Archives for December 2018

“If characters kiss, the shows can get hugely fined,” Akhtar said. (Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council can punish broadcasters that show anything it considers contrary to the national and moral values of the society.) “So all the fans put together some money, then contacted the director and said, ‘Let them kiss. We’ll pay the fine for you.’ ”

Bottles of alcohol are usually blurred to avoid trouble with the censors, she added. Murder is fine, though.

Yasemin Y. Celikkol, a doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania who studies Turkish dramas, said some series had proved to have particular resonances in some other countries. A show called “Falling Leaves” was a hit in Bulgaria, she said, because its plot is “about the terrible things that happen to families when they move to cities.” There’s been a lot of internal migration in Bulgaria, and people could see themselves in it, she added.

Dramas have overhauled Turkey’s image in Russia too, Celikkol said, leading many Russians to travel there for vacations, to find husbands or to seek medical treatment. But that seemed to have produced a backlash, she added. In 2016, a Russian television company made a series, “East/West,” about a Russian couple visiting a Turkish fertility clinic, only for the Russian woman to end up as the Turkish doctor’s unhappy second wife.

“It almost seemed like the show was saying to Russian women, ‘Don’t go there, you’ll lose your freedom and have no access to your children,’ ” Celikkol said. A second season of “East/West” was broadcast this year.

Back in London, Akhtar raced through the first two episodes of “The Protector,” pointing out all the differences between the Netflix show and other Turkish productions. A scene featuring a woman in her underwear would definitely not appear on television in Turkey, she said. And there was more swearing than normal. The lead actor also looked more unkempt.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/arts/television/turkish-tv-netflix-the-protector.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Not all tattoo licensing happens so amicably.

At least three lawsuits have been filed against Take-Two Interactive, a game developer and publisher, and a subsidiary, 2K Games. A federal court ruling in any of the cases could have a ripple effect among sports video games, which emphasize realism.

The company Solid Oak Sketches obtained the copyrights for five tattoos on three basketball players — including the portrait and area code on Mr. James — before suing in 2016 because they were used in the NBA 2K series. The following year, an artist sued because the Gloria tattoo on Mr. James, among others, were included in the same franchise. And in April, another artist sued because her tattoos on the wrestler Randy Orton had been included in several iterations of WWE 2K.

Shawn Rome and Justin Wright, two of the three tattoo artists who licensed their work to Solid Oak, said they had been deceived by its founder, Matthew Siegler, and never desired a lawsuit. He approached them with a plan to incorporate their tattoo designs into a clothing line, they said, but it went nowhere.

“He’s just poaching on artists,” Mr. Rome said.

Before filing its lawsuit, Solid Oak sought $819,500 for past infringement and proposed a $1.14 million deal for future use of the tattoos.

Mr. Siegler did not respond to requests for comment. His primary lawyer, Darren Heitner, said that Take-Two used the copyrights without permission, and that Mr. Siegler wanted to be fairly compensated. Peter C. Welch, associate general counsel for Take-Two, said he could not comment on pending litigation. A spokeswoman for 2K Games said it does not comment on legal matters.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/27/style/tattoos-video-games.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Tech That Was Fixed

Smartphone parental controls

E-cigarettes notwithstanding, at least parents can worry less about their children’s addiction to smartphones. This year, Apple released Screen Time, a feature for people to set restrictions on the amount of time they spend on their iPhones. The software includes the ability for parents to remotely monitor and limit their children’s iPhone use.

I tested Screen Time for three weeks with a colleague’s daughter and was thrilled to see that the curbs helped the screenager cut iPhone use down to about three hours a day from roughly six hours. (The constraints I set on myself were not as effective because I could easily override them as a parent.)

There’s still room for smartphone parental controls to improve. Google offers Family Link, a comprehensive parental controls tool for Android phones. Yet the software has major limitations, as children can turn off the features once they turn 13 — which seems like precisely the time when you would want to be monitoring your child’s phone.

A browser for the people

Remember Firefox? Over the last decade, the once prominent web browser became irrelevant after Google released Chrome, a speedier and more secure web browser. Then late last year, Mozilla released a redesign of Firefox with thoughtful privacy features and much faster browsing speeds.

This year, Mozilla kept polishing and expanding on Firefox’s capabilities. It released a “container” that can be installed to prevent Facebook from tracking your activities across the web. In August, Mozilla also said that it would, by default, turn on anti-tracking features to prevent third parties, including advertisers, from snooping.

Firefox could still be better. Chrome, for instance, is still faster at loading some web pages. But after a harsh year when consumers lost faith in how companies like Facebook managed their data, it feels heartening to know that someone in the tech industry is making a browser for the people.

So did we get to a shorter list of personal tech lows and a longer list of highs? Not quite. I guess there’s always next year.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/technology/personaltech/tech-fix-2018.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Dr. Eisenberg, a self-described ardent liberal, was having none of this. As he wrote in reply:

A “residual force,” Mr. O.?

With “limited missions,” ah, so,

Precipitous? Nay!

It’s a sure way to stay.

Your plan sounds like “in statu quo”!

In the years that followed, limericks burst forth from Dr. Eisenberg on a welter of subjects.

There was baseball commentary, as in this 2010 post:

True, the Mets lost their place in the Sun,

But the year has moved onward by one,

Wounds have healed, time to grin

At each has-been brought in,

Chance of winning? Between slim none!

There were TV reviews, like this one, from 2011:

“Homeland” with time brought up to date,

Owes to “Manchurian Candidate”?

Is the theme tired,

And hardly inspired?

Production and cast are first rate.

And after the 2016 election there was copious versification of President Trump:

A mauler, a grabber, abuser,

A do whatever you chooser

Non-thinker, non-reader,

A spoiled-children breeder

An every trick-in-the-book user.

The son of Sidney Eisenberg, a furniture salesman, and Yetta Yellen Eisenberg, a homemaker, Lawrence Eisenberg was born in the Bronx on Dec. 21, 1919.

After graduating from James Monroe High School in the Bronx, he earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the City College of New York, followed by a bachelor of electrical engineering degree there. He went on to earn a master’s and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn. During World War II he was a radar operator with the Army Air Forces.

Dr. Eisenberg joined Rockefeller University in 1958 and later became a director of its electronics laboratory. Early in his tenure at Rockefeller, he helped develop a transistorized, battery-operated cardiac pacemaker, which was considered a vast improvement over the wire-laden earlier models. He taught at the university until 2000.

As a science-fiction writer, Dr. Eisenberg was best known for his short story “What Happened to Auguste Clarot?” The comic tale of a disappearing Parisian scientist, it was published in “Dangerous Visions” (1967), the noted anthology edited by Harlan Ellison.

He was also known for his stories featuring Prof. Emmett Duckworth, an amiably hapless Nobel Prize-winning scientist. (Duckworth’s inventions include an intensely addictive aphrodisiac containing 150,000 calories per ounce.)

Dr. Eisenberg’s wife, Frances Brenner, a political scientist and social worker, died in 2017. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a sister, Sondra Baskin; a son, Michael Eisenberg; and a grandson.

A longtime resident of the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Dr. Eisenberg at his death resided in Somerville, Mass. He died at a hospice facility in Lincoln, Mass.

In a 2011 feature, Dr. Eisenberg was asked by The 6th Floor, a Times Magazine blog, to supply a brief biographical summary for readers. He replied — a mere 20 minutes later — in the form he knew best:

A nonagenarian, I,

A sometime writer of sci-fi,

Biomed engineer,

Gen’rally of good cheer,

With lim’ricks in ready supply.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/obituaries/larry-eisenberg-dead.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

He gave 30 interviews in October and November alone, not counting a pair of formal news conferences before and after the midterm elections. At the first of the two, Mr. Trump referred to a Kurdish journalist as “Mr. Kurd” and questioned the character of George Washington, musing, “Didn’t he have a couple things in his past?”

Hannity in the House

The president’s preferred venue, however, remained Fox News, whose prime-time and morning shows amounted to a Trump cheering section beamed into millions of homes. The cable network secured 18 interviews with the president this year; Fox Business had three more.

Journalists there have grumbled about the blurred line between the administration and some of the network’s star commentators. On the eve of the midterm elections, Sean Hannity rallied onstage with Mr. Trump in Missouri, high-fived the White House deputy chief of staff, Bill Shine — himself a former Fox News co-president — and jeered reporters in the auditorium as “fake news.” In 2010, Mr. Hannity was chastised by Fox News executives, including Mr. Shine, for scheduling an appearance at a Tea Party fund-raiser.

Fox News called the Missouri episode an “unfortunate distraction.”

Mr. Hannity also failed to tell viewers that he and Mr. Trump shared a lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. And this summer, the host campaigned in Florida for a candidate for governor, Ron DeSantis, a frequent guest. Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, Brad Herold, boasted that Mr. Hannity would rally the crowd.

“I’m concerned, with Hannity and DeSantis at the same event, that Fox News may have to cancel its prime-time programming tonight,” Mr. Herold joked in an interview in July.

Insults and a Lawsuit

Other presidents sparred with the press. Mr. Trump makes it personal.

He called April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks a “loser”; replied to Abby Phillip of CNN by saying, “You ask a lot of stupid questions”; dismissed a query from Yamiche Alcindor of PBS as “racist”; and told Cecilia Vega of ABC News, “You’re not thinking — you never do.” All four reporters are women of color.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/business/media/trump-year-with-press.html?partner=rss&emc=rss