Bioethicists Give Hollywood's Films A Reality Check

Directors and bioethicists hashed out how moral medical issues should be depicted on screen during a meeting in Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Colin Crowley

Directors and bioethicists hashed out how moral medical issues should be depicted on screen during a meeting in Los Angeles.

Courtesy of Colin Crowley

A life-threatening pandemic occurs. You're a doctor in the ER and can save a 9-year-old or a 63-year-old doctor. Whom do you choose? How do you choose?

Questions like that can crop up in real life and also on the silver screen. So how good a job do filmmakers do at portraying these moral dilemmas? Some do fairly well, but there's also room for improvement.

A group of bioethicists from the Johns Hopkins went to Hollywood on Oct. 8 to talk about injecting an extra dose of accuracy in film and television. The Science and Entertainment Exchange, a project of the National Academy of Sciences, hosted the event.

To Rick Loverd, head of the exchange, the bioethics panel represents a natural meeting of the minds. "Storytellers really enjoy working at the edge of the bell curve," he tells Shots. "Where it's unclear where the right answer is and there's moral ambiguity. Thinking about bioethics really engages an audience about thinking about the future."

Three topics drove the discussion. How to allocate scarce medical resources was one, such as the case of saving a child or an elderly doctor. The broad array of human enhancements was another, with discussions ranging from vaccinations to genetic engineering.

During the session, the bioethicists asked: "Is enhancement cheating?"

Courtesy of Colin Crowley

During the session, the bioethicists asked: "Is enhancement cheating?"

Courtesy of Colin Crowley

And third, the ethicists and directors talked about how privacy and health data can mix well or clash. Say a business wants to use its employees' health information to create a better work environment, but the workers don't want their details in the boss's hands. Where's the middle ground?

Ruth Faden, head of Hopkins' Berman Institute, says there has been behind-the-scenes work between bioethicists and entertainers since 2008. (The Science and Entertainment Exchange holds about 30 events a year.) She says the more accurate our movies, the more sophisticated our dialogue about the issues afterward. There's even a website with examples of faithful depictions of bioethics in the media.

"Every time we've had an epidemic-based movie, we've had an opportunity to have a public discussion about the ethics of how we ought to respond — the limits of what is possible and what principles we should be using to allocate the resources we do have," she tells Shots.

Jacob Rosenberg, a filmmaker with Bandito Brothers, said the discussion about genetic enhancements applied to a project he's working on now. The conversation confirmed some of the technical details of his storyline.

As for movies that depict a serious disease outbreak, the solution might sound simple: Save whom you can and don't look back.

But Rosenberg tells Shots the discussion showed him that's not reality. You can't think like an outsider, he says. "You can have so many conversations about what you would do, but in that exact moment, each of us would react in our own personal way."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/10/10/231447510/bioethicists-reality-check-hollywood-s-disaster-films?ft=1&f=1007
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Graham Nash Has 'Wild Tales' To Spare

Graham Nash has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice — once in 1997 as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and once in 2010 as a member of The Hollies.

Eleanor Stills/Courtesy of Crown Archetype

Graham Nash has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice — once in 1997 as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash, and once in 2010 as a member of The Hollies.

Eleanor Stills/Courtesy of Crown Archetype

Graham Nash first came to the U.S. as part of the British Invasion with his band The Hollies, which got its start at the same time as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and shared bills with both groups in England. But Nash later helped to define a kind of West Coast sound, singing harmonies as part of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Nash wrote some of the most famous songs by the powerhouse group (who would add Neil Young to its roster in 1969), including "Our House," "Teach Your Children" and "Marrakesh Express."

In a new memoir called Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life, Nash touches on those memories and many others. He recently spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, just a few hours before Crosby, Stills & Nash performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Interview Highlights

On the influence of The Everly Brothers' harmonies

"I was about 15 years old; Allan [Clarke, founding member of The Hollies] and I were attending a Catholic schoolgirls' dance on a Saturday evening. I remember going down the stairs and giving the young lady our tickets. 'You Send Me' by Sam Cooke had just stopped playing, and of course that was a slow dance where every boy and girl were feeling each other up and getting close and the teachers were trying to separate them. So the song finished and the ballroom floor cleared, and Allan and I saw a friend across the way that we both wanted. And we got halfway across the floor and 'Bye Bye Love' by The Everly Brothers came on — and it stopped us in our tracks. We sang together, so we knew what two-part harmony was, but this sounded so unbelievably beautiful. They're brothers, of course, and they're from Kentucky and have these beautiful accents. They could harmonize unbelievably, very much like The Louvin Brothers, who they probably learned from. And ever since that day, I decided that whatever music I was going to make in the future, I wanted it to affect people the same way The Everly Brothers' music affected me on that Saturday night."

On Buddy Holly's ordinary charm

"Buddy Holly was one of us. He was an ordinary-looking kid, wore big thick glasses. He wasn't shakin' his hips and being sexy — he was actually one of us. We could be Buddy Holly. It was very hard to be Elvis; only Elvis was Elvis. But with Buddy Holly, he was one of us and he touched our hearts in a very simple way. What a lot of people don't realize is that the kid only recorded for less than two years before he was tragically killed with the Big Bopper and Richie Valens. ... He was very dear to us. His music was very simple: Everybody could play it if you knew three chords. It had great energy, great simplicity. I often wonder what Buddy Holly would be doing with today's technology."

On his early infatuation with America

"Coming to America was amazing to me. The phone rang exactly as it did in John Wayne movies. You could get a real hamburger — because in England at the time, there were only these things called 'wimpy burgers,' and they were like shoe leather. You could get food brought in! Unheard of in England. I loved America from the moment I set foot on it, I really did. When we actually got a chance to go and fly to Los Angeles, I climbed the nearest palm tree and I told Allan Clarke that there was no way I was going back."

On how marijuana use changed his songwriting style

"I think alcohol is a depressive drug, whereas marijuana is not. I never got depressed when I smoked dope at all; it was a joyful experience. I'm not condoning my drug use. ... I go into great detail in the book about Crosby's spiraling down into cocaine madness, but at that time, smoking dope wasn't that big of a deal. Quite frankly, I loved it. It expanded my mind, it made me think about more profound issues. The Hollies were great at creating a two-and-a-half-minute pop song, to be played right before the news. ... In hanging out with David [Crosby] and Stephen [Stills] and Neil [Young] and Joni [Mitchell], I began to realize that you could write catchy melodies that would attract people, but you could talk about real things. I began to change the way I wrote songs. I was trained to write good pop songs, and I took that sensibility and talked about what I considered to be deeper, more profound subjects."

On how adding Neil Young changed Crosby, Stills & Nash

"It's more difficult to sing four-part [harmonies]; you've got to start shifting parts around and stuff. Neil brings a darker edge to our music, and I don't mean that in a negative way. ... It's more intense. That first album of Crosby, Stills & Nash is kind of summery: lots of palm trees in it feeling, a cool-breeze-through-the-canyons kind of music. Actually, Jimi Hendrix, when asked what he thought of Crosby, Stills & Nash, looked at the interviewer and said, 'That's Western sky music.' And I thought, 'Wow. That's brilliant.' The point is that Neil brings a different kind of musical intensity to the band, and the music of Crosby, Stills & Nash and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young is very, very different."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/15/234683906/graham-nash-has-wild-tales-to-spare?ft=1&f=13
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Aviate for Android enters private beta, adapts your home screen to your lifestyle (hands-on)

ThumbsUp Labs believes that our smartphone screens are too messy -- we have to wade through pages of apps to find just the right tool at a given moment. The company hopes to clean things up by releasing the private beta of Aviate, an Android launcher that builds context-aware home screens and ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/UPEv787T03A/
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A King Comes to Queens: Paul McCartney Rocks New York City High School

MJ Kim/MPL Communications for iHeartRadio

Of all days to promote the release of his latest album, New, Paul McCartney picked John Lennon's birthday and his anniversary with wife, Nancy Shevell.

"You're getting a lot of plugs today," he said to his betrothed, who sat with a crowd of students and press packed into an auditorium at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York. There, a stone's throw away, the former Beatle performed 13 songs with his band and took questions from the audience.

The top-secret show was only disclosed to the media some 24 hours prior, and the students paraded into the 400-seat theater having no idea they were about to be treated to a concert by one of the two living Beatles. (Worth noting: the first time the band ever stepped on U.S. soil was at nearby John F. Kennedy International Airport, also in Queens.)

Sir Paul came to this particular school at the suggestion of Tony Bennett, who founded it in 2001. The ever-humble 87-year-old crooner watched the 75-minute presentation from backstage while many wondered: Would he emerge to collaborate with Macca?

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Veteran rock DJ Jim Kerr of New York’s Q104.3 introduced McCartney and his backing band at 2:15 pm. They opened with “Eight Days a Week” and followed with “Save Us,” the rockin’ lead track from New, and “Jet.” Kerr came back and asked McCartney about his interest in education. Similar to Bennett, a few years ago he funded the renovation of his own high school, the Liverpool Institute, which he attended with fellow Beatle George Harrison in the 1950s.

About a dozen students were pre-selected to ask questions, most of the generic variety: Who inspired him? When did he know they’d made it? Is there anything he would change if he could? As far as his inspirations, McCartney mentioned standards (“songs from my dad’s era”) and the rock & roll of Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Little Richard and others. “We tried to bring the two things together,” he explained. “The standards with the rock & roll. It was quite funky.”

McCartney performed two more songs from New, including the title track, which he dedicated to his wife. For the rest of the 50-minute set, he dusted off such classics as “We Can Work It Out,” “Obla Di, Obla Da,” “Being for the Benefit for Mr. Kite” (dedicated to Lennon), “Blackbird,” “Lady Madonna,” “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” “Band on the Run” and “Hey Jude,” which had the crowd singing along during and after the song was over and the band had left the stage.

As always, McCartney was light on his feet, charming, witty and warm. The daytime gig, playing before an audience more familiar with Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber than an aging Beatle, was clearly a kick for him and the band -- Rusty Anderson (lead guitar), Brian Ray (guitar, bass), Paul Wickens (keyboards) and Abe Laboriel Jr. (drums).

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It turned out Bennett never ventured on stage. Though it would’ve been nice to hear him team up with McCartney on his favorite Beatles tune, “Yesterday,” the Queens-born singer noted firmly in an exclusive post-concert interview with The Hollywood Reporter and music blog Brooklyn Vegan in his office at the school, “Paul had to do his thing. He’s promoting the new album. It’s a great start for him in this country, because this performance today will be on television and radio.”

Bennett recalled originally meeting McCartney at The Palladium in London when he was on the road with Lena Horne in the 1960s. “We’ve been great friends through the years,” Bennett added. “I was the first one to give the Beatles an award at Wembley Stadium. When I looked at the four of them, I looked at Paul McCartney and said, ‘That guy’s got it!’ And, sure enough, Paul is surviving.”

The McCartney program will be broadcast on select Clear Channel stations as well as on iHeartRadio.com/pm on Oct. 15, the day of the album's release. Fans can check out the show the night before on Yahoo!.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/music/~3/6F4UQjsAWrQ/story01.htm
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China's creaking export model: James Saft

By James Saft

(Reuters) - That creaking sound you hear just might be the Chinese export-driven economy model about to break.

While most of the world's attention is focused on the interminable and badly sung opera in Washington, China just released a set of data that indicate a serious slowing in demand for its products, particularly from its emerging market trading partners.

Chinese exports in September fell 0.3 percent from a year ago, customs officials said. While demand for Chinese products flagged in the European Union, the main culprit seems to have been emerging markets, which have been hit hard by slowing capital flows. Exports to Southeast Asia fell to a 17-month low, while those to South Africa were also hit hard.

Emerging markets had a hard summer, as expectations, now reversed, that the Federal Reserve would slow its purchases of bonds made borrowing money internationally more difficult.

And yet, despite the fall in exports, the rest of China's economy, which is still predicated on demand from abroad, is carrying on as if nothing has changed. Imports were sharply higher in the month, especially of the sorts of raw materials needed for export industries and to invest in infrastructure to support more exports. Credit creation also rose, with doubtless much of it going to support imports and property investment.

Imports of crude oil and iron ore set a fresh record in September, while copper shipments jumped 18 percent to set an 18-month high.

For decades, China's economic model has been relatively simple: use a lower wage base to drive exports and re-invest most of the profits into the infrastructure and factories needed to create yet more exports. Though this approach worked brilliantly for years, there were two big longer-term weaknesses with this plan. Both of them may be coming into play just about now, which would both explain decreasing demand for Chinese goods and make it more difficult for China to cope.

Wage growth in China has far outpaced inflation, making it less competitive. Wages in Chinese manufacturing have more than tripled in 8 years, while the supply of rural workers streaming to cities has slowed. Boston Consulting Group sees more so-called onshoring of jobs back to the United States, driven by wages, automation and energy and transportation costs.

The paired weakness is in China's consumer economy, which has been small and has suffered as the economy remains focused on investment, often in houses, for which there is little natural demand.

CHINA'S PLAYBOOK

It is unclear if slowing exports are being driven by cyclical trends, like weakness in emerging markets, or secular ones, like the migration of manufacturing. September's figures may also look worse than they were due to a crackdown this year on phantom imports, which have been a popular way for companies wanting to bring money into the country to skirt Chinese capital controls.

If there is a sustained fall in demand for China's products, its options may be somewhat limited. Given the centrality of investment and exports to China's economy, the government has a track record of reacting forcefully to slow-downs. The tactics include easing monetary conditions, which stimulate loans and investment even in the absence of strong demand for the end product.

But such easing may be a bit difficult right now.

China's annual consumer inflation rate rose to a seven-month high of 3.1 percent in September, driven by food inflation, in particular vegetables. While this was driven by weather, and thus may subside, it will serve to limit the central bank's ability to loosen conditions.

In some ways, the biggest issue isn't limitations on government stimulus if China needs it. One of the advantages of a single-party state with strong control over banking is that the government can always foment credit growth.

The problem instead is what happens if exports don't come back, if change is long-term and mostly in one direction. That will put a lot of pressure on China, not least because a lot of the investment there since the great financial crisis has been of very low quality.

It is not simply empty cities filled with "investment" apartments. It is everything from the cost and wastefulness of infrastructure investment to low-yielding research and development.

An IMF study from 2012 estimated that China's over-investment is equivalent to between 10-20 percent of annual output every year. (http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12277.pdf) Not only does that imply very, very low returns on investment, it almost certainly points to lower growth over time if, or rather when, China is forced to move away from its export model.

That story, when it happens, may make U.S. political dysfunction look like small potatoes in comparison.

(James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

(At the time of publication, Reuters columnist James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund. For previous columns by James Saft, click on)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-creaking-export-model-james-saft-041646521--sector.html
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Cards, Dodgers, Tigers, Bosox sport longtime logos

Tune in this week to watch Yasiel Puig or David Ortiz in high-def, then check out these throwbacks: Jackie Robinson stealing home in a grainy newsreel, Ted Williams swinging in a black-and-white photo.

See something familiar?

That flowing blue "Dodgers" script across the front of the jersey that followed them from Brooklyn. That pointy, ornate "B'' on the Red Sox cap.

Same style, now and then.

Pretty much true for the Cardinals and Tigers, too. The classic "birds on a bat" logo sported by Carlos Beltran and his St. Louis teammates, the Olde English "D'' worn by Miguel Cabrera and his Detroit pals — find a picture from the 1934 World Series between those teams and you'll recognize the jerseys.

In an era when clubs frequently change their look and often wear more than a dozen uniform combinations, kind of neat to see the four remaining playoff teams dressed up in duds that date back 70 years or so.

"They're all definitely the top jerseys in the game. You probably don't need to change them," Cardinals reliever Kevin Siegrist said.

"It's just the history of the game. It's crazy. These organizations have been around since when the game first started so it's awesome to have all these big teams in there. It's fun," he said.

There have been some changes, of course. The bat in the Cardinals logo is now yellow, rather than red or black from way back. The Tigers "D'' on the hat was orange at Fenway Park, instead of white.

Still, close enough.

"Uniforms have changed so much, it's nice to wear one that hasn't changed a lot," Red Sox infielder John McDonald said.

McDonald has put on plenty of them — he's played for seven teams in the majors, including Boston, Cleveland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh this season alone.

"My dad used to take me to watch baseball games a lot, I'd go to New York, Boston, a lot of places. I really started to notice the older uniforms when I was in Pittsburgh earlier this year," he said.

And now, baseball's playoff club shares a bond.

"It's cool. There's a lot of tradition with the teams that are left and a lot of history. That makes it great for baseball," Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter said.

___

AP freelance writers Jeff Melnick, Ken Powtak and Calvin May contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cards-dodgers-tigers-bosox-sport-longtime-logos-150033798.html
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(Cabbage) Heads Will Roll: How To Make A Food Network 'From Scratch'

According to journalist Allen Salkin, Emeril Lagasse initially opposed bringing Rachael Ray, pictured here in 2007, onto the Food Network – and, at first, Ray agreed with him. "You have this all wrong," she told executives, "I'm beer in a bottle; you guys are champagne."

Scott Gries/Getty Images

According to journalist Allen Salkin, Emeril Lagasse initially opposed bringing Rachael Ray, pictured here in 2007, onto the Food Network – and, at first, Ray agreed with him. "You have this all wrong," she told executives, "I'm beer in a bottle; you guys are champagne."

Scott Gries/Getty Images

Mario Batali, Guy Fieri and Rachael Ray are just a few of the stars the Food Network helped create. But what the network gave, it could also take away.

In From Scratch, author Allen Salkin takes an unsparing look at the network's progression from struggling cable startup to global powerhouse, and the people — Emeril Lagasse, Paula Deen — who rose and fell along the way.

Salkin tells NPR's Rachel Martin that while the network was intended for cooks, it wasn't run by them.

"They were not trying to spread the gospel of kale and of shallots," he says. "These were guys trying to make a media play and make some money."

Interview Highlights

On what cooking shows were like before the Food Network

It was this thing relegated to weekend mornings on PBS with Julia Child, obviously, pioneering the format in the '60s with The French Chef, and then in the '80s with The Frugal Gourmet and Martin Yan. And it really was sort of a ghetto of television. Nobody believed that anyone would ever want to watch this on primetime.

... Julia is a great figure and really showed the way to having some personality on food TV, but it was not being exploited. It fell to these cable TV pioneers to take a shot at it.

On the early, low-budget set for Mario Batali's show, Molto Mario

He was such a great host at first, telling these erudite stories about how he learned about a certain kind of ravioli in a certain village in Umbria, but there was no oven. So he would pretend to slide that tray of whatever he was making under the counter and stamp his foot on the floor to simulate an oven sound — which is, you know, great television.

On how Emeril Lagasse helped jump-start the network

Emeril was actually a guy from Fall River, Mass., and he had become famous because he sort of revolutionized and modernized Creole cuisine down in New Orleans. And he was first making appearances on the Nashville Network, and these producers down there basically pitched Emeril as a potential host.

... It was with Emeril Live eventually, his third show on the network, that he was really the first breakthrough star. He took the original Julia Child dump-and-stir, if you will, format and married it with this Tonight Show pizzazz of a monologue and a live band, and that was really the thing that started the Food Network on its way.

On the near-death of Emeril's "Bam!"

Allen Salkin is an investigative journalist who's hosted a video series for AOL's Slashfood blog and written for The New York Times.

Earl Wilson

Allen Salkin is an investigative journalist who's hosted a video series for AOL's Slashfood blog and written for The New York Times.

Earl Wilson

A character on [The Larry Sanders Show] used to say "Hey now!" all the time, and [Creative Director] Jonathan [Lynn] thought that Emeril's shtick with the "Bam!" and "Hey now!" and "Let's kick it up a notch!" was derivative, and so told him to kill the "Bam!" ... Can you imagine? It's like telling the Fonz not to say, "Eyyy." [Emeril won] because Emeril, in his restaurants in New Orleans, was already getting a little bit of feedback with people shouting "Bam!" back at him. He knew he was working.

On Emeril's departure

Emeril had been the biggest star on the network for 10 years, and the network had started seeing him as this aging quarterback who could no longer take them to the Super Bowl — especially starting in the early 2000s, with Top Chef competing against them on Bravo, and others. And the Food Network felt like his demographic — you know, it's always the same: His viewers are getting older, his ratings are going down a little, his program was more expensive. Ultimately, they treated him pretty shoddily. ... It really was the final, kind of, end of an era of this great star — who made the network, who was a chef, who was grounded in restaurant culture — being shown the door by a bunch of television executives.

On where the network stands today

If you look at it, their last breakthrough, household-name star was Guy Fieri, and he won, in 2006, [The] Next Food Network Star. So that's been seven years. ... In about 2002, 2003 this network was just generating household names: Barefoot Contessa, Giada De Lorentiis, Paula Deen. And they are no longer doing that. In fact, they no longer even have their own internal production; they're not making their own cooking shows anymore. The network, at its heart, used to literally smell like apple pie and baking chickens, and now they're doing what every other network is doing: They're sending executives to have meetings with production companies in L.A., trying to find the next Duck Dynasty.

On Paula Deen

The Paula Deen problem started before this N-word controversy, which came from the racial and sexual discrimination lawsuit against her and a deposition she gave. The problems she had started way back in 2001. Her agent had negotiated a deal where the network was not participating in any of her businesses. In other words, they have the American Idol model: You win American Idol, you've got to give part of your record contract back to the people who make American Idol. And that's what Food Network wants. They believe that their brand is so strong that they should take a cut of your cookbook sales, of your spatulas and everything else. They didn't get that from Paula so they were not really in business with her.

Secondly, the diabetes drug deal that she had made about a year and a half earlier, where the Queen of Butter and Sugar had all of a sudden admitted she had diabetes exactly at the time she was taking millions of dollars to endorse a diabetes drug, rather than before that. And none of her programming had been changed. The Food Network hired a crisis consultant company and was calling reporters on background and telling us, "We had nothing to do with this, this is outrageous," and really distancing the network from this. So she already had a few strikes against her.

At the same time, these stand-and-stir cooking shows that Paula was doing were losing viewers. And this, ultimately, was a network that is trying to expand channels into South Africa, Singapore, all over Asia. And so when the N-word controversy happened, she already had two strikes against her and her contract was up at exactly the wrong time.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/10/13/231527991/-cabbage-heads-will-roll-how-to-make-a-food-network-from-scratch?ft=1&f=
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