Everybody hates wires, but if you want crazy speed, they're the way to go. But maybe not anymore. A team of German scientists have developed record-setting Wi-Fi that cooks right along at 100 Gigabits per second. You know, like Google Fiber but times 100.
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The name of Washington's football team has been hotly debated: criticized for being a racial slur but defended but the team's owner as actually being a kind of tribute to Native Americans. Host Scott Simon talks to Forbes senior editor Kurt Badenhausen about the economics of the Washington Redskins brand.
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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Washington, D.C.'s football team has been under increasing criticism for keeping an old team name that's a racial epithet. I usually don't say it. I will now - for the purposes of information. The Washington Redskins. That name's been hotly debated, criticized for being a racial slur, but defended by the team's owners as actually being a kind of tribute to Native Americans.
As the moral argument goes on, there's another question. How much is a team name worth in modern sports? We're joined now by Kurt Badenhausen, senior editor at Forbes Magazine. Thanks very much for being with us.
KURT BADENHAUSEN: Thanks for having me on today.
SIMON: Your magazine consistently puts the Washington franchise as one of the most valuable in the world, even though they lose so much they're often called the Deadskins. What makes them so valuable?
BADENHAUSEN: It's really the revenue that the team generates. By our count they're the third-most valuable franchise in the NFL, worth $1.6 billion and the eighth-most valuable franchise in the world behind a handful of soccer clubs as well as teams like the Yankees and Dodgers. And it's really, it's people coming to the stadium, sponsorship revenues are among the highest in the NFL. And that's what's really driving the Redskins' value.
SIMON: Is there any reason to think that the name enhances the value?
BADENHAUSEN: I don't think it enhances the value. We assign a value to the brands of the various teams and there the Redskins are the third-most valuable too, behind the Cowboys and Patriots, with a brand worth $131 million. That is really wrapped up in the history of the franchise as well as the premium that tickets, as well as rights fees for TV and radio command for the Redskins.
SIMON: Would the Redskins make even more money if they changed the name and logo to something like the Washington Shutdown, and forced millions of fans to buy new sweatshirts and puffy fingers?
BADENHAUSEN: It's really not a big financial move for the Redskins in terms of adding revenue because merchandize revenue that is bought outside of the stadium is split amongst the NFL teams evenly, 32 ways. So if you walk into a Modell's and buy a Redskins jersey, they get 1/32nd of that.
SIMON: Is there anything to be learned from Washington, D.C.'s professional basketball team? It used to be the Bullets, and Abe Pollin and the owner thought that's a little awkward with the murder rate so high, so they changed the name to Wizards. They still lose, but did it enhance the franchise or not?
BADENHAUSEN: I don't think it enhanced the franchise and it didn't hurt the franchise. If the Redskins are going to go ahead and change the name, you're going to have some hardcore fans that are going to be put off by the situation. But are those guys not going to go the stadium anymore? I don't think the Redskin name is driving any of the value of the franchise.
SIMON: Kurt Badenhausen, senior editor at Forbes Magazine. Thanks so much.
BADENHAUSEN: Thanks for having me on.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE REDSKINS SONG)
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Singing) Hail to the Redskins, hail to victory. Braves on the warpath fight for old D.C.
SIMON: This is NPR News.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
New Jersey will choose a new U.S. Senator Wednesday. Pundits thought Newark Mayor Cory Booker would win it easily, but the Democratic Party's rising star is facing a tougher than expected challenge from Tea Party Republican Steve Lonegan — a sign of the Tea Party's growing stature in deep blue New Jersey.
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ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
New Jersey voters head to the polls tomorrow to vote in a special election for U.S. Senate. The Democratic candidate is Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a rising star in his party. NPR profiled him last week. The Republican contender is Steve Lonegan, a conservative who supports the government shutdown. From member station WNYC, Janet Babin reports on how Lonegan is faring in a state with a traditionally moderate GOP.
JANET BABIN, BYLINE: Bergen County is just a short car ride from New York City, but it gets suburban pretty fast. And the recession hit hard here. This area is home to the New Jersey Tea Party Coalition, one of about a dozen similar groups that have cropped up across the state since 2008. I meet with coalition co-founder Michele Talamo and a handful of other members at a local park. Like most tea partiers, Talamo wants lower taxes, smaller government and has a visceral mistrust of the president.
MICHELE TALAMO: I became very anxious by the election of Barack Obama, coming into office and the transition, and then the stimulus that came into being.
BABIN: Another member, Ron Ellis(ph), explains why he's worried about the erosion of personal freedom.
RON ELLIS: Have you ever ridden in the back of a pick-up truck?
BABIN: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
ELLIS: Yeah? Well, you know, you're one of the few. You can't do that anymore because the government has gotten bigger and bigger and is telling us everything that we can and cannot do.
BABIN: These Tea Party members say they're supporting Steve Lonegan in New Jersey's special U.S. Senate election. And when the conservative Republican ran for governor of New Jersey against Chris Christie four and a half years ago, he sounded very much like the Tea Partier. Here's Lonegan at a gubernatorial campaign event, talking about the direction he believes the country was moving in.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED SPEECH)
STEVE LONEGAN: It's called socialism and a shift from our American way of life to a European socialism.
BABIN: But fast forward to the current campaign for U.S. Senate, and Lonegan is shying away from any formal association with the Tea Party. This has been hard to do, given that he recently headed up a group favored by the Tea Party. Professor Brigid Callahan Harrison at Montclair State University says Lonegan's solid, conservative credentials are a double-edge sword.
BRIGID CALLAHAN HARRISON: That background in the Tea Party in some ways is hurting him with more moderate Republicans.
BABIN: It also may be what's helping him. The race was predicted to be a blowout win for Democrat Cory Booker. And with a 10-point lead in one of the most recent polls, those predictions will likely come true. But Lonegan has been cutting down on Booker's big lead these past few days. Patrick Murray is director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute.
PATRICK MURRAY: Most voters say that Cory Booker's views are in line with the state of New Jersey, whereas Steve Lonegan's are not. But it's the sense that the Garden State voters feel that their vote may have been taken for granted.
BABIN: Murray says New Jersey voters perceive Booker as a candidate who craves the national spotlight, and Lonegan has taken advantage of that weakness. At a campaign even in Newark last month, Lonegan said he's bringing the GOP together.
LONEGAN: We have pro-gun support and not so pro-gun Republicans. We have pro-life Republicans, not so pro-life Republicans.
BABIN: Professor Callahan Harrison at Montclair State says Lonegan deserves credit for making the race competitive.
HARRISON: As Lonegan's numbers in the polls increase, it then signals other voters that maybe this guy actually has a shot and it's OK to say that you're going to support him.
BABIN: Despite the current groundswell, Lonegan may not be able to overcome the math. It's been 40 years since New Jerseyans have elected a GOP senator. But what better time for conservatives to throw a hail Mary pass than a Wednesday, in the middle of October, with turnout expected to hit a record low. For NPR News, I'm Janet Babin.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: This is NPR News.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.
NEW YORK (AP) — Little did Nico Muhly know when he composed "Two Boys" that the type of Internet deception he based the opera on would keep repeating over and over.
So when reports surfaced last winter that Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o was duped into an online relationship with a nonexistent woman, Muhly took notice.
"I was so happy," he said, "in a perverse way."
Then he explained how the Web had created such a tangled web.
"It wasn't just some sort of man and girl in the suburbs. So that to me was very satisfying," he added with a laugh, going on to cite the case of a physicist duped into smuggling cocaine while believing he was courting a bikini model.
"It happens to random people, to famous people, to really smart people, to educated people, to uneducated people. There's a real kind of egalitarian nature to deceit, you know what I mean?"
The work by the 32-year-old New Yorker receives its North American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night, a fictionalized account of a British teenager who used the Internet in an attempt to arrange his own murder in 2003. The first composition to reach the Met stage from the company's 7-year-old commissioning program with Lincoln Center Theater, "Two Boys" has been revised since its world premiere two years ago at the English National Opera.
Starring mezzo-soprano Alice Coote as Detective Anne Strawson and tenor Paul Appleby as Brian, a 16-year-old accused in the stabbing of a 13-year-old named Jake, "Two Boys" is a starkly contemporary piece.
Met General Manager Peter Gelb said the adult themes ruled out the opera from inclusion in the company's high-definition theater simulcasts.
"It's full of such darkness, such personally really upsetting things that I have to witness that, yeah, I feel very tired," Coote said. "There's a lot of sexual and emotional abuse going on in this piece."
Gelb first became aware of Muhly when he was an executive at Sony. They started talking soon after Muhly was a pianist for a workshop of what became Rufus Wainwright's "Prima Donna."
Muhly wrote the opera with librettist Craig Lucas in a method Mozart, Verdi and Wagner would be unfamiliar with. When he had drafts of music ready, he would email them to Lucas as PDF files. Muhly composes at home and on the road — and on Amtrak trains.
"The cafe car is the best," he said. "I find out in advance where it's going to be and then wait by the staircase in Penn Station."
Reviews at the original run were lukewarm. Rupert Christiansen wrote in The Telegraph that it was "a bit of a bore — dreary and earnest rather than moving and gripping, and smartly derivative rather than distinctively individual. Yet I wish that I could have heard it again before passing judgment."
Since the London premiere, they've switched the beginnings of the two acts to make the work more linear, created more of a backstory to the detective, added about 1½ minutes of music, inserted dancing to the online chat room choruses and made minor changes to the orchestration,
"I think most operas after their first performance get revised, since the beginning of time," Muhly said. "And others go through a period of heavy, heavy revision, and then you realize the first instance was right."
Gelb has instituted a commitment to contemporary operas at the Met since he took over as general manager in 2006, presenting the company premieres of John Adams' "Nixon in China," Thomas Ades' "The Tempest" and Philip Glass' "Satyagraha." Trying to fill its 3,800 seats, the Met has put up posters in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, erected signs in New York City subways and advertised on MTV's "Catfish: The TV Show," a reality program about Manti Te'o-style trickery in online dating.
"In general a piece that is completely unfamiliar to the audience is harder to sell, obviously, than a piece that is familiar," Gelb said.
For all the modern technology, Appleby says the emotions of the story are familiar. He compares it to plays of Shakespeare and the French dramatist Cyrano de Bergerac.
"A very, old traditional story about people trying to reach out and looking, longing for a connection or longing for love and not feeling comfortable expressing themselves," he called it.
Everyone involved describes "Two Boys" as troubling.
"This is written in such a way that it almost expresses the disjointedness of daily life that we all live," Coote said. "What has become of us as humanity when we're so dominated now by the Internet, by technology, as our lives are quite a lot of the time being lived within those realms?"
A NASA plan to launch the world's largest solar sail into space and unfurl it like a giant parasol has passed a major test as the mission moves closer to a planned January 2015 launch. Sunjammer mission successfully deployed part of its huge solar sail in a test on Sept. 30, revealing the craft should be ready to function successfully following its January 2015 launch.
The giant Sunjammer solar sail, cleared a successful design test that required the deploying beam to stretch a quarter of the sail completely open. Because the Sept. 30 test took place on Earth, gravity and atmosphere made conditions more challenging than they would be in the vacuum of space, the sail's designers said.
"If this test succeeded under these stressing conditions, we certainly anticipate it will work exceedingly well in space," Nathan Barnes, President of lead contractor L'Garde Inc, said in a statement.
When Sunjammer launches in 2015, it will be the largest solar sail ever flown. Covering an area of almost 13,000 square feet (1,200 square meters), the full sail will span approximately a third the length of a football field. Despite its size, the enormous sail will be only about five millionths of a meter thick, keeping its weight down to 70 pounds (31 kilograms).
The lightweight, reflective material will rely on the pressure generated by sunlight to maneuver it through space. Smaller sails at the end of each of four booms will act as rudders to help the craft navigate.
Sunjammer will monitor solar activity as it demonstrates the validity of relying solely on low-cost, propellantless solar winds for spacecraft navigation. Ultimately, Sunjammer could form a part of a fleet of solar sail crafts providing an early warning system for space weather. Other sun-powered craft could travel completely out of the solar system.
The successful deployment of Sunjammer's solar sail is a key step for the success of the mission.
"We are very pleased by these results, as they bring us one step closer to realizing NASA's vision of a propellantless spacecraft and introduce the exciting potential of solar sails to the world," L'Garde's Space Services CEO Charles Chafer said in the same statement.
Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.
LYON, France – Quentin Tarantino brought out the big guns – including Harvey Weinstein, Uma Thurman and Harvey Keitel – when he received the Prix Lumiere at the film festival here Friday night.
The Prix Lumiere, which has been awarded to Clint Eastwood, Milos Forman, Gerard Depardieu, and Ken Loach in the five years since its inception, was envisioned by Cannes and Lumiere film festivals head Thierry Fremaux to become the Nobel prize of filmmakers to honor their bodies of work.
At an exceptionally emotional tribute and award ceremony, which preceded a brief backstage government ceremony in which he was awarded the Commander of Arts and Letters by French culture minister Aurelie Filippetti, the director was honored by his longtime friends and creative collaborators.
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Tim Roth got the evening off to a bawdy start with a few well-placed swears, but the mood soon turned more sweet and serious as producers Lawrence Bender and Weinstein took the stage. The famously demanding Weinstein credited Tarantino for both of his businesses success.
"My first company, Miramax, was the house that Quentin built, and my second company, The Weinstein Company, is the house that Quentin saved," he said, showing an uncharacteristic soft spot when adding that Tarantino is "tough minded and tough, but really one of the most compassionate human beings I know."
Keitel, who took the stage next, was moved by Weinstein's words and grew teary as he began to talk about the director. "Damn, I'm not going to make it through this," he said when composing himself, before comparing his relationship with Tarantino to a great romance. "I always felt we were meant for each other and nothing could keep us apart. Maybe if he had been a woman we could have gotten married, had kids," he joked. "Working with Quentin is like reading a great novel or hearing a great symphony or piece of music -- it changes you. You don't know how, but it has."
With a barrage of superlatives that required Fremaux to translate from her "terribly" hand-written speech on the back of the day's program, Thurman declared: "For all your wildness, your work always has aspirations for justice, freedom from oppression, courage, and most of all love and passion."
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"You have been an explosion of dynamite in the art of cinema itself," she said, comparing him to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the namesake of the Nobel Prize. "You invented your own dynamite, your 'cinemite.' May your legacy be your fearlessness and the flicker of light projected through the darkness of a movie house forever be your fuse."
"I don't have words for how I feel -- probably one of the first times that has happened to me," said Tarantino. He credited the actors onstage for bringing his characters to life, and Bender and Weinstein for backing him and his dreams throughout his career.
"I have always thought of myself as a lone wolf, but always because I never really had a family, but these people are my family. Their affection and respect is all I ever want," he said, just before Thurman presented him with the award.
He thanked the roaring crowd, the city of Lyon - where film was invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1895 - and France as well. "Cinema is my religion and France is my Vatican," he said, causing much confusion in the crowd. "I probably just insulted you a little bit with that but it was the best example I could come up with."
"I don't know where I would be if the Lumiere brothers' mother and father had never met," he said. "Probably somewhere selling 'Royale with Cheese.' "
Take a whiff of those pears and peaches: All white wines have a citrus aroma, but some also emit tropical or more subtle fruit flavors, Richard Betts explains in his book.
Take a whiff of those pears and peaches: All white wines have a citrus aroma, but some also emit tropical or more subtle fruit flavors, Richard Betts explains in his book.
Knock wine off its pedestal. That's the goal of wine expert Richard Betts. And he has come up with a brilliant way to do it: a scratch n' sniff guide to the aromas and flavors of the wine world.
With beautiful illustrations from Wendy MacNaughton, the 10-page board book looks like it belongs with your kid's toys instead of next to The Joy of Cooking.
But don't let the playfulness fool you. There's some serious wine science in Bett's new book, The Essential Scratch and Sniff Guide to Becoming a Wine Expert.
The 10-page board book is as sweet to the nose as it to the eyes. But don't let the playfulness fool you: There's some serious wine science hidden in there.
From the peach and pineapple notes in a chardonnay to the burnt rubber and mushroom odors that plague some cheaper wines, Betts covers the wine sensory gamut with humor and a refreshing simplicity.
"Until recently, wine has been more hoity-toity, not accessible to people," Betts, one of just 200 Master Wine Sommeliers, tells The Salt. "We're making it more inclusive. Wine is a grocery, not a luxury."
He came up with the idea of a scratch 'n' sniff guide late one night over a glass of wine, of course. "We were talking and realized that the wine world didn't need another tome with glossy photos, maps and descriptions of wines you will never drink."
So he opted instead for something fun and perhaps even more useful. He steers clear of wine jargon that's meaningless to most of us, and strips down tasting concepts to their essential, so they're easier to remember.
Richard Betts explains wine tasting with simplicity and clarity. For instance, he boils down wine's bouquet to just four odors: fruit, wood, Earth and other.
Richard Betts explains wine tasting with simplicity and clarity. For instance, he boils down wine's bouquet to just four odors: fruit, wood, Earth and other.
Take, for instance, the infamous "wine aroma wheel." Developed by a researcher at the University of California, Davis, the original infographic lists about a hundred wine aromas, including not-so-common odors like tar, mousy and kerosene.
But Betts pares it down to just four categories: fruit, wood, Earth and other. He hits the nail on the head. Those few terms will get you far in the wine-tasting world.
So what about the scratch 'n' sniff elements? Unfortunately, the technology hasn't changed much in the past few decades and still isn't so great at recreating fruit smells.
When I sniffed the peach illustration, the artificial aroma immediately transported me back to my childhood bedroom in the early '80s, reading Richard Scarry's Lowly Worm. Clearly, the bouquet of Mr. Rabbit's fruit isn't exactly what you'll find in a 2011 sauvignon blanc.
But Betts says his goal isn't to replicate wine nuances exactly. "It's not about saying that this smell is the most faithful recreation of peach in a glass of wine," he says. "But the book gets you thinking about what you like and don't like — and talking about them in terms of vocabulary [readers] already have, not in 'wine speak.' "
When it comes to wine smelling, size really doesn't matter.
When it comes to wine smelling, size really doesn't matter.
"When we were hunter-gatherers, we depended on our smell so much for survival," Bett adds. "We need to tap back into that."
Some of the science in the book is also a little outdated. For instance, the tongue really isn't divided up into five sections for various tastes. And most flavor chemists would say that American oak has more vanilla odor than French oak does.
Still though, Betts has succeeded where others in the wine business have failed. He's taken a complex, overworked topic, and presented it in a innovative, inviting way. Mastering the ideas in the book won't turn you into a sommelier, but it will make drinking wine at dinner more fun.
