree. He started his business there in the late 1960s before moving it to Chicago, the epicenter of the futures industry. (Cedar Falls is about 60 miles north of Cedar Rapids, where Mr. Wasendorf was sentenced.)

In 2009, Mr. Wasendorf returned to Cedar Falls, spending $20 million to build a gleaming headquarters on the outskirts of town. A delegation of Iowa lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, attended the office’s grand opening.

He became a local hero, creating jobs, sponsoring numerous charitable causes and opening two restaurants in town. His Italian eatery, myVerona, became a Cedar Falls hot spot and a coveted place to land a job. In 2010, Mr. Wasendorf paid for the entire staff to travel to Italy — visiting Milan, Parma and Modena — to hone their culinary skills and sample the authentic cuisine.

“How can I expect them to prepare and cook north Italian food if they haven’t experienced it?” Mr. Wasendorf told The Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier.

His estate, a compound carved out of Iowa farmland, featured a 1,000-bottle wine cellar and a U-shaped indoor swimming pool with a retractable glass-paneled roof. He owned a private jet — nicknamed Air Wasendorf — that he flew out of nearby Waterloo, traveling frequently to Chicago for meetings.

Judge Reade rejected any leniency for Mr. Wasendorf because of his contributions to the community. “It is easy to be generous with other people’s money,” she said.

Iowa newspapers nicknamed Mr. Wasendorf “the Madoff of the Midwest.” Though Mr. Wasendorf’s criminal proceeds were a tiny fraction of Mr. Madoff’s, the two men suggested similar reasons for why they turned to a life of crime.

Mr. Madoff has said in interviews that he began his fraud after his investment performance soured and he couldn’t admit defeat. Similarly, Mr. Wasendorf, in his confession, said he began to steal from his clients when his business slumped and he began to run out of money.

“I guess my ego was too big to admit failure,” wrote Mr. Wasendorf. “So I cheated.”

On Thursday, Mr. Wasendorf, gaunt and diminished, expressed deep remorse.

“I feel I fully deserve whatever sentence I’m given,” he said. “The punishment I’ve caused myself is worse than anything you can impose.”

A version of this article appeared in print on 02/01/2013, on page B1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Ex-Peregrine Chief Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison.

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Hagel to stress opposition to a nuclear Iran in Senate testimony

WASHINGTON -- President Obama’s nominee for secretary of Defense, former Sen. Chuck Hagel, will stress at his confirmation hearing Thursday that he opposes letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons and will focus on developing military options to set back Tehran’s program, according to a U.S. official familiar with his planned testimony.

It will be Hagel’s first chance to explain his views publicly since his selection last month ignited fierce opposition from several former Republican colleagues and pro-Israel groups. They contend Hagel was not tough enough on Iran during his two terms as a GOP senator from Nebraska, and warn he might not push for a U.S. attack on Iran if one is needed.

“He’s going to be very clear that he fully supports the president’s policy of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because Hagel had not yet testified. “His job as secretary of Defense is to ensure that the military is prepared for any contingency, and he believes all options should be on the table, including military options.”

Hagel’s willingness to back the use of force against Iran is likely to be the key area of questioning during what is expected to be a daylong hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After a shaky start, Hagel’s nomination has picked up increasing support from Democrats, and the first Republican, Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, announced Monday that he would vote for Hagel.

White House officials say they expect more Republicans to back Hagel and predict that when the full Senate votes, he will win more than the 60 votes necessary to avoid the threat of a filibuster.

Some pro-Israel groups have greeted Hagel’s nomination with opposition or lukewarm support. Even Democrats who back Hagel are determined to press him for greater clarity on how long diplomatic pressure and sanctions on Iran should be given to work before a military strike becomes necessary.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said “most Democrats are leaning very strongly” for Hagel, including himself. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have questions,” he added.

Many Republicans have not forgiven Hagel for publicly criticizing the George W. Bush administration for its handling of the war in Iraq, and they are likely to be considerably harsher in tone.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon, said Hagel’s nomination had “already done damage to the United States’ credibility” in dealing with Iran.

“I realize that Sen. Hagel is now repudiating many of his past actions and statements,” he added. “But we’ve seen this before.”

Like Obama, Hagel has long called for a mix of negotiations and international economic sanctions to pressure Iran, insisting that military action should be considered only as a last resort. As he has sought support for his nomination, Hagel has emphasized that unilateral U.S. sanctions and even military action could be required.

“If Iran continues to flout its international obligations, it should continue to face severe and growing consequences,” Hagel said in response to written questions from the committee. ‘‘While there is time and space for diplomacy, backed by pressure, the window is closing. Iran needs to demonstrate it is prepared to negotiate seriously.’’

Ironically, the pressure on Hagel to come out strongly for a possible military strike against Iran comes as some Israeli officials, who have long pressed the Obama administration to consider a preemptive attack, say Iran appears to have backed away, at least for now, from what the West believes is a program to develop a nuclear bomb.

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the top Republican on the panel, said last week that he and Hagel were “too philosophically opposed on the issues" for Inhofe to support his nomination, citing Hagel’s support for defense budget cuts and for cutting nuclear stockpiles. Inhofe was one of three Republicans who voted Tuesday against confirming Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) as secretary of State.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility that Republicans would require a 60-vote threshold for confirming Hagel.

“Sen. Hagel hasn't had his hearing yet, and I think it's too early to predict the conditions under which his nomination will be considered,” McConnell said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has said he would block Hagel’s nomination from coming to a vote unless the current Pentagon chief, Leon E. Panetta, agrees to testify about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. A White House official downplayed the possibility that Hagel’s nomination could be blocked, saying negotiations were underway to let Panetta testify.

david.cloud@latimes.com

michael.memoli@latimes.com

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Amazon's Future Is Not in Selling Stuff — And That's a Good Thing

During Amazon’s wonkish earnings call this week, Chief Financial Officer Tom Szkutak revealed a number that offered a surprising glimpse into the company’s ambitious future — a future where Amazon doesn’t sell stuff. At least not directly.

In the Q&A with analysts, Szkutak said that a full 39 percent of the “product units” sold on Amazon during the most recent quarter were from third-party sellers, up from 36 percent a year earlier. In other words, more than a third of everything sold on Amazon during the last three months wasn’t sold by Amazon itself, but by someone else selling through Amazon.

Szkutak went on to say that unit sales on Amazon overall grew 32 percent during the quarter. Third-party sales rose at an even faster clip — more than 40 percent.

When I shop on Amazon, I tend to check price first, then reviews, then whether the thing I want to buy is eligible for Prime. Only then do I tend to check the actual seller, which Amazon lists below whether the item is in stock. From the success of third-party sales on Amazon, I’m clearly not the only person indifferent to who has title to the merchandise I’m buying. If it’s on Amazon, I tend to think of it as from Amazon.

That might not always be wise, since third-party sellers might, for instance, have a different return policy than Amazon’s standard guidelines. But that kind of variation seems less and less likely as Amazon makes standardization the most appealing option.

The company’s not-so-secret secret to smoothing the path for third-party sellers is Fulfillment by Amazon, the Amazon Web Services of non-digital stuff. In the same way that Amazon leveraged its own existing digital infrastructure to become the backend of many of the web’s most popular sites, Fulfillment by Amazon offers up the company’s existing physical infrastructure to third-party sellers who want to outsource such joyless tasks as warehousing their inventory, shipping orders and handling returns.

While Fulfillment by Amazon gives even small mom-and-pop sellers access to Amazon’s global visibility and reach, the arrangement also works to Amazon’s advantage. Last year, Amazon opened up 20 new fulfillment centers and has plans for several more, including one near San Francisco and three planned for Texas, each more than 1 million square feet in size. By investing so much in shelf space, Amazon has every incentive to keep those shelves filled. And the more third-party stuff Amazon can move through its distribution hubs, the better, since that’s all inventory Amazon doesn’t have to pay for itself. As analysts at Baird Equity Research point out, third-party sales are 100 percent gross margin for Amazon. In other words, the only cost to Amazon of providing third-party fulfillment is money they would have spent anyway on the infrastructure, labor, transportation and whatever else they need to support their direct sales operation.

Considering these advantages, third-party sales loom as an important part of Amazon’s business future. Last year, sales of services — including commissions on third-party sales — accounted for about 15 percent of Amazon’s total sales. If current trends continue, that percentage will rise, giving all the more reason to stop thinking of Amazon as a seller of stuff and to start thinking of the world’s biggest online retailer as a platform for stuff — an API for the material world.

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ABC orders pilots for “Big Thunder” drama, Gothic soap opera

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – ABC has ordered pilots for the dramas “Big Thunder” and “Gothica,” the network said Tuesday.

“Big Thunder,” which is written by “Ice Age” writer Jason Fuchs (pictured) and executive produced by Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “The Troop”) follows a brilliant doctor in late 19th century New York whose family is given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to relocate to a frontier mining town run by a powerful, but mysterious tycoon. However, they quickly realize that not everything in Big Thunder is as it seems.

ABC Studios is producing the pilot, which is based on the Big Mountain Thunder Railroad ride at several Disney-owned theme parks.

“Gothica,” meanwhile, is described as a “sexy gothic soap opera set in present day” that “weaves together a mythology that incorporates the legends of Dracula, Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein and Dorian Gray among others.”

The project, written by Matt Lopez, comes from ABC Studios and the Mark Gordon Company.

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Well: Myths of Weight Loss Are Plentiful, Researcher Says

If schools reinstated physical education classes, a lot of fat children would lose weight. And they might never have gotten fat in the first place if their mothers had just breast fed them when they were babies. But be warned: obese people should definitely steer clear of crash diets. And they can lose more than 50 pounds in five years simply by walking a mile a day.

Those are among the myths and unproven assumptions about obesity and weight loss that have been repeated so often and with such conviction that even scientists like David B. Allison, who directs the Nutrition Obesity Research Center at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, have fallen for some of them.

Now, he is trying to set the record straight. In an article published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine, he and his colleagues lay out seven myths and six unsubstantiated presumptions about obesity. They also list nine facts that, unfortunately, promise little in the way of quick fixes for the weight-obsessed. Example: “Trying to go on a diet or recommending that someone go on a diet does not generally work well in the long term.”

Obesity experts applauded this plain-spoken effort to dispel widespread confusion about obesity. The field, they say, has become something of a quagmire.

“In my view,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, a Rockefeller University obesity researcher, “there is more misinformation pretending to be fact in this field than in any other I can think of.”

Others agreed, saying it was about time someone tried to set the record straight.

“I feel like cheering,” said Madelyn Fernstrom, founding director of the University of Pittsburgh Weight Management Center. When it comes to obesity beliefs, she said, “We are spinning out of control.”

Steven N. Blair, an exercise and obesity researcher at the University of South Carolina, said his own students believe many of the myths. “I like to challenge my students. Can you show me the data? Too often that doesn’t come into it.”

Dr. Allison sought to establish what is known to be unequivocally true about obesity and weight loss.

His first thought was that, of course, weighing oneself daily helped control weight. He checked for the conclusive studies he knew must exist. They did not.

“My goodness, after 50-plus years of studying obesity in earnest and all the public wringing of hands, why don’t we know this answer?” Dr. Allison asked. “What’s striking is how easy it would be to check. Take a couple of thousand people and randomly assign them to weigh themselves every day or not.”

Yet it has not been done.

Instead, people often rely on weak studies that get repeated ad infinitum. It is commonly thought, for example, that people who eat breakfast are thinner. But that notion is based on studies of people who happened to eat breakfast. Researchers then asked if they were fatter or thinner than people who happened not to eat breakfast — and found an association between eating breakfast and being thinner. But such studies can be misleading because the two groups might be different in other ways that cause the breakfast eaters to be thinner. But no one has randomly assigned people to eat breakfast or not, which could cinch the argument.

So, Dr. Allison asks, why do yet another study of the association between thinness and breakfast? “Yet, I can tell you that in the last two weeks I saw an association study of breakfast eating in Islamabad and another in Inner Mongolia and another in a country I never heard of.”

“Why are we doing these?” Dr. Allison asked. “All that time and effort is essentially wasted. The question is: ‘Is it a causal association?’” To get the answer, he added, “Do the clinical trial.”

He decided to do it himself, with university research funds. A few hundred people will be recruited and will be randomly assigned to one of three groups. Some will be told to eat breakfast every day, others to skip breakfast, and the third group will be given vague advice about whether to eat it or not.

As he delved into the obesity literature, Dr. Allison began to ask himself why some myths and misconceptions are so commonplace. Often, he decided, the beliefs reflected a “reasonableness bias.” The advice sounds so reasonable it must be true. For example, the idea that people do the best on weight-loss programs if they set reasonable goals sounds so sensible.

“We all want to be reasonable,” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, when he examined weight-loss studies he found no consistent association between the ambitiousness of the goal and how much weight was lost and how long it had stayed off. This myth, though, illustrates the tricky ground weight-loss programs have to navigate when advising dieters. The problem is that on average people do not lose much – 10 percent of their weight is typical – but setting 10 percent as a goal is not necessarily the best strategy. A very few lose a lot more and some people may be inspired by the thought of a really life-changing weight loss.

“If a patient says, ‘Do you think it is reasonable for me to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ the honest answer is, ‘No. Not without surgery,’” Dr. Allison said. But, he said, “If a patient says, ‘My goal is to lose 25 percent of my body weight,’ I would say, ‘Go for it.’”

Yet all this negativism bothers people, Dr. Allison conceded. When he talks about his findings to scientists, they often say: “O.K., you’ve convinced us. But what can we do? We’ve got to do something.” He replies that scientists have an ethical duty to make clear what is established and what is speculation. And while it is fine to recommend things like bike paths or weighing yourself daily, scientists must make sure they preface their advice with the caveat that these things seem sensible but have not been proven.

Among the best established methods is weight-loss surgery, which, of course, is not right for most people. But surgeons have done careful studies to show that on average people lose substanial amounts of weight and their health improves, Dr. Allison said. For dieters, the best results occur with structured programs, like ones that supply complete meals or meal replacements.

In the meantime, Dr. Allison said, it is incumbent upon scientists to change their ways. “We need to do rigorous studies,” he said. “We need to stop doing association studies after an association has clearly been demonstrated.”

“I never said we have to wait for perfect knowledge,” Dr. Allison said. But, as John Lennon said, “Just give me some truth.”

---

Here is an overview of the obesity myths looked at by the researchers and what is known to be true:

MYTHS

Small things make a big difference. Walking a mile a day can lead to a loss of more than 50 pounds in five years.

Set a realistic goal to lose a modest amount.

People who are too ambitious will get frustrated and give up.

You have to be mentally ready to diet or you will never succeed.

Slow and steady is the way to lose. If you lose weight too fast you will lose less in the long run.

Ideas not yet proven TRUE OR FALSE

Diet and exercise habits in childhood set the stage for the rest of life.

Add lots of fruits and vegetables to your diet to lose weight or not gain as much.

Yo-yo diets lead to increased death rates.

People who snack gain weight and get fat.

If you add bike paths, jogging trails, sidewalks and parks, people will not be as fat.

FACTS — GOOD EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT

Heredity is important but is not destiny.

Exercise helps with weight maintenance.

Weight loss is greater with programs that provide meals.

Some prescription drugs help with weight loss and maintenance.

Weight-loss surgery in appropriate patients can lead to long-term weight loss, less diabetes and a lower death rate.

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Chinese Hackers Infiltrate New York Times Computers

A Cyberattack from China:
Chinese hackers infiltrated The New York Times’s computer systems, getting passwords for its reporters and others.

SAN FRANCISCO — For the last four months, Chinese hackers have persistently attacked The New York Times, infiltrating its computer systems and getting passwords for its reporters and other employees.

After surreptitiously tracking the intruders to study their movements and help erect better defenses to block them, The Times and computer security experts have expelled the attackers and kept them from breaking back in.

The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings.

Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network. They broke into the e-mail accounts of its Shanghai bureau chief, David Barboza, who wrote the reports on Mr. Wen’s relatives, and Jim Yardley, The Times’s South Asia bureau chief in India, who previously worked as bureau chief in Beijing.

“Computer security experts found no evidence that sensitive e-mails or files from the reporting of our articles about the Wen family were accessed, downloaded or copied,” said Jill Abramson, executive editor of The Times.

The hackers tried to cloak the source of the attacks on The Times by first penetrating computers at United States universities and routing the attacks through them, said computer security experts at Mandiant, the company hired by The Times. This matches the subterfuge used in many other attacks that Mandiant has tracked to China.

The attackers first installed malware — malicious software — that enabled them to gain entry to any computer on The Times’s network. The malware was identified by computer security experts as a specific strain associated with computer attacks originating in China. More evidence of the source, experts said, is that the attacks started from the same university computers used by the Chinese military to attack United States military contractors in the past.

Security experts found evidence that the hackers stole the corporate passwords for every Times employee and used those to gain access to the personal computers of 53 employees, most of them outside The Times’s newsroom. Experts found no evidence that the intruders used the passwords to seek information that was not related to the reporting on the Wen family.

No customer data was stolen from The Times, security experts said.

Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, and possibly with the military, China’s Ministry of National Defense said, “Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security.” It added that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”

The attacks appear to be part of a broader computer espionage campaign against American news media companies that have reported on Chinese leaders and corporations.

Last year, Bloomberg News was targeted by Chinese hackers, and some employees’ computers were infected, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s internal investigation, after Bloomberg published an article on June 29 about the wealth accumulated by relatives of Xi Jinping, China’s vice president at the time. Mr. Xi became general secretary of the Communist Party in November and is expected to become president in March. Ty Trippet, a spokesman for Bloomberg, confirmed that hackers had made attempts but said that “no computer systems or computers were compromised.”

Signs of a Campaign

The mounting number of attacks that have been traced back to China suggest that hackers there are behind a far-reaching spying campaign aimed at an expanding set of targets including corporations, government agencies, activist groups and media organizations inside the United States. The intelligence-gathering campaign, foreign policy experts and computer security researchers say, is as much about trying to control China’s public image, domestically and abroad, as it is about stealing trade secrets.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 31, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the timing of a cyberattack that caused damage at Iran’s main nuclear enrichment plant. Evidence suggests that the United States and Israel released a computer worm around 2008, not 2012.

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Gun hearing starts with plea from Giffords

Shooting victim and former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords arrives for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun control. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images / January 30, 2013)

By Melanie Mason

January 30, 2013, 7:51 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The year's first congressional committee hearing on guns began with an emotional jolt Wednesday, with former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was seriously wounded in a mass shooting two years ago, urging senators to "be bold, be courageous" in addressing gun violence.

Bucking tradition, Giffords spoke at the outset of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, before senators made their opening statements. She and her husband, former astronaut Mark Kelly, were escorted to the witness table by the committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and its ranking Republican, Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

Giffords, whose speech is impaired after being shot in the head by Jared Loughner two years ago, spoke slowly and emphatically in a minute-long statement.

"Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something," she said.

"It will be hard, but the time is now," Giffords added. "You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you."

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melanie.mason@latimes.com

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Affordable Injection Molding Transforms Tinkerers Into Tycoons

While everyone is talking about the 3-D printing industrial revolution, Protomold is helping tinkerers become tycoons by making mass-production injection molding technology accessible for easily customized short-run batches — and their recent expansion of materials lets designers produce almost anything they need.

3-D printing something like a cellphone case can take hours — unacceptable when makers need mass quantities. In order to cost-effectively produce products in big batches, traditional manufacturing processes like injection molding are still the best option. Unfortunately, companies that specialize in these processes want to work on huge-volume projects, leaving the little guy, or even a moderately successful Kickstarter project, with few options.

Protomold has stepped in to provide servicing to those makers who need small orders by being able to produce 50-5,000 injection-molded parts in one business day with prices starting at $1,495 for a production tool, and each produced part costing a couple dollars or less. The experience isn't much different than ordering business cards online. A designer uploads their CAD file, chooses from a few preset options, and shelf-worthy injection-molded parts arrive on their doorstep.

The company has been successful, operating since May 1999, while continuing to grow their service. They've just added new materials to their list, including injection molded steel, stainless steel, magnesium, copper. Their newest is the option to mold parts in high temperature, medical grade resins, giving garage entrepreneurs the ability to produce parts for medical devices and high performance applications. Protomold is focused on helping turn big ideas into big companies.

Protomold is able to move so quickly because they optimize their offering for small businesses. While some companies treat moldmaking as an artform, with each production tool cherished like a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, Protomold is more like a Thomas Kincaid canvas used to cover a hole in the wall. This means mold cycle times are a few seconds slower, tools are made out of aluminum instead of steel, and need to be simple enough to be produced on a CNC milling machine. "We can't make everything," says CEO Brad Cleveland. "But the things we can make, we make faster than anyone."

What started as a single engineer looking to solve his own problem has turned into a publicly traded company with a billion dollar market cap and 511 workers filling 160,000 square feet of office space producing parts 24 hours a day.

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Spielberg seen winning director Oscar for “Lincoln”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – American filmmaker Steven Spielberg is clear favorite among the public to win the best director award for his film about President Abraham Lincoln at the Academy Awards this year, a Reuters poll showed on Wednesday.

While the race to win best film at the February 24 ceremony was shaken up by “Argo” stealing the thunder of “Lincoln” at two award ceremonies last weekend, the best director statuette was deemed destined for one man.

Spielberg, 66, who has been nominated seven times for best director at the Oscars and won twice – for the World War Two dramas “Schindler’s List” in 1993 and “Saving Private Ryan” in 1998 – was seen as far ahead in the all-male field of five.

A Reuters Ipsos poll of 1,641 Americans found 41 percent thought Spielberg should win and 38 percent said he was most likely to win for his U.S. Civil War-era drama in which British actor Daniel Day-Lewis plays Lincoln.

Almost half of the respondents to the survey conducted Friday through Tuesday were unsure who should or was most likely to be voted best director. The accuracy of the poll uses a statistical measure called a “credibility interval” and is precise to within 2.8 percentage points.

The online poll comes before the Directors Guild of America awards on Saturday in Los Angeles. Since 1948, there have been only six occasions where the winner of the DGA Award for Feature Film has not gone on to win the Oscar for best director.

But this year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members choose Oscar winners, overlooked the directors of four of the year’s biggest movies – Ben Affleck (“Argo”), Kathryn Bigelow (“Zero Dark Thirty”), Quentin Tarantino (“Django Unchained”) and Tom Hopper (“Les Miserables”) – opening the possibility of a rare split in February in the best film and best director categories.

Betting agencies also have earmarked Spielberg as clear favorite, with William Hill offering odds of 1-5 on Spielberg.

“Our theory is that Spielberg will win best director but not best film,” said Rupert Adams, a spokesman for bookmaker William Hill. “If you listen to what people are saying it is that ‘Lincoln’ is a brilliant film in terms of direction but it is not that exciting to watch unlike ‘Argo.’”

Ang Lee, with his 3-D film adaptation of the best-selling novel “Life of Pi” about an Indian boy adrift at sea with a tiger, was ranked second in the Reuters poll with about one in 10 respondents saying he should or was most likely to win.

The Taiwanese director won the Academy Award for best director in 2005 for the gay-themed Western romance “Brokeback Mountain.”

David O. Russell with the quirky comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” was rated third in the poll with about 5 percent.

The two surprise contenders in the race ranked fourth and fifth: Benh Zeitlin, 30, with his first feature, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” and Austrian director Michael Haneke with the French-language drama “Armour” about illness and old age.

The exclusion of Bigelow for her film about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been controversial in the run-up to the 85th Academy Awards. Bigelow, 61, is the only woman to win a best director Oscar, for “The Hurt Locker” in 2009.

Affleck, 40, whose Iran hostage thriller “Argo” swept the board at last weekend’s Hollywood awards shows, was also notable by his absence, as were Hooper and Tarantino. However, all four of their movies are in the running for best film at the Oscars.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Belinda Goldsmith)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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