1965: Jim Clark & Team Lotus, The UK Races
Copiously illustrated with nearly 200 hitherto unseen photographs from the Peter Darley Archive, the book not only captures the unique atmosphere of the time but also lists the race results for every class in which Jim Clark competed and records the thrills and spills as they unfolded for Colin Chapman’s record breaking Team Lotus in 1965….

24 Stunden Nurburgring Nordschleife 2009

Formula 1: The Definitive Visual Guide
Get the inside track on Formula 1. Steer your way through this top-of-the-range look at Formula 1. From crazy budgets to nail-biting championships, find out everything there is to know about the sport….

Team Lotus, one of the most synonymous names with Formula One will return to the top formula of racing for the 2010 season.

The team, which will be backed by Malaysian funding, takes BMW Sauber’s lost slot.  That said, BMW’s application was so good, they have been placed onto a reserve team list.

Lotus will be based in Norfolk, England,  just a handful of miles away from their road car production factory, in the former Bentley Le Mans factory, also used by Toyota in their very early F1 days.

Mike Gascoyne,a long term figurehead of Formula One racing will also join the team.  Also believed to be a part of the team is the Air Asia Airline, who could be the title sponsor.  Perhaps Alex Yoong too, Malaysia’s F1 Driver might test or even race for the team.

By popular demand, I am reposting this story about Mayor Sarah Palin eliminating building permits before her personal home AND the Wasilla Sports Complex were constructed in Wasilla, Alaska.  The post originally appeared on the Sarah Palin Truth Squad back in October 14, 2008.

The original title was The Book of Sarah (Palin): Contractors Awarded Wasilla Sports Complex Contract Built New Palin Family Home.”

Although this is old news, it’s good to remember the personal ethics of Sarah Palin as she moves forward into her latest career.

__________________________________________________________

Sarah Palin winking to the cameras.

Wayne Barrett, investigative journalist and senior editor for the Village Voice, published a brilliantly illuminating exposé on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and the building of her new Wasilla family home by the same contractors awarded the contract to build the new, multi-million dollar Wasilla sports complex. Also, throughout Sarah Palin’s political career, she has worked closely with lobbyists, promoting the interests of big business and oil corporations. Barrett was interviewed by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown as to the possible conflicts of interest these connections might have posed for Gov. Palin.

Along with the winks and folksy “doggone” moments early in her debate with Joe Biden last week, Sarah Palin repeated her familiar claim to the title of “maverick,” declaring that “as a governor and as a mayor,” she’s had a “track record of reform” and has now “joined a team of mavericks.”

Despite the free fall that her polling numbers went into after her disastrous interviews with Katie Couric, that branding as a “reformer” has been resilient. Introduced skillfully before tens of millions during an intense surge of interest six weeks ago, it’s been hammered home with repeated soundbites.

But the label doesn’t hold up under close scrutiny. From the controversy that catapulted her to the governorship, to her ties to the indicted patriarch of Alaska’s GOP, to the multilayered nexus of lobbyists and Big Oil interests around her, and, finally, to the Wasilla sports complex that capped her mayoral career, the myth of Sarah Palin, reformer, withers under inspection.

Wasilla, Alaska Sports Complex

PALIN’S CLAIM to fame as an Alaska reformer-that she risked her career to expose the chairman of the state GOP-is revisionist. In fact, Palin supported the methane-drilling project that helped sink GOP boss Randy Ruedrich before she later decided she was against it-a mirror of her flip-flop on the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. And her reversal had more to do with seizing a political opportunity than following her conscience.

In 2003, Ruedrich, an oil executive known for his ability to raise industry contributions for the party, was appointed to the powerful Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC) by Governor Frank Murkowski at the same time as Palin, who had finished her second term as Wasilla mayor the year before. Murkowski had given Palin the plum position to compensate for overlooking her when he appointed his own daughter Lisa to the U.S. Senate seat he vacated when he was elected governor in 2002.

Palin’s near-win in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor earlier that year-losing to the first Alaskan of native ancestry ever elected to state office-had made her a statewide star. She had filmed commercials and stumped for Frank Murkowski that fall, so he owed her. But she rejected other top posts that he offered until she got the one she wanted-a position that allowed her to live at home and commute to Anchorage, rather than relocate to Juneau. She certainly also saw the commission appointment as a stepping-stone, and as late as October 2003, she told reporters that she was considering a race against Lisa Murkowski in the upcoming 2004 special senate election.

When Murkowski made Palin the $122,400 chairwoman of the OGCC, one of her jobs was to oversee commission ethics, meaning she was charged with reporting any possible ethics violations by staff or commission members to the governor’s office. By her own account, she first did that in September 2003, reaching out to a top Murkowski staffer about Ruedrich. But what she complained about then, according to a source familiar with these conversations, was Ruedrich’s party business on state time. She said nothing about his blatant championing of a methane-drilling project by a company called Evergreen Resources-even though she’d witnessed it herself at a standing-room-only community meeting in August. Palin and Ruedrich went to the meeting because the commission had oversight powers over the drilling, and homeowners in the Wasilla area where she was once mayor were up in arms over the effects they feared it would have on their property and drinking water.

Chris Whittington-Evans, chair of the citizens’ group that helped organize the meeting, says that Ruedrich presented a slideshow very similar to one the company itself had presented at any earlier session. Palin remained quiet through most of the meeting, though Evans recalls that she was questioned about a possible conflict of interest she might have. Palin was then chairing the campaign committee of a pro-Evergreen candidate for Borough Mayor of Mat-Su, the county that includes Wasilla. The candidate, Charlie Fannon, her former police chief, had taken $2,500 in donations from three Evergreen executives and a consultant, though community outrage eventually forced him to return some of the money. Ruedrich had given Fannon $500.

The same three executives had also just given $1,747 to Palin’s 2002 campaign for lieutenant governor. In fact, with the low campaign-finance limits in Alaska, Evergreen was the second-largest giver to both Palin and Fannon. While still mayor, Palin had backed an Evergreen-designed bill that allowed the state to override local objections to the drilling and permitted an ordinance-introduced by her closest ally on the city council authorizing methane extraction-to become law. But the focus of the question at the community meeting was Fannon. Palin had asked Fannon to run and had filmed an ad for him. He was the only candidate she’d ever contributed to-and her father contributed as well. Evans says he found it odd when she insisted that there was no conflict between backing “a big promoter of methane-drilling” and sitting in judgment on the project.

That’s what Tim Anderson, the Borough Mayor who beat Fannon and opposed the drilling, says now as well: “You could say that it was a conflict of interest” for Palin to be on the commission and supporting Fannon. Anderson was also at the August meeting and says that Palin sat up front with Ruedrich and Evergreen. “They were trying to convince the people that drilling underneath their homes wasn’t a big problem.” Fannon’s narrow loss to Anderson, wrote the local newspaper The Frontiersman, confirmed the political potency of the methane issue. In early November, Evans sent Palin an e-mail detailing the case against Ruedrich and demanding that he be fired from the commission. Palin finally acted, forwarding the Evans e-mail to the state’s attorney general. Two days later, Ruedrich resigned.

A few days after Ruedrich’s resignation, Palin searched his commission e-mail and found damaging evidence of his ties to Evergreen and his party abuse of the commission. For reasons she has never explained, she took a month to send those e-mails to the attorney general. In that intervening time, she talked twice to the attorney general’s office, and her own subsequent notes indicated that she expressed “concerns” about whether a continuing investigation was needed, since Ruedrich had already stepped down.

By the time she finally forwarded the e-mails, which were very damaging to Evergreen as well, the company had dumped its top Wasilla-based executive and had begun to withdraw from its Alaska adventure. A couple of weeks later, she surprised everyone and resigned herself, attributing it later to the dilatory response she was getting from state officials. In fact, when she quit, she had given the officials less time to act after getting the e-mails than she’d taken to send them.

Michelle Church, who was the director of the same citizens’ group that Evans chaired, believes that Palin was “definitely supportive of the drilling” and “opportunistic” when she switched and went after Evergreen and Ruedrich. “It really strengthened her support in the community,” recalls Church, who was elected to the Mat-Su assembly as a result of the methane controversy. “She turned on them because it was to her political advantage to do so.” The target was the governorship.

When she resigned from the commission in January 2004, Palin was simply trying to decide which Murkowski she would challenge-Lisa for U.S. Senate, or Frank for the governorship. Lisa Murkowski had a couple million in the bank, while the governor’s campaign kitty was strangely barren. Frank Murkowski’s nepotism, proposed sales tax, and elimination of a longevity bonus for seniors-all of which happened before Palin took Ruedrich on-had depressed his approval ratings so badly that many thought he wouldn’t seek re-election.

Palin wrote an op-ed in the Anchorage Daily News in April 2004, reliving her days as basketball point guard “Sarah Barracuda” and lauding the good competition of public life. But a week later, she announced that she would not run against Lisa Murkowski, attributing it to her son Track, who she said opposed it. Then she set her sights on the governorship. When Murkowski, the oldest governor in America at 73, finally did decide in May 2006 to run again, Palin had already been an announced candidate for seven months, perfectly positioned as his reform nemesis. He spent a third of what he did in 2002 and lost badly.

SARAH PALIN’S MAVERICK image flies in the face of her longtime ties to the Republican patriarch of Alaska politics, Senator Ted Stevens, who is on trial in Washington for taking $250,000 in gifts from VECO, an oil-services company that was once Palin’s biggest donor. Palin remained nominally neutral in the recent GOP primary, shunning two Republicans who tried to give the already-indicted Stevens a serious challenge.

Her chief of staff, Mike Tibbles, left his state post to become Stevens’s campaign manager, and she did a press conference with Stevens shortly before the vote. (Tibbles’s wife is still a top appointee in Palin’s administration.) A Stevens campaign consultant, Art Hackney, says: “She has campaigned with him, and they are enjoying a good relationship.” Asked on a visit to New York recently if she was supporting Stevens’s re-election, Palin replied that his trial had just started. “We’ll see where that goes,” said Palin, who forced the resignation of Ruedrich and another top Murkowski aide on ethics charges that never came close to reaching the level of an indictable offense.

Vic Vickers, a wealthy banker who ran against Stevens in the GOP primary and spent $700,000 of his own money, tells the Voice that Palin and Stevens “are very close” and that the two organizations “merged to defeat my candidacy.” While Palin has called for the resignation of Stevens’s son Ben as national committeeman, Vickers said that “vicious attacks” against him were “coming out of her office” during the primary. “They just torched me in the end,” the anti-Bush and anti-war Republican said.

Dave Cuddy, a more conventional Republican and former legislator who also challenged Stevens in the primary, said he reached out to Palin: “We did call, and we played telephone tag. I think she was uncomfortable. She didn’t support me because she thought that I was not going to win.”Palin’s ties to Stevens go back nearly a decade, when she retained Stevens’s former chief of staff, Steve Silver, as the Washington lobbyist for Wasilla. He opened doors for her on lobbying trips to Washington for earmarks.

Silver’s firm was so tied to Stevens that it also included the senator’s former counsel and, according to registration forms, his son. It also lobbied for Ketchikan Gateway Borough, the beneficiary of Stevens’s pork-barrel favorite, the since-killed Bridge to Nowhere, as well as for the Alaska Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority, sponsor of the second Nowhere Bridge that’s still alive and runs near Palin’s house. Ironically, the firm was also so tight with Frank Murkowski that it was Murkowski’s since-convicted top aide, Jim Clark, who once headed its lobbying unit and brought Silver aboard.

But one Stevens law firm wasn’t enough for Palin. She hired the firm that included Stevens’s brother-in-law, Bill Bittner, as counsel to the city, ultimately steering hundreds of thousands in payments to it, much of it associated with a costly lawsuit sparked by a Palin development decision. Bittner, who has engineered real-estate investments for Stevens, also rented an apartment to the state for Murkowski’s use whenever he visited Anchorage. A year after Palin stepped down as mayor, she was one of three incorporators of a nonprofit called the Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service Committee that he helped establish to support Republican women.

It’s unclear why Bill Allen, the VECO president who has pled guilty to bribery charges and is expected to testify against Stevens, became such a large Palin donor in 2002. His contributions and bribes were usually connected to his business interests, and he had none in Wasilla. News accounts in Alaska indicate that in 2001, Palin drove from Wasilla to Allen’s home in faraway Cook Inlet. Allen, other VECO executives, and their wives then gave Palin’s campaign committee $5,000, contributing $500 apiece over a two-day period in late December.No one else in Palin’s underfinanced bid for lieutenant governor came close to VECO.

Virtually the same group of executives repeated the pattern in 2003-giving $1,600 to Charlie Fannon’s campaign committee, chaired by Palin. No one seemed to mind that the Alaska Public Offices Commission had collected the largest fine in its history ($28,000) from VECO who were paying employees to make illegal campaign contributions. In the current VECO scandals, which have already led to the convictions of several state legislators, it’s clear that VECO continued the practice of reimbursing the campaign donations of its executives. Palin’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, who recently did a Fox News Sunday appearance on her behalf, collected $16,000 in VECO contributions as a state legislator.

JOHN McCAIN AND Palin share at least one common bond beyond their self-proclaimed independence: They’re both very comfortable with lobbyists. Sean Parnell-who is running Alaska’s government while Palin travels and is so trusted that he was one of only three Alaskans named to the national campaign’s truth squad for Palin-was a lobbyist in the Anchorage office of the legendary Washington firm, Patton Boggs, before he was elected with Palin.

Ironically, one of the charges in the eventual ethics complaint against Ruedrich was that he’d sent numerous e-mails to Evergreen’s lobbyist, Kyle Parker, a Patton Boggs partner. Ruedrich admitted that he had even leaked a confidential commission memo on the methane controversy to Parker. Ruedrich was reporting at the time to Kevin Jardell, an assistant commissioner of administration who oversaw the commission. Jardell had lived for months in Ruedrich’s home while he worked with Parker representing the state GOP in a reapportionment case, hired by Patton Boggs, which was the party’s outside counsel.

This intertwining of interests was exposed when all the details of the Ruedrich scandal hit the headlines in 2004. Parnell was then Murkowski’s deputy director of Oil & Gas. Undeterred by Patton’s reputation, Parnell left his state job in 2005 to join the firm, where he soon had his own oil clients. Before joining the Murkowski administration, he had been the in-house lobbyist for ConocoPhillips.

Parnell’s bio makes him an odd choice to lead a truth squad-having moved from the state senate to an oil company, then back to a state oil job, and finally, becoming an outside lobbyist for oil interests while running for lieutenant governor. Even closer to Palin than Parnell is the Alaskan lobbyist whose firm topped the charts in earnings: Wendy Chamberlain.

Palin lists Chamberlain on her personal-disclosure forms because Chamberlain took Palin’s daughter Willow and her own daughter on a 2007 summer trip to a basketball camp in Mexico. Palin insisted on the form that she had reimbursed Chamberlain-the legislature had passed a bill that barred executives from taking gifts from lobbyists. A Washington Post story last week revealed that Chamberlain’s clients have deluged Palin with gifts, including three, worth $2,650, from the chief executive of a mining company (Parnell used to represent the same firm, Calista).

Todd Palin took two trips from other Chamberlain clients, though the lobbyist claims she had no idea her clients were so generous with her friend.In fact, Chamberlain tried to minimize her relationship with Palin in a Voice interview (“I know her about the same as any other lobbyist”), though news clips describe Palin and Chamberlain together working the sidewalks for Frank Murkowski in the 2002 campaign. Chamberlain was then married to Eldon Mulder, a state legislator who now runs his own lobbying firm. “We first met Governor Palin many years ago,” Mulder says, “when our daughters were in basketball camp together. About six to eight years ago.”

Chamberlain acknowledged that back then, one of her firm’s clients was VECO. Mulder collected $9,000 in VECO contributions from 1999 to 2001, and, according to press reports, he used his position as chair of the House Finance committee to push for a tax-break bill introduced at VECO’s request by another legislator eventually convicted of taking payoffs from VECO.

Mulder was accused by a third House member-also a Republican-of threatening to cut off state funds if he got in the way of the VECO bill. Chamberlain became a lobbyist two years after her husband was first elected to the House in 1992 and ran into problems three times with the ethics committee-mostly for using state offices and funds for her lobbying business. Once, she was sanctioned for “poor judgment” when her husband weakened a cruise-ship-pollution bill in the interests of a Chamberlain client. Mulder and Chamberlain’s lobbying partner, former House Speaker Joe Hayes, contributed $1,500 to Palin in 2006.

One Chamberlain client, the Pebble Partnership, has fared so well with Palin that the governor spoke out against a state initiative that would have erected environmental obstacles to its proposed mining project. A state watchdog group whose members she appoints is now looking at whether Palin’s highly unusual public opposition to a ballot issue-with her saying, “Let me take my governor’s hat off” for a moment of “personal privilege”-violated state laws. Chamberlain pushed so hard against the initiative that other clients, like the Alaska Association of Realtors, decided to oppose it at an executive meeting she attended. Chamberlain’s husband also lobbied for Pebble, and three other lobbyists recently tied to the partnership, one of whom is dating Palin’s legislative director, donated $4,150 to her.

In her 2006 race, Palin received $24,000 in contributions from lobbyists, most of them tied to the oil industry.

EVEN PALIN’S most plausible claim-that she’s taken on Big Oil-is at best a half-truth. She did hike their taxes and push through a natural-gas pipeline deal that, at least for now, has cut them out. But delegates weren’t chanting “Drill, baby, drill” during her convention speech without reason. Shortly after she became governor, she was elected chair of the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission (IOGCC), a pro-industry coalition of 30 producer states. She soon tapped Michael Smith, who was assistant secretary of fossil energy at Bush’s Energy Department, as its new executive director. Smith left the Abraham Group, the lobbying and consulting firm of former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, to join IOGCC. Harper’s Magazine said of Smith: “While in government, he pushed to promote oil drilling wherever a drop might be found”-and that was before Bush and McCain began pushing offshore drilling.

Smith isn’t the only Palin connection to the most pro-oil administration in American history. One of her 2002 campaign treasurers, Hans Neidig, was named special assistant for Alaska in the Bush interior department. Neidig was selected by Drue Pearce, a former Alaska state senator now in charge of overseeing the federal role in the giant pipeline project. Pearce, a gushing Palin champion in recent news stories, joined in Palin’s 2006 victory party.

Palin also selected Larry Hartig as state environmental-conservation commissioner, though Hartig’s law firm, Hartig Rhodes, lists a dozen Alaska oil and drilling companies as clients, as well as a few mining companies. One well-known Hartig client, Halliburton Energy Services, has surprisingly extensive investments in the state-and even services the company that acquired Evergreen’s Alaska interests. Another, Anadarko Petroleum, is owned by the 30th-largest corporate polluter in the country. Even Randy Ruedrich’s onetime employer is a Hartig client, and the man Murkowski selected to replace Palin when she quit the Oil & Gas Commission in ostensible protest was a Hartig partner.

As commissioner, Hartig rushed to the aid last year of Shell when it ran into trouble getting offshore drilling permits from Bush’s EPA. The onetime Evergreen lobbyist Kyle Parker actually e-mailed Hartig a draft letter for him to forward to an EPA appeals board, and Hartig obliged-altering the language but requesting an “expedited review” so “drilling can proceed this season.” Palin has put Hartig in charge of the climate-change subcabinet she bragged about during the debate as well, suggesting that Carl Pope of the Sierra Club might not be far off when he declared: “No one is closer to the oil industry than Governor Palin.”

Marathon Oil, a Wendy Chamberlain client and sponsor of Palin’s inaugural, has already benefited from one unnoticed Palin decision-her support of an extension of a license that allows it and ConocoPhillips to continue exporting natural gas to Japan and other Asian countries. Palin championed this license though several gas users in Alaska objected that it would worsen the problem of declining gas reserves, and one, a major fertilizer-maker, shut its plant when the extension was granted, forcing 130 workers out of jobs. As frequently as Palin’s lack of foreign-policy experience has been noted in the media, she has never cited her meeting with Japan’s consul over gas issues, perhaps because it might appear inconsistent with her claim that Alaska is a bulwark of production for the U.S. itself.

Even Palin’s ballyhooed pipeline is more a pipedream than it is the blow to Big Oil that Palin pretends it is. (Murkowski was about to award the deal to the oil giants when she beat him.) Two days after Palin’s deal with TransCanada was approved, the company’s chief executive, Hal Kvisle, repeated what he’d been saying all along: “Nothing goes ahead until Exxon is happy with it.” While he was forced to pull back a bit from that moment of candor, his statement that “the five key players”-including TransCanada, the state, and three main producers-have to still “get together” and “craft something” is indisputably true.

All Palin has done is outsource the negotiations with the producers to TransCanada, who can conduct them very privately. She also offered the company a half-billion-dollar state bonus if it can get a deal going, though Palin’s natural-resources commissioner, Tom Irwin, quit the Murkowski administration in part because it gave the producers financial incentives that he said were unnecessary. The only way Palin’s pipeline becomes real (she claimed, absurdly, during the debate that the state was already “building” it) is if the producers, who have announced their own project now, are brought back into it-something, like Troopergate and her possible Pebble Mine violation, that won’t be resolved until post-election.

THE $12.5 MILLION sports complex and hockey rink that is the lasting monument to Palin’s two terms as Wasilla mayor is also a monument to the kind of insider politics that dismays Americans of both parties. Six months before Palin stepped down as mayor in October 2002, the city awarded nearly a half-million-dollar contract to design the biggest project in Wasilla history to Kumin Associates.

Blase Burkhart was the Kumin architect on the job-the son of Roy Burkhart, who is frequently described as a “mentor” of Palin and was head of the local Republican Party (his wife, June, who also advised Palin, is the national committeewoman). Asked if the contract was a favor, Roy Burkhart, who contributed to her campaign in the same time frame that his son got the contract, said: “I really don’t know.”

Palin then named Blase Burkhart to a seven-member builder-selection committee that picked Howdie Inc., a mostly residential contractor owned at the time by Howard Nugent. Formally awarded the contract a couple of weeks after Palin left office, Nugent has donated $4,000 to Palin campaigns. Two competitors protested the process that led to Nugent’s contract. Burkhart and Nugent had done at least one project together before the complex-and have done several since.

A list of subcontractors on the job, obtained by the Voice, includes many with Palin ties. One was Spenard Builders Supply, the state’s leading supplier of wood, floor, roof, and other “pre-engineered components.” In addition to being a sponsor of Todd Palin’s snow-machine team that has earned tens of thousands for the Palin family, Spenard hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

When the Palins began building a new family home off Lake Lucille in 2002-at the same time that Palin was running for lieutenant governor and in her final months as mayor-Spenard supplied the materials, according to Antoine Bricks, who works in its Wasilla office. Spenard actually filed a notice “of its right to assert a lien” on the deed for the Palin property after contracting for labor and materials for the site. Spenard’s name has popped up in the trial of Senator Stevens-it worked on the house that is at the center of the VECO scandal as well.

Todd Palin told Fox News that he built the two-story, 3,450-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath, wood house himself, with the help of contractors he described as “buddies.” As mayor, Sarah Palin blocked an effort to require the filing of building permits in the wide-open city, and there is no public record of who the “buddies” were. The house was built very near the complex, on a site whose city purchase led to years of unsuccessful litigation and, now, $1.3 million in additional costs, with a law firm that’s also donated to Palin collecting costly fees from the city.

Dorwin and Joanne Smith, the principals of complex subcontractor DJ Excavation & Development, have donated $7,100 to Palin and her allied candidate Charlie Fannon (Joanne is a Palin appointee on the state Board of Nursing). Sheldon Ewing, who owns another complex subcontractor, Weld Air, has donated $1,300, and PN&D, an engineering firm on the complex, has contributed $699.

Ewing was one of the few sports-complex contractors, aside from Spenard, willing to address the question of whether he worked on the house as well, but he had little to say: “I doubt that it occurred, but if it did indirectly, how would I know anyhow?” The odd timing of Palin’s house construction-it was completed two months before she left City Hall and while she and Todd Palin were campaigning statewide for the first time-raises questions, especially considering its synergy with the complex.

Salon’s David Talbot recently visited the complex, which, he said, resembled “a huge airplane hangar” so far away from the city’s center that kids can’t bike or walk there. It’s adorned by a plaque commemorating Palin. Even as a governor, she is still such a champion of the complex-which loses money every year-that she just steered state funding for a new kitchen to it.

The Book of Sarah (Palin)

GOP presidential & vice presidential candidates: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin & Arizona Senator John McCain

…

A still from the movie The Cove.

…

With so many photographers adding film and video to their repertoire, it’s worth taking note of those who have managed to do big things with this new-to-them medium. The Cove, for example, is a documentary about the slaughter of dolphins in Japan and the environmental consequences of same that has swept up a slew of awards—including the Audience Award at Sundance earlier this year—since it made its premiere on the festival circuit. That represents a major triumph for the film’s director, Louie Psihoyos, who had previously been known for his photography, particularly for National Geographic. In a two-part interview with him at her blog, Stellazine, photo consultant and photo editor Stella Kramer basically asks Psihoyos if he’s making film his new medium. Here’s what he said:

“I don’t want to disparage still photography, I certainly couldn’t have pulled this without working as long and hard as I did in this field, but I feel like I’ve been wandering around in the wilderness in comparison to filmmaking. Film is the most powerful medium in the world, the ultimate weapon of mass construction. I have been shooting at the top of my profession for nearly 35 years but I’ve never seen whole theaters of people crying then laughing then cheering and then raising up to give a standing ovation. But this happens routinely with The Cove.”

…

“He was miserable with the quality of commercial underwater housings and cameras—even the Hasselblad—so he built the best underwater camera ever made by an order of magnitude.”

….

Meanwhile, SiliconValley.com reports that exhibitions of photographs from the Cove shoot are being planned for New York and Los Angeles. Interestingly, the images were taken with a camera designed by the film’s executive producer, Jim Clark, a Silicon Valley iconoclast who cofounded Netscape and Shutterfly.

“He was miserable with the quality of commercial underwater housings and cameras—even the Hasselblad—so he built the best underwater camera ever made by an order of magnitude,” says Psihoyos of Clark. “David Doubilet came diving with us and declared it the holy grail of the underwater camera. Unbelievable detail. It’s a 65-mega-pixel back on a view camera with the unbelievable optics. We dive with rebreather teams so we can stay down for up to three hours at a stretch and not have to worry about bubbles or decompression obligations. We take up to 12 lights and light up the best-preserved reefs, in the most remote parts of the world, like a movie set. Places like Papua, Andaman Islands, Silver Banks. The results are stunning.”

Read the rest of Stella’s interview here. The Sundance Film Festival has also posted a video interview with Psihoyos here.

….

….

Five things you should know about him…

1). He graduated from Twin Valley High School, Elverson in 1995 and went on to receive his B.A. in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

2). Hurley worked in eBay’s PayPal division—one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo.

3). He is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of video sharing website YouTube.

4). In October 2006 his company YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google.

5). Chad is married to Kathy Clark, daughter of Jim Clark, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, He has two children.

Got reservations at Thomas Keller’s Per Se and Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. Will report back (hopefully with pictures!) once I dine. Gotta get my laptop fixed first, cuz borrowing computers to access the web is teh suck. At any rate, I’m on a mission to eat at Michelin-starred restaurants, starting at the top.

Discovered a mouse in my apartment. Not sure if it’s the same mouse my roommate and I found in the winter — we named it Teacup. Oh well. Time to hide the dried fruits that I suspect he’s munching on and break out the peanut butter. I’d like to build a better mousetrap, a la Jim Clark, but we’ll see how much motivation I have to do something so cool/geeky.

Finally, a word of advice: avoid cheap tongs. Trust me. I speak from personal experience. Despite owning numerous knives (including the super-sharp Shun Kaji 10″ chef’s knife) and sharpening them all myself with Japanese water stones, I haven’t cut myself in the past year or 3 — that is, until tonight: on a pair of tongs I bought from the dollar store.

Don’t ask. I don’t know how I did it, either.

These are four, small (116,000 Sq. Ft. total) office buildings on two contiguous parcels along Desert Inn Blvd. in Las Vegas.   It was purchased by Western America in January 2006 for $22,200,000, with an appraised value of $22,500,000. Western America immediately offered and sold this property to TIC investors for $24,720,000. The PPM contains an ARGUS spreadsheet projection for the building covering 10 years of operations into the future.  The projection is for increasing cash flow, year after year.    There are no added disclosures “to inform investors about the inherent uncertainty of financial modeling” that Western America would later add to its PPMS.   But this is largely beside the point.  It’s not the software.  If you want to get reality out of the software program, you need to put reality into the program.  This projection results in increasing cash flow, because that is the result that you get, based upon the assumptions that you make.   No PPM puts out projections that say: hey, this building is likely to lose money, especially beginning in the 4^th year.    Let’s say that you were a due diligence officer from one of the brokerage firms considering offering this project to investors, and that you are standing on the street in front of this building in January 2006.  What do you know and what do you want to know?  The PPM says that Nevada had been the fastest growing state in the US for 18 years in a row up to that point.  The projections say: more growth for another 10 years.   Ask yourself, is it likely?  18 years of growth, and the projection is for 10 years more of the same.  Can it happen? Has it ever happened?  What happens if the projection is wrong?   How important is this?  The PPM says that the vacancy rate for office space in Las Vegas was over 10% at that time, and that when completed,  the offices then under construction would add more than 10% to the total office space available.  So, was continued growth important, absolutely?    But was it likely to happen?    Probably not.   So why would any broker offer this particular property to investors at this price, at this time?

Western America is a real estate company located in Bellevue, WA.  President Jim Clark currently manages over $230 million and 1.3 million square feet of properties in four western states.   Western America is one of the smaller TIC sponsors, but in some regards, not terribly different from the others.  In 2006, Jim Clark authored an article in one of the TIC industry newsletters, questioning the use of ARGUS, the standard software used for creating those “projections” that the TIC industry puts in its PPMS.    Saying that financial forecasts made with ARGUS software were  ” limited, because reality is more detailed and variable than the design of the software ” , Clark noted that Western America had recently added disclosures to its PPMs “to inform investors about the inherent uncertainty of financial modeling.”    Clark makes cogent arguments about the inadequacy of software programs which rely upon “averages”  to make their projections and those which apply only linear analysis “even though real life is non-linear.”   He even suggests reasons why ARGUS may be acceptable for institutional investors but not TIC investors.  All in all, it is a thoughtful, reasoned article.   I wonder if he sent a copy to the investors in the dozen or so projects Western America had sold to TIC investors prior to the time he wrote this article.  Did he tell them that the projections Western America had provided, and which their broker made such a big deal about, may not have any utility in the real world.    See:  Western America- Desert Inn Office Center.

Headlines need to create some sort of drama to get you to read the story, but it should go without saying that they need to be correct.

The Daily Telegraph has turned a story about how Kristy Hinze’s parents initially didn’t approve of her older boyfriend (he’s 36 years older) into ‘Kristy’s parents hated me, says billionaire Jim Clark’. It’s a story about a story in Who, but nowhere does it say that he said they hated him – a juicy quote that would certainly have been included, if he’d actually said it.

by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Tony Harris (pencils), Jim Clark (inks), JD Mettler (colors)

The Story: After a long wait, the final arc of Ex Machina begins.  Mitchell Hundred has a shocking announcement regarding his political career, dark secrets from Hundred’s past are hinted at, and an ending you won’t want to miss suggests the possible return of a character from Hundred’s past.

The Good: Though I do wish we’d see more of his writing in comics, Vaughan is still razor sharp.  Writing-wise, this is the Ex Machina we all know and love: tight and witty dialogue, enjoyable action, and great plotting.  The “conversation” between reflecting panhandler and comically “out of it addict” is great, as is Mitchell’s declared love for NYC and its people.  Vaughan’s cast of characters is as enjoyable as ever.

With this issue, Vaughan has crafted a first chapter that really does its job as the opener of a new story arc.  Several hooks are planted and several mysteries are suggesedt that will all leave you salivating for issue number 2.  What is this dreaded “white box?”  What is Hundred’s coming announcement?  It’s not all merely hooks and hints though, as Hundred’s press conference and the “uh oh” ending of the issue move the plot along, with the latter in particular introducing what will no doubt be a central conflict in this arc.

With so many hints of things to come, the only fault of the writing is that it’s left me wanting issue 42 so very badly, and that’s exactly how it should be.  It got me hooked and despite revealing very little, I’m sure curtains will begin to drop next month.  I also really enjoyed the concerns of economic crisis.  Indeed, it is only 2004 in the comic, but, as Vaughan no doubt intended,  it plays very nicely with the current recession.

The Not-so-Good: While Vaughan hasn’t missed a step, Tony Harris sure has.  Unfortunately, this issue reeks of an artist cutting corners and rushing it through.

For those that don’t know, Harris is an artist who uses photo-references.  Regardless, I’ve always been a fan of Harris’ work.  He captured the series’ tone and delivered a high degree of realism and detail.  I’ve always liked his stuff.

However, things are just off here, as some frames are just flat out rushed and end up looking sloppy (see the press conference, particularly the reporters).  At other times, the issue shows the worst of photo-referencing; characters come off as static and posed (the conversation with January), a problem I’ve rarely had with Harris before.

Even Harris’ storytelling/plotting is off-kilter.  The crucial scene between Bradbury and Suzanne Padilla is just a mess, feeling as though each character was a separate image, all of them shoved into the same frame with the subsequent interactions feeling unnatural and forced.  It’s very disconcerting, particularly when some of these characters feel reproduced from previous frames with only minor adjustments.

It also appears that Harris is having some difficulties drawing eyes.  Several times, with Hundred and the panhandler, a characters sports one eye that is freakishly larger than the other.  Even worse, the panhandler starts his scene looking exactly like Mitchell Hundred, only with a beard.  Then by the scene’s end, this is halted, leading to the poor panhandler looking like two entirely different people.  It’s a damned shame considering how great Vaughan’s writing/dialogue is in this scene.

Lastly, Mettler’s colours also are a bit off, coming across as weirdly and incongruously bright during a brief portion in the middle of the issue.  It’s almost as though he had someone else take over for a few pages.

The Bottom-line: The same great writing we’ve come to expect is accompanied by a parodic, slapped together version of the art we’ve also come to expect.  Considering how long this took, it’s a bit shameful.  Vaughan’s always excellent writing saves this from being a total disaster and makes this issue still worth picking up if you’re an Ex Machina fan, but I pray to God that Harris pulls himself together.

Grade: C

-Alex Evans

by Brian K. Vaughan (writer), Tony Harris (pencils), Jim Clark (inks), JD Mettler (colors)

The Story:  After a long wait, the final arc of Ex Machina begins.  Mitchell Hundred has a shocking announcement regarding his political career, dark secrets from Hundred’s past are hinted at, and an ending you won’t want to miss suggests the possible return of a character from Hundred’s past.

The Good:  Though I do wish we’d see more of his writing in comics, Vaughan is still razor sharp.  Writing-wise, this is the Ex Machina we all know and love: tight and witty dialogue, enjoyable action, and great plotting.  The “conversation” between reflecting panhandler and comically “out of it addict” is great, as is Mitchell’s declared love for NYC and its people.  Vaughan’s cast of characters is as enjoyable as ever.

Vaughan has crafted an issue that really does its job as the first part of a new story arc.  Several hooks are planted and several mysteries suggested that will all leave you salivating for issue number 2.  What is this dreaded “white box?”  What is Hundred’s coming announcement?  It’s not all merely hooks and hints though, as Hundred’s press conference and the “uh oh” ending of the issue move the plot along, with the latter in particular introducing what will no doubt be a central conflict in this arc.

 With so many hints of things to come, the only fault of the writing is that it’s left me wanting issue 42 so very badly, and that’s exactly as it should be.  It got me hooked and despite revealing very little, I’m sure curtains will begin to drop next month.  I also very much enjoyed the concerns of economic crisis.  Indeed, it is only 2004 in the comic, but, as Vaughan no doubt intended,  it plays very nicely with the current recession.

The Not-so-Good:  While Vaughan hasn’t missed a step, Tony Harris sure has.  Unfortunately, this issue reeks of an artist cutting corners and rushing it through.

For those that don’t know, Harris is an artist who uses photo-references.  Regardless, I’ve always been a fan of Harris’ work.  He captured the series’ tone and delivered a high degree of realism and detail.  I’ve always liked his stuff.

Here though, things are just off.  Some frames are just flat out rushed and end up looking sloppy as a result (see the press conference, particularly the reporters).  At other times, the issue shows the worst of photo-referencing; characters come off as static and posed (the conversation with January), a problem I’ve rarely had with Harris before.

Even Harris’ storytelling/plotting is off-kilter.  The crucial scene between Bradbury and Suzanne Padilla is just a mess, feeling as though each character were a separate image, all of them shoved into the same frame with the subsequent interactions feeling unnatural and forced.  It’s very disconcerting, particularly when some of these characters feel reproduced from previous frames with only minor adjustments. 

It also appears that Harris is having some difficulties drawing eyes.  Several times, with Hundred and the panhandler, a characters sports one eye that is freakishly larger than the other.  Huh?  Worse still, the panhandler starts his scene looking exactly like Mitchell Hundred, only with a beard.  Then, by the scene’s end, this is halted, leading to the poor panhandler looking like two entirely different people.  It’s a damned shame considering how great Vaughan’s writing/dialogue is in this scene.

Lastly, Mettler’s colours also are a bit off, coming across as weirdly and incongruously bright during a brief portion in the middle of the issue.  It’s almost as though he had someone else take over for a few pages.

The Bottom-line:  The same great writing we’ve come to expect is accompanied by a parodic, slapped together version of the art we’ve also come to expect.  Considering how long this took, it’s a bit shameful.  Vaughan’s always excellent writing saves this from being a total disaster and makes this issue still very much worth picking up if you’re an Ex Machina fan, but I pray to God that Harris pulls himself together.

Grade: C+

18. April – Fangio bleibt ungeschlagen: Juan Manuel Fangio ist auch weiterhin der einzige Fahrer in der Geschichte der Formel 1, dem es gelang ein nagelneues Auto eines in der WM debütierenden Rennstalls bei den ersten 3 Grands Prix auf die Pole Position zu stellen. Dieses Kunststück, vom unvergessenen fünffachen Weltmeister 1954 auf einem Mercedes-Benz W196 Silberpfeil mit Bestzeiten bei den GPs von Frankreich, England und Deutschland vorexerziert, hätte Jenson Button heute im Quali zum GP von China mit der 3. Pole in Folge für BrawnGP einstellen können. Doch der Brit hatte das Nachsehen, stattdessen sicherte Sebastian Vettel dessen Team Red Bull die 1. Pole Position.

18/4/1979, Anthony Davidson is born in Hemel Hempstead, UK

.
Anthony Denis Davidson debütierte in der Formel 1, als das Minardi-Team 2002 Fahrer Alex Yoong für einige Rennen ins Abseits stellte. Sein Auftritt beim Grand Prix von Ungarn war solide, doch eine andere Option, als den seit 2000 ausgeübten job als Testfahrer BAR ergab sich nicht. 2005 ergab sich dann eine weitere Chance, als BAR-Pilot Takuma Sato vor dem GP von Malaysia erkrankte und „Ant“ als Ersatzmann einspringen durfte. Doch das Auto gab nach wenigen Runden den Geist auf. Davidson blieb als Testfahrer an Bord, als das Team 2006 von Honda aufgekauft wurde und Honda belohnte seine langjährige Loyalität mit einem Cockpit beim Satelliten-Team Super Aguri für 2007. Er blieb auch für die darauffolgende Saison beim finanziell angeschlagenen Team, doch der Rennstall musste nach dem GP von Spanien 2008 dicht machen und somit endete die F1-Karriere des Anthony Davidson. Heuer kommentiert der junge Brite lediglich die GPs im Radio für die BBC.

18/4/1990, Bob Drake dies

.
Robert Drake restaurierte hauptberuflich klassische Automobile in Los Angeles, hatte anschliessend aber weitaus mehr Erfolg als Stunt-Fahrer und Fabrikant von Fahrzeugen, die für ebensolche Szenen von der Filmindustrie in Auftrag gegeben wurden. Als Hobby fuhr er Sportwagen-Rennen auf Aston Martin, Cooper und vor allem dem Maserati 61 „Birdcage“. Doch der Kalifornier machte erst richtig von sich reden, als er 1960 in Riverside gegen die Armada europäischer Formel 1-Rennwagen überraschend Zweiter beim Grand Prix der USA wurde, am Steuer eines Ol’ Yaller Mk.II genannten US-Sprint-Renners. Bob drake starb 1990 in Kalifornien im Alter von 70 Jahren.

Geboren: 14. Dezember 1919 in San Francisco, USA,
Verstorben: 18. 1990 in Woodland Hills, USA, 70 Jahre alt.

18/4/1942, Jochen Rindt is born in Mainz, Germany

.

Karl-Jochen Rindt gelang der Durchbruch 1964, als er bei der London Trophy der Formel 2 in Crystal Palace Piloten vom Schlage eines Graham Hill, Jim Clark und Denny Hulme besiegte, ein 3-jahres-Vertrag mit dem Cooper Formel 1 Werksteam war die Folge . Wider erwarten blieb diese Allianz allerdings sieglos und so zog er 1968 zum Brabham-Repco-Team weiter. Doch auch diese Saison war nicht von Erfolg gekrönt, technische Gebrechen verhinderten Erfolge. Also akzeptierte der Österreicher 1969 ein Angebot von Colin Chapman, trat so im Lotus-Team gewissermassen die Nachfolge von Jim Clark an. Rindt eroberte am Ende jener Saison in den USA endlich seinen ersten Grand Prix-Sieg und positionierte sich Anfang 1970 durch einen dramatischen Sieg in Monaco als einer der Titelaspiranten. Als er danach den revolutionären Lotus 72 hingestellt bekam, folgten weitere 4 GP-Siege, bevor ihm die kompromisslose Bauweise dieses Autos zum Verhängnis wurde. Beim Training im italienischen Monza verunglückt Jochen Rindt tödlich und wird später posthum Weltmeister.

Geboren: 18. April 1942 in Mainz, Deutschland;
Verstorben: 5. September 1970 in Monza, Italien, 28-jährig.

18th of April – Fangio remains unbeaten: Juan Manuel Fangio remains the only driver in Formula 1 history to put a brand new car of a debutant team on pole position in the first 3 Grands Prix, a feat achieved by the late five times World Champion back in 1954, driving a silver arrow Mercedes-Benz W196. Jenson Button could have equalled this record today in qualifying for the Chinese GP by securing his 3rd pole in a row for BrawnGP. But the Brit lost out to Sebastian Vettel, who secured Red Bull’s 1st ever pole position in F1

F1 Remembering Jimmy

Jim Clark: The Quiet Champion

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 on BBC 4.

Earlier this month, Jim Clark, the 65-year-old maverick entrepreneur well known for starting companies such as Netscape and Healtheon, tied the knot with 28-year-old Australian supermodel Kristy Hinze. The odd coupling mirrors today’s strange agreed-upon wedding of Clark’s first major company, Silicon Graphics (s SGI) and the little-known server-making upstart Rackable Systems (s RACK). SGI filed for bankruptcy and was agreed to be sold to Rackable for $25 million.

As a beat reporter, I covered SGI pretty closely. I remember the company’s foray into the “Information Superhighway” and how its coolest-looking machines helped create Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park.” SGI was cool, in an Apple (s AAPL) sort of a way. It had some of the smartest engineers and had a feeling of counterculture, which has slowly vanished from the Valley. I remember writing about the company giving up on its own version of UNIX and adopting Windows NT (s MSFT).

A series of management blunders and teutonic tectonic shifts in the technology landscape turned this once proud bastion of engineering into a historical footnote. And, as of today, even that is no more.