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Europeans have always been better at sex onscreen than Americans. We're not bad at romance, and we seem to have a real knack for violence and mayhem, but when it comes to sex onscreen, most American filmmakers just crank up the sound track and film everything through orange gauze. A 16-year-old boy on Viagra couldn't get excited.
What has always made European sex scenes sexy, aside from obvious things like the presence of naked French or Italian people, has been that sex seems real. Not literally real, as though the actors were actually going at it, but real to human experience. Skin I4 Cartoon Protector film looks like skin, with actual pores. Faces have lines on them. People get sweaty, and there's usually no sound track. American sex scenes feel like a show. European sex scenes feel like eavesdropping.
But lately, European films are getting even more real about sex, and the result is not that they're becoming more sexy. These movies are blurring the line between usual film fare and pornography, and yet the intent isn't to titillate. "Baise-Moi," a recent French film about prostitutes out for revenge,
for example, was more interested in shocking the audience with its mix of harsh violence and graphic shots of penetration.
"Intimacy," which opened this weekend, doesn't go quite that far, but it arrives in the Bay Area having rattled or at least challenged the sensibility of most people who've seen it. Directed by Patrice Chereau, a respected opera and film director ("Queen Margot"), the movie stars Mark Rylance, one of England's most gifted stage actors, and Kerry Fox ("An Angel at My Table") as Londoners who meet every Wednesday for silent, desperate, animal-like coupling.
If the sex looks real, it's because a lot of it is real. When Fox fellates Rylance, well, that's no rubber ducky. As for the rest of it, it's difficult to tell from watching them as they go at it, and at it, and at it.
"It's not pornography," Chereau says by phone from Paris. " 'Intimacy' is a totally normal thing, a love story, but we just see more than usual. I'm not interested in pornography at all. As soon as I chose the subject -- a woman meets a man every Wednesday and they have sex -- I knew I should show what they're doing. Since they don't talk, if I don't show what they're doing every Wednesday, there's no film at all. But they are talking. It's the language of their bodies, and it's beautiful to watch."
Contrary to some articles that have been written about the film, Chereau confirms that there was "no penetration" in the sex scenes. "It's a silly question," he says. "Of course it's simulated. These are actors. If I was making a movie about a killing, you wouldn't ask if it's a snuff film."
"Intimacy" is based on stories by British author Hanif Kureishi. In adapting the material, Chereau knew from the beginning that he wanted to make the movie in London, as an English-language picture with British actors. "I tried to catch something of the harshness of British cinematography, which is sometimes more vulgar and more real," he says.
As a French film, Chereau says, "Intimacy" would have had "more romanticism and been more abstract." There's yet another thing "Intimacy" might have had that Chereau doesn't mention: better-looking actors. It's not that Rylance and Fox are bad-looking. They just look like anybody.
"I had a temptation in the beginning to choose very beautiful people," Chereau says. "And then I thought, 'No, I'm wrong. I need good actors.' It's silly to choose a man and a woman only for their bodies. I was about to make that mistake, but that would have been wrong. In Berlin, a woman asked me at a press conference, 'Why is she (Fox) so unglamorous?' I told the woman, 'I don't have a perfect body. You neither. It's a movie about normal people.' "
In fact, a valid artistic case could be used for choosing very good-looking actors for a movie that spends so much time in the bedroom. The sex means something to them, but for it to mean anything to us, we have to want to watch them. Good-looking (they don't have to be beautiful) actors bring the audience into the experience as it's being lived by the characters. Icky or even average-looking actors, especially in a sexually graphic film, could hold Phone Case the audience at a distance -- and threaten to make audiences want to keep their distance, too.
For example, Catherine Breillat's 1999 film "Romance," about a woman on a sadomasochistic journey of self-discovery, was both sexually explicit and an ugly thing to sit through. It's as if the director were insulating Noctilucent and Diamond herself against the charge of making a titillating film by making the sex so hideous it's almost politically correct.
These are artistic choices, but in making them filmmakers must remember: There is nothing more boring than other people having sex, and nothing more interesting than you having sex. To make sex interesting, some point of identification has to be made.
"Innocence," a recent Australian film directed by Paul Cox, offers a good example of a delicate sex scene shrewdly handled. Two 70-year-olds, who had an affair 50 years earlier, are making love together for the first time since Harry Truman was president. We see them in bed, kissing, and just as the audience is bracing itself, thinking, "Oh, no, they're going to make us see them naked," the director cuts to shots of them in bed 50 years ago. By cutting back and forth between the lovers in their old and young incarnations, the director makes us feel, with a real sense of poignancy, what this experience means to them. Through the naked bodies of the young people, we see the emotional nakedness of the old people, and that's all the nakedness we need from either of them.
Sex scenes are not medicine. There's nothing inherently edifying or uplifting in watching homely people in bed. If today barriers are being lifted with regard to depicting sexuality in film, the movies most successful in using that freedom will be the ones that somehow make sex compelling and watchable. Director Chen Kaige, currently shooting "Killing Me Softly," an erotic drama starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes, has been quoted as saying, "I'm not going to show things that nobody wants to see. . . . I want the sex to have a very beautiful look." Not a bad idea.
One breakthrough in movie sex is particularly welcome. In two recent French films, actresses in their 50s appear in naked love scenes. Nathalie Baye, 51, has an affair with a man she meets through the personal ads in last year's "An Affair of Love" (the French title is better: "A Pornographic Love Story"). And Charlotte Rampling, 56, romped merrily this year in "Under the Sand."
In an earlier generation, both actresses might have been playing grandmothers. So the movies could be said to serve a positive function in asserting the sexual vibrancy of women of a certain age. But one thing also doesn't hurt: Baye and Rampling are both gorgeous. 'Intimacy' The movie opened this weekend at Bay Area theaters.
Gov. Gray Davis weighed in yesterday on the Enron memo flap, telling me he wants federal authorities to investigate how Enron's clout with the Bush administration may have affected runaway electricity prices in California.
"It's a smoking gun," Davis said, echoing a sentiment expressed a day earlier by California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "It makes clear that Enron was prevailing on the federal government to take a hands-off approach to California."
First reported in this paper, the memo highlighted the clout former Enron Chairman Ken Lay enjoyed in his dealings with Vice President Dick Cheney, who was tasked by President Bush with producing a national energy policy.
The memo, which Lay handed Cheney during one-on-one talks last April, contained a series of steps that "need to be taken" by the administration.
Foremost among Enron's guidelines was something the administration shouldn't do: impose caps on runaway wholesale electricity prices. And S5360 GALAXY Y the administration resisted just such an impulse until an exasperated Congress threatened to act on its own.
Portions of the memo are clearly reflected in Cheney's energy plan -- a fact that the White House is trying to play down but which a close reading of both documents (not an easy task) bears out.
Davis said he believes the memo strengthens California's case for receiving more than $8 billion in compensation for electricity overcharges.
Moreover, the governor said he's going to instruct state Attorney General Bill Lockyer to explore the possibility of a lawsuit in light of the memo.
For her part, Boxer said yesterday that -- also in light of the memo -- she wants the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to come clean on any meetings or phone calls it had with Enron execs.
Boxer told The Chronicle that she intends to grill Lay on the contents of the memo when he appears before the Senate Commerce Committee on Monday.
And that should be another full day for Lay.
An interesting thing that came out in my chat with the governor is the way Lay kept busy schmoozing public officials to get what he wanted. The memo, of course, places an exclamation mark on his activities at the federal level.
What isn't as well known is that he was pulling pretty much the same stuff at the state level, contacting Davis at regular intervals to coax the governor into toeing the Enron line.
"He would tell me that everything we were doing was screwed Phone Cover up," Davis said.
"He wanted to deregulate everything."
It would be wrong to say that the governor did as Lay told him to. But you have to wonder if he would have waited as long as he did to act if Lay hadn't been whispering sweet nothings in his ear.
"He's a very charming person," Davis recalled. "He felt he knew best about electricity."
So here's what we had: In April of last year, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had just gone bankrupt, electricity prices were up about 800 percent from a year before, and Lay was laying it on thick with state and federal leaders to prevent anyone from putting out the fire.
At the same time, his own company was quietly teetering toward financial ruin.
How's that for chutzpah?
"Ken Lay was the high priest of deregulation," Davis said. "No one had more to do with shaping deregulation than him."
The governor used to say to anyone who would listen that power companies like Enron were taking advantage of a flawed system to "game" the market.
He has changed his tune just a little. Davis told me he now believes Enron and its posse knew from the start that they would make out like bandits in California, that they in fact rigged the state's power market to allow them to bleed us dry.
If so, the Enron memo smells even worse. It could be seen as a desperate ploy to keep the money flowing until the last cent ended up jingling in the power industry's pockets.
Why didn't Davis say as much to Cheney last year when the vice president was doing all Back Clip Power Bank his fact-finding for the national energy policy?
"I wasn't asked to go to the meeting," Davis replied.
Yeah, why would you want the thoughts of the governor of the state that had turned into the poster child for deregulation-gone-bad? After all, Lay was on hand to tell the veep all he needed to know.
"Ken Lay was a great salesman for his point of view," Davis said. "More than anyone in America, he's responsible for the outcome of deregulation in this country."
And at this point, that's a lot to answer for.
Car Keys on the Front Seat Peter McDonnell/Linda De Moreta Represents
Drive for long enough, and eventually you’ll experience it: that helpless feeling that comes when you discover you’ve locked your keys in your car. Before it happens again, install a system that unlocks your car doors with your cellphone. The setup involves using the Bluetooth module from a cheap wireless printer, which receives a command from your phone and sends it to a switch connected to your car’s spare electronic key fob. Instead of telling the printer to print a photo like it normally would, the phone signals it to trigger the unlocking mechanism. Stash the system under a seat (plugged into a lighter socket for power), and a few keystrokes will pop open the doors from up to 10 feet away.
Phone It In:Sending a photo to the printer triggers the system to unlock the doors. Peter McDonnell/Linda De Moreta Represents
1. Open the printer. Slide the battery Cover Phone plate off and remove the battery. Snap the plastic bezel off the front of the printer, and remove the two screws that hold the cover plate in place. Remove the narrow ribbon cable.
2. Route two wires into the printer via the paper exit slot. Solder one to the “TP14” solder connection point on the circuit board, and the other to any ground point on the board.
3. Reassemble the printer. Slide the two wires through the paper exit slot. Solder the other ends of those two wires to each one of the coil prongs on the relay. Solder two different wires to the remaining switch prongs of the relay.
4. Open the key fob and locate the button that unlocks the doors. Solder one relay wire to each pole of the switch. Reassemble the fob. Connect the printer’s power supply to an inverter, and plug it into your lighter.
5. Turn on the printer. Enter passcode 6000 to pair your phone with the printer. Send a photo via Bluetooth, and the relay will trigger the key fob to unlock your car’s doors.
The Samsung Galaxy S III is going to be a wild smash hit, I'm sure. And it's a very good phone; a lot of people will be very happy with it. But stepping back to look at the current state of Android smartphones, it's interesting to look at the S III compared to last November's Samsung Galaxy Nexus—a slightly older but extremely similar phone, loaded with a pure install of Android 4.0 that Samsung wasn't allowed to mess with, on Google's orders.
This time, Samsung put their hands all over the Android install inside the Galaxy S III, and it's a phone crammed full of ideas--new gestures, camera options, sharing options, big and strong hardware, and the best implementation of near-field communication we've seen yet. But do all these new features really improve the experience? Or is it just a phone badly in need of an editor--someone to say "no"?
WHAT'S NEW
The Galaxy S III is most similar to the company's own Galaxy Nexus. The Nexus is Google's reference line--there's one Nexus for each version of Android, the first phone to have that version, and each Nexus has a completely clean, Google-approved version of the operating system with no carrier interface add-ons allowed. The Galaxy S III has slightly improved hardware and adds Samsung's TouchWiz, an interface skin laid on top, and a whole mess of new Samsung-specific features.
Samsung is the biggest phone-maker in the world. The Galaxy S line is its flagship, the best it has to offer. This year's, the Galaxy S III, has a very large 4.8-inch screen, though the body is about as thin as an iPhone 4S (which is to say, extremely thin). It has built-in NFC, 4G LTE compatibility, an absurd number of new camera features, gestures, and sharing options. There are tons of new ways to share documents, photos, videos, files, and music. And it comes with the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich, modified a bit to Samsung's liking.
Galaxy S III on Piano: Dan Nosowitz
WHAT'S GOOD
Speed: The phone is fast fast fast fast FAST. It's so fast, with its 2GB of RAM, that it makes up for what I have long assumed is a software weakness in Android--Android phones often have trouble keeping up with your finger as you swipe and dart around. Not here. The camera app, too, is screamingly fast, with basically no shutter lag at all. (More on the camera below.)
As a modern Android phone with a ton of horsepower, the GSIII tears through Google apps. Android has always had the best Maps, Gmail, Reader, and YouTube implementation of any platform, and the Galaxy makes those legitimately fun to use. After months with an iPhone, it was great to get back into Android's Maps app.
Software: Ice Cream Sandwich, the latest version of Android, remains very solid even with Samsung's TouchWiz layered on. I love the WebOS-inspired swipe-to-close programs--just grab it and throw it off the side of the phone, like you're heaving unwanted cargo off of a ship. I love the subtle, not-too-bright blinking of the LED indicator light above the screen--blink, blink, you have a new message. Thank you, Blinky. It manages to have an external microSD slot and a replaceable battery without sacrificing thinness. The notification shade which you pull down from the top gives you quick access to settings, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and more. It's years ahead of Apple's, partly because, well, Android has literally been doing it for several years longer than Apple.
Galaxy S III: NFC:Dan Nosowitz
NFC: This is probably my favorite part of the phone. Samsung is selling "TecTiles,' which are little NFC stickers, at five for $15. Like the Galaxy Nexus, the Galaxy S III has NFC built in. When you tap a TecTile with the back of your phone (provided you've downloaded the free app), you'll be able to program the TecTile to trigger all kinds of fun things. Stick one on your bedside table, so when you put your phone down, it'll turn the alarm clock on, set the phone to nighttime mode, and make sure the volume's at the right level. Never worry about forgetting to set your alarm again. Stick an NFC sticker on your front door, tap it when you go inside, and it'll connect to your home Wi-Fi network.
It can change settings, make calls, check you into Foursquare, show a message, and more. I could see restaurants sticking Foursquare-branded NFC stickers on entryways--tap to check in. Or movie theaters with NFC stickers on the wall, with a big sign saying "Tap Here to Silence Your Phone," alongside a picture of a dancing popcorn box making a shushing motion.
NFC, or near-field communication--check out our primer on the subject if you're unfamiliar with it--is one of those latent technologies that's cool,Phone Cover but that in America has proved hard to market. The TecTiles are legitimately exciting; they're simple but useful. You can immediately see why they'd be a good thing to have. They work perfectly (although I'd prefer some more advanced options). And that's not the only way to use NFC; there's also a feature called S-Beam that lets you tap the back of your phone to somebody else's phone to share files. It works via Wi-Fi Direct: the NFC triggers an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network, meaning a network just between two devices, without the need for a router or Wi-Fi hotspot. Wi-Fi networks are fast, so you can transfer big files between phones easily and quickly. You'll have to find someone else with an NFC-enabled phone, but it's genuinely futuristic.
In a phone that is overstuffed with ideas, this is one that I really like.
Galaxy S III: PenTile Screen:Dan Nosowitz
WHAT'S BAD
This phone is crammed full of ideas. We appreciate the thought, but not always the execution.
Your first few days with the phone will be laden with pop-ups telling you about new ways to do simple things. The camera has a bajillion modes, settings, and options, far more than you'd need, and, frankly, more than the quality of the camera in this phone actually warrants. There are a million ways to share things, from DLNA to AllShare to AllShare SugarSync to ShareShot. You'll need a tutorial on each. There are a dozen new gestures, some good, some bad, but all will be bombarding you with newness. New things you have to learn.
These aren't all bad features. Some of them I even like. And I'm not opposed to new features. But all at once, they are exhausting. They make the phone feel much more complicated and intimidating than it really is. It seems like Samsung tested all this to make sure it works, but not to see if anyone would ever actually use it. An ideal phone, just like anything else in life (#philosophy), should include just the things that are good. We don't need to have the other things just because they exist. I mean, really, did we need a way to pan around web pages in the browser that requires you to move your entire body?
Hardware: The hardware design cannot be classified as bad, but it's not pushing anything forward. Samsung's designers are stuck on this curvy featherweight plastic thing when everyone else has moved beyond it to substantial materials like glass and metal. It's light, sure, and it doesn't feel fragile, but that's not the same as feeling good. Just poach a designer or two from Apple, Microsoft, or even Nokia, huh?
The screen is not great, which is surprising, since Samsung is known as a pioneer and leader in LCD tech. This is a PenTile display, a technology used by most Android phone-makers (Motorola, HTC) to save battery life. It's like looking at your phone through a fine screen door. It's also not especially bright, rendering it so reflective outdoors that it's basically unreadable in direct sunlight. THe GSIII has a 720p display, and it's not a bad screen--it nicely gives you different color temperature options for those who find it too cool or too warm--but I'm not particularly impressed by it. And considering it's summer here in NYC, I found its difficulties in sunlight to be a major problem.
I appreciate that Samsung has finally condensed the line--remember that the Galaxy S II was offered in about twelve different variations, each with silly names, and that this one is simply called the Galaxy S III wherever it appears--but I'm still annoyed that it's only available with a giant screen. Samsung does sell some smaller phones, but they're also not as good; if you want a good phone, you have to get a big one, and if you want a small phone, you have to settle for a crappier one. It is blatant discrimination and I hope the League of Small-Handed Gentlemen stage some kind of protest in which they hold tiny signs.
*raises undersized fist in solidarity*
The battery life is about what I expected from a 4G LTE phone with a giant screen: just okay. It'll get you through a day of moderate use, but heavy use will leave you very low on juice by that night, and you can forget about not charging it at night. Get used to bringing your chargers around with you, people. The voice command is Samsung's, not Google's, and it tries for a Siri-like understanding of natural human language. It's pretty bad, and very rarely understood what I was trying to get it to do.
Galaxy S III Sample Shot:A sample shot taken by the Galaxy S III. The colors are a little less vibrant, the produce a little less sharp and detailed than we'd hoped. Dan Nosowitz
The camera is amazing on paper, but I actually wasn't very impressed with the shots I took. They seem washed-out and lack the kind of vibrancy and detail that the iPhone 4S has. And it was slow to deal with sunlight, often leaving big white splotches in my photos. It's kind of an indoor phone, I guess.
THE PRICE
No word on price yet. It'll be available on all four major networks (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile) first online, and then in stores "in the following weeks." It'll be available in 16GB and 32GB versions, though it has that microSD slot so the storage is definitely flexible.
THE VERDICT
If you're looking at an Android phone, you should be looking here, you should be looking at HTC's One line, and you should be looking at the Galaxy Nexus. Me personally? The Galaxy S III would be my third choice of the three. I like the HTC's entertainment-focus, and I like the construction and the screen more. The Galaxy S's speed and its smart NFC implementation are great, and I even like some of the goofy gestures--and as an adult, I am fully capable of ignoring the stupid ones (here's how I did it: every time the phone asked me if I wanted to turn something on, I refused, and then I told it never to bother me again). But here's the more important thing: Android is still best when it's left alone (or mostly alone, as in the HTC One). The Nexus, the cleanest, Google-approved Google phone, is still reliably the better Android phone. It's a more reasonable size, with a better screen. It'll get updates first. It won't come with tons of apps pre-installed. It won't bug you about weird gestures. And best of all? You can still take advantage of the NFC TecTiles--Samsung tells me they'll be compatible with the Nexus as well.
Sometimes I just want to grab Samsung by the lapels (already, I have imagined Samsung is a corporeal being, gender non-specific, dressed in business casual) and shake it. "Just stop!" I want to say. "You don't have to use every single idea you've ever had!" The Galaxy S III is a great phone, for sure. But it's not what I'd buy.
2001-12-02 04:00:00 PDT Yosemite National Park -- Yosemite National Park
Late on a winter afternoon in Yosemite Valley, the mist rises like smoke from the snow-quilted meadows. It hangs among the black oaks and rolls up the fissures in the granite cliffs. The roar of Yosemite Falls has diminished to a sigh. Out to the west, El Capitan hangs like an enormous curtain, suspended open at the wings of some monumental stage.
In the off season, Yosemite Valley, the centerpiece of Yosemite National Park, has always seemed to me more poised for drama than in the touristy summer. The slant of light, the flowing fogs, the frozen pools, the long shadows - they all seem informed with magic and hidden meanings. Always a spiritual place, Yosemite feels even more so in the cathedral silence of winter, more a place of renewal and solace.
Yet there's plenty of fun, too. Kids plod through the woods on snowshoes. Teens race around the ice rink. Free buses roll out every morning, bound for Badger Pass with loads of excited skiers - both cross-country and downhill - and snowboarders. Whimsical snowmen with twiggy arms and pine-cone eyes sprout in the meadows.
The Park Service rangers and the food-and-lodging people, freed from the crush of summer tourists, seem more welcoming, more personable. The convenient free shuttle buses run frequently all around the valley, so once you arrive you can park your car and not use it again until you depart for home.
For 40 years, I've been traveling to Yosemite Valley in all seasons, and the special beauties of winter have made it my favorite time. I sit by a fire with an absorbing book or putter around the museum, visitor center and Ansel Adams Gallery. I go skating on the country's most scenic ice rink - directly below Glacier Point, with a full-on view of Half Dome. I follow the trails to my favorite haunts - on skis when there's snow enough, in hiking boots when the ground is bare.
Even when it's raining, I think it's a hoot to don a rain jacket and big rubber boots and go sloshing about in the puddles and squishy meadows. I love the sounds of Yosemite in the rain: the patter in the oak trees, the irritated jays, all those ephemeral falls trickling to life.
Plus, I know I -won't be bored. There's usually some kind of interpretive program or entertainment happening: storytelling, sing-alongs, films, history talks and nature walks. Once last winter I went to an evening talk on "Ravens and Crows," and ranger Karen Amstutz appeared in the Ahwahnee Great Lounge wearing a raven costume, flapping her arms and cawing.
During the off season the venerable Ahwahnee Hotel is the setting for some appealing indoor events: the Vintners' Holidays, Bracebridge Dinner, Chefs' Holidays and the new Yosemite Winter Literary Conference. It was at a Chefs' Holiday that I lapped up one of the most memorable dishes of my life: a sorbet of champagne and Douglas fir, concocted by guest chef Hartmut Handke from Ohio.
It was like eating a snowy forest.
Depending on my fortunes, I've spent winter nights at the Yosemite Lodge, the Ahwahnee and the cabins without a bath. I've shivered in my sleeping bag in the tent-cabins at Curry Village. Lodging in Yosemite Valley is at its most reasonable during the winter, especially mid-week. And now 60 of the canvas tent-cabins at Curry Village even have gas heaters - although you still have to venture outside to the communal bathrooms.
For the really hardy or well-equipped, a couple of campgrounds are open: Upper Pines for RV and car camping, Camp 4 (Sunnyside) for walk-ins. My most recent winter visit was this past February, to attend the first annual Yosemite Winter Literary Conference, with seminars and readings by Terry Tempest Williams, Gretel Erlich, James Houston and other chroniclers of the American West.
As if compelling literature in a magnificent place -weren't enough, I threw my Nordic skis into my car because I knew there had been a big snowfall in the valley. Back in the late 1960s I'd learned cross-country skiing at Yosemite, as well as how to construct a snow cave for backcountry winter camping. Slept in it, too.
As soon as I'd checked into my room at the lodge, I jumped onto my skis and headed up the unplowed bicycle trail. The snow was littered with black oak leaves. A raven, obsidian incarnate, flapped across the meadow. I went striding past the Ahwahnee and crossed the tranquil green Merced River twice, passing beneath the Royal Arches and Washington Column, scenes of my long-ago rock-climbing forays.
Along the way I encountered perhaps 30 other people - four on skis, a dozen on snowshoes, the rest slogging miserably on foot. I even saw an amazing young man with no legs, his torso strapped to a sled, poling himself up the trail.
After a couple of miles I came to Tenaya Creek, and skied along its banks to Mirror Lake, at the east end of the valley. A little water, still and glassy, had collected in the vanishing lake, reflecting the forbidding gray face of Half Dome, half-curtained by clouds.
Next morning at the Literary Conference, writer-publisher Malcolm Margolin talked about Yosemite Valley when the Ahwahneechee people lived here, in those halcyon summers before the white man came.
"It was not a wilderness then," he said, "but a cultural landscape. The hands of Indians were all over the place."
They burned the valley floor to foster the black oak acorn crop; the basket- weavers pruned the redbud and willow. Their legends involving people, mythic beings and animals were embedded in the waterfalls and rock formations in a "humanized landscape" all around them.
I had glimpsed some of this one dark, rainy morning earlier in the winter. Folding my umbrella, I stepped into the Yosemite Museum, which displays a fine collection of Miwok and Paiute artifacts. There, as usual, the renowned basket- maker Julia Parker, a Pomo/Miwok Indian, sat in a corner quietly at work. Today she was sizing strips of redbud.
I watched for a while, then tentatively began asking questions, trying to probe the great mystique of California Indian basketry. She told me that many of the plants preferred for basket designs, like sedges and brackenfern roots, "love to have their feet soaked in water," and that many things can influence the shape of the basket - the strength of her hand, when and where the fibers were collected. "Even some of my own baskets are thick, or fine, or big or small," she said.
Looking up, she added, "If the Phone Cover redbud -doesn't like you, you -won't get a basket." Then, concentrating again on her work, "Baskets change, people change.
It's a never-ending story."
A few other visitors entered the museum, bringing their children I4 Triple Frame to watch Parker. So I moved away to the display cases, peering at obsidian points, ceremonial headpieces, an owl-feather dance cape that looked like woven snowflakes.
Outside the back door of the museum, an interpretive trail wanders through a reconstructed Ahwahneechee village, with a dwelling, acorn-storage shelter, a sweat lodge, a roundhouse and grinding rocks. It seems especially evocative in winter.
Next door is another good foul-weather stop: the Visitor Center. Here one can learn a lot about Yosemite by studying the exhibits on such things as granite, bears, fire, pioneer history and arts, and the glaciers that sculpted the valley during the Ice Ages. Over by the big windows is my favorite item: a large relief map of the entire park, showing the canyons of the Merced and Tuolumne rivers, and the vast roadless wilderness of peaks and creeks and meadows. And, in the newly refurbished West Auditorium, an award-winning and stunning new film, "Spirit of Yosemite," plays every hour.
When it's not raining or snowing and the ground is dry, winter hiking on the valley floor is exhilarating - and the trails are mostly level. Sometimes the bridges are frosty, the mats of fallen oak leaves outlined in white rime. The air is bracing, there are few other hikers on the trails and evidence that Yosemite Valley is a work-in-progress is audible: rocks falling, ice crackling.
And there's a better chance of seeing wildlife. Once, walking alone near Camp Curry, I spent half an hour watching a bobcat meandering through the woods on an early morning hunt.
Most visitors know about the short walks, ranging from half a mile to two miles, to Bridalveil Fall, Mirror Lake, Lower Yosemite Fall and the bridge below Vernal Fall. But not many realize that a 13-mile trail runs all the way around the valley at the base of the cliffs. It's called the Valley Floor Loop,
and it can take all day to hike if you stop at various landmarks. At the west end of the valley, it crosses the Merced River at Pohono Bridge. In many areas there are interpretive signs - from one of these I learned, for example, that California has more species of oak than anywhere else on earth. And near Sentinel Bridge, the Yosemite Fund has built a new interpretive trail on boardwalks across Cook's Meadow.
On full-moon nights, Yosemite Valley is especially dazzling in winter. I like to bundle up and walk the bicycle paths into the meadows, and look up to the neon-bright snow blanketing the high country, wrapped like an ermine cloak around Half Dome. Moonlit mists sift through the firs and journey along the great walls. Afterward, it's nice to go inside - say, to the Curry Village guest lounge, or to those big comfy couches in the Ahwahnee Great Lounge - and settle down by the radiant hearth, with a book or maybe even a snifter of brandy.
When, on a March morning, I last drove out of the valley, snow from a fresh fall lingered on my car roof. But just outside the park in the Merced River canyon, early wildflowers were already blooming.
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE: Of the several routes to Yosemite from the Bay Area, Highway 140 through Mariposa is the most reliable in winter. But on it and all other routes, carry chains. You can also go via Amtrak; buses meet the trains in Merced and carry passengers to Yosemite Valley. In winter, Yosemite Area Regional Transit buses provide round-trip service from various communities along Highway 140 between Merced and the park. Get information toll-free at (877) 989-2787.
GETTING IN: Park entrance fee is $20 per vehicle, good for a week. An annual pass is $40.
WHERE TO STAY: In winter, lodging in Yosemite Valley includes some 550 rooms - in Curry Village, Yosemite Lodge and the Ahwahnee, all run by Yosemite Concessions Services. Prices range from $49 per night for a heated canvas tent- cabin to $326 per night at the Ahwahnee. Midweek in winter, a room at Yosemite Lodge is $96 for one or two people; children under 12 can stay free. You can get a good look at the various deals at www.yosemitepark.com. For reservations,
call (559) 252-4848, or write Reservations, Yosemite Concession Services, 5410 East Home Ave., Fresno, CA 93727.
CAMPING: Campsites at Upper Pines are $18 per night. Reservations are advised, but usually there are sites available in winter. Phone toll-free (800) 436-7275 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Walk-in sites at Camp 4 (Sunnyside) are $5 per person, first-come, first-served.
WHERE TO EAT: At Yosemite Lodge, the old cafeteria has been replaced by a new Food Court, with pasta, pizza, deli, grill and entree stations, as well as hot breakfast and a bakery. Items from under $2 to $8.95. The Ahwahnee's baronial dining room is one of the most beautiful in the nation; this year there's a new chef, James Anile. Expect to pay about $35 per person for dinner,
including wine. At night there's a dress code. Go for breakfast, when you can enjoy the view and ambience at cheaper prices.
WINTER EVENTS: Ask YCS (see above) about packages for Vintners' Holidays (through Dec. 13) and Chef's Holidays (Jan. 9-Feb. 7). Bracebridge Dinner is performed on seven nights over the Christmas holidays. Usually you'll need Bracebridge reservations a year in advance, but it's sometimes possible to grab last-minute cancellations.
WHAT TO DO: The ice rink at Curry Village is open daily through March, with rental skates and a warming hut. Free buses run daily from the valley hotels up to Badger Pass, the ski area on the Glacier Point Road. Also at Badger Pass is a Nordic ski lesson-and-rental concession operated by the Yosemite Mountaineering School, which offers guided overnight ski-tours to a backcountry lodge at Glacier Point. A Nordic track is laid every day along the 10-mile route from Badger Pass to Glacier Point, and there are marked ski trails to Dewey Point and Ostrander Hut. Crane Flat and the Mariposa Grove also have marked ski trails. At Badger Pass, rangers lead snowshoe walks daily,
and on full-moon Ultrathin Series nights. Yosemite Concessions also offers a $20 "passport" which includes one lift ticket at Badger Pass, ice-skating and a bus tour of the valley floor; it must be purchased when you reserve your room.
LITERARY CONFERENCE: Dates are Feb. 24-28, 2002. Among the many presenters are Gary Snyder, Francisco Alarcon, Al Young and Malcolm Margolin. Contact Yosemite Association. P.O. Box 230; El Portal, CA 95318; call (209) 379-2646 or visit www.yosemite.org. YA also sponsors seminars on winter ecology, photography and snowshoeing.
MORE INFORMATION: For Yosemite road and weather conditions and general information, phone (209) 372-0200. When you enter the park, ask for a copy of the latest free Yosemite Guide, a tabloid full of details about programs and facilities for winter visitors. The official Web site for the national park is www.nps.gov/yose.
Q: I am redoing my kitchen floor and am torn between hardwood and laminated flooring. I do a lot of cooking and am a messy cook. In the long run, which flooring material will have the fewest problems with upkeep and retain good looks?
Jane McRabin San Francisco
A: I feel compelled to mention that slate, tile and various stone floorings are also great options in a kitchen. I have limestone that is the color of dirt and camouflages the sins of messy cooking quite well! I have two boys, a black cat and a mutt -- all equally capable (as I am) of trashing my floor. The limestone is a terrific surface for my lifestyle and my somewhat perfectionist personality. It limits my tizzy fits because I simply cannot see the dirt the way I could when I had -- yes, it was ridiculous and I was pre-children -- a white tile floor.
After making a weakly concealed vote for a stone floor, I will now focus on your question. I assume you want to compare a true, nailed- down hardwood such as oak versus a laminate that looks like wood.
In my personal design opinion, rarely will you be sorry for having used a natural product. I honestly feel that in almost all cases you are better off using natural materials.
Before I get booed out of the state by the makers of synthetic materials, I need to say there are definite uses for fabricated as well as natural materials and I have, on occasion, specified linoleum in a laundry room or vinyl tile in an entrance or mud room. For certain design jobs these materials are ideal and create a definite, often desired look.
Still, I believe it's rare that you will regret using a "real" material. You may be sorry you used a natural material in a certain application or in a particular stain, but rarely will you find someone who looks at their hardwood floor and says "Oh, gee, I wish I had gotten vinyl instead."
I have a dear friend who used maple floors throughout her house and she used them in the lightest stain possible even though she had three young children, a sloppy husband, a dog and a cat. I begged her not to use maple and not to use the light, clear, high-gloss finish. She did and has regretted it ever since and I of course have had the joy of knowing I was right. We are still friends and now she does everything I tell her to do concerning her furnishings! Darker, oak floors would have been the right choice for her.
Oak has a nice grain that helps camouflage spills. A darker finish is more forgiving to nicks and gouges.
I do understand your concerns about the upkeep and damage factor with hardwood floors although if they are well I9220(N7000) GALAXY NOTE done and sealed just a swipe with a wet mop is the usual cleaning recommendation. Plus, remember with real hardwood you have the ability to refinish whereas with faux floors you cannot. You also can have hardwood installed pre- distressed if you want. There are lots of hardwood options in terms of different woods, planking size, thickness, stain and other factors. Visit a few flooring companies to see samples.
Wood floors are a specific genre of flooring and there are experts who work only in this field. I recommend educating yourself by chatting with a few installers who have been in the field at least 10 years or so. They can tell you not only about recent developments but also about how they have seen different floors wear. Certainly a hickory floor will wear differently than a pine or maple floor. There are also some dealers who further specialize in old restored hardwood floors. I have had the pleasure of seeing a few of these installed and, hands down, they are the most beautiful floors I have ever seen!
In a kitchen you need a nice interplay between the cabinet material, the countertops and the floor so that they all relate in a complementary way. Consider your cabinets and your countertops as well as your overall design scheme before selecting the floor. If those items already exist they usually point you in one direction fairly easily. Painted cabinets and tile countertops look terrific with wood flooring while wood cabinets and butcher block countertops may need a tile floor.
As for the durability of laminates, frequently they are sold by weight or thickness with the thinner linoleums being less durable. Many laminate floors come with length warranties and guarantees. I personally have torn out my fair share of old composition tile while doing renovations and have been amazed at the great shape it was in even though it clearly had been down over 20 little witch iPad leather case years. Visit a few stores that specialize in vinyl flooring so you can talk to experts who have used it for years and who can give you solid information about styles, brands and warranties.
My advice is to step back and study your kitchen thoroughly and visualize what you think the most complementary flooring selection would be. Decide which material would make you the happiest every day as you enter the room. Remember, you are going to live with it a very long time and not only do you want to receive good wearability from it but Phone Case you want to enjoy it as well.
NEED DESIGN ADVICE?
Have a dilemma? Describe the problem -- no matter how small -- and the effect you'd like to achieve by writing to Design Dilemmas, Home&Garden section, San Francisco Chronicle, 901 Mission St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Please include your city and daytime phone number.
If possible, enclose a good- quality photograph of the problem for which you'd like advice.
Book editors have become accustomed to the Paradox of the Hot Topic -- that phenomenon that occurs when the best book about a controversy isn't the first breakthrough, or even the next dozen treatments; it's the last book, the one that comes when everybody's yawning their heads off (until yet another H.T. grabs their attention).
In the O.J. Simpson sweepstakes -- pardon me, case -- for example, Faye Resnick's raw, crude and angry book about Nicole Brown Simpson raced up the best-seller list faster than you could say "I Want To Tell You," Simpson's own cache for cash that came later. Big, fill-in-the-gap books by New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin and others hit the lists briefly but then began the Book-of-Substance Slump, dying off faster than motions for the prosecution. Enter the clean-up crew of participants (Christopher Darden, Marcia Clark, Johnnie Cochran, etc.), which ushered in the JJs (judgmental jurors, kicked off and otherwise), followed by the conspiracy theorists (Robert Kardashian), your sieg-heil-give- me-the-money hacks (Mark Fuhrman) and culture-gossip mongers (Dominick Dunne).
Now, when it's all over and everybody is sick to death of O.J. Simpson, along comes the Paradox of the H.T.: The best book on the subject turns out to be the most recent and probably the last one, a massive book whose very weight and size says, Yes, America, You Have to Go Over It Again, TRIUMPH OF JUSTICE by the plaintiff attorney in Simpson's I5 Rose civil case, Daniel Petrocelli (Crown; 644 pages; $24.95).
In San Francisco to talk about the book, Petrocelli doesn't mind expressing a little emotional explosion. He shakes his head with weariness when asked about defense accusations in Simpson's criminal trial that the Los Angeles Police Department was inept, sloppy and capable of tampering. "All those broad-based accusations simply break down under the light of reason and analysis. The defense wanted to throw it all out there, inflame the jury and hope they'd (the jurors) wouldn't think through the evidence.
"So they asked things like, 'Why didn't the police take aerial photos of the crime scene? Or get on a ladder and shoot down? Or measure blood stains with rulers?' Well, they didn't because they're not that smart, maybe! Who cares why they didn't do it? The fact is they didn't do it! This is not a malpractice case against the Los Angeles Police Department. It's not a case about whether they're the best police department in the country. This is a murder case! Let's stick to the evidence that was found."
Petrocelli believes that defense claims of a police frame-up are so "ludicrous" that "even a person with half a brain" should see that Fuhrman would have been "crazy" to try planting the bloody glove found on Simpson's property and that Judge Lance Ito should never have allowed "hypothetical scenarios" into the record.
"Now here's the defense asking the DNA expert, 'Well, Dr. Cotton,Phone Cover isn't it true that if blood spilled during the testing process, bindles could get contami nated?' If forced to answer the witness might say, 'Perhaps, if blood did spill, contamination could occur.' But there was no evidence that blood did spill! It's all speculation."
Petrocelli thinks the prosecution made a big mistake by not introducing the statement Simpson gave police before he fled. "It's true, Simpson denies things in there, and the jury would hear his denials, but he also makes some devastating admissions. He admits calling Paula Barbieri from his cell phone after the recital; well, the only record of such a call shows the time as 10:03 p.m., when Simpson was supposed to be at home. But he said he made that phone call while driving the Bronco.
"He also said he cut his finger before going to Chicago; later he said he cut his finger in Chicago. These are contradictions, you can argue to a jury, that show his guilt, and they might have made the defense respond by putting Simpson on the stand."
It is this image -- Simpson, at last, on the witness stand -- that starts and ends "Triumph of Justice." While the book tells us a great deal about the difference between civil and criminal trials, why Cochran got away with playing the race card and the kind of "blueprint for impeachment" Petrocelli constructed during his 10-day deposition of Simpson, there is a magnificence to the author's dismantling of the defendant that is unmatched in any of the Simpson books.
Here we see this once-ambivalent attorney deciding to "discipline" Simpson, to "impeach" him, to be "curt" with him and get the judge to "force" him to answer questions.
Every time Simpson tries to evade questions about Nicole's bruises by stating, "I felt totally responsible -- " wham! Petrocelli stings him with the whip. "I'm not asking about your responsibility," he says coldly, meaning: Answer the question. And when Simpson tries to hopscotch around by replying, "I don't remember," whack! Petrocelli grabs the deposition record and reads Simpson's words: "I remember exactly what I did."
Part of Petrocelli's strategy, he says, included his understanding that "Simpson was an inveterate talkaholic. You can tell: He can't contain himself. He needs to talk. To overcome that desire to speak, he tried with all his might to restrain himself, so he came off as uninspiring, not very convincing, almost vacant." By contrast, Petrocelli remembers, "I was seething with outrage at the end. I was harsh, angry, confrontational. The message was: I'm in control, you're not."
While other books discuss Simpson's power as quarterback of his own Dream Team, this last one finds a hollow core that revolving leather sheath for ipad will live on in memory, long after Simpson himself recedes from public life.
When Ruby's bright tomato sign disappeared from Third Street after an eight-year run, pizza fans lamented its passing. The restaurant earned wide acclaim because it was one of the few places that specialized in its kind of crisp, cornmeal crust pizza.
But Dan Rubinstein, better known as waterproof phone case Ruby, didn't let lease disputes stop him. He left the business last summer and opened Nightshade on Steiner at Sutter, an area that straddles Pacific Heights and the Western Addition.
The nightshade theme is carried through in the interior, where a huge, realistic-looking eggplant vine wraps the post in front of the host stand, the famous Ruby's red tomato is above the kitchen and a giant potato adorns a door to the dish-washing area (all three vegetables are of the nightshade family). Where Ruby's was small and intimate, this space is much larger. Its hard surfaces and large windows give the 100-seat space the cool feel of an office building. Some elements, such as the green hanging globes over the bar and the high-tech Italian halogen lights next to the bar, are cutting-edge. The double line of round white globes that hangs from the ceiling makes the room look even larger, which diminishes the elements that might give the space a more personal feel.
INTERIOR NEEDS TO WARM UP
The interior Hello Kitty iPhone4 leather cases needs to warm up a lot, especially to go with the rustic food created by Bela Durst, who worked three years at Stars and then went on to other restaurants around the Bay Area.
And even though Rubinstein has de-emphasized the pizza ($3.25 a slice; $18.50 whole) by placing it at the bottom of the menu, it's still the best item, whether topped with fennel sausage, roasted peppers and onions or slathered with eggplant, mushrooms and Roma tomato sauce. If the crust tastes familiar, it could be because the owner was an original partner in Vicolo, which has been dishing up this thick, rich cornmeal crust in Hayes Valley for nearly 15 years.
As with many new places, Nightshade had a rough start, including chef changes. We happened to show up on the night Durst took over, and he was trying to produce unfamiliar food in unfamiliar surroundings. We decided to give him a few weeks to settle in.
On our three return visits, it was evident that he had put his stamp on the Italian menu. While much of the menu is familiar, a few items showed the chef's creative bent. For example, he cuts a head of butter lettuce into wedges, much as cooks used to do with iceberg, and drizzles it with a Gorgonzola vinaigrette with roast peppers and pancetta. It's cold, crisp and refreshing, with just the right amount of tangy dressing.
He also papered a dinner plate with thin slices of prosciutto ($8.75) and topped them with a warm pile of just-crunchy green beans mixed with roasted peppers, crispy bits of bacon and a chop of hard-boiled eggs that presented a soothing counterpoint to the intense flavors of the marinated vegetables and salty meat.
The mussels ($8.25) had the potential to be great; the only problem was that the seafood appeared to have been cooked separately from the lemony herb broth. Its flavor never permeated the mussels.
The main courses, in many cases, had items piled so closely on the plate that they bordered on gross: The roasted spring chicken ($13.50), which was nearly as small as a half Cornish hen, with less meat and more bone, was crowded by creamy-lumpy rosemary mashed potatoes, sauteed greens studded with pearl onions and a soupy broth that made everything a mess. The presentation was much better for the pork chop ($15) in a creamy sour cherry sauce, with au gratin potatoes and a pile of green beans. And the flavors were absolutely glorious in a grilled halibut ($17), a nightly special, complemented by a creamy tomato sauce. Only the gritty spinach detracted from the combination. On another night the halibut was served with leeks and roasted peppers, and was almost as good.
ORDINARY OFFERINGS
The restaurant's potential becomes obvious in this type of dish. However, too many offerings are ordinary, including the Caesar salad ($5.25), the rigatoni with Italian sausage ($9.25) and the dense gnocchi with wild mushrooms and roasted shallot cream ($7.50). And a few dishes need to be rethought, including the ravioli stuffed with seafood mousse ($14.75). Not only was the filling rubbery and the pasta too chewy, but the combination of blood orange, tarragon, Pernod and nicoise olives left an unpleasant medicinal aftertaste.
What should have been an excellent grilled steak ($19) with porcini mushrooms and crisp wedges of potatoes Anna was a major disappointment because the meat we ordered medium rare was still raw and cool in the middle.
The tiramisu ($5.50) was a dry, gooey mess, one of the worst versions I can remember. The chocolate fruit tart ($5.50) with strawberries could have been fine, but the crust needed some work. The honey anise pine nut tart ($5.75) also needed a more pliable crust and a different combination of flavors. Much like the ravioli, it had a slight metallic quality.
Two desserts were worth ordering: an intensely flavored espresso panna cotta with caramel sauce ($5.50) that had a rich, almost creme brulee texture; and a thick lemon cheesecake ($5.50).
The main disappointment at Nightshade, however, isn't the food, but the service. Clearly the staff isn't trained. Servers pick up plates while people are still eating, deliver food to the wrong person and seem unable to anticipate what a table might Phone Case need. It's apparent that the staff wants to give good service, but the restaurant hasn't come up with an efficient system.
Still, it's nice to have Ruby's back in business. And it's even nicer to know that if you don't want to trek across town there's free citywide pizza delivery. Rubinstein recommends ordering it half-baked so you can finish baking it at home and enjoy some of the best pizza in the city. WINE LIST OFFERS 25 BY THE GLASS
The strength of the wine list at Nightshade is the 25 selections available by the glass. Pours are generous and prices are reasonable.
The two-page list of bottles bears the personal stamp of owner Dan Rubinstein. The imports are particularly strong: 1995 Perrin Cotes du Rhone Blanc ($21), 1995 Doro Princic Tocai Friuliano from Italy ($29) and the New Zealand 1996 Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc ($26). Among the imported reds, the 1995 Bodegas Rico Carchelo from Spain ($18) is one of the best values. Other good choices include the 1992 Zenato Ripassa Valpolicella ($26) from Italy and the 1992 Guigal Gigondas from France ($29).
The domestic wines don't have a theme. They're all over the board, but you can find some interesting selections. At the top of my list are the 1994 Shafer Firebreak Sangiovese ($38) and the 1995 Rabbit Ridge North Coast Merlot ($31). In the white wine category, try the 1995 Cain Musque Sauvignon Blanc ($25) or the 1995 Arrowwood Sonoma Chardonnay ($36).
The dessert, spirit and special drink list is also unbalanced. Most of the single malts, for example, have a very peaty character, and the majority of the specialty drinks are made with vodka.
Samsung Galaxy S4 officially available up to now less than a month, Samsung announced Galaxy S4 shipments have exceeded ten million.
This data does not surprise to everyone, Samsung's goal is total sales reached 100 million, the first month of sales of 10 million. Although shipments and sales can not be equated,I8160 Galaxy Ace 2 but by Galaxy S4 popular level point of view, is not difficult to achieve monthly sales of ten million. But Apple iPhone 5 Available weekends only three days after selling 5 million records is huge.
For that Samsung also plans to launch a new color models in the summer of Galaxy S4, reported that the new color will be named Purple Mirage and Brown Autumn. This will also further stimulate sales of mobile phones.
Samsung Android phone market can be described as a single large,Phone Cover in the first quarter alone, the entire Android mobile phone market profits earned 95%, with the Galaxy S4's hot, this proportion may also increase.
News from U.S. media, in order to achieve the purpose of ban, Apple AT & T, T-Mobile and Sprint in the sale of Galaxy S4 have been tested, and finally they give such a result, the first Samsung's flagship new machine violation of Apple's patent No. 8,086,604, and 6,847,959,Phone Cover which is related to Siri to retrieve information in a computer system interface issues common.
The U.S. District Court Judge Jose Lucy Koch (Lucy Koh) has said that Apple's next month on the 25th prosecution case will hold a hearing. And Apple is now showing the target is quite straightforward, and that is to do their utmost to achieve a moratorium Galaxy S4.
Meanwhile, Apple submitted to the Court documents also show GS4 violated their No. 5,666,502, No. 5,946,647 and No. 7,761,414 patent, which represent the graphical user interface using historical lists classification techniques,I5 KIKI Monkey computer-generated data structure to perform operations on a system and method and asynchronous data synchronization between devices.
In addition to Samsung, the same as Google. Because in addition to these five accused Galaxy S4 infringing patents, Apple has also submitted to the court a Google's Google Now Siri related patent infringement reports
We lead rich virtual lives on social networking sites like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter. So what happens when real life catches up, and our flesh-and-blood bodies succumb to mortality? For our virtual selves, at least, some concrete answers are available—ways to settle our digital affairs after death, while minimizing hassle and heartache for loved ones.
Google sets the standard by building a dead man’s switch (one with a gentler name) into your Google account features. Facebook and Twitter also have processes in place for handling accounts of the recently deceased, though they’re somewhat more cumbersome. A few good Web services can help for all other online cases, passing along login information based on triggers you can set yourself.
Google’s dead man switch
Google’s new Inactive Account Manager system is simple to understand and set up. Accessible from your Google account settings page, it helps you set up a time-out period for your account—the length of time you can go without logging in before Google assumes that you’re never coming back. The default is three months, but you can dial it up in increments of 90 days until it tops out at a year and a half. I recommend setting it to at least six months,Phone Cover though you could vary this period based on how often you log in.
Google makes preparing for your death quick and painless.
A fail-safe is built into the service: One month before the timeout period, Google will send you an e-mail reminder (and an optional SMS message, if you give them a phone number) to make sure you're not coming back. Once your account is inactive long enough to trigger the Inactive Account Manager, Google will send a message to up to ten people notifying them that your account is now inactive.
You’ll need to provide a working phone number for every contact. Google will send each of them a unique verification code so they can download any data you'd like them to have.
The Inactive Account Manager lets you selectively share your Google data postmortem with up to ten people via email.
You can choose which pieces of your Google data to share with each person. For example, you can arrange for close friends to get links to download Picasa photo albums, while you entrust a family member to have access to your mail, Google Voice messages, and everything else. They’ll have a three-month window for doing so—after that, they’ll be locked out for good.
Finally, you can configure your Google account to eradicate every trace of itself from the Google servers. That includes all of your public data, from YouTube videos to blog posts and the like.
Twitter and Facebook involve more hassleBoth Twitter and Facebook have systems in place to help you close out your accounts after you die, but neither is as thorough, nor as intuitive, as Google’s new tool. You’ll have to do a little legwork and assign someone to settle matters on your behalf. Twitter will allow a designated party to deactivate your account without needing your password, but it requires a heck of a lot of paperwork. The full article on contacting Twitter about deceased users is worth a read, but in brief: Twitter needs your username and a copy of your death certificate, along with a signed statement from your loved one explaining who they are, how they know you, proof that the Twitter account belonged to you (if your username doesn’t match your real name), and a copy of a government-issued ID (such as a driver’s license) that proves their identity. They then have to fax or mail all of that to Twitter—the appropriate address and fax number are both on the page for the Twitter Help Center. One more form that needs to be filled out in the digital age.Facebook requires a similar amount of information, but it at least provides an online form to help your friend or family member submit the information quickly. Facebook also goes one step above and beyond deactivating or deleting your account: Your loved ones can convert your Facebook page into a memorial page that has higher security and allows friends and family to post memories about you on your timeline.
Entrust a loved one with your digital estateFacebook's neat/creepy memorial account feature aside, in most cases, it’s much faster and easier to provide your login information to a trusted friend or family member, along with instructions to delete your accounts after you’ve passed away. Asking a loved one to delete your Facebook account after you die is way more efficient than having to verify your death with Facebook, which can often take several days. Deleting your Twitter account is even easier—just head to “Deactivate my Account” at the bottom of your account settings page, follow a few instructions, and you’re done. Deleting your information isn’t the only reason you should keep a record of your passwords on hand for loved ones. Because most online stores like iTunes are actually selling you a license and not the media itself, you can't count on retailers like Apple to help your loved ones get into your account. If you download or stream a lot of media, your passwords may be the only things that keep your music and movies in the family. Build your own dead man switchIf you feel uncomfortable giving out your account passwords while you’re still alive and kicking, you could always set up a dead man switch of your own to send out that information. I recommend using free services like the appropriately named Dead Man's Switch or Deadman. Both will securely provide the previously mentioned password and other personal information to your loved ones after your death. Deadman is fast and easy to use, and it could save your friends and family a lot of hassle down the road.Just like Google’s Inactive Account Manager, these services have variable time delays that you can configure to be days, months, or even years after your last login. Most will send you an e-mail a few days before the deadline. If they don’t hear back by the time your deadline rolls around, they'll automatically send a prewritten message to your loved ones. Both of the services recommended here are free but also have premium options, such as the ability to add more recipients and encrypt your message until it’s sent. Of course, if you’re not concerned with that extra security and you plan on setting up Google’s Inactive Account features anyway, you can use Google to disseminate your passwords and instructions for downloading all your media and shutting down your accounts. Since you can customize the message that Google sends on a user-by-user basis, you can include any relevant passwords and instructions for other services in your post-mortem email blast. Exiting gracefully from virtual lifeIt’s a grim subject, but the process of preparing your digital estate can take as little as an hour once you’ve gathered your passwords and decided what to do with all your data. More important, it can save your loved ones weeks or even months of frustration and trouble.
Researchers from two-factor authentication provider Duo Security found a loophole in Google's authentication system that allowed them to bypass the company's 2-step login verification by abusing the unique passwords used to connect individual applications to Google accounts.
According to the Duo Security researchers, Google fixed the flaw on Feb. 21, but the incident highlights the fact that Google's application-specific passwords don't provide granular control over account data.
When enabled, Google's 2-step verification system requires the input of unique codes in addition to the account's regular password in order to log in. This is designed to prevent accounts from being hijacked even when the password is compromised. The unique codes can either be received at a phone number associated with the account or can be generated using a smartphone application.
However, 2-step verification only works when logging in through Google's site. In order to accommodate desktop e-mail clients, chat programs, calendar applications and so on, Google introduced the concept of application-specific passwords (ASPs). These are randomly-generated passwords that allow applications to access the account without the need of a second authentication factor. ASPs can be revoked at any time without changing the account's main password.
The problem is, "ASPs are—in terms of enforcement—not actually application-specific at all!" the Duo Security researchers said Monday in a blog post. "If you create an ASP for use in (for example) an XMPP chat client, that same ASP can also be used to read your email over IMAP, or grab your calendar events with CalDAV."
The researchers found a flaw in the auto-login mechanism implemented in Chrome in the latest versions of Android that allowed them to use an ASP to gain access to a Google account's recovery and 2-step verification settings.
In essence, the flaw could have allowed an attacker who stole an ASP for a Google account to change the mobile phone number and recovery email address associated with that account or even disable 2-step verification altogether.
"Given nothing but a username, an ASP, and a single request to https://android.clients.google.com/auth, we can log into any Google web property without any login prompt (or 2-step verification)!" the Duo Security researchers said. "This is no longer the case as of February 21st, when Google engineers pushed a fix to close this loophole."
In addition to fixing the issue, Google apparently also changed the message displayed after generating an application-specific password in order to warn users that "this password grants complete access to your Google Account."
"We think it's a rather significant hole in a strong authentication system if a user still has some form of 'password' that is sufficient to take over full control of his account," the Duo Security researchers said. "However, we're still confident that—even before rolling out their fix—enabling Google's 2-step verification was unequivocally better than not doing so."
That said, the researchers would like to see Google implement some kind of mechanism similar to OAuth tokens that would allow restricting the privileges of every individual application-specific password.
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment about this flaw or possible plans to implement more granular control for application-specific passwords in the future.
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