Hollywood directs its star power toward a campaign closer to home

A stylish crowd waited beneath a flashing marquee outside the Fonda Theatre. "Appearing tonight!" the sign read. "Eric Garcetti 4 Mayor."

In a city where political campaigns are typically waged at neighborhood meetings, not Hollywood concert halls, last week's star-studded fundraiser for Garcetti highlighted the entertainment industry's outsized role in this year's mayoral race. Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel started the show with a stand-up routine and musician Moby got the crowd of several hundred dancing. Actress Amy Smart urged everyone to tweet about the campaign, and actor Will Ferrell beamed in via video to pledge that if Garcetti is elected, every resident in the city will receive free waffles.

Hollywood is taking to City Hall politics like never before, veterans say, with power players such as Steven Spielberg leading a major fundraising effort and celebrities such as Salma Hayek weighing in via YouTube. A Times analysis of city Ethics Commission records found that actors, producers, directors and others in the industry have donated more than $746,000 directly to candidates, with some $462,000 going to Garcetti and $226,000 to City Controller Wendy Greuel.

Several of Greuel's big-name celebrity supporters, including Tobey Maguire, Kate Hudson and Zooey Deschanel, recently hosted a fundraiser for her at an exclusive club on the Sunset Strip. She is getting extra help from Spielberg and his former partners at DreamWorks, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who have given at least $150,000 and are raising more for an independent group funding a TV ad blitz on her behalf.

The burst of support is coming from an industry often maligned for paying little attention to local politics.

While Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is often photographed at red carpet events and former Mayor Tom Bradley was famously close to actor Gregory Peck, serious Hollywood money and star power has tended to remain tantalizingly out of reach for local politicians. "It's no secret that the entertainment industry has never really focused on the city that houses it," said Steve Soboroff, who ran for mayor and lost in 2001.

Political consultant Garry South, who has worked on mayoral and gubernatorial campaigns, recalled having to pay celebrities to appear at fundraisers in the past. Hollywood has long embraced candidates in presidential and congressional elections, South said, in part because they have more influence over causes favored by celebrities.

"The mayor of L.A. is not going to get us out of Afghanistan. The mayor of L.A. is not going to determine whether or not gay marriage is legal," South said. "The local issues are just not as sexy."

But this year, if you're a part of the Hollywood establishment, chances are you've gotten invitations to fundraisers for Greuel, Garcetti or both.

The difference this time is that both candidates have worked to cultivate deep Hollywood connections, observers say. Garcetti has represented Hollywood for 12 years, overseeing a development boom and presiding over ceremonies to add stars — Kimmel recently got one — on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Greuel is a former executive at DreamWorks, where she worked with the moguls who founded the studio. She has also served for 10 years on the board of the California Film Commission.

City Councilwoman Jan Perry and entertainment attorney Kevin James have reaped far less financial support from the industry, records show, although each claims a share of celebrity endorsements. Dick Van Dyke sponsored a fundraiser for Perry and Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black has given to James.

Agent Feroz Taj, who attended Garcetti's Moby concert, said a flurry of activity around the race, involving friends and colleagues, piqued his interest. He said he's never been involved in a political campaign, but now when he receives invites to Greuel events, he says he is supporting Garcetti.

Industry insiders have been buzzing about a letter they say is being circulated by an advisor to Spielberg and Katzenberg, urging people to give $15,000 to an independent group supporting Greuel. The DreamWorks founders have made a difference for Greuel in previous elections. In 2002, financial support from the studio executives and their allies helped her squeak out a victory in one of the closest City Council races in history.

This time around, billionaire media mogul Haim Saban is getting involved, providing his Beverly Hills estate for a Greuel fundraiser featuring U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Greuel has also received contributions from Tom Hanks and actresses Mariska Hargitay and Eva Longoria, neither of whom have given to a local political campaign before, according to records.

Garcetti, on the other hand, has picked up contributions from former Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner, as well as newcomers to local politics Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayek, who once traveled with Garcetti on a global warming awareness mission to the South Pole. The actress released a video endorsing Garcetti and thanking him for helping her find her wallet in the snow.

Campaign consultant Sean Clegg linked the industry's burgeoning interest in mayoral politics to President Obama's election, which he said had "a catalyzing effect on Hollywood." Indeed, many Greuel and Garcetti supporters were Obama backers. Hayek hosted a fundraiser for Obama and Longoria served as a co-chair of his reelection campaign.

Clegg is a consultant for Working Californians, an independent campaign committee that hopes to raise and spend at least $2 million supporting Greuel, with donations from Spielberg and others in Hollywood, as well as the union representing Department of Water and Power employees.

Generally, Clegg argued, Hollywood money is different than the special-interest funding campaigns collect. "Money is coming out of the entertainment industry more on belief and less on the transactional considerations," he said.

But Raphael Sonenshein, director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said Hollywood's new interest in local elections may be tied to growing concerns about film production being lured elsewhere by tax incentives.

Garcetti and Greuel have both pledged to reverse job losses tied to runaway television and film production, with Garcetti touting a recent proposal to eliminate roughly $231,000 in annual city fees charged for pilot episodes of new TV shows. The number of pilots shot locally has dropped 30% in recent years, but city budget analysts say the tax break would have a minimal effect because city fees represent only a small portion of production costs.

On the council, both candidates voted to eliminate filming fees at most city facilities. Greuel tells audiences she has an insider's perspective on the industry's needs and says she will create an "entertainment cabinet" to help it thrive. "I have sat with studio heads," she said in a recent interview. "They want a city . . . that is a champion for film industry jobs in Los Angeles."

Greuel may have Garcetti beat on experience in the studio front office, but he is the only candidate with his own page on IMDb.com — a closely watched industry website that tracks individuals' film and television credits.

The councilman, a member of the Screen Actors Guild, has made several television appearances, including one for the cable police drama "The Closer." He played the mayor of Los Angeles.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Times staff writer Maloy Moore contributed to this report.

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<cite>Halo</cite> Creator Unveils Its Next Masterpiece, a Persistent Online World

"Citadel": Concept art from Bungie's Destiny.

BELLEVUE, Washington — Destiny, the new game from the creator of Halo, isn’t just another shooter. It’s a persistent online multiplayer adventure, designed on a galactic scale, that wants to become your new life.

“It isn’t a game,” went the oft-heard tagline at a preview event on Wednesday. “It’s a world where the most important stories are told by the players, not written by the developers.”

This week, Bungie Studios invited the press into its Seattle-area studio to get the first look at Destiny. Although the event was a little short on details — Bungie and Activision didn’t reveal the launch date, handed out concept art instead of screenshots, and dodged most of my questions — it gave an intriguing glimpse at what the creator of Halo believes is the future of shooters.

Bungie was acquired by Microsoft in 2000, and its insanely popular shooter was the killer app that put the original Xbox on the map. Bungie split off from its corporate parent in 2007, and Microsoft produced Halo 4 on its own last year. The development studio partnered up with mega-publisher Activision for its latest project, which was kept mostly secret until now.

Destiny, slated for release on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, isn’t exactly an MMO. Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg called it a “shared-world shooter” — multiplayer and online, but something less than massive.

“We’re not doing this just because we have the tech,” Hirshberg said. “We have a great idea, and we’re letting the concept lead the tech.”

Built with new development software created specifically for Destiny, this new game is set in Earth’s solar system and takes place after a mysterious cataclysm wipes out most of humanity. The remaining survivors create a “safe zone” underneath a mysterious alien sphere called “The Traveler.”

The enigmatic sphere imparts players with potent weapons, magic-like powers and defensive technology. Thanks to these gifts, people have begun reclaiming the solar system from alien invaders that moved in while humanity was down.

Bungie fired off a list of design principles that guide Destiny’s creation: Create a world players want to be in. Make it enjoyable by players of all skill levels. Make it enjoyable by people who are “tired, impatient and distracted.” In other words, you don’t have to be loaded for bear and pumped for the firefight of your life every time you log on to Destiny.

After this brief overview, writer/director Joseph Staten used concept art and narration to outline an example of what a typical Destiny player’s experience might be.

Beginning in the “safe zone,” a player would start out from their in-game home and walk into a large common area. From here, the player would be able to explore their surroundings and meet up with friends. Then, they might board their starships and fly to another planet, let’s say Mars, in order to raid territory held by aliens.

During this raid, other real players who traveled to the same zone (like visiting a particular server on an MMO) would be free to come and go as they please. For example, a random participant could simply walk on by. They could stop and observe. Or they could get involved in the fight. In this instance, Staten suggested that a passerby would join the raid and then break off from the group after the spoils were divvied up without any user interface elements to fuss with. Walk away, and it’s done.

Bungie made a point of saying several times over that Destiny will not have any “lobby”-type interfaces, or menus from which to choose from a list of quests. Instead, players will simply immerse themselves in the world and organically choose to participate in whatever activities they stumble upon. Bungie promised solo content, cooperative content, and competitive content, though it provided no further examples of these.

The developer said that by employing very specialized artificial intelligence working entirely behind the scenes, players will encounter other real players who are best suited for them to interact with, based on their experience levels and other factors.

Staten didn’t say how many players would be able to exist in the world at the same time, but said that characters will be placed in proximity to each other based on very specific criteria, not simply to “fill the world up.”

Bungie showed off three distinct character classes throughout the day’s presentations: Hunter, Titan and Warlock. Although no differences were outlined between them apart from the Warlock being able to use a kind of techno-magic, the developer was keen to emphasize the idea that each character in Destiny would be highly customized and unique, and will grow with the player over an extended period of time.

While many games make the same promise, Destiny’s vision of “an extended period of time” isn’t 100 hours. It’s more like 10 years.

Bungie’s plan is for the Destiny story to unfold gradually over the course of 10 “books,” each with a beginning, middle and end. Through this will run an overarching story intended to span the entire decade’s worth of games, although like many other topics covered during the day, Bungie gave little detail about how this will work.

The developer spent a lot of time emphasizing its claim that no game has been made at this scale before. Bungie says it has a whopping 350 in-house developers working on Destiny.

Senior graphics architect Hao Chen gave examples of the sort of impenetrable mathematics formulas that allow Bungie to craft environments and worlds at a speed that it claims was previously impossible.

Bungie’s malleable team system was also said to increase its output. With the ability to co-locate designers, artists, and engineers at any time, Bungie says it can go through exceptionally rapid on-the-spot iteration and improvement for each facet of the game.

Apart from highly improved technology and the basic concept of humanity taking back the solar system, there’s just not a lot of hard information on Destiny at the moment. One thing that was made quite clear is that the game will not be subscription-based. Every presenter was clear in stating that players will not pay a monthly fee to participate in this persistent world.

While fees may not be required, a constant connection to the Internet will be. Since the core concept of Destiny is exploring a world that exists outside of the player’s console and is populated by real people at all times, it “will need to be connected in order for someone to play,” said Bungie chief operating officer Pete Parsons.

Representatives from both Bungie and Activision gave vague answers when Wired pressed for further details, often stating that they “were not ready” to discuss specifics. Whether that means those things are still being kept from the press, or whether they have not yet been determined by the development team, was unclear.

Questions currently unanswered: How will players communicate? How will players interact with each other outside of combat? What content exists in the non-combat “safe zones”? Subscriptions may be out, but what about in-app purchases? Will player versus player combat be available? Will the game ship on a disc or be download only? Will its persistent world allow Xbox and PlayStation gamers to play together? What content and interactions will be possible via smartphones and tablets (which Bungie alluded to)? Will the fancy new tools be licensed to other developers?

And so on.

For now, Bungie is asking us to take it for granted that it will execute on a bold 10-year plan for a very different sort of shooter. In the history of the always-changing gaming industry, no one’s ever been able to pull off a 10-year plan for anything. Can Bungie do it?

Hey… they made Halo, right?

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Discovery bets on 2 dope series about pot growers

NEW YORK (AP) — Cupcake makers, pawnbrokers and storage container raiders have all had their moments in reality television’s spotlight. Now the time may be right for marijuana growers — and the people who chase them.

The Discovery network debuts a six-episode series, “Weed Country,” at 10 p.m. Wednesday and will replace it with “Pot Cops” in April. Both examine the marijuana trade in northern California.

It fits Discovery’s efforts to introduce interesting subcultures to viewers, said Nancy Daniels, the network’s executive vice president for production and development on the West Coast. Discovery tried a series about a medical marijuana dispensary in Oakland two years ago, “Weed Wars,” and is sticking with dope even though the show didn’t do very well in the ratings.

“We still think it’s an interesting world and maybe we didn’t tap into the right part of it,” Daniels said.

Based on its first episode, “Weed Country” is a nuanced effort at giving equal time to both sides of the issue. Producers find colorful growers who use science to make the best product possible. They don’t believe what they are doing is wrong. “We’re flying the flag of civil disobedience,” one grower said.

The growers may be trying to dodge the law, but don’t hesitate to open up different facets of their business to television cameras.

At the same time, “Weed Country” shows the challenges faced by law enforcement. It follows one group’s careful training for backwoods missions to find farms guarded by growers who are armed and intent upon protecting their crops.

“It surprised me with how deep and complex it was,” Daniels said.

The show does have some distracting reality TV contrivances. Before one commercial break, a grower making a late-night delivery to a customer becomes suspicious of a van that ominously pulls out behind him on a dark road. After the break, the van drives innocently by. At another point, producers lead you to believe the grower is about to be pulled over by police when, after a commercial, it becomes clear the officer is going after someone else.

The “Pot Cops” series will be told from the point of view of law enforcement, after producers reached an agreement for access to officers hunting down marijuana farms in California’s Humboldt County.

Discovery had planned to air the two programs back-to-back on the same night and promote it as “Weed Wednesday” on the network. But those plans were dropped because unrelated programming expected to be available this spring had fallen through and Discovery needed “Pot Cops” to fill a hole on its schedule in April.

The change had nothing to do with feeling cold feet about a “Weed Wednesday” promotion, Daniels said.

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Cuomo Bucks Tide With Bill to Lift Abortion Limits

ALBANY — Bucking a trend in which states have been seeking to restrict abortion, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is putting the finishing touches on legislation that would guarantee women in New York the right to late-term abortions when their health is in danger or the fetus is not viable.

Mr. Cuomo, seeking to deliver on a promise he made in his recent State of the State address, would rewrite a law that currently allows abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy only if the pregnant woman’s life is at risk. The law is not enforced, because it is superseded by federal court rulings that allow late-term abortions to protect a woman’s health, even if her life is not in jeopardy. But abortion rights advocates say the existence of the more restrictive state law has a chilling effect on some doctors and prompts some women to leave the state for late-term abortions.

Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, which has not yet been made public, would also clarify that licensed health care practitioners, and not only physicians, can perform abortions. It would remove abortion from the state’s penal law and regulate it through the state’s public health law.

Abortion rights advocates have welcomed Mr. Cuomo’s plan, which he outlined in general terms as part of a broader package of women’s rights initiatives in his State of the State address in January. But the Roman Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups are dismayed; opponents have labeled the legislation the Abortion Expansion Act.

The prospects for Mr. Cuomo’s effort are uncertain. The State Assembly is controlled by Democrats who support abortion rights; the Senate is more difficult to predict because this year it is controlled by a coalition of Republicans who have tended to oppose new abortion rights laws and breakaway Democrats who support abortion rights.

New York legalized abortion in 1970, three years before it was legalized nationally by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would update the state law so that it could stand alone if the broader federal standard set by Roe were to be undone.

“Why are we doing this? The Supreme Court could change,” said a senior Cuomo administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the governor had not formally introduced his proposal.

But opponents of abortion rights, already upset at the high rate of abortions in New York State, worry that rewriting the abortion law would encourage an even greater number of abortions. For example, they suggest that the provision to allow abortions late in a woman’s pregnancy for health reasons could be used as a loophole to allow unchecked late-term abortions.

“I am hard pressed to think of a piece of legislation that is less needed or more harmful than this one,” the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, wrote in a letter to Mr. Cuomo last month. Referring to Albany lawmakers in a subsequent column, he added, “It’s as though, in their minds, our state motto, ‘Excelsior’ (‘Ever Upward’), applies to the abortion rate.”

National abortion rights groups have sought for years to persuade state legislatures to adopt laws guaranteeing abortion rights as a backup to Roe. But they have had limited success: Only seven states have such measures in place, including California, Connecticut and Maryland; the most recent state to adopt such a law is Hawaii, which did so in 2006.

“Pretty much all of the energy, all of the momentum, has been to restrict abortion, which makes what could potentially happen in New York so interesting,” said Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. “There’s no other state that’s even contemplating this right now.”

In most statehouses, the push by lawmakers has been in the opposite direction. The past two years has seen more provisions adopted at the state level to restrict abortion rights than in any two-year period in decades, according to the Guttmacher Institute; last year, 19 states adopted 43 new provisions restricting abortion access, while not a single significant measure was adopted to expand access to abortion or to comprehensive sex education.

“It’s an extraordinary moment in terms of the degree to which there is government interference in a woman’s ability to make these basic health care decisions,” said Andrea Miller, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice New York. “For New York to be able to send a signal, a hopeful sign, a sense of the turning of the tide, we think is really important.”

Abortion rights advocates say that even though the Roe decision supersedes state law, some doctors are hesitant to perform late-term abortions when a woman’s health is at risk because the criminal statutes remain on the books.

“Doctors and hospitals shouldn’t be reading criminal laws to determine what types of health services they can offer and provide to their patients,” said M. Tracey Brooks, the president of Family Planning Advocates of New York State.

For Mr. Cuomo, the debate over passing a new abortion law presents an opportunity to appeal to women as well as to liberals, who have sought action in Albany without success since Eliot Spitzer made a similar proposal when he was governor. But it also poses a challenge to the coalition of Republicans and a few Democrats that controls the State Senate, the chamber that has in the past stood as the primary obstacle to passing abortion legislation in the capital.

The governor has said that his Reproductive Health Act would be one plank of a 10-part Women’s Equality Act that also would include equal pay and anti-discrimination provisions. Conservative groups, still stinging from the willingness of Republican lawmakers to go along with Mr. Cuomo’s push to legalize same-sex marriage in 2011, are mobilizing against the proposal. Seven thousand New Yorkers who oppose the measure have sent messages to Mr. Cuomo and legislators via the Web site of the New York State Catholic Conference.

A number of anti-abortion groups have also formed a coalition called New Yorkers for Life, which is seeking to rally opposition to the governor’s proposal using social media.

“If you ask anyone on the street, ‘Is there enough abortion in New York?’ no one in their right mind would say we need more abortion,” said the Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which is part of the coalition.

Members of both parties say that the issue of reproductive rights was a significant one in November’s legislative elections. Democrats, who were bolstered by an independent expenditure campaign by NARAL, credit their victories in several key Senate races in part to their pledge to fight for legislation similar to what Mr. Cuomo is planning to propose.

Republicans, who make up most of the coalition that controls the Senate, have generally opposed new abortion rights measures. Speaking with reporters recently, the leader of the Republicans, Dean G. Skelos of Long Island, strenuously objected to rewriting the state’s abortion laws, especially in a manner similar to what the governor is seeking.

“You could have an abortion up until the day the child would be born, and I think that’s just wrong,” Mr. Skelos said. He suggested that the entire debate was unnecessary, noting that abortion is legal in New York State and saying that is “not going to be changed.”

The Senate Democratic leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, who is the sponsor of a bill that is similar to the legislation the governor is drafting, said she was optimistic that an abortion measure would reach the Senate floor this year.

“New York State’s abortion laws were passed in 1970 in a bipartisan fashion,” she said. “It would be a sad commentary that over 40 years later we could not manage to do the same thing.”

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Deasy wants 30% of teacher evaluations based on test scores

L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy announced Friday that as much as 30% of a teacher's evaluation will be based on student test scores, setting off more contention in the nation's second-largest school system in the weeks before a critical Board of Education election.

Leaders of the teachers union have insisted that there should be no fixed percentage or expectation for how much standardized tests should count — and that test results should serve almost entirely as just one measure to improve instruction. Deasy, in contrast, has insisted that test scores should play a significant role in a teacher's evaluation and that poor scores could contribute directly to dismissal.

In a Friday memo explaining the evaluation process, Deasy set 30% as the goal and the maximum for how much test scores and other data should count.

In an interview, he emphasized that the underlying thrust is to develop an evaluation that improves the teaching corps and that data is part of the effort.

"The public has been demanding a better evaluation system for at least a decade. And teachers have repeatedly said to me what they need is a balanced way forward to help them get better and help them be accountable," Deasy said. "We do this for students every day. Now it's time to do this for teachers."

Deasy also reiterated that test scores would not be a "primary or controlling" factor in an evaluation, in keeping with the language of an agreement reached in December between L.A. Unified and its teachers union. Classroom observations and other factors also are part of the evaluation process.

But United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher expressed immediate concern about Deasy's move. During negotiations, he said, the superintendent had proposed allotting 30% to test scores but the union rejected the plan. Deasy then pulled the idea off the table, which allowed the two sides to come to an agreement, Fletcher said. Teachers approved the pact last month.

"To see this percentage now being floated again is unacceptable," the union said in a statement.

Fletcher described the pact as allowing flexibility for principals, in collaboration with teachers, first to set individual goals and then to look at various measures to determine student achievement and overall teacher performance.

"The superintendent doesn't get to sign binding agreements and then pretend they're not binding," Fletcher said.

When Deasy settled on 30%, his decision was in line with research findings of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has examined teacher quality issues across the country. Some experts have challenged that work.

The test score component would include a rating for the school based on an analysis of all students' standardized test scores. Those "value-added" formulas, known within L.A. Unified as Academic Growth Over Time, can be used to rate a school or a teacher's effectiveness by comparing students' test scores with past performance. The method takes into account such factors as family income and ethnicity.

After an aggressive push by the Obama administration, individual value-added ratings for teachers have been added to reviews in many districts. They make up 40% of evaluations in Washington, D.C., 35% in Tennessee and 30% in Chicago.

But Los Angeles will use a different approach. The district will rely on raw test scores. A teacher's evaluation also may incorporate pass rates on the high school exit exam and graduation, attendance and suspension data.

Deasy's action was met Friday with reactions ranging from guarded to enthusiastic approval within a coalition of outside groups that have pushed for a new evaluation system. This coalition also has sought to counter union influence.

Elise Buik, chief executive of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, said weighing test scores 30% "is a reasonable number that everyone can be happy with."

The union and the district were under pressure to include student test data in evaluations after L.A. County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant ruled last year that the system was violating state law by not using test scores in teacher performance reviews.

A lawsuit to enforce the law was brought by parents in Los Angeles, with support from the Sacramento-based EdVoice advocacy organization.

If the "actual progress" of students is taken into account under Deasy's plan, "it's a historic day for LAUSD," said Bill Lucia, the group's chief executive.

All of this is playing out against the backdrop of the upcoming March 5 election. The campaign for three school board seats has turned substantially into a contest between candidates who strongly back Deasy's policies and those more sympathetic toward the teachers union. Deasy supporters praise the superintendent for measures they say will improve the quality of teaching. The union has faulted Deasy for limiting job protections and said he has imposed unwise or unproven reforms.

In the upcoming election, the union and pro-Deasy forces are matched head to head in District 4, with several employee unions behind incumbent Steve Zimmer and a coalition of donors behind challenger Kate Anderson.

Anderson had high praise for Deasy's directive, saying it struck the right balance and that teachers and students would benefit.

Zimmer said that although he understands that principals need guidance, "I worry about anything that would cause resistance or delay in going forward. I hope this use of a percentage won't disrupt what had been a collaborative process."

howard.blume@latimes.com

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The Quirky World of Competitive Snow Carving Comes to California

Team Truckee entered the competition late, after Team Russia was unable to get visas in time. Their sculpture: "Rising Tide."

The weekend at Northstar ski resort in Truckee, California, is beautiful, sunny, and in the 30s. For eight teams of snow carvers from around the world, though, it’s terrible — the melty snow is sloppy, hard to carve, and even dangerous.

Teams of three from Finland, Japan, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. were selected from more than 40 applicants for the inaugural Carve Tahoe, a five-day competition to hew works of art from 14-foot-high, 20-ton blocks of snow. But despite the bad snow, the teams rely on decades of experience, handcrafted tools, and creative techniques to fashion their massive sculptures. The team members are sculptors and artists and designers, but also doctors and lawyers. Though they spend weeks each year carving, nobody makes a living doing it.

“Everyone seems to have their own method of doing things,” says Team Wisconsin’s Mark Hargarten. “It’s amazing how different they are.”

The Wisconsin team uses a grid system for their carving — a Native American wearing an eagle costume, its feathers turning to flames, called “Dance of the Firebird.” The polyurethane model they built is scaled so 1/2 inch equals one foot on the finished snow sculpture. They cut a copy of the model in four, and covered each section with clay, sectioned in 1/2 inch increments. They etch corresponding lines in the snow, one foot to a side, and they peel off one piece of clay, carve the part of the sculpture they can see, and move on to the next.

“You never get lost using the method,” says Dan Ingebrigtson, a professional sculptor from Milwaukee. “Three or four guys can work from different angles, and meet in the middle.”

Wisconsin’s got several other strategies behind their carving as well. From the south, it looks like they haven’t even started; they left the southern side of the block intact to protect the rest of it from the sun, and the wall has been decimated by the heat. More than 20 percent of its thickness has melted by Sunday night, three days in. After the sun goes down, the team is hollowing out the interior of the structure, so it will freeze faster overnight.

Other teams are relying on nighttime freezing as well. A team partly from the U.S. and partly from Canada carves spires from blocks they removed from the sculpture, and plans to attach them to the top of their sculpture, “The Stand,” which incorporates four interwoven trees. They’ll use melty snow pulled from the middle of the block right when the sun goes down to cement the tops onto the trees, says team member Bob Fulks from the top of a stepladder as he cuts away at the sculpture with an ice chisel.

Fulks’ team is leaving Tahoe after the competition to go straight to Whitehorse, in the Yukon, for another competition, where he anticipates no problems with warm weather.

“It’s a good gig, you can travel all over the world doing it,” he says. “You go around and see the same people.”

Many of the carvers know each other from previous competitions.

“We’ve sculpted with almost everybody here before,” says Team Idaho-Dunham’s Mariah Dunham, who is working on “Sweet House (of Madness)” with her mother, Barb. The creation is a beehive, with the south side as the exterior, and the north side (intentionally placed out of the sun) as a representation of the comb, including hexagonal holds that perforate all the way to the hollow interior.

Though Carve Tahoe is new, snow carving is not. Many of the sculptors have been at it for more than 20 years, traveling around the world and meeting and competing against many of the same people — though each competition demands unique new designs from all the sculptors. Kathryn Keown discovered snow carving while Googling something completely different, and decided she wanted to host an international event.

“First we fell in love with the sculptures, then we fell in love with the sculptors,” says Keown, who founded the competition with Hub Strategy, the ad agency where she works.

Keown contacted several ski areas before Northstar, but the resort was on board right away; its owner, Vail Resorts also owns Breckenridge, where one of the biggest and most prestigious snow carving competitions is held.

But Keown wanted to commit to the design of the competition, not just the sculptures. Applicants submitted their designs last summer, and Keown enlisted Lawrence Noble, chair of the School of Fine Art at the Academy of Art University to help choose modern, complex, realist designs. She wanted no artsy, kitschy snowmen.

Then she chose a design-friendly logo and judges. In addition to Noble, the panel of judges features a sushi chef from Northstar, two interior designers, a photographer from nearby Squaw Valley, and Bryan Hyneck, vice president of design at Speck, which makes cases for mobile devices and was one of the event’s sponsors.

“The level of complexity and sophistication in this type of sculpture is just amazing,” says Hyneck, who has judged industrial and graphic design competitions, but never snow carving. “It’s amazing how organic some of the shapes can be.”

As a judge, Hyneck says he’ll focus on the craft and the execution of the sculptures, and how the sculptors use particular techniques to take advantage of the snow’s properties. But he adds that subject matter, point of view, message, and relationship to a theme are all important points as well.

“Anybody that is really going to push the limits of the capabilities of the media is going to get a lot of my attention,” he says.

For some, like the Germans, that means suspending massive structures made completely of snow. Their sculpture, titled “Four Elements”, features four large spires encircled by a tilted disc. Despite a trickle of melted snow dripping off the bottom edge, one — or even two — of the German carvers frequently stand atop the sculpture, using saws or chisels to shape the towers.

Sunday evening, after the sun has gone down and the temperature dropped, Josh Knaggs, bearded, with a cigarette in his mouth, is sitting in the curve made by the largest bear from the Team Idaho-Bonner’s Ferry sculpture, “Endangered Bears.” Wearing a blue event-issued jacket, he’s brushing out the hollow loop made by mama and papa bear.

Three days later, the judges award Knaggs and his team third prize, with Japan’s modern work, “Heart to Heart” coming in second and Germany’s gravity-defying “Four Elements” taking first. The teams disperse, and after a few more sunny days, Northstar tears down the structures before they get too soft and fall — all except the German piece, which can’t bear its own weight and collapses after judging is complete. But the ephemeral nature of the snow is part of what attracts the competitors.

“It’s for the moment, and it’s a beauty all in itself, creating something that’s gonna be disappearing, you know, it’s okay that it disappears,” says Team Truckee’s Ira Kessler. “We are making it for the moment.”

All Photos: Bryan Thayer/Speck

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Epic regrets Lil Wayne lyric about slain civil rights figure

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Epic Records has apologized to the family of Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder spurred the U.S. civil rights movement, over a graphic reference by rapper Lil Wayne and promised to delete the lyrics upon its release, the company said on Thursday.

Epic Chairman L.A. Reid told the family it was regretful that a remix of the song “Karate Chop” by rapper Future, in which Lil Wayne likens the beating of African-American Till to sex, had been leaked on the Internet.

“He (Reid) apologized to me and our family and stated the song is being pulled,” said a post on the Facebook page of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation on Wednesday. Mobley, who died in 2003, was Till’s mother.

The song reportedly first appeared online over the weekend.

“Mr. Reid stated the song was leaked out and he had not heard the lyric,” the statement added. “He is a man of integrity that values our family’s legacy and wouldn’t allow such a heinous usage of Emmett Till’s name or dishonor his memory.”

The foundation, which was founded by Till’s cousin Airickca Gordon-Taylor, said that it had yet to hear from Lil Wayne.

Reid, an African American, is one of the music industry’s highest-profile executives and was a judge on the Fox singing competition “The X Factor” for two seasons.

Till, from Chicago, was beaten and murdered in 1955 at the age of 14 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the village of Money, Mississippi, where he was visiting family.

An all-white jury acquitted two white men of Till’s murder, sparking national outrage. The trial is credited with mobilizing the civil rights movement and drawing attention to racial injustice and violence in the American South.

Epic Records called the song an “unauthorized remix” and promised to delete the reference from the official version.

“Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version,” the record company said in a statement.

Epic Records is owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a division of Sony Corp.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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Livestrong Tattoos as Reminder of Personal Connections, Not Tarnished Brand

As Jax Mariash went under the tattoo needle to have “Livestrong” emblazoned on her wrist in bold black letters, she did not think about Lance Armstrong or doping allegations, but rather the 10 people affected by cancer she wanted to commemorate in ink. It was Jan. 22, 2010, exactly a year since the disease had taken the life of her stepfather. After years of wearing yellow Livestrong wristbands, she wanted something permanent.

A lifelong runner, Mariash got the tattoo to mark her 10-10-10 goal to run the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2010, and fund-raising efforts for Livestrong. Less than three years later, antidoping officials laid out their case against Armstrong — a lengthy account of his practice of doping and bullying. He did not contest the charges and was barred for life from competing in Olympic sports.

“It’s heartbreaking,” Mariash, of Wilson, Wyo., said of the antidoping officials’ report, released in October, and Armstrong’s subsequent confession to Oprah Winfrey. “When I look at the tattoo now, I just think of living strong, and it’s more connected to the cancer fight and optimal health than Lance.”

Mariash is among those dealing with the fallout from Armstrong’s descent. She is not alone in having Livestrong permanently emblazoned on her skin.

Now the tattoos are a complicated, internationally recognized symbol of both an epic crusade against cancer and a cyclist who stood defiant in the face of accusations for years but ultimately admitted to lying.

The Internet abounds with epidermal reminders of the power of the Armstrong and Livestrong brands: the iconic yellow bracelet permanently wrapped around a wrist; block letters stretching along a rib cage; a heart on a foot bearing the word Livestrong; a mural on a back depicting Armstrong with the years of his now-stripped seven Tour de France victories and the phrase “ride with pride.”

While history has provided numerous examples of ill-fated tattoos to commemorate lovers, sports teams, gang membership and bands that break up, the Livestrong image is a complex one, said Michael Atkinson, a sociologist at the University of Toronto who has studied tattoos.

“People often regret the pop culture tattoos, the mass commodified tattoos,” said Atkinson, who has a Guns N’ Roses tattoo as a marker of his younger days. “A lot of people can’t divorce the movement from Lance Armstrong, and the Livestrong movement is a social movement. It’s very real and visceral and embodied in narrative survivorship. But we’re still not at a place where we look at a tattoo on the body and say that it’s a meaningful thing to someone.”

Geoff Livingston, a 40-year-old marketing professional in Washington, D.C., said that since Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey, he has received taunts on Twitter and inquiries at the gym regarding the yellow Livestrong armband tattoo that curls around his right bicep.

“People see it and go, ‘Wow,’ ” he said, “But I’m not going to get rid of it, and I’m not going to stop wearing short sleeves because of it. It’s about my family, not Lance Armstrong.”

Livingston got the tattoo in 2010 to commemorate his brother-in-law, who was told he had cancer and embarked on a fund-raising campaign for the charity. If he could raise $5,000, he agreed to get a tattoo. Within four days, the goal was exceeded, and Livingston went to a tattoo parlor to get his seventh tattoo.

“It’s actually grown in emotional significance for me,” Livingston said of the tattoo. “It brought me closer to my sister. It was a big statement of support.”

For Eddie Bonds, co-owner of Rabbit Bicycle in Hill City, S.D., getting a Livestrong tattoo was also a reflection of the growth of the sport of cycling. His wife, Joey, operates a tattoo parlor in front of their store, and in 2006 she designed a yellow Livestrong band that wraps around his right calf, topped off with a series of small cyclists.

“He kept breaking the Livestrong bands,” Joey Bonds said. “So it made more sense to tattoo it on him.”

“It’s about the cancer, not Lance,” Eddie Bonds said.

That was also the case for Jeremy Nienhouse, a 37-year old in Denver, Colo., who used a Livestrong tattoo to commemorate his own triumph over testicular cancer.

Given the diagnosis in 2004, Nienhouse had three rounds of chemotherapy, which ended on March 15, 2005, the date he had tattooed on his left arm the day after his five-year anniversary of being cancer free in 2010. It reads: “3-15-05” and “LIVESTRONG” on the image of a yellow band.

Nienhouse said he had heard about Livestrong and Armstrong’s own battle with the cancer around the time he learned he had cancer, which alerted him to the fact that even though he was young and healthy, he, too, could have cancer.

“On a personal level,” Nienhouse said, “he sounds like kind of a jerk. But if he hadn’t been in the public eye, I don’t know if I would have been diagnosed when I had been.”

Nienhouse said he had no plans to have the tattoo removed.

As for Mariash, she said she read every page of the antidoping officials’ report. She soon donated her Livestrong shirts, shorts and running gear. She watched Armstrong’s confession to Winfrey and wondered if his apology was an effort to reduce his ban from the sport or a genuine appeal to those who showed their support to him and now wear a visible sign of it.

“People called me ‘Miss Livestrong,’ ” Mariash said. “It was part of my identity.”

She also said she did not plan to have her tattoo removed.

“I wanted to show it’s forever,” she said. “Cancer isn’t something that just goes away from people. I wanted to show this is permanent and keep people remembering the fight.”

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'Blade Runner' Oscar Pistorius weeps as he faces murder charge

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee revered in South Africa for overcoming his disability to compete in the London Games last year, wept in court Friday as he faced a murder charge in connection with the fatal shooting of his girlfriend.

During the proceedings in Pretoria, Gerrie Nel, one of the National Prosecuting Authority’s most senior advocates, said he would argue the killing of model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp was premeditated murder, the most serious category of offense under South African law.

Nel is known for prosecuting high-profile cases, including winning the conviction of former police chief and Interpol boss Jackie Selebi on corruption charges.

Pistorius, nicknamed the "Blade Runner" because of the carbon-fiber prosthetic legs he uses to compete, did not enter a formal plea and was remanded into custody at Brooklyn police station in Pretoria until Tuesday, when his bail application is to be heard.

Under South African law, a suspect charged with such a high-level offense would have to prove exceptional circumstances to be granted bail.

In a packed courtroom, members of Pistorius' family struggled to pass through a media scrum and to find seats. The hearing coincided with "Black Friday," a day when people were being urged to wear black to protest rapes and violence against women.

[Updated, 8:35 a.m. Feb. 15: The family and Pistorius' management company later issued a statement denying that the athlete had murdered his girlfriend, saying: "The alleged murder is disputed in the strongest possible terms."

Some details of Pistorius' argument and the state's case are expected Tuesday.]

The famed athlete's court appearance came as South African media reported that he shot Steenkamp, his girlfriend of several months, four times through a bathroom door.

Under South African law, a person who fatally shoots an intruder has to prove he or she had a reasonable fear that the intruder posed a real threat to his or her life.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of gun homicides in the world, with killings of women by intimate partners the leading cause of female homicide in the country. About 57% of female homicide victims were killed by their partners in 2009, according to a report last year by the Medical Research Council.

One-third of female homicides were committed by partners with a history of prior violence against their partners, according to the report.

Friends of Steenkamp and Pistorius mourned the incident on social media.

"Drained, confused, I just can't wrap my head around things," one of Pistorius’ close friends, Alex Pilakoutas, posted on Twitter.

Darren Fresco, who described himself as one of Steenkamp’s best friends said he was hoping to wake from a nightmare and hear her infectious laughter again.

"We were just goofing off the other day talking to each other in only the way that we could to each other. My heart is on the verge of exploding with the pain of such a sudden loss of one of my best friends," Fresco, who said he was one of the last people to exchange tweets with Steenkamp, posted on Facebook.

ALSO:

Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge

Mexico finds fire-god figure at top of Pyramid of the Sun

Iranian general reportedly assassinated while traveling from Syria

robyn.dixon@latimes.com

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Odds of Death by Asteroid? Lower Than Plane Crash, Higher Than Lightning

Most people in the U.S. woke up to a spectacular sight this morning: videos from Russian dashboard cameras showing a fireball in the sky crashing down to the Earth. The 15-meter meteorite impacted the atmosphere and exploded above the Chelyabinsk region of central Russia, injuring an estimated 1,200 people and causing roughly 1 billion rubles ($33 million U.S.) in damage. It was the largest meteorite to hit the country in more than a century.

It’s hard to know what’s stranger about the event. That a substantial meteorite hit the Earth on the same day as a 50-meter asteroid is making a record-breaking (and completely safe) close pass, that people have been thinking more and more about how to deflect potentially killer space rocks, or that we live in a day and age when dozens of videos of a fairly rare event can be uploaded to the internet and instantly seen worldwide.

While rocks raining from space are scary and there is no way to completely eliminate their threat, they are also thankfully sporadic. Your odds of getting killed by a meteorite are roughly 1 in 250,000. You are far more likely to die in an earthquake, tornado, flood, airplane crash, or car crash (but less likely to be killed by lightning). Most asteroids burn up in the atmosphere long before they hit the ground and the few that do will probably hit open ocean or a remote part of the Earth rather than your head.

Throughout its 4-billion-year history, the Earth has been hit by millions of asteroids, many over 1 kilometer in diameter and capable of widespread havoc. Because of the constant churning of the Earth’s mantle that devours old crust, only about 160 surviving impact craters remain on the planet’s surface. But most of these asteroids hit early in our planet’s history, when the solar system was young and rogue space rocks far more common. These days, very large impacts are not expected to happen more than once every few million years.

• Asteroid Size


• Frequency


• Damage Potential

• 1 micron


• Every 30 microseconds


• Burns up in atmosphere

• 1 millimeter


• Every 30 seconds


• Burns up in atmosphere

• 1 meter


• Every year


• Tiny burst in air, no piece reaches ground

• 10 meters


• Every 10 years


• Moderate burst in air, some fragments may reach ground. The bolide that hit Russia on Feb. 15 was estimated to be 15 meters across.

• 100 meters


• Every 1,000 years


• Enormous burst in air, leveling large area, equivalent to a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. Tunguska impact that hit a remote part of Russia in 1908 was one of these.

• 10 kilometers


• Every 100 million years


• Gigantic planet-wide destruction, mass extinction, enormous crater. The Chicxulub impactor that killed the dinosaurs was one of these.

The other good news is that modern humans are looking out for potentially hazardous asteroids. NASA’s Near Earth Object program has a risk table for all known objects that calculates their likelihood of impact for the next 100 years. Asteroids are plotted on the Torino Scale, which runs from 1 to 10 to assess the menace we face from any asteroid. Currently, nothing on the table is above a 1, which means it poses no level of danger and an impact is calculated as extremely unlikely. With new private outfits like the B612 Foundation hoping to launch a dedicated telescope to discover 90 percent of all asteroids more than 30-meters in diameter, humanity is on the case.

Adam is a Wired Science staff writer. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

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Follow @adamspacemann on Twitter.

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