Cover Letter Examples

Cover Letter Examples
Your Name Your Address City, State, Zip Code Date Name (Dr., Mr., Mrs., Ms.) Title Organization Street Address or PO Box # City, State, Zip Code Dear Mr./Ms________:
First Paragraph
State specifically why you are writing by identifying the position, field or general area of your inquiry. Tell how you heard of the opening or organization and the central reason why you would like to work for that organization (e.g. its mission or philosophy) and/or why you are well suited for this opportunity.
Body of letter (typically one or two paragraphs)

Elaborate on why you are particularly suited for THIS organization and THIS job by reviewing the job description, conducting online research, and specifically connecting the qualifications needed with your skills. Highlight your particularly relevant achievements. Elaborate on key points from your resume without repeating your resume word-for-word. This is not a paragraph version of your resume. Communicate clearly to the employer that you understand what is required of the position and the ways in which you have developed the skills the employer seeks.
Final Paragraph
Refer the employer to an enclosed resume and/or application form. Reiterate your interest in the specific position and restate the name of the organization. Request to meet with them to discuss this opportunity and your qualifications. Indicate how you can be contacted. If the position requires any level of sales skills (development, etc.) state that you will follow up (this demonstrates your comfort in doing this type of marketing outreach). But, if you state you will contact them, be sure to do so in the time you indicated! This is also the place that you include information that may be important but that you havent included elsewhere- for example if applying for a position out of town and you will be in the area at a certain time, if you will be out of the country and inaccessible for a period of time, etc. This is also where you include salary requirements, only if they request them. Sincerely, (Your Signature Here) Your Name Typed Enclosure (or Attachment if emailing) 555 W. 55th Street, #4D New York, NY 10023 917-555-5555 Abc111@columbia.edu March 21, 2007 Ms. Susan Smith Childrens Hospital Division of Adolescent Medicine
111 Main Street, 5th Floor Indianapolis, IN 46666 Dear Ms. Smith: I am writing in response to the Post-Graduate Social Work Fellowship at Childrens Hospital that was advertised in Columbia Universitys Job Listings. I am presently exploring career opportunities in clinical social work, particularly working with the issues associated with the health and mental health of adolescents and young adults. Throughout my graduate school education, I have gained experience working with adolescents and young adults dealing with a variety of health and mental health concerns, such as chronic mental illness, teenage pregnancy, physical and sexual abuse, and eating disorders. These varied experiences have furthered my interests in gaining greater knowledge and training with this population. Of particular relevance, with respect to my qualifications for the Post-Graduate Fellowship position, is my work at Harlem Mental Health Centers Adult Outpatient Department, where I provide intake assessments and long-term treatment for individuals with mental illness. I have gained the knowledge and clinical experience essential for working with culturally diverse populations with varying types and severities of mental illness, as well as effectively functioning on a multi-disciplinary team of professionals. Additionally, my experiences working at Queens Community Center have enhanced my desire to work with adolescents and young adults and furthered my interest in womens health, such as eating disorders and reproductive health issues. I am able to forge excellent working relationships and collaborate with other staff and community agencies to assist clients in meeting their treatment and life goals and am committed to working creatively and collaboratively with clients. I believe that with my educational and professional experiences, as well as my motivation, enthusiasm, empathy and compassion for others, I could be a valuable and productive member of your team. I have attached my resume for your review and would welcome and appreciate the opportunity to meet with you to discuss this position further. I may be reached at (917) 555-5555 or at abc1111@columbia.edu. Thank you in advance for your time and I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience. Sincerely, Jody Jobseeker Attachment 222 River Road New York, NY 10027 May 15, 2007 Susan Smith Human Resources Manager Social Service Agency, Inc. 111 Main Street, Room 11 Somewhere, NY 11111 Dear Ms. Smith: Please accept my resume for the Research Associate position available in the Higher Education Policy Research Center at Silver Springs University. I am currently completing my doctoral program in higher education at Teachers College, Columbia University and am extremely interested in moving into a research setting. I feel strongly that my previous professional experiences working in academia and my recent dissertation research have adequately prepared me to perform successfully in this position. While I have spent the majority of my professional career working with students directly, I have shifted my focus to policy-making and the impact of higher education policy on the college student experience. I also am competent in both qualitative and quantitative research methods. Please let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely, [Your Signature Here] Jody Jobseeker 111 River Road, Apartment 111 Brooklyn, NY 11111 June 8, 2007 Ms. Christina Huang, Director Recruitment and Staffing The Mount Olive Medical Center One High Terrace New York, NY 10055 Dear Ms. Huang: I am interested in the MICA Day Treatment Program and the Inpatient Gero-Psych positions advertised in The New York Times on June 6, 2007. Having spent the first ten years of my life in Uruguay, South America, I am bilingual and bicultural. Furthermore, I completed my first year graduate school internship providing long-term psychotherapy to Latino clients at Oscar Arias Family Guidance Center. These experiences, my graduate education, and my clinical skills would enable me to excel as part of your therapeutic team. Of particular relevance to the MICA position, is my rotation (part of my second year placement) at New York Hospitals Psychiatric Emergency Room where I assessed patients drug abuse histories and their willingness to enter rehabilitation if substance abuse was a problem. Prior to this, as an undergraduate, I completed an entire summer workshop on alcoholism sponsored by The Famous Foundation. Moreover, as an undergraduate research assistant at Babies Hospital Columbia Presbyterian, I interviewed pregnant women to identify addictive behavior patterns. As to my qualifications for the Inpatient Gero-Psych position, please note my rotation at the New York Hospitals Fracture Service, again part of my second years Rotating Placement. There I gained invaluable experience with elderly patients. In undergraduate school, I interned eight months with Alzheimer s patients at the International Center for the Disabled. I particularly enjoyed this client population. Given that the enclosed resume cannot fully communicate my qualifications, I welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss your needs and my abilities to fulfill them. I can be contacted at 212-555-5555 or abc1111@columbia.edu. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, (Your Signature Here) Jody Jobseeker Enclosure 111 Main Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 Abc0000@columbia.edu February 14, 2007 Ms. Kris Stackman Executive Director Forum at the Crossing 555 Woodside Chicago, IL 60666
Dear Ms. Stackman: Susan Alcott, Superintendent of the League for the Protection of Immigrants and a resident of the Forum, recommended I submit my resume in regards to the Development Director position with the Forum at the Crossing. With my graduate education from the Columbia University School of Social Work, proven abilities to motivate staff, and extensive fundraising experience, I am confident in my abilities to excel as Director of Development. I believe Ms. Abbott has already spoken to you about my speech writing and fundraising skills. My five-year community service background also includes program development experience in providing health, education, and psychological services for immigrants and women entering the work force at an organization called Immigrants First. In addition to providing these vital social services, I supervised junior staff, interns, and volunteers, and successfully designed and implemented several projects which increased funding by 45% over a two-year period. Given my skills and our areas of mutual interest, I believe I could be of enormous assistance to you in the growth and expansion of the Forum. The details of my background appear in the enclosed resume. I will contact you next week for an appointment to further discuss ways I can contribute to your development initiatives. I can also be contacted at your convenience at 212-555-5555. I look forward to meeting with you soon. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely yours, (Your Signature Here) Jody Jobseeker cc: G. Abbott Enclosure
Jody Jobseeker 111 Broadway, New York, NY 10022 (212)-555-5555 abc1111@columbia.edu May 1, 2007 Human Resources Manager Visiting Nurse Services of New York 111 W 110th Street New York, NY 10011 Dear Human Resources Manager: I have enclosed my resume in regarding to the Nurse Recruiter position posted on Idealist.org. In May of this year, I will be graduating from Columbia University School of Social Work with a Master of Science degree with a concentration in Social Enterprise Administration. As a Social Enterprise Administration student, I have taken courses in Human Resource Management, Supervision and Staff Development. This knowledge coupled with my professional recruiting experience would enable me to excel as part of your recruiting team. Throughout my graduate studies and professional career, I have advertised, marketed and recruited for social services programs. In previous positions, I collaborated with school administration and assigned liaison(s) to recruit participation and marketed an employment program to develop jobs for youth in both public agencies and nonprofit organizations for New York City. I have also developed marketing materials and presented the Addiction Prevention Initiative to education, healthcare, housing, legal institutions and community residents in order to both recruit clients and foster/develop resources for the program. More recently, during my leadership of a healthy living
committee, comprised of managers, I recruited workshop facilitators and developed marketing materials to promote Healthy Living Week to over 300 consumers. I am committed to improving the healthcare services available to families, youth, and children and believe that accomplishing this goal depends on developing a strong and compassionate healthcare workforce. I am eager to contribute to your mission of connecting top quality providers to clients in need and am confident in my abilities to identify and recruit strong candidates for your nursing staff. I look forward to meeting with you in person to discuss the position and how my experiences and educational achievements could benefit your organization. I can be contacted at 212-555-5555 or acb1111@columbia.edu. Thank you for your time and consideration. Sincerely, Jody Jobseeker Attachment 555 West 55th Street, #5W New York, NY 10055 (212)555-5555 Abc555@columbia.edu June 17, 2007 Ms. Barbra Streis, Director Stellar Social Services of New York City 123 Broadway, Room 123 New York, NY 10011 Dear Ms. Blige: I am writing to apply for the position of Social Worker that appeared on www.citylimits.org. In May of this year, I was awarded the Master of Science degree from Columbia University School of Social Work, and have my LMSW in New York State. My education, experience working with youth, and interest uniquely qualify me for this position. Throughout my graduate studies and even pre-professionally, I worked with children and families in school-based settings. I have provided counseling to special education students with emotional disturbances, both individually and in groups. Some of my clients were mandated, so I am accustomed to working with students reluctant to face challenging issues such as HIV or AIDS. My prevention efforts addressed social and educational high-risk behaviors and included outreach to students, parents, and teachers. I have attached my resume for your review. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you soon and meeting with you at your earliest convenience. Sincerely, (Signature) Jody Jobseeker, LMSW Attachment
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Art & Design World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design
Books Dance Movies Music Television Theater Video Games Events Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos Architecture Review Design as Balm for a Communitys Soul Tassafaronga Village and Richardson Apartments in Bay Area By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN Published: October 10, 2012 17 Comments Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Single Page
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OAKLAND, Calif. When Tassafaronga Village, a mixed-income development, opened in East Oakland two years ago, it replaced a compound of grim, crumbling, low-rise concrete buildings penned in by a gated fence. The complex was a typical, segregated 1960s housing project, on contaminated land between an industrial belt and a gritty stretch of single-family houses, notoriously dangerous. Enlarge This Image
Matthew Millman for The New York Times Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments In San Francisco, this five-story residence for formerly homeless people is close to the citys ballet and opera companies. More Photos Multimedia
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Matthew Millman for The New York Times Tassafaronga Village In East Oakland, Calif., a variety of housing makes this mixed-income development feel urban and each home a little more distinct. More Photos Readers Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment Read All Comments (17) Even Bridget Galka, the project manager for Tassafaronga from the Oakland Housing Authority, had her doubts that tearing down the old project and putting up new architecture would make much difference. This was a really tough neighborhood, and weve built other new developments where the bad guys just moved back in, she told me one recent afternoon. That has not happened this time. We were standing on the leafy deck of the main apartment building at Tassafaronga, painted canary yellow, white and gray. Twin girls on pink tricycles trailed their mother past boxed lemon trees on the way to the laundry room. Across the bay in San Francisco, there was also skepticism about the Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments. A five-story residence for formerly homeless people that opened last year, it is a block or so from the citys ballet and opera companies, and on the edge of the up-and-coming Hayes Valley neighborhood, which used to be among the seediest parts of town until the freeway that ran through it was demolished. Now luxury apartments and fancy chocolate shops are moving in. Community groups overwhelmingly backed Richardson, although some of the inevitable wealthy condo owners next door demanded more space for parking as a way to protest a homeless residence rising on an empty lot left by the deconstructed freeway. But that was then. Richardson has come to be widely embraced as a boon to the neighborhood, its street-level retail (including a nonprofit bakery and a Vietnamese sandwich shop) bringing commerce and activity to a long-deserted corner. Healing the scar of the freeway, is how David Baker, Richardsons architect, described the buildings effect.
Mr. Baker, who runs David Baker + Partners, also oversaw Tassafaronga Village. His firm has a reputation in and around the Bay Area for doing first-class housing for the poor and elderly, for mixed-income residences and for innovative green designs. When I said I had come to town to check out Mr. Bakers work, everyone responded the same way. His firm has won many awards. He is a kind of local hero, with projects that represent what I think is a shift of priorities in the architectural profession. With Richardson, his design goes beyond housing some of a wealthy citys poorest citizens. It entails healthy urbanism, including features that open the building to the neighborhood instead of making it a fortress, like pedestrian-friendly remade sidewalks and a glassed and landscaped ground floor. Inside as well as out, the place feels open. The shape is a U, constructed around a garden court (gained by dispensing with on-site parking, which also saved money). The garden faces a 2003 public mural of dancers covering the back of a parking garage next door, ready-made art above a scrim of palms. When I visited, tenants were clustered in the garden, chatting around tables and chairs. They checked mail in the sleek wood-and-glass lobby. An open-air stairway led from the apartments to the courtyard, providing terraces to sit outside, encouraging walking and community, as does the roof, with its shared gardens and knockout views. Maybe most important, the apartments all 120 of them for singles get natural light, which in residences for the poor is a rare commodity. As for the big aesthetic moves, on the outside of Richardson Mr. Baker painted a wall lime-green, so that the building proudly announces itself to passers-by from trendy Hayes Street. And a zinc-and-wood facade its swooping bay, folding and rising to a peak on the corner gives the building a little swagger and scale to acknowledge City Hall two blocks away. At the same time the mix of materials and window placements break up the long wall, nodding to Richardsons Victorian-walk-up neighbors. In a city so guarded about its architecture, that often stymies innovation through its planning process, moves likes these have an outsize effect even as they remain attentive to their surroundings. 1 2 Next Page A version of this review appeared in print on October 11, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Design as Balm for a Communitys Soul.
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ed cheng NYC Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag it would be helpful if michael kimmelmann would go back 2 years later to check it out but i definitely believe in the ideals Oct. 11, 2012 at 3:49 a.m.
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Deepak Baniya Oakland, California Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag I moved here three weeks ago from midwest.This is my first travel to California along with my 7 yrs old daughter and wife. My daughter got scared of all the graffitti in the buildings, walls, and walkways . She had noisephobia ( thunderstorms) while in midwest, now graffittiphobic. Anyway we loved the weather here. As a student of architecture, I see a lot of potential in this eastbay city. David Baker + Partners' intention of connecting outer environment into the building or vice versa using glass and parking space,and wonderful colors; is a great precedence for future works. I see most of the buildings as a "Fortress," as said in the article. I key four locks everyday to get into my apartment next to bart station. I can not see the Madison square park without cursing..... Yesterday, when I saw the construction works going on around the Lake Merritt, It was so heartwarming. This can be a great park for the city. Apparantly, through the efforts of architects like Baker, people of oakland and the government organizations; the city is going to be as pleasant as its weather in the future. Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m.
edna san francisco Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag The ugly, 1950s era, roach infested projects in our neighborhood in SF were torn down and replaced several years ago with about 340 well-designed low-income units that blend in beautifully with the VERY expensive condo and apartment blgs in our area. What a delightful change! The buildings have been well-maintained by the residents. Not only is there no graffiti, many residents have been taking care of their own lovely outdoor plants at the entrances of their units. On the ground floors, there are community rooms, a place that offers dance lessons, a thriving Trader Joe's, a Starbucks, and other businesses. Tourists are no longer aware they standing in the middle of a housing project when waiting for the cable car at the end of Mason street. People who once acted like they "occupied" our neighborhood now act like they are a part of it -- there is more eye contact and smiles. I'd be curious to find out why the projects in our SF neighborhood did not suffer the same immediate decay that Jane from San Diego describes in her comment above, even though the resident population profiles may be similar. What was done differently and how can we increase the likelihood of more successful outcomes? Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m. Recommended2
brendancaron vancouver, B.C. Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Way to go, America! Helping the poor to help themselves is what it is all about. As crime falls the people begin to revel in the new world that gives them and their progeny a chance to live the good life. We should have this here in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Thanks for the inspiration that gives the poor a chance to be citizens that ake pride in being people and not statistics. American Know-how and industriousness being brought to the forefront is what is needed. Thanx. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:38 a.m. Recommended3
Robert Dana NY 11937 Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Beautiful. Love the allusion to Richardson. But, will these buildings wear well over time? I visited the Pompidou Center this summer. At 35, it is very shop worn and looks so dated. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:38 a.m.
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Theresa Bruckner San Francisco, California Theresa Bruckner is Verified Verified Commenters enjoy the privilege of commenting on articles and blog posts without moderation. Verified Commenter FAQ Verified Report Inappropriate Comment
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Huh! I've been by the Richardson apartments a few times over the last year and would never have guessed that they were apartments for the formerly homeless. A sign of success, I'd say. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:16 a.m. Recommended5
Swimmy44 San Francisco, CA Report Inappropriate Comment
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Tassafaronga in East Oakland - I would hardly call it east Oakland - this neighborhood is right on the edge of better downtown neighborhoods. Now that being said, Oakland is a GREAT place to live - there is affordable housing, beauty, and close to ideal weather - plus there are jobs for those who look, want, and qualify for them. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended1
Fran San Francisco Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag Dear Swimmy44 - thanks for the good words for Oakland, and I agree it's a great place to live. However, Tassafaronga's website shows that it is located at 930 84th Avenue, which is south of the Coliseum and definitely East Oakland. Bravo to the city of Oakland and the developer - and good luck to the residents. Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m.
JY Chengdu Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag It is a wonderful projects. Wonderful in every aspects. The low-rises created a human scaled environment of which people and housing easily hug the ground in their daily life. The buildings are uplifting for their residents with fondness and pride. What the project has built credits to what it has destroyed -- rightly so by removing a highway making room for life to root. In 'Community and Privacy' Christopher Alexander wrote that car is number one public enemy to community. Here we can see taking back space from freeway in larger sense we have halted people traveling here and there. But mostly getting to nowhere at the end. Planting roots as a community like the Tassafaronga Villageis is a wonderful alternative. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended2
David San Francisco Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag It IS a year later, Jane. Richardson has been open a year, and you can see how it looks today. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended3
Don Carleton Puerto Viejo Costa Rica Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Jane has a great idea. Lets see this article be a yearly thing for a few years and see what becomes of the projects. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended2
chris columbus marfa, texas Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Is this cool or what; this is a good thing. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m.
JMR California Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag Thank you for this article. It gives me hope. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m.
Jane San Diego Report Inappropriate Comment
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I live in a mixed income complex that had units set aside for the formerly homeless, section 8, 30-80% medium income, and market rate units. I moved in when it first opened 4 years ago my friends were in awe I could afford to live there because from the appearance it was exactly like the high end complexes in the neighborhood. It took less than 6 months for the appearance to fade- graffetti all over, people spitting on the elevator floor and carpet, people littering all over, the lobby furniture destroyed. Anything not nailed down stolen or vandalized. We have recycle bins but it is no use since many of the tenants dump their garbage in the closest reciprocal even if it says "paper only" in huge red letters. It is people paying the full market rate and working 80 hour a weeks who are the good neighbors and conscientious. It is those paying nothing, or close to it, and do not work who won't pick up after themselves and destroy the building. I laugh when people say the reason the poor aren't capable of doing simple things like using the right recycle bin is there are too busy working 6 jobs. Or think that "entitled" and "priveledged" are attitudes only found in the wealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hope the NYT comes back a year later and shows photos of what the building looks like then. You will have the same problems in the state of the art complex as the old school housing project. It's the behavior that causes it to be a slum not the building. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m. Recommended3
Mouse NYC Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Because if you are given something for nothing, it has no value. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:14 a.m. Recommended3
soldout in San Francisco The City by the bay Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Your screed is somewhat unclear. Were you one of the people who was given a reduced rate unit? Did you eventually move out? Which part of San Diego is the complex located? I don't necessarily doubt your story but it reads somewhat like a generalized stereotype of poor people, rather than a truthful account of your experiences. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:37 a.m. Recommended3
third.coast earth Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag I sympathize with your frustration, but the issue really is one of management. Tenants need to be screened carefully before they are given a lease and kicked out when the break the rules. I know that last part is easier said than done, but you need hands-on, strict management. Good luck to you. Oct. 11, 2012 at 3:49 a.m. Recommended1
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Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos Architecture Review Design as Balm for a Communitys Soul Tassafaronga Village and Richardson Apartments in Bay Area Published: October 10, 2012 17 Comments Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Single Page Reprints
(Page 2 of 2) The building respects the neighborhood, the residents, and all this is reciprocated, as Brian Quinn, who manages the apartments for Community Housing Partnership, put it to me. The organization worked with Mercy Housing, a nonprofit developer, to construct Richardson. Multimedia
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A sortable calendar of noteworthy cultural events in the New York region, selected by Times critics. Go to Event Listings Readers Comments Share your thoughts. Post a Comment Read All Comments (17) The cost? $27 million. The value? As with any subsidized housing project that spends a little extra for quality architecture, some advocates for the homeless questioned whether the money might have been better spent on more units. But health and safety go hand in hand with pride of place and a sense of dignity. San Franciscos public health department said the city saves up to $29,000 a year on former homeless residents in supportive housing, and in general nearly $10,000 per resident a year, which jibes with Community Housing Partnerships numbers at Richardson. Thats not counting the contribution Mr. Bakers work has made to rising real estate prices in the area. As for Tassafaronga, the Oakland Police Department last year recorded a 25 percent drop in crime compared with 2007 in the old housing complex. The new village is a dense, colorful, environmentally friendly mix of 157 rental apartments and 22 single-family town houses, the latter Habitat for Humanity homes for families that put in up to 500 hours of sweat equity to purchase them.
Everything faces onto sidewalks, playgrounds or paths. Residents barbecue and sunbathe outdoors. Where speeding cars once made walking dangerous, narrow streets and raised intersections slow traffic to a crawl, knitting Tassafaronga into the surrounding neighborhoods and bringing more eyes onto streets by encouraging pedestrians. A variety of housing types makes the site feel urban and each home a little more distinct. This includes a defunct pasta factory, converted by Mr. Bakers firm into residential lofts with a medical clinic on the ground floor. The factory building cleverly incorporates the industrial border at Tassafaronga, while the centerpiece of the village, the apartment building where I found the tricyclists, has what Mr. Baker calls a dragons back facade, a wavy, multicolored flourish that acts like a flag for the community. The Tassafaronga project was completed in 24 months, on time, and, at $54 million, $1.45 million under budget. Like Richardson, it has been a pebble in a pond. I bumped into Kelly Carlisle. Shes the director of Acta Non Verba, a community garden program. Ms. Carlisle said she could have chosen any green spot in Oakland to cultivate. Having grown up near the old Tassafaronga, she recalled when this area was the scariest place around. Seeing the new village, she picked the scruffy public park next to it to start a garden for children. Where gangs sold drugs, now elementary school students from Tassafaronga grow tomatillos, collard greens, corn and squash, and sell what they harvest to neighbors, the proceeds deposited into savings accounts for the childrens education. We stood in the garden near a sculptured pizza oven still warm from a block party the day before. Things arent perfect theres still some crime but people didnt used to want to leave their houses in the old days, Ms. Carlisle said. Now parents feel safe dropping off their kids in the garden, and seniors help maintain the streets. She told me she had been thinking of moving to Tassafaronga with her young daughter. Thats the multiplier effect of good design. Previous Page 1 2 A version of this review appeared in print on October 11, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Design as Balm for a Communitys Soul. Facebook Twitter Google+
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ed cheng NYC Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag it would be helpful if michael kimmelmann would go back 2 years later to check it out but i definitely believe in the ideals Oct. 11, 2012 at 3:49 a.m.
Deepak Baniya Oakland, California Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag I moved here three weeks ago from midwest.This is my first travel to California along with my 7 yrs old daughter and wife. My daughter got scared of all the graffitti in the buildings, walls, and walkways . She had noisephobia ( thunderstorms) while in midwest, now graffittiphobic. Anyway we loved the weather here. As a student of architecture, I see a lot of potential in this eastbay city. David Baker + Partners' intention of connecting outer environment into the building or vice versa using glass and parking space,and wonderful colors; is a great precedence for future works. I see most of the buildings as a "Fortress," as said in the article. I key four locks everyday to get into my apartment next to bart station. I can not see the Madison square park without cursing..... Yesterday, when I saw the construction works going on around the Lake Merritt, It was so heartwarming. This can be a great park for the city. Apparantly, through the efforts of architects like Baker, people of oakland and the government organizations; the city is going to be as pleasant as its weather in the future. Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m.
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag The ugly, 1950s era, roach infested projects in our neighborhood in SF were torn down and replaced several years ago with about 340 well-designed low-income units that blend in beautifully with the VERY expensive condo and apartment blgs in our area. What a delightful change! The buildings have been well-maintained by the residents. Not only is there no graffiti, many residents have been taking care of their own lovely outdoor plants at the entrances of their units. On the ground floors, there are community rooms, a place that offers dance lessons, a thriving Trader Joe's, a Starbucks, and other businesses. Tourists are no longer aware they standing in the middle of a housing project when waiting for the cable car at the end of Mason street. People who once acted like they "occupied" our neighborhood now act like they are a part of it -- there is more eye contact and smiles. I'd be curious to find out why the projects in our SF neighborhood did not suffer the same immediate decay that Jane from San Diego describes in her comment above, even though the resident population profiles may be similar. What was done differently and how can we increase the likelihood of more successful outcomes? Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m. Recommended2
brendancaron vancouver, B.C. Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Way to go, America! Helping the poor to help themselves is what it is all about. As crime falls the people begin to revel in the new world that gives them and their progeny a chance to live the good life. We should have this here in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. Thanks for the inspiration that gives the poor a chance to be citizens that ake pride in being people and not statistics. American Know-how and industriousness being brought to the forefront is what is needed. Thanx. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:38 a.m. Recommended3
Robert Dana NY 11937 Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Beautiful. Love the allusion to Richardson. But, will these buildings wear well over time? I visited the Pompidou Center this summer. At 35, it is very shop worn and looks so dated. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:38 a.m.
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Theresa Bruckner San Francisco, California Theresa Bruckner is Verified Verified Commenters enjoy the privilege of commenting on articles and blog posts without moderation. Verified Commenter FAQ Verified Report Inappropriate Comment
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Huh! I've been by the Richardson apartments a few times over the last year and would never have guessed that they were apartments for the formerly homeless. A sign of success, I'd say. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:16 a.m. Recommended5
Swimmy44 San Francisco, CA Report Inappropriate Comment
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Tassafaronga in East Oakland - I would hardly call it east Oakland - this neighborhood is right on the edge of better downtown neighborhoods. Now that being said, Oakland is a GREAT place to live - there is affordable housing, beauty, and close to ideal weather - plus there are jobs for those who look, want, and qualify for them. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended1
Fran San Francisco Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag Dear Swimmy44 - thanks for the good words for Oakland, and I agree it's a great place to live. However, Tassafaronga's website shows that it is located at 930 84th Avenue, which is south of the Coliseum and definitely East Oakland. Bravo to the city of Oakland and the developer - and good luck to the residents. Oct. 11, 2012 at 1:39 a.m.
JY Chengdu Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag It is a wonderful projects. Wonderful in every aspects. The low-rises created a human scaled environment of which people and housing easily hug the ground in their daily life. The buildings are uplifting for their residents with fondness and pride. What the project has built credits to what it has destroyed -- rightly so by removing a highway making room for life to root. In 'Community and Privacy' Christopher Alexander wrote that car is number one public enemy to community. Here we can see taking back space from freeway in larger sense we have halted people traveling here and there. But mostly getting to nowhere at the end. Planting roots as a community like the Tassafaronga Villageis is a wonderful alternative. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended2
David San Francisco Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag It IS a year later, Jane. Richardson has been open a year, and you can see how it looks today. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended3
Don Carleton Puerto Viejo Costa Rica Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Jane has a great idea. Lets see this article be a yearly thing for a few years and see what becomes of the projects. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:15 a.m. Recommended2
chris columbus marfa, texas Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Is this cool or what; this is a good thing. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m.
JMR California Report Inappropriate Comment
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Flag Thank you for this article. It gives me hope. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m.
Jane San Diego Report Inappropriate Comment
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I live in a mixed income complex that had units set aside for the formerly homeless, section 8, 30-80% medium income, and market rate units. I moved in when it first opened 4 years ago my friends were in awe I could afford to live there because from the appearance it was exactly like the high end complexes in the neighborhood. It took less than 6 months for the appearance to fade- graffetti all over, people spitting on the elevator floor and carpet, people littering all over, the lobby furniture destroyed. Anything not nailed down stolen or vandalized. We have recycle bins but it is no use since many of the tenants dump their garbage in the closest reciprocal even if it says "paper only" in huge red letters. It is people paying the full market rate and working 80 hour a weeks who are the good neighbors and conscientious. It is those paying nothing, or close to it, and do not work who won't pick up after themselves and destroy the building. I laugh when people say the reason the poor aren't capable of doing simple things like using the right recycle bin is there are too busy working 6 jobs. Or think that "entitled" and "priveledged" are attitudes only found in the wealthy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hope the NYT comes back a year later and shows photos of what the building looks like then. You will have the same problems in the state of the art complex as the old school housing project. It's the behavior that causes it to be a slum not the building. Oct. 10, 2012 at 11:55 p.m. Recommended3
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Because if you are given something for nothing, it has no value. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:14 a.m. Recommended3
soldout in San Francisco The City by the bay Report Inappropriate Comment
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag Your screed is somewhat unclear. Were you one of the people who was given a reduced rate unit? Did you eventually move out? Which part of San Diego is the complex located? I don't necessarily doubt your story but it reads somewhat like a generalized stereotype of poor people, rather than a truthful account of your experiences. Oct. 11, 2012 at 12:37 a.m. Recommended3
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Off-topic Submit Cancel Flag I sympathize with your frustration, but the issue really is one of management. Tenants need to be screened carefully before they are given a lease and kicked out when the break the rules. I know that last part is easier said than done, but you need hands-on, strict management. Good luck to you. Oct. 11, 2012 at 3:49 a.m. Recommended1
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NEW HAVEN In 1754 George Washington, then an officer in the Virginia militia, found himself hotly debating charges that he had committed what today we would call a war crime. Enlarge This Image
Chris Capozziello John Fabian Witt Related Sunday Book Review: Lincolns Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt(September 30, 2012) Enlarge This Image
Granger Collection Francis Lieber During a campaign against the French in the Ohio Valley, Washington was said to have stood by while his troops killed a captive ambassador, leading a French official to declare, in the outcry that followed, There is nothing more unworthy and lower, and even blacker, than the sentiments and the way of thinking of this Washington. The story is the opening anecdote in Lincolns Code: The Laws of War in American History, John Fabian Witts sweeping history of American engagement with the idea that the brutality of war should be constrained by humanitarian rules. But if the French outrage calls to mind international reaction to the wartime behavior of a more recent president named George, Mr. Witt hardly aims to give aid and comfort to contemporary partisans. The book is an equal opportunity offender, Mr. Witt, 40, said during a recent interview in his Yale office here, where he is a professor in the law school and the history department. In Lincolns Code he argues against two competing and, in his view, equally false notions: on the left, the idea that George W. Bushs war on terror represented a radical break with the American past; and on the right, the idea that Americans started caring about the laws of war only when pointy-headed Europeans forced them to. But the respectful reviews that the book is already drawing from neoconservatives and human-rights advocates alike suggest that we may have reached, if not a truce, at least an easing of the past decades intense partisan wrangling over the conduct of the war on terror. Its a great book and an honest book, Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said in an interview. In addition to telling the historical story on its own terms, it really captures the many, many tensions between idealism and reality that have always characterized the laws of war.
The story that Mr. Witt tells, which stretches from 1754 to 1914, is not a tidy one, narratively or morally. He shows a chastened Washington, decades after the Ohio affair, ordering that all soldiers in the Continental Army sign a copy of rules intended to limit harm to civilians; Thomas Jefferson denouncing British encouragement of slave uprisings as an affront to civilized warfare; and Andrew Jackson thumbing his nose at the idea that he had committed atrocities in the First Seminole War even as he throatily recalled his own mistreatment by British officers as a young captive in the Revolution. But the core of Mr. Witts book, a result of five years of far-flung archival research, is his account of the Civil War, which gave rise to the first modern code of wartime conduct, commissioned by Lincoln on the eve of Emancipation, just as he was preparing to intensify the war. The code was written by Francis Lieber, a German-born legal scholar and man of contradictions. He had sons on both sides of the Civil War. He was a lifelong critic of slavery who once owned slaves. He was a devotee of the German theorist Clausewitz (War is the continuation of politics by other means) who proclaimed the purifying virtues of war even as he set to writing the first formal code constraining its savagery. Or constraining it somewhat. Liebers code, authorized by Lincoln in April 1863, banned torture and the use of poison gases, and set out a distinction between combatants and civilians that remains enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. But beyond that, the code included few hard-and-fast rules that could not be overturned by what it called military necessity. The code, Mr. Witt writes, was both a humanitarian shield and a sword of justice, forged in service of Lincolns crusade to end slavery forever. Lieber was something of an intellectual celebrity in his time. His 1861 lecture course on laws of war at Columbias newly founded law school was published in full in The New York Times. But he has been little known in Civil War history, Mr. Witt notes, ignored by scholars who have tended to view the legal rules of war as irrelevant to events on the ground. The international lawyers who see Lieber as a founding hero, however, also fail to see him clearly, Mr. Witt argues. Liebers code may have unequivocally banned torture, but it was far from the rigorously neutral set of rules that is enshrined in humanitarian law today. The effort of the contemporary laws of war is to avoid taking sides, Mr. Witt said. But Liebers code was developed by a side for the purpose of helping it win a war. Mr. Witt is a Quaker school alumnus (and son of a conscientious objector) who describes his views on war as somewhere in the muddy middle, along with Lincoln and Obama. He has largely stayed neutral in the post-Sept. 11 legal wrangling over torture, detentions, drone strikes and other tactics in the war on terror. I dont think the research Ive done warrants signing on to briefs on either side, he said.
But his work, he said, does contradict the notion, asserted in accounts like Jane Mayers best-selling book The Dark Side, that the Bush administration turned its back on centuries of unbroken American respect for the international laws of war. 1 2 Next Page A version of this article appeared in print on October 11, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trying to Set Legal Rules For Brutal War.
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By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER Published: October 10, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Single Page Reprints
NEW HAVEN In 1754 George Washington, then an officer in the Virginia militia, found himself hotly debating charges that he had committed what today we would call a war crime. Enlarge This Image
Chris Capozziello John Fabian Witt Related Sunday Book Review: Lincolns Code: The Laws of War in American History by John Fabian Witt(September 30, 2012) Enlarge This Image
Granger Collection Francis Lieber During a campaign against the French in the Ohio Valley, Washington was said to have stood by while his troops killed a captive ambassador, leading a French official to declare, in the outcry that followed, There is nothing more unworthy and lower, and even blacker, than the sentiments and the way of thinking of this Washington. The story is the opening anecdote in Lincolns Code: The Laws of War in American History, John Fabian Witts sweeping history of American engagement with the idea that the brutality of war should be constrained by humanitarian rules. But if the French outrage calls to mind international reaction to the wartime behavior of a more recent president named George, Mr. Witt hardly aims to give aid and comfort to contemporary partisans. The book is an equal opportunity offender, Mr. Witt, 40, said during a recent interview in his Yale office here, where he is a professor in the law school and the history department. In Lincolns Code he argues against two competing and, in his view, equally false notions: on the left, the idea that George W. Bushs war on terror represented a radical break with the American past; and on the right, the idea that Americans started caring about the laws of war only when pointy-headed Europeans forced them to. But the respectful reviews that the book is already drawing from neoconservatives and human-rights advocates alike suggest that we may have reached, if not a truce, at least an easing of the past decades intense partisan wrangling over the conduct of the war on terror. Its a great book and an honest book, Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School and a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said in an interview. In addition to telling the historical story on its own terms, it really captures the many, many tensions between idealism and reality that have always characterized the laws of war.
The story that Mr. Witt tells, which stretches from 1754 to 1914, is not a tidy one, narratively or morally. He shows a chastened Washington, decades after the Ohio affair, ordering that all soldiers in the Continental Army sign a copy of rules intended to limit harm to civilians; Thomas Jefferson denouncing British encouragement of slave uprisings as an affront to civilized warfare; and Andrew Jackson thumbing his nose at the idea that he had committed atrocities in the First Seminole War even as he throatily recalled his own mistreatment by British officers as a young captive in the Revolution. But the core of Mr. Witts book, a result of five years of far-flung archival research, is his account of the Civil War, which gave rise to the first modern code of wartime conduct, commissioned by Lincoln on the eve of Emancipation, just as he was preparing to intensify the war. The code was written by Francis Lieber, a German-born legal scholar and man of contradictions. He had sons on both sides of the Civil War. He was a lifelong critic of slavery who once owned slaves. He was a devotee of the German theorist Clausewitz (War is the continuation of politics by other means) who proclaimed the purifying virtues of war even as he set to writing the first formal code constraining its savagery. Or constraining it somewhat. Liebers code, authorized by Lincoln in April 1863, banned torture and the use of poison gases, and set out a distinction between combatants and civilians that remains enshrined in the Geneva Conventions of 1949. But beyond that, the code included few hard-and-fast rules that could not be overturned by what it called military necessity. The code, Mr. Witt writes, was both a humanitarian shield and a sword of justice, forged in service of Lincolns crusade to end slavery forever. Lieber was something of an intellectual celebrity in his time. His 1861 lecture course on laws of war at Columbias newly founded law school was published in full in The New York Times. But he has been little known in Civil War history, Mr. Witt notes, ignored by scholars who have tended to view the legal rules of war as irrelevant to events on the ground. The international lawyers who see Lieber as a founding hero, however, also fail to see him clearly, Mr. Witt argues. Liebers code may have unequivocally banned torture, but it was far from the rigorously neutral set of rules that is enshrined in humanitarian law today. The effort of the contemporary laws of war is to avoid taking sides, Mr. Witt said. But Liebers code was developed by a side for the purpose of helping it win a war. Mr. Witt is a Quaker school alumnus (and son of a conscientious objector) who describes his views on war as somewhere in the muddy middle, along with Lincoln and Obama. He has largely stayed neutral in the post-Sept. 11 legal wrangling over torture, detentions, drone strikes and other tactics in the war on terror. I dont think the research Ive done warrants signing on to briefs on either side, he said.
But his work, he said, does contradict the notion, asserted in accounts like Jane Mayers best-selling book The Dark Side, that the Bush administration turned its back on centuries of unbroken American respect for the international laws of war. 1 2 Next Page A version of this article appeared in print on October 11, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trying to Set Legal Rules For Brutal War.
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Sunday Book Review World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science
Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design Books Sunday Book Review Best Sellers Dance Movies Music Television Theater Video Games Events Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imp.gif?client=canytimes_display_html&event=noscript" /> Advertise on NYTimes.com The Hunters and the Hunted Subversives, by Seth Rosenfeld
The Los Angeles Times The radical activist Tom Hayden with his 22,000-page F.B.I. file, circa 1979. By MATT TAIBBI Published: October 5, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Single Page Reprints
America never got over the 60s. The deep social divisions that emerged during that decade remain, for the most part, the divisions that define modern American politics. The battle lines are still so painfully visible that 50 years after the beginning of the Vietnam War and the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, the presidential race this year will come down to a contest between a former community organizer pilloried for supposed ties to 60s radicals and a former Stanford student who protested against campus antiwar demonstrations. SUBVERSIVES The FBIs War on Student Radicals, and Reagans Rise to Power By Seth Rosenfeld Illustrated. 734 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $40 Related Times Topic:Federal Bureau of Investigation Moreover, the current culture war being played out between watchers of Fox News and readers of The Huffington Post is really the same old 60s argument, pitting social conservatives unshakable faith in American exceptionalism against the progressive insistence that theres something dark and violent at the core of American hegemony. These two sides have painstakingly constructed competing versions of recent American history, leaving us without even a common set of historical facts to debate. Its important to try to ignore all of this background when reading Subversives, the journalist Seth Rosenfelds electrifying examination of a newly declassified treasure trove of documents detailing our governments campaign of surveillance of the Berkeley campus during the 60s. Rosenfeld spent 30 years fighting to compel the government to release more than 300,000 pages of documents about the illegal spying program, an effort the F.B.I. spent almost a million dollars opposing. If forced through the typical blue/red Crossfire-style propaganda shredder, the sensational material would be debased, both sides using the books iconic characters to score quick and easy on-air points. Right-wing screamers like Michael Savage would rail against the book as 700 pages of whining by reddiaper doper babies whose idea of changing the world was singing Yellow Submarine and hanging Ronald Reagan in effigy. Liberal cable shows, meanwhile, would make great hay over the sordid revelations about Reagan (whom the F.B.I. records reveal to have been petty and cowardly, snitching on a young actress to the F.B.I. just because she embarrassed him at a cocktail party). But Subversives has a powerful story to tell about the vanity and stupidity of political leaders of any persuasion who squander public resources spying on personal enemies and obsessing over personal hangups and the frightening weakness of the laws designed to restrain their authority. In Subversives, men like J. Edgar Hoover treat the law, at best, as a minor political consideration. And whether its Hoover embarking upon the quasi-legal Responsibilities Program (a secret project to
disseminate derogatory information about politically suspect teachers) or the F.B.I. agent George Dalen committing illegal break-ins (It was strange, Dalen wrote, that I should join the F.B.I. and learn how to become an institutional liar), government officials worry fleetingly about breaking the law but quickly grow accustomed to it. Thats how Hoovers initially modest Responsibilities Program ballooned into a vast and illegal national campaign of asinine, time-wasting, career-wrecking surveillance, targeting campus intellectuals who left to their own devices would have become harmless members of the mainstream. (Hoover would have been shocked at how many 60s counterculturalists became Silicon Valley capitalists.) Subversives chronicles many examples of this phenomenon. In 1943, the F.B.I. learned that the Soviet Consulate in San Francisco was trying to penetrate the atomic laboratories at Berkeley. They thwarted that threat, but their response seemed mild when compared with the gigantic police response generated by a question on a 1959 University of California English aptitude test for applicants: What are the dangers to a democracy of a national police organization, like the F.B.I., which operates secretly and is unresponsive to criticism? 1 2 Next Page Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine, is the author, most recently, of Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History. A version of this review appeared in print on October 7, 2012, on page BR11 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The Hunters and the Hunted.
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Sunday Book Review World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design Books Sunday Book Review Best Sellers
Dance Movies Music Television Theater Video Games Events Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imp.gif?client=canytimes_display_html&event=noscript" /> Advertise on NYTimes.com Inside the List By GREGORY COWLES Published: October 5, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
THE FORECASTER: Statisticians dont tend to have large popular followings. But the numbers cruncher Nate Silver, whose political blog FiveThirtyEight runs on NYTimes.com, is an exception. His detailed Moneyball analyses of poll results routinely draw hundreds of comments, and in 2009 five months after he correctly predicted the outcome of the presidential race in 49 of the 50 states (and nailed every Senate race) Time magazine named him one of the worlds 100 most influential people. He was 31 years old.
Nate Silver Now Silver has a book out about the difficult business of divining the future, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Dont, which lands on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Silver walks readers through the use of statistics in baseball (where he first made his name as an analyst), as well as the stock market, poker, epidemiology, weather forecasting and, of course, politics. But he recently told New York magazine that the political worlds suspicion and hostility had worn him down. Before I did politics I did sports, he said. You werent getting in huge personal fights like, Oh, youre a White Sox fan, so youre biased in how youre interpreting the data. J(UST) R(IGHT): Parents! Do you want your newborn to become a best-selling novelist? Based on a scrupulous statistical analysis of this weeks hardcover fiction list, you would do well to ensure that the initials J and R appear somewhere in his or her monogram. Consider this: The list includes entries from a J.K.R. at No. 1, a J.R.W. at No. 10, a J.W.R. at No. 11 and a J.D.R. at No. 12. (Thats not even counting the extended list, where J. R. Moehringers novel, Sutton, is girding its loins at No. 17.) Throw in the three authors whose initials include either a J or an R but not both, and you could argue that those two letters just 7.7 percent of the alphabet are basically responsible for half of this weeks fiction list. I dont know what that means in terms of, well, anything, but Im pretty sure that Nate Silver could make a nifty bar chart out of it. BAD HAIR DAY: J.K.R. is, of course, the former childrens book author and current gazillionaire Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who must have one of the highest follower-to-tweet ratios of anyone on Twitter. Since signing up for an account in September 2009, she has accrued nearly 1.5 million followers and posted (as of this writing) just 11 short messages, six of them expressing her profound lack of interest in
posting to her Twitter account. Rowlings first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, enters the list at No. 1 amid a flurry of publicity, not all of it positive. Just as her Harry Potter series occasionally stirred up righteous Christian indignation all that witchcraft! the new book has prompted controversy in India for its portrayal of a Sikh girl as a hairy man-woman who is mustachioed yet large-mammaried. (The Sikh faith proscribes followers, men and women alike, from shaving or trimming their hair.) Although the descriptions are clearly from the point of view of a villainous bully, a Sikh group in New Delhi told The Telegraph that it would read the book carefully. If deemed derogatory to the Sikh faith, we will demand a ban on it, a spokesman said. One person unlikely to sign on to any ban is Balpreet Kaur, a Sikh student at Ohio State who recently faced some bullying of her own when a stranger posted her picture online. I have no problem with Rowlings description, Kaur wrote in The Guardian. Thats how most people perceive me. How I react to these perceptions defines my character, not the opinions themselves. A version of this article appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page BR22 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Inside The List.
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Inside NYTimes.com Fashion & Style Opini Great Musi Opin Hom Opin Fas on Home c ion e & ion hio Gard n & s Paten Fixes: Clue Styl en ts vs. The Stapl Arise OpOp- e Creati Avon e-Gun s Ed: Mini Ed: Ladie Decor Rega The ature Ope Art vity s of ating rding Wro in ning Tha Intelle in Lost ng Gam the ts Africa ctual Fort Phot Way e Chur Not prope Door- Green o of to Only ch Just Design as But Who Will rty toMahl Help to on e Americans Are Balm for a The Care for Me? law door the the the er Barmy Over Communitys Competing was sales Wor Fac Poor Views on Britishisms Soul mean and ld e Competition t to franc We foster hising spen innov are d ation. being near Room used ly $1 for by a trilli Debat group on a e called year asks: Living for Does Good the it now s to nee just get dy. serve need It big ed isnt busin healt wor h ess? king. produ cts to peopl Art & Design Booming Opini Home & on Garden
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Sunday Book Review World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design Books Sunday Book Review Best Sellers Dance Movies Music Television Theater
Video Games Events Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imp.gif?client=canytimes_display_html&event=noscript" /> Advertise on NYTimes.com Inside the List By GREGORY COWLES Published: October 5, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
Nate Silver Now Silver has a book out about the difficult business of divining the future, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Dont, which lands on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Silver walks readers through the use of statistics in baseball (where he first made his name as an analyst), as well as the stock market, poker, epidemiology, weather forecasting and, of course, politics. But he recently told New York magazine that the political worlds suspicion and hostility had worn him down. Before I did politics I did sports, he said. You werent getting in huge personal fights like, Oh, youre a White Sox fan, so youre biased in how youre interpreting the data. J(UST) R(IGHT): Parents! Do you want your newborn to become a best-selling novelist? Based on a scrupulous statistical analysis of this weeks hardcover fiction list, you would do well to ensure that the initials J and R appear somewhere in his or her monogram. Consider this: The list includes entries from a J.K.R. at No. 1, a J.R.W. at No. 10, a J.W.R. at No. 11 and a J.D.R. at No. 12. (Thats not even counting the extended list, where J. R. Moehringers novel, Sutton, is girding its loins at No. 17.) Throw in the three authors whose initials include either a J or an R but not both, and you could argue that those two letters just 7.7 percent of the alphabet are basically responsible for half of this weeks fiction list. I dont know what that means in terms of, well, anything, but Im pretty sure that Nate Silver could make a nifty bar chart out of it. BAD HAIR DAY: J.K.R. is, of course, the former childrens book author and current gazillionaire Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who must have one of the highest follower-to-tweet ratios of anyone on Twitter. Since signing up for an account in September 2009, she has accrued nearly 1.5 million followers and posted (as of this writing) just 11 short messages, six of them expressing her profound lack of interest in posting to her Twitter account. Rowlings first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, enters the list at No. 1 amid a flurry of publicity, not all of it positive. Just as her Harry Potter series occasionally stirred up righteous Christian indignation all that witchcraft! the new book has prompted controversy in India for its portrayal of a Sikh girl as a hairy man-woman who is mustachioed yet large-mammaried. (The Sikh faith proscribes followers, men and women alike, from shaving or trimming their hair.) Although the descriptions are clearly from the point of view of a villainous bully, a Sikh group in New Delhi told The Telegraph that it would read the book carefully. If deemed derogatory to the Sikh faith, we will demand a ban on it, a spokesman said. One person unlikely to sign on to any ban is Balpreet Kaur, a Sikh student at Ohio State who recently faced some bullying of her own when a stranger posted her picture online. I
have no problem with Rowlings description, Kaur wrote in The Guardian. Thats how most people perceive me. How I react to these perceptions defines my character, not the opinions themselves. A version of this article appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page BR22 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Inside The List.
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Sunday Book Review World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design Books Sunday Book Review Best Sellers Dance Movies Music Television Theater Video Games Events Style Travel
Jobs Real Estate Autos <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imp.gif?client=canytimes_display_html&event=noscript" /> Advertise on NYTimes.com Inside the List By GREGORY COWLES Published: October 5, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
Nate Silver Now Silver has a book out about the difficult business of divining the future, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Dont, which lands on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Silver walks readers through the use of statistics in baseball (where he first made his name as an analyst), as well as the stock market, poker, epidemiology, weather forecasting and, of course, politics. But he recently told New York magazine that the political worlds suspicion and hostility had worn him down. Before I did politics I did sports, he said. You werent getting in huge personal fights like, Oh, youre a White Sox fan, so youre biased in how youre interpreting the data. J(UST) R(IGHT): Parents! Do you want your newborn to become a best-selling novelist? Based on a scrupulous statistical analysis of this weeks hardcover fiction list, you would do well to ensure that the initials J and R appear somewhere in his or her monogram. Consider this: The list includes entries from a J.K.R. at No. 1, a J.R.W. at No. 10, a J.W.R. at No. 11 and a J.D.R. at No. 12. (Thats not even counting the extended list, where J. R. Moehringers novel, Sutton, is girding its loins at No. 17.) Throw in the three authors whose initials include either a J or an R but not both, and you could argue that those two letters just 7.7 percent of the alphabet are basically responsible for half of this weeks fiction list. I dont know what that means in terms of, well, anything, but Im pretty sure that Nate Silver could make a nifty bar chart out of it. BAD HAIR DAY: J.K.R. is, of course, the former childrens book author and current gazillionaire Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who must have one of the highest follower-to-tweet ratios of anyone on Twitter. Since signing up for an account in September 2009, she has accrued nearly 1.5 million followers and posted (as of this writing) just 11 short messages, six of them expressing her profound lack of interest in posting to her Twitter account. Rowlings first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, enters the list at No. 1 amid a flurry of publicity, not all of it positive. Just as her Harry Potter series occasionally stirred up righteous Christian indignation all that witchcraft! the new book has prompted controversy in India for its portrayal of a Sikh girl as a hairy man-woman who is mustachioed yet large-mammaried. (The Sikh faith proscribes followers, men and women alike, from shaving or trimming their hair.) Although the descriptions are clearly from the point of view of a villainous bully, a Sikh group in New Delhi told The Telegraph that it would read the book carefully. If deemed derogatory to the Sikh faith, we will demand a ban on it, a spokesman said. One person unlikely to sign on to any ban is Balpreet Kaur, a Sikh student at Ohio State who recently faced some bullying of her own when a stranger posted her picture online. I
have no problem with Rowlings description, Kaur wrote in The Guardian. Thats how most people perceive me. How I react to these perceptions defines my character, not the opinions themselves. A version of this article appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page BR22 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Inside The List.
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World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Art & Design Books Sunday Book Review Best Sellers Dance Movies Music Television Theater Video Games Events Style Travel Jobs Real Estate
Autos <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/imp.gif?client=canytimes_display_html&event=noscript" /> Advertise on NYTimes.com Inside the List By GREGORY COWLES Published: October 5, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
Nate Silver Now Silver has a book out about the difficult business of divining the future, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Dont, which lands on the hardcover nonfiction list at No. 12. Silver walks readers through the use of statistics in baseball (where he first made his name as an analyst), as well as the stock market, poker, epidemiology, weather forecasting and, of course, politics. But he recently told New York magazine that the political worlds suspicion and hostility had worn him down. Before I did politics I did sports, he said. You werent getting in huge personal fights like, Oh, youre a White Sox fan, so youre biased in how youre interpreting the data. J(UST) R(IGHT): Parents! Do you want your newborn to become a best-selling novelist? Based on a scrupulous statistical analysis of this weeks hardcover fiction list, you would do well to ensure that the initials J and R appear somewhere in his or her monogram. Consider this: The list includes entries from a J.K.R. at No. 1, a J.R.W. at No. 10, a J.W.R. at No. 11 and a J.D.R. at No. 12. (Thats not even counting the extended list, where J. R. Moehringers novel, Sutton, is girding its loins at No. 17.) Throw in the three authors whose initials include either a J or an R but not both, and you could argue that those two letters just 7.7 percent of the alphabet are basically responsible for half of this weeks fiction list. I dont know what that means in terms of, well, anything, but Im pretty sure that Nate Silver could make a nifty bar chart out of it. BAD HAIR DAY: J.K.R. is, of course, the former childrens book author and current gazillionaire Joanne Kathleen Rowling, who must have one of the highest follower-to-tweet ratios of anyone on Twitter. Since signing up for an account in September 2009, she has accrued nearly 1.5 million followers and posted (as of this writing) just 11 short messages, six of them expressing her profound lack of interest in posting to her Twitter account. Rowlings first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, enters the list at No. 1 amid a flurry of publicity, not all of it positive. Just as her Harry Potter series occasionally stirred up righteous Christian indignation all that witchcraft! the new book has prompted controversy in India for its portrayal of a Sikh girl as a hairy man-woman who is mustachioed yet large-mammaried. (The Sikh faith proscribes followers, men and women alike, from shaving or trimming their hair.) Although the descriptions are clearly from the point of view of a villainous bully, a Sikh group in New Delhi told The Telegraph that it would read the book carefully. If deemed derogatory to the Sikh faith, we will demand a ban on it, a spokesman said. One person unlikely to sign on to any ban is Balpreet Kaur, a Sikh student at Ohio State who recently faced some bullying of her own when a stranger posted her picture online. I have no problem with Rowlings description, Kaur wrote in The Guardian. Thats how most people perceive me. How I react to these perceptions defines my character, not the opinions themselves. A version of this article appeared in print on October 14, 2012, on page BR22 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Inside The List.
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Books of The Times He Knew Where the Money Was, and He Usually Took It Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer, a Fictional Biography By DWIGHT GARNER Published: October 9, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
There are two ways to read Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer: as a third-rate novel with a deep and crippling cornball streak, or as a loose and journalistic speculative biography of a famous bank robber. Either way, you lose. But you lose less if you decide to read it as semi-true biography. You can at least enjoy the ragtime shuffle of the authors better sentences. Enlarge This Image
Donna Svennevik/ABC J. R. Moehringer SUTTON By J. R. Moehringer 334 pages. Hyperion. $27.99. The bank robber is Willie Sutton, the man famous for supposedly saying, when asked why he held up banks, Thats where the money is. Sutton robbed dozens of them during his four-decade-long career. He also escaped from three maximum-security prisons, prompting frantic manhunts, and became a folk hero in the process. His dapper Irish good looks didnt hurt. When young, he somewhat resembled Jack Kerouac. In the overselling style that characterizes Sutton, which is billed as a novel, Mr. Moehringer declaims about his hero: Smarter than Machine Gun Kelly, saner than Pretty Boy Floyd, more likable than Legs Diamond, more peaceable than Dutch Schultz, more romantic than Bonnie and Clyde, Sutton saw bank robbery as high art and went about it with an artists single-minded zeal. Thats not the sound fiction makes. Thats the sound jacket copy makes. Suttons famous quotation has always made him seem like a lovable dunce, Yogi Berra with a gun moll and a getaway car. In Sutton Mr. Moehringer reminds us that he was a shrewd fellow and a committed reader, with copies of Dante and Tennyson tucked into his prison cell. Sutton wrote two memoirs (they contradicted each other) and an unpublished novel. Mr. Moehringer uses Suttons fondness for libraries to grinding effect, as an excuse to turn each sentence that comes out of his mouth into a barroom epigram. Sutton is set on Christmas Day, 1969, just after its heros surprise parole from Attica at 68. (He died from emphysema in Florida 11 years
later.) The novel chronicles the hours Sutton spent in New York City with two journalists who had been promised an exclusive. Sutton gives them a greatest-hits tour of his past, while readers get more substantive flashbacks. A better title for this novel might have been, had Willie Nelson not already taken it for his own 2007 book, The Tao of Willie. You can open to almost any page of Sutton and find our hero uttering things like: Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Dont let go. Or, more puzzlingly: Did you ever notice, kid, that the words obit and orbit are separated by one little letter? Its like listening to Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade, after slight brain damage from a stroke. Nearly everyone in Sutton talks like this. Its a novel with not one, but two, whores with hearts of gold. Characters blurt thesis statements from out of nowhere. Heres a photographer, explaining why readers care about Suttons story: This is the Age of the Antihero. I dont have to tell you, Willie, times are hard, people are fed up. A hooker arrives to underscore this books populist, anti-Wall Street themes. Wall Street, Willie, she says. Theyre a bad bunch. She adds: I know who I am. What I am. And as such, Ill take a sailor over an investment banker any day. Suttons young girlfriends wealthy and disapproving father says: None of us knows what bad luck is. Or where it comes from. Maybe its wild and random like the wind. Mr. Moehringer is the author or co-author of two previous books, both of them excellent. His memoir, The Tender Bar (2005), is rheumy and complex, its sentimental streak fully earned and also balanced with flyaway comedy. The authors Uncle Charlie, a bartender, barks at a patron, If you think Sigourney Weaver is sexy, then you are a homosexual. Strange sparks fly. He is also the co-author of Andre Agassis memoir, Open, a book that reads like a rocket. Or speaks, at any rate. I listened to all 18 hours and 4 minutes of Open while on a long car trip with my family. We were, all four of us, held rapt, and were not even tennis fans. Mr. Moehringer gets some good things said in Sutton. I liked the bit where Sutton talks about how criminals, like Broadway actors, cant wait to seize upon their notices in the next mornings newspapers. The bad reviews, we took those hard, Sutton says. If the cops said the robbery looked like the work of amateurs, wed go into a funk for a week. There is also this line, about a conundrum that faces Sutton: What would Ben Franklin do if offing a dwarf were the only way to be happy? And there is Suttons comment about life outside of prison in 1969. When exactly, he asks, did everybody get together and decide to stop getting haircuts? But Sutton has little of the depth, nuance or graininess of real fiction. Reading it is like watching a man confidently paint the exterior walls of a house while completely forgetting to do the interiors. A man has to feel good at something or hes not a man, Willie Sutton says, in one of the many bromides that pack this novel. Mr. Moehringer is very good at many things. Fiction is not yet one of them.
A version of this review appeared in print on October 10, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: He Knew Where the Money Was, and He Usually Took It.
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Books of The Times He Knew Where the Money Was, and He Usually Took It Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer, a Fictional Biography By DWIGHT GARNER Published: October 9, 2012 Facebook Twitter Google+ E-mail Share Print Reprints
There are two ways to read Sutton, by J. R. Moehringer: as a third-rate novel with a deep and crippling cornball streak, or as a loose and journalistic speculative biography of a famous bank robber. Either way, you lose. But you lose less if you decide to read it as semi-true biography. You can at least enjoy the ragtime shuffle of the authors better sentences. Enlarge This Image
Donna Svennevik/ABC J. R. Moehringer SUTTON By J. R. Moehringer 334 pages. Hyperion. $27.99. The bank robber is Willie Sutton, the man famous for supposedly saying, when asked why he held up banks, Thats where the money is. Sutton robbed dozens of them during his four-decade-long career. He also escaped from three maximum-security prisons, prompting frantic manhunts, and became a folk hero in the process. His dapper Irish good looks didnt hurt. When young, he somewhat resembled Jack Kerouac. In the overselling style that characterizes Sutton, which is billed as a novel, Mr. Moehringer declaims about his hero: Smarter than Machine Gun Kelly, saner than Pretty Boy Floyd, more likable than Legs Diamond, more peaceable than Dutch Schultz, more romantic than Bonnie and Clyde, Sutton saw bank robbery as high art and went about it with an artists single-minded zeal. Thats not the sound fiction makes. Thats the sound jacket copy makes. Suttons famous quotation has always made him seem like a lovable dunce, Yogi Berra with a gun moll and a getaway car. In Sutton Mr. Moehringer reminds us that he was a shrewd fellow and a committed reader, with copies of Dante and Tennyson tucked into his prison cell. Sutton wrote two memoirs (they contradicted each other) and an unpublished novel. Mr. Moehringer uses Suttons fondness for libraries to grinding effect, as an excuse to turn each sentence that comes out of his mouth into a barroom epigram. Sutton is set on Christmas Day, 1969, just after its heros surprise parole from Attica at 68. (He died from emphysema in Florida 11 years
later.) The novel chronicles the hours Sutton spent in New York City with two journalists who had been promised an exclusive. Sutton gives them a greatest-hits tour of his past, while readers get more substantive flashbacks. A better title for this novel might have been, had Willie Nelson not already taken it for his own 2007 book, The Tao of Willie. You can open to almost any page of Sutton and find our hero uttering things like: Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Dont let go. Or, more puzzlingly: Did you ever notice, kid, that the words obit and orbit are separated by one little letter? Its like listening to Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade, after slight brain damage from a stroke. Nearly everyone in Sutton talks like this. Its a novel with not one, but two, whores with hearts of gold. Characters blurt thesis statements from out of nowhere. Heres a photographer, explaining why readers care about Suttons story: This is the Age of the Antihero. I dont have to tell you, Willie, times are hard, people are fed up. A hooker arrives to underscore this books populist, anti-Wall Street themes. Wall Street, Willie, she says. Theyre a bad bunch. She adds: I know who I am. What I am. And as such, Ill take a sailor over an investment banker any day. Suttons young girlfriends wealthy and disapproving father says: None of us knows what bad luck is. Or where it comes from. Maybe its wild and random like the wind. Mr. Moehringer is the author or co-author of two previous books, both of them excellent. His memoir, The Tender Bar (2005), is rheumy and complex, its sentimental streak fully earned and also balanced with flyaway comedy. The authors Uncle Charlie, a bartender, barks at a patron, If you think Sigourney Weaver is sexy, then you are a homosexual. Strange sparks fly. He is also the co-author of Andre Agassis memoir, Open, a book that reads like a rocket. Or speaks, at any rate. I listened to all 18 hours and 4 minutes of Open while on a long car trip with my family. We were, all four of us, held rapt, and were not even tennis fans. Mr. Moehringer gets some good things said in Sutton. I liked the bit where Sutton talks about how criminals, like Broadway actors, cant wait to seize upon their notices in the next mornings newspapers. The bad reviews, we took those hard, Sutton says. If the cops said the robbery looked like the work of amateurs, wed go into a funk for a week. There is also this line, about a conundrum that faces Sutton: What would Ben Franklin do if offing a dwarf were the only way to be happy? And there is Suttons comment about life outside of prison in 1969. When exactly, he asks, did everybody get together and decide to stop getting haircuts? But Sutton has little of the depth, nuance or graininess of real fiction. Reading it is like watching a man confidently paint the exterior walls of a house while completely forgetting to do the interiors. A man has to feel good at something or hes not a man, Willie Sutton says, in one of the many bromides that pack this novel. Mr. Moehringer is very good at many things. Fiction is not yet one of them.
A version of this review appeared in print on October 10, 2012, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: He Knew Where the Money Was, and He Usually Took It.
http://w w w .nytim He Knew Where call 1
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Inside NYTimes.com Fashion & Style Art & Design Booming Opini Home & on Garden Paten ts vs. Creati Opini Great Musi on Home c s Fixes: Clue The Stapl Arise Avon e-Gun s Opin Hom ion e & Gard en OpEd: Mini Opin Fas ion hio n& Styl Op- e Ed:
Ladie Decor Rega The ature Ope Art s of ating rding Wro in ning Tha Intelle Lost ng Gam the ts Africa in ctual Fort Phot Way e Chur Not prope DoorGreen o of to Only ch Just rty to- e Mahl Help to on law door the the the er was sales Wor Fac Poor mean and ld e Americans Are Design as But Who Will The t to franc We Barmy Over Balm for a Competing Care for Me? foster hising spen Communitys Views on Britishisms innov are d Soul Competition ation. being near Room used ly $1 for by a trilli Debat group on a e called year asks: Living for Does Good the it now s to nee just get dy. serve need It big ed isnt busin healt wor h ess? king. produ cts to peopl e in Africa . vity Home World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology
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Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School. He is the author of "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires." October 10, 2012 The story of intellectual property rights and innovation is one of a good idea gone way too far. I.P. law is usually a big success in the industries it began in. For copyright, thats the book industry; for patent, pharmaceuticals, chemistry and mechanics. Great so far. Then comes the overreach. Inspired by the success of I.P. concepts in one area, lawyers push the idea that it would be great everywhere, in larger doses. Theyre like a chef who thinks that since his tartar sauce makes fish taste better, itll improve his pumpkin pie as well. It doesnt.
When intellectual property law works in one area, lawyers stretch it to another. Even when this fails, the laws are hard to get rid of.
For complex reasons that economic models don't predict, some I.P. extensions succeed, others yield mixed results, and some are outright failures. The problem is that laws are hard to get rid of, even when they fail. Software patent is a good example of a failed experiment. Patent had a good record encouraging investment in pharmaceuticals, so surely it would be great for software, right? Just the opposite. Weve had three decades of astonishing software innovations, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscapes browser or Googles search and patent is responsible for none of it.
No one can name a major software innovation whose investments depended on patent, and thats damning. Instead, software patent is a freak sideshow that costs everyone lots of money, threatens competition and is occasionally used for accounting fraud. It has been a failed experiment in innovation policy, and an expensive one. Failure is okay. Learning from it is normal in Silicon Valley. But we need a better way to acknowledge failed policies and, as we do with failed businesses, to reboot. Courageous judges, like Richard Posner, know a fiasco when they see one. Let others follow his example. Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Law, Technology, media industry, prescription drugs
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Does the Law Support Inventors or Investors?

The protections for intellectual property were intended to encourage innovation. Now many fear they have become 'destructive weapons.' Read More
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Copyright Rules and the Art They Inspire
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When the Law Is Not Just for Oligarchs
Siva Vaidhyanathan, author, "Copyrights and Copywrongs"
A Centuries-Old System, and It Works
William Barber, American Intellectual Property Law Association

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Tim Wu is a professor at Columbia Law School. He is the author of "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires." October 10, 2012
The story of intellectual property rights and innovation is one of a good idea gone way too far. I.P. law is usually a big success in the industries it began in. For copyright, thats the book industry; for patent, pharmaceuticals, chemistry and mechanics. Great so far. Then comes the overreach. Inspired by the success of I.P. concepts in one area, lawyers push the idea that it would be great everywhere, in larger doses. Theyre like a chef who thinks that since his tartar sauce makes fish taste better, itll improve his pumpkin pie as well. It doesnt.
For complex reasons that economic models don't predict, some I.P. extensions succeed, others yield mixed results, and some are outright failures. The problem is that laws are hard to get rid of, even when they fail. Software patent is a good example of a failed experiment. Patent had a good record encouraging investment in pharmaceuticals, so surely it would be great for software, right? Just the opposite. Weve had three decades of astonishing software innovations, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscapes browser or Googles search and patent is responsible for none of it. No one can name a major software innovation whose investments depended on patent, and thats damning. Instead, software patent is a freak sideshow that costs everyone lots of money, threatens competition and is occasionally used for accounting fraud. It has been a failed experiment in innovation policy, and an expensive one. Failure is okay. Learning from it is normal in Silicon Valley. But we need a better way to acknowledge failed policies and, as we do with failed businesses, to reboot. Courageous judges, like Richard Posner, know a fiasco when they see one. Let others follow his example. Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Law, Technology, media industry, prescription drugs
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For complex reasons that economic models don't predict, some I.P. extensions succeed, others yield mixed results, and some are outright failures. The problem is that laws are hard to get rid of, even when they fail. Software patent is a good example of a failed experiment. Patent had a good record encouraging investment in pharmaceuticals, so surely it would be great for software, right? Just the opposite. Weve had three decades of astonishing software innovations, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscapes browser or Googles search and patent is responsible for none of it. No one can name a major software innovation whose investments depended on patent, and thats damning. Instead, software patent is a freak sideshow that costs everyone lots of money, threatens competition and is occasionally used for accounting fraud. It has been a failed experiment in innovation policy, and an expensive one. Failure is okay. Learning from it is normal in Silicon Valley. But we need a better way to acknowledge failed policies and, as we do with failed businesses, to reboot. Courageous judges, like Richard Posner, know a fiasco when they see one. Let others follow his example.
Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Law, Technology, media industry, prescription drugs
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For complex reasons that economic models don't predict, some I.P. extensions succeed, others yield mixed results, and some are outright failures. The problem is that laws are hard to get rid of, even when they fail. Software patent is a good example of a failed experiment. Patent had a good record encouraging investment in pharmaceuticals, so surely it would be great for software, right? Just the opposite. Weve had three decades of astonishing software innovations, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscapes browser or Googles search and patent is responsible for none of it. No one can name a major software innovation whose investments depended on patent, and thats damning. Instead, software patent is a freak sideshow that costs everyone lots of money, threatens competition and is occasionally used for accounting fraud. It has been a failed experiment in innovation policy, and an expensive one.
Failure is okay. Learning from it is normal in Silicon Valley. But we need a better way to acknowledge failed policies and, as we do with failed businesses, to reboot. Courageous judges, like Richard Posner, know a fiasco when they see one. Let others follow his example. Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Law, Technology, media industry, prescription drugs
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For complex reasons that economic models don't predict, some I.P. extensions succeed, others yield mixed results, and some are outright failures. The problem is that laws are hard to get rid of, even when they fail. Software patent is a good example of a failed experiment. Patent had a good record encouraging investment in pharmaceuticals, so surely it would be great for software, right? Just the opposite. Weve had three decades of
astonishing software innovations, like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscapes browser or Googles search and patent is responsible for none of it. No one can name a major software innovation whose investments depended on patent, and thats damning. Instead, software patent is a freak sideshow that costs everyone lots of money, threatens competition and is occasionally used for accounting fraud. It has been a failed experiment in innovation policy, and an expensive one. Failure is okay. Learning from it is normal in Silicon Valley. But we need a better way to acknowledge failed policies and, as we do with failed businesses, to reboot. Courageous judges, like Richard Posner, know a fiasco when they see one. Let others follow his example. Join Room for Debate on Facebook and follow updates on twitter.com/roomfordebate. Topics: Law, Technology, media industry, prescription drugs
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Thursday, October 11, 2012 Business DayTechnology World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Autos <a href="http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/nc/12309-160198-1358-3?mpt=2012.10.11.11.05.20"> <img src="http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/nb/12309-160198-1358-3?mpt=2012.10.11.11.05.20" alt="Click Here" border="0">< /a> For Some Drivers, an Electric Motorcycle Could Be the Best of Both Worlds By BRIAN X. CHEN
Jim Wilson/The New York Times A prototype of an electric motorcycle, which has a gyro stabilization system. The C-1, being built by Lit Motors, is a bike encased in a metal shell that is meant to provide the convenience of a motorcycle with the amenities of a car.
Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers By NATASHA SINGER Senator John D. Rockefeller, a Democrat from West Virginia, said he was concerned that personal information about people could be collected and sold to their potential detriment. Small-Business Guide
Even Small Players Can Seize the Day With an App Strategy By EILENE ZIMMERMAN Consumers now expect nearly every brand to have its own app, and small businesses feel pressured to create and publish them.
More Small-Business Guides You're the Boss: Have You Tried to Create Your Own App? | Bits Blog Post a Comment
The Global Arbitrage of Online Work By QUENTIN HARDY The growth of online staffing companies, which connect freelancers with remote clients for software and accounting jobs, could change qualifications for hiring. Bits Blog
A Bedding E-Commerce Start-Up Cuts Out the Middlemen By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER Crane & Canopy, a Silicon Valley start-up, sells bedding at a discount because it cuts out licensing companies, exporters and retail stores, and sells directly to customers on the Web. Bits Blog
Decide.com Pays to Get Consumer Reports's Reputation By BRIAN X. CHEN A start-up called Decide.com, though small, is already describing itself as the next generation Consumer Reports. Widening Scrutiny of Googles Smartphone Patents By STEVE LOHR
The Federal Trade Commission is investigating Googles policies around licensing certain patents and suing other companies that it claims infringe on them. Same-Day Delivery Test at Wal-Mart By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD The move transforms the more than 4,000 local Walmart stores into distribution centers Amazon, by contrast, had fewer than 40 warehouses at the end of last year. Bits Blog
Ride-Sharing App Gets $10 Million - and a Cease and Desist Order By JENNA WORTHAM Sidecar, an application that lets people arrange rides with nearby drivers, is battling a cease-and-desist order even as it raises a round of venture capital. High Court in Philippines Suspends Contentious Internet Law Bits Blog: Shortage of New iPhones Spooks Apple Investors Bits Blog: Open vs. Closed: The Cloud Wars Online, a Genome Project for the World of Art Bits Blog: Missteps Curb Microsoft Bonuses for Ballmer and Sinofsky U.S. Panel Cites Risks in Chinese Equipment Bits Blog: From the Land of Angry Birds, a Mobile Game Maker Lifts Off Redefining Medicine With Apps and iPads
October 10, 2012 Today's Scuttlebot: Antarctican Visions and Hipstamatic's Struggle October 10, 2012
TimesCast Media+Tech: Electric Motorcycles October 10, 2012 Ahead of Spyware Conference, More Evidence of Abuse October 10, 2012 The Global Arbitrage of Online Work October 10, 2012 Decide.com Pays to Get Consumer Reports's Reputation Around the Web
WinRumors Office for iOS and Android reportedly confirmed by Microsoft product manager, due March 2013
Bloomberg Apple Choice of IPhone Aluminum Said to Slow Down Output Scuttlebot
News from the Web, annotated by our staff Map Reveals Corporate Bus Routes Tech Workers Take| WSJ.com A clever study of how San Francisco traffic corridors are changing because of tech workers. - Damon Darlin California Puts Brakes on Ridesharing Apps| mashable.com
Collaborative consumption gets a cease and desist order - Somini Sengupta Facebook Fought S.E.C. to Keep Mobile Risks Hidden Before I.P.O.| Bloomberg An e-mail exchange between the S.E.C. and Facebook depicts a company hesitant to disclose information. - Damon Darlin Antarctica like you've never seen it before| localwiki.org A local wiki for Antarctica. Wait, there's Internet in Antarctica? - Brian X. Chen
The Digital Doctor A special issue of Science Times looks at some of the many ways that technology is changing the world of medicine. Redefining Medicine With Apps and iPads Mind: Recalibrating Therapy for Our Wired World Go to Special Section
Video More L.G.B.T. Characters on Television TimesCast Media + Tech: Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender characters become increasingly common on television. | The future of 3-D printing. Disruptions
With a 3-D Printer, Building a Gun With the Push of a Button
By NICK BILTON It might sound like science fiction, but 3-D printers are quickly becoming a consumer product, and people are already planning how to print a firearm. State of the Art
Newly Enlightened E-Readers By DAVID POGUE In the nonstop struggle to produce the perfect e-reader, Amazon responds to Barnes & Nobles Nook with the Kindle Paperwhite.
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For Some Drivers, an Electric Motorcycle Could Be the Best of Both Worlds Tool Kit: Making Room in Your Piece of the Cloud The iEconomy: The Patent, Used as a Sword Widening Scrutiny of Googles Smartphone Patents Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers Bits: The Global Arbitrage of Online Work Bits: IPhone 5 Shortage Spooks Apple Investors Bits: Open vs. Closed: The Cloud Wars App Smart: Useful New Tools, and Some Diversions, for Apples New Phone Bits: Disruptions: With a 3-D Printer, Building a Gun With the Push of a Button Go to Complete List Romney Strives to Stand Apart in Global Policy U.S. Military Is Sent to Jordan to Help With Crisis in Syria Truth About Jobs With New Vigor, Romney Resets Ohio Campaign A Fat, Mustachioed Orphan Finds a Home Attention Disorder or Not, Pills to Help in School The Policy Verdict I Online, a Genome Project for the World of Art As Romney Repeats Trade Message, Bain Maintains China Ties Taliban Gun Down Girl Who Spoke Up for Rights Go to Complete List For Some Drivers, an Electric Motorcycle Could Be the Best of Both Worlds Tool Kit: Making Room in Your Piece of the Cloud App Smart: Useful New Tools, and Some Diversions, for Apples New Phone
Bits: The Global Arbitrage of Online Work The iEconomy: The Patent, Used as a Sword Senator Opens Investigation of Data Brokers Bits: Ahead of Spyware Conference, More Evidence of Abuse Widening Scrutiny of Googles Smartphone Patents Bits: IPhone 5 Shortage Spooks Apple Investors Bits: Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses
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Malala Yousafzai, Teenage School Activist, Survives Taliban Attack

Orphaned Baby Walrus to Arrive at New York Aquarium

MAUREEN DOWD 2. Barry Trails Off . . .

3. Details of Doping Scheme Paint Armstrong as Leader

4. A Fat, Mustachioed Orphan Finds a Home

5. Number of Protestant Americans Is in Steep Decline, Study Finds

Op-Ed Contributor 6. Long Live Paper

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN 7. Its Not Just About Us

8. Everyone Eats There

9. Taliban Gun Down Girl Who Spoke Up for Rights

Campaign Stops 10. Liberalism's Glass Jaw Go to Complete List

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Election 2012 - Definitive Coverage

Does it now just serve big busin ess?

Good s to get need ed healt h produ cts to peopl e in Africa .

the nee dy. It isnt wor king.

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