Manhattanhenge

 

Manhattanhenge – sometimes referred to as the Manhattan Solstice – is a semiannual occurrence during which the setting sun aligns with the east–west streets of the main street grid in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. The neologism is derived from Stonehenge, where the sun aligns with the stones on the solstices with a similarly dramatic effect. The word was popularized in 2002 by Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History. The term applies to those streets that follow the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which are laid out in a grid offset 29.0 degrees from true east–west. (The 29.0 degrees should be added to true east and west, making the western bearing approximately 299.0 degrees.) During Manhattanhenge, an observer on one of the gridded east-west streets will see the sun setting over New Jersey directly opposite, from the street, along its centerline. The dates of Manhattanhenge usually occur around May 28 and July 12 or July 13 – spaced evenly around summer solstice. In 2011, Manhattanhenge occurred on May 31 at 8:17 p.m., and on July 12 (full sun) and 13 (half sun), both at 8:25 p.m.[1][2] The two corresponding mornings of sunrise right on the center lines of the Manhattan grid are approximately December 5 and January 8 – spaced evenly around winter solstice.[3] As with the solstices and equinoxes, the dates vary somewhat from year to year.[citation needed]

Man charged in Etan Patz killing has mental health issues – latimes.com

 

NEW YORK — A man who claims to have abducted and strangled Etan Patz, who vanished 33 years ago Friday, has suffered from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and hallucinations, his attorney said as the man had his first court appearance since making his surprise confession a day earlier. Pedro Hernandez, 51, did not enter a plea to a second-degree murder charge filed earlier Friday. He also did not speak during a hearing that lasted just a few minutes. As his court-appointed attorney, Harvey Fishbein, outlined what he called Hernandez’s “long psychiatric history,” Hernandez sat slumped in a chair, clad in an orange jumpsuit, his hands manacled behind his back. Hernandez has been held at New York’s Bellevue Hospital because of his apparent mental instability, and he and Fishbein appeared via a video linkup to a Manhattan courtroom shortly after Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus Vance Jr. announced the charges. “This is the beginning of the legal process, not the end,” Vance said in a statement that reflected the challenges of prosecuting a case in which there is no body, no physical evidence linking Hernandez to the crime, and a defendant with an apparent history of mental illness. “There is much investigative and other work ahead.” Even though Hernandez says he committed the murder, his motive remains unclear. Patz’s parents and at least one investigator became convinced years ago that a convicted pedophile serving time on an unrelated charge was the culprit. In 2004, a civil court ruled the man, Jose Ramos, responsible for Etan’s death. Ramos denied involvement. Hernandez was not asked to enter a plea, and Judge Matthew Sciarrino Jr. ordered a psychiatric examination for him. Assistant Dist. Atty. Armand Durastanti also said no bail should be considered, and none was requested. “It has been 33 years and justice has not yet been done in this case,” Durastanti said, noting the haste with which Etan’s life was ended on May 25, 1979, as he made the short walk from his Manhattan apartment to his school bus stop. “This is approximately 110 yards. He has not been seen or heard from since.” The hearing coincided withNational Missing Children’s Day, which President Reagan proclaimed in 1983 in honor of Etan. He was the first child to have his picture appear on a milk carton, part of the nationwide awareness movement that ensured his face would be familiar to anyone buying milk. His disappearance — on the first day his parents, Stan and Julie Patz, had let him walk to the school bus alone — also is seen as marking the end of an era when it was not unusual for young children to walk to school or go out to play without parents by their sides. For decades, the case haunted the street in the now-trendy SoHo neighborhood where Etan’s parents, Stan and Julie Patz, still live. Neither parent has spoken out about Hernandez’s sudden confession, which came a month after the FBI and New York police dug up the basement of a nearby building in search of Etan’s remains. None was found. But the renewed publicity about the case from that dig apparently nudged someone close to Hernandez to tip police that he might be involved in Etan’s disappearance. At the time the boy vanished, Hernandez was an 18-year-old stock clerk at a corner grocery store near the Patz home. He moved to New Jersey shortly after Etan vanished, and he had told some people over the years that he had “done a bad thing and killed a child in New York,” New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in announcing Hernandez’s arrest on Thursday. Kelly said Hernandez was brought in for questioning on Wednesday and told police he had lured Etan into the store with promises of a soda, taken him into the basement, strangled him, and put the body into an alley with the trash. The body never was found, and Kelly said he didn’t expect to find any physical evidence to corroborate Hernandez’s confession. But he said Hernandez was able to provide enough details of the crime to convince police he was telling the truth. Neither the Patz family nor Hernandez’s appeared at the Friday court hearing, and Hernandez’s wife has not commented on her husband’s arrest. According to the Associated Press, the Rev. George Bowen Jr., the pastor at Hernandez’s church, said that Hernandez’s wife and daughter visited him Thursday after he was in custody. “They were just crying their eyes out,” AP quoted Bowen as saying. “They were broken up. They were wrecked. It was horrible. They didn’t know what they were going to do.”

John Edwards trial judge meets with attorneys on ‘juror matter’ – latimes.com

 

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The federal judge in the John Edwards trial closed her courtroom Friday afternoon to deal with what she called a “juror matter,” and then sent the jury home for the Memorial Day weekend with no verdict reached. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles did not disclose what she and lawyers for both sides discussed during the 35 minutes the courtroom was closed to reporters and spectators. Jurors will return for a seventh day of deliberations Tuesday morning. Before deliberations began on May 18, the jury foreman, a financial consultant, told the judge that he might have an upcoming scheduling conflict. On Friday, Eagles told lawyers for both sides to arrive early Tuesday in case she needs to discuss a juror matter with them. As she does at the close of each session, Eagles reminded jurors not to discuss the case with anyone — even fellow jurors — outside the jury room, and to avoid all media reports about the trial. The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether $925,000 in payments from two wealthy patrons were illegal campaign contributions during Edwards’ failed race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Edwards contends the payments were private gifts not directly related to the campaign. After a sixth day of deliberations, it was not possible to determine whether the jury was divided over guilt versus acquittal, or merely being thorough and meticulous. The longer deliberations drag on, the greater the likelihood of a split verdict or, if disagreements cannot be resolved, a hung jury. Jurors have asked to review more than 60 trial exhibits focusing on payments made to hide Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter, whom he had hired as a campaign videographer. The jury has met for about 34 hours over six days, after having listened to 31 witnesses and examined hundreds of exhibits during the monthlong trial. Jurors troop in and out of the wood-paneled courtroom a couple of times a day, a collection of ordinary citizens in jeans, slacks and summer dresses. Some looked weary Friday. Others appeared restless. The faces of one or two jurors suggested mild annoyance. Edwards, 58, unfailingly neat and trim in a dark suit, has studied jurors closely during their brief courtroom appearances over the past week, appraising their demeanor from his regular seat at the defense table. The former U.S. senator and 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee is charged with six counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted and sentenced to maximum penalties. Jurors’ requests for exhibits this week indicate they have plowed through the first two counts, which involve $725,000 in checks from billionaire heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, an ardent Edwards supporter. Jurors now appear to be finishing up deliberations over the next two counts, involving payments from the late Fred Baron, a wealthy Texas lawyer who was Edwards’ national finance chairman. Prosecutors say Edwards orchestrated the payments to cover up the affair and prevent his campaign from collapsing in scandal. The defense says the payments were intended to hide the affair from Edwards’ wife, Elizabeth Edwards, who had grown increasingly suspicious of her husband. The other two counts against Edwards accuse him of causing his campaign to file false finance reports and conspiring to accept and conceal illegal contributions through “trick, scheme or device.” The jurors must reach a unanimous decision on each count to convict. Eagles has instructed them that prosecutors don’t have to prove that the sole purpose of the payments was to influence the election — only that there was a “real purpose or an intended purpose” to do so. However, Eagles also told the jurors: “If the donor would have made the gift or payment notwithstanding the election, it does not become a contribution merely because the gift or payment might have some impact on the election.” david.zucchino@latimes.com

Wilborn Hampton: "The Common Pursuit": Halls of Poison Ivy

 

At what point does the zeal of youthful idealism wear off? In Simon Gray’s play The Common Pursuit, now in a rather prosaic revival by the Roundabout Theatre Company, it erodes slowly over time until dreams become a distant mirage and betrayals, professional and personal, turn the erosion into a landslide. For the sextet of Cambridge students – five young men and the girlfriend of one – who set out to start a new literary magazine in the 1960’s, the years take an exceptionally heavy toll. Compromise and infidelity, both to scholarly standards and to one another, alter the landscape and lower expectations. Each in his way becomes the thing he once most despised. The magazine, to be named Common Pursuit, is the brainchild of Stuart Thorne. It will be dedicated solely to literary excellence, focused on poetry, and Stuart has recruited four other students to join him in the enterprise. To the suggestion that his criteria might be elitist, he responds “well, someone has to be elitist.” The group he brings together is a cross-section of collegiate types. There is Humphry Taylor, a poet-philosopher who is the brightest of the lot and, at the outset, a closet gay; Nick Finchling, a chain-smoking, incipient alcoholic whose flamboyance is matched only by his egotism; Peter Whetworth, a sexoholic history major nicknamed Captain Marvel for his prowess between the sheets; Martin Musgrove, a moneyed and enthusiastic outsider whose essay on cats is rejected for the first issue; and Marigold Watson, Stuart’s devoted girlfriend and a sort of cheerleader for the project. Lest anyone doubt Stuart’s passion for poetry, we see him in the opening scene leap from Marigold’s embrace – coitus quite literally interruptus – to recruit Cambridge’s leading poet into contributing some verse to the fledgling magazine. Back in his rooms, the others argue over whether they are listening to Vivaldi or Bach and indulge in the old undergraduate pastime of denigrating the literary merits of their peers. Fast forward nine years and disillusion has already set in. The past two numbers of the magazine have failed to appear, the printers haven’t been paid, and eviction notices on its office have been issued. On top of it all, Marigold is pregnant. Only the London Arts Council can save Common Pursuit from going under and Stuart learns he may not be the final arbiter on literary merit after all. One man’s poetry may be another’s doggerel and vice versa. If there is any fizz left in this bubbly and ultimately sad play, it has gone flat in the current revival. The exuberance of the opening scene is forced and any humor is mostly lost in the rushed delivery of some of the lines. The acerbity of the zingers with which the individual characters skewer their literary rivals – vitriol being a Gray trademark – is oddly diluted. And while there is a sense of sorrow over the treachery inflicted among these onetime friends, it is more gloomy than poignant. Gray, who died in 2008, made a career of writing plays set in academia, and was himself a university lecturer. Among his more frequently revived plays are Butley (1971) and Quartermaine’s Terms (1981). The Common Pursuit was first produced in 1984, directed by Harold Pinter, and revised by Gray a few years later. The Roundabout revival, directed by Moises Kaufman, never quite finds either the passion with which the magazine is launched or the depth of disappointment at the duplicity that follows. Some of the roles are miscast. Kristen Bush is consistently convincing as Marigold. Josh Cooke and Jacob Fishel have their moments as Stuart and Martin, respectively, and Tim McGeever is stoic as Humphry.

Mt. Everest climber skips summit to rescue fellow hiker – NY Daily News

 

ISTANBUL (AP) — An Israeli who rescued a distressed climber on Mount Everest instead of pushing onward to the summit said Friday that the man he helped, an American of Turkish origin, is like a brother to him. Nadav Ben-Yehuda, who was climbing with a Sherpa guide, came across Aydin Irmak near the summit last weekend. In that chaotic period, four climbers died on their way down from the summit amid a traffic jam of more than 200 people who were rushing to reach the world’s highest peak as the weather deteriorated. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Ben-Yehuda, 24, appeared proud that Irmak, 46, had made it to the summit, noting that he is one of a small number of “Turkish” climbers to reach the top. Irmak left Turkey for New York more than two decades ago, but remains proud of his Turkish heritage. The friendship stands in contrast to the political tension between Turkey and Israel, which were once firm allies. “Aydin, wake up! Wake up!” Ben-Yehuda recalled saying when he found his friend in the darkness. The American, he said, had been returning from the summit but collapsed in the extreme conditions, without an oxygen supply, a flashlight and a rucksack. Ben-Yehuda, who developed a friendship with Irmak before the climb, had delayed his own ascent by a day in hopes of avoiding the bottleneck of climbers heading for the top. There have been periodic tales of people bypassing stricken climbers as they seek to fulfill a lifelong dream and reach the summit of Everest, but Ben-Yehuda said his decision to abandon his goal of reaching the top and help Irmak was “automatic,” even though it took him several minutes to recognize his pale, gaunt friend. “I just told myself, `This is crazy.’ It just blew my mind,” Ben-Yehuda said. “I didn’t realize he was up there the whole time. Everybody thought he had already descended.” The Israeli carried Irmak for hours to a camp at lower elevation. Both suffered frostbite and some of their fingers were at risk of amputation. Ben-Yehuda lost 20 kilograms (44 pounds) in his time on the mountain, and Irmak lost 12 kilograms (26 pounds), said Hanan Goder, Israel’s ambassador in Nepal. Goder had dinner with the pair after their ordeal. “They really have to recover mentally and physically,” Goder said. “They call each other, `my brother.’ After the event that they had together, their souls are really linked together now.” The ambassador said the rescue was a “humanitarian” tale that highlighted the friendship between Israelis and Turks at a personal level, despite the deteriorating relationship between their governments. One of the key events in that downward, diplomatic spiral was an Israeli raid in 2010 on a Turkish aid ship that was trying to break the Israeli blockade on Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of eight Turkish activists and a Turkish-American. The Jerusalem Post, which reported that Ben-Yehuda would have been the youngest Israeli to reach Everest’s summit, spoke to Irmak by telephone during the dinner that Goder hosted. “I don’t know what the hell is going on between the two countries,” the newspaper quoted Irmak as saying. “I don’t care about that. I talked to his (Ben-Yehuda’s) family today and I told them you have another family in Turkey and America.” Ben-Yehuda, who spoke to the AP just before leaving Nepal for urgent medical treatment in Israel, said he could not say with certainty how he would have reacted if he had come across a stricken climber he did not know. Oxygen is in such short supply and the conditions are so harsh, he said, that people on the mountain develop a kind of tunnel vision. “You just think about breathing, about walking, about climbing,” he said. According to Ben-Yehuda, the fundamental questions going through the mind of a climber heading for the peak are: “Are you going to make it?” and “When is the right time to turn back?” And once a climber begins the descent, the all-embracing question becomes: “How fast can I go down?” Ben-Yehuda said his military training in Israel helped shape his reflexive dec

A Good Day for Elon Musk

 

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, has had his tough days; on Saturday, for example, an attempted launch of the company’s Falcon 9 rocket, the first commercially developed flight to attempt to connect with the International Space Station, never got off the ground; flight computers aborted it during the countdown. But today definitely was a good day for Musk. A really good day. Early this morning, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket carrying the unmanned Dragon capsule blasted off successfully; Dragon is due to rendezvous with the Space Station in a couple of days. A jubilant Musk tweeted “Falcon flew perfectly!! Dragon in orbit, comm locked, and solar arrays active!! Feels like a giant weight just came off my backJ” And good news came out of Tesla Motors today as well, good for the company, as well as for buyers of the company’s second model, the Model S sedan. Tesla announced on its corporate blog that manufacturing for the Model S is a few weeks ahead of schedule and delivery to customers will begin June 22. This announcement followed late yesterday’s tweet by Musk, “Major Tesla milestone: All crash testing is complete for 5* (max) safety rating. Cars can now be built for sale to the public!!”   The company also announced that the car’s regenerative braking, which feeds energy back to the battery and slows the car down, will be adjustable (some people find the resistance from regenerative braking disturbing, and would be willing to sacrifice range to avoid it). Musk, interviewed yesterday by Spaceflight Now, an online publication, may be treated a bit like a tech pop star, but he still talks like the engineer that he is. Asked how he expected to feel today, he responded, “Either really happy or really sad. It’s just one of those things that has a bimodal outcome.” Safe to say that today he’s feeling really happy. Above: Video of today’s Falcon 9 launch from Cape Canaveral. To hear Elon Musk talk about his career and his long term goal of making life multiplanetary, listen to my 2009 interview with Musk.