The string of storms pummeling California has proved catastrophic. Here’s what it looks like.
Not pictured: dollar signs. A lot of them.
This year’s event raised about $26 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, according to a spokeswoman. That’s a $4 million increase over last year’s total, and more than double what the event raised a decade ago, in 2014.
The total pummels the philanthropic events thrown to support many of the city’s other cultural institutions. The most recent fall gala for the New York City Ballet raised just short of $4 million, and the American Museum of Natural History’s gala brought in $2.5 million. Even The Met’s other events do not compare: Its Art & Artists Gala raised $4.4 million last year.
“There are very few other events that raise this kind of money,” said Rachel Feinberg, a fund-raising consultant who has worked on galas in New York City including a benefit last year for the Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. “The Met has found this formula that is fantastic for them.”
Ukrainians Try to Push Back Russian Forces Pummeling Their Cities
Image
A civilian guarding a defense checkpoint on the road to Zhytomyr, near the Ukrainian village of Mala Racha on Tuesday. Most of the civilians volunteering with the unit lacked military training.Credit...Nuno Veiga/EPA, via Shutterstock
Post away, parents. Post away.
In the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any time in its 25-year history http://econ.st/1fC7kvU
Jack wakes up to discover a beanstalk outside his window, climbs up, and befriends a lonely giant boy at the top. T
Japan police turned away Aum Shinrikyo cult member
Telegraph.co.uk
One of Japan's most wanted criminal suspects was turned away by police when he tried to turn himself in on New Year's Eve. By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Makoto Hirata had been on the run for more than 16 years for his alleged role in a series of crimes ...
turn away
1. Send away, dismiss, as in They ran short and had to turn away many customers. [Late 1500s]
2. Repel, as in The high prices turned away prospective buyers.
3. Avert, deflect, as in She managed to turn away all criticism. [Late 1300s]
turn in
1. Hand in, give over, as in I turned in my exam and left the room. [c. 1300]
2. Surrender or inform on, especially to the police, as in The shoplifter turned herself in. [1920s]
3. Produce, as in He turned in a consistent performance every day. [Mid-1900s]
4. Go to bed, as in I turned in early last night. [Colloquial; late 1600s]
Since the 1970s, when Mao inspired his Red Guards to pummel every “reactionary” Confucius temple and Ming Dynasty statue they could find, Mr. Li has been salvaging architectural remnants and stowing them away, sometimes at considerable risk.
As bombs continued to pummel the Gaza Strip for the third straight day, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared "an all-out war against Hamas."
Even after the ECB doled out nearly half a trillion euros of loans to banks last week, fears about financial problems are stalking the sector. One big reason: concerns about collateral.
這名被倫敦老年婦女稱為「夜魔 王」（Night stalker）的嫌疑人名叫德爾羅伊·格蘭特（Delroy Grant），是7個孩子的父親，并有一位患有多發性硬化症的妻子，過去5年內一直坐在輪椅上，需要他全日照料。 格蘭特自1990年以來，在倫敦南部犯下強奸、性攻擊和盜竊等200多起案件， ...
stalk (FOLLOW)
verb
1 [T] to follow an animal or person as closely as possible without being seen or heard, usually in order to catch or kill them:
The police had been stalking the woman for a week before they arrested her.
2 [I or T] to illegally follow and watch someone, usually a woman, over a period of time:
He was arrested for stalking.
3 [T] LITERARY If something unpleasant stalks a place, it appears there in a threatening way:
When night falls, danger stalks the streets of the city.
stalker
noun [C]
a person who illegally follows and watches someone, especially a woman, over a period of time:
Several well-known women have been troubled by stalkers recently.pummel
verb [T] -ll- or US USUALLY -l-
1 to hit someone or something repeatedly, especially with your fists:
The boxer had pummelled his opponent into submission by the end of the fourth round.
2 INFORMAL to defeat someone easily at a sport:
They were pummelled in the second round.
pummelling, US USUALLY pummeling
noun [C]
Digital Domain Maybe Microsoft Should Stalk Different Prey
OVER the years, Microsoft has pummeled countless rivals, including the superheavyweight I.B.M. But it has never faced a smaller foe as formidable as Google. The tale of the tape gives Microsoft a $100 billion advantage in market capitalization, but it counts for little: Google appears to be its superior in strength, speed, smarts.
Having exhausted its best ideas on how to deal with Google, Microsoft is now working its way down the list to dubious ones — like pursuing a hostile bid for Yahoo. Michael A. Cusumano, who has written several books about the software industry and about Microsoft, is not impressed with Microsoft’s rationale for its Yahoo offer. He said the bid seemed to be a pursuit of “an old-style Internet asset, in decline, and at a premium.”
Determined to match Google in search and online advertising, Microsoft has managed to overlook a plain-vanilla strategy, the oldest one in the book: build on its own strengths. What it does best is to sell software to corporations, for all sorts of applications, visible and not so visible, at a handsome profit.
If Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should not pursue Yahoo. Rather, it should acquire another major player in business software, merging Microsoft’s strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happier outcome than yoking two ailing businesses, Yahoo’s and its own online offerings, and hoping for a miracle.
For an illustration of how Microsoft could select targets more judiciously, Mr. Cusumano, who is a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed to the Oracle Corporation’s strategic acquisitions and its prudent use of capital to “roll up firms with similar products and customers to its own.” With impressive regularity — 13 strategic acquisitions in 2005, another 13 in 2006 and 11 in 2007 — Oracle has picked up key products and customers while avoiding an “oops” slip, venturing too far away from its core business, or paying too much. At no point along the way has it acted in a fit of desperation.
Last month, Oracle pulled in another major prize, BEA Systems, a leading software company, for about $8.5 billion. You’ve probably never heard of BEA: it’s doubly obscure, producing the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that large companies use to build behind-the-scenes software systems for their entire business, or “enterprise software.” Both Oracle and BEA are based in Silicon Valley, but their side of the street is not lit by klieg lights and does not get the same attention as the Googles and Yahoos.
And, to be honest, it’s not much fun hanging out on the enterprise side of the software business. BEA says its software helps organizations “ensure that business processes are optimally defined, managed, executed and monitored.” Unless you’re playing Business Jargon Bingo, it’s hard to sit still and remain attentive. You have to admire Oracle’s ability to remain focused on the business that serves business and to not be distracted by the buzz of the Web crowd gathered across the street.
Microsoft does business software well. Approximately half its revenue comes from business customers for its e-mail infrastructure, database systems, developer tools, Office productivity applications and other mainstays. It has also assembled, through acquisitions, a fledgling line of enterprise software that it calls Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft would like Dynamics to be viewed as competing head to head with the No. 2 name in enterprise software, Oracle, or the No. 1, SAP of Germany. For the moment, however, Microsoft Dynamics’ parity with those big names is nothing more than wishful aspiration.
Professor Cusumano has a suggestion: Rather than acquire Yahoo, Microsoft should pursue SAP.
It’s not an outlandish idea. The two companies held merger talks in late 2003, and perhaps since then, too. Microsoft is in an enviable position: it is a nearly universal presence in corporate data centers, and large enterprise customers are arguably the best customers a software company can have. Clients pay very dear prices for the complex, semicustomized software that runs their business. And once they’ve got their systems running — a process that can take years to complete — they aren’t inclined to change vendors lightly.
A few dozen well-paying Fortune 500 customers may actually be more valuable than tens of millions of Web e-mail “customers” who pay nothing for the service and whose attention is not highly valued by online advertisers.
Today, SAP’s market capitalization is about $59 billion, and a sizable premium to get a deal done would send its price well north of that. Microsoft cannot put both SAP and Yahoo in its shopping cart, deals that together might run well over $120 billion. Microsoft must pick one or the other.
Suppose that Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, were the head of Microsoft and was doing the shopping. Which deal would he choose? Past experience suggests that it would not be Yahoo. That acquisition would bring little but duplication headaches — and no large enterprise customers.
It’s amusing to note that the most Larry-like choice, Microsoft’s acquiring of SAP and leaving it alone as an autonomous division to avoid a cross-cultural integration fiasco, is the course that would be most discomfiting to Oracle. Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, an information technology research firm, in Irvine, Calif., said that “a Microsoft-SAP combination would be Oracle’s worst nightmare.”
Google would not be happy with a conjoined Microsoft and SAP, either. It has made a pro forma expression of its own opposition to a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, but we can speculate that it may be cheering that deal on. Working in Google’s favor are the hostile nature of Microsoft’s bid, the colossal potential for integration problems, and organizational paralysis in, and exodus of talent from, Yahoo.
But were Microsoft to turn and head in SAP’s direction, Google would have reason for concern. Whatever strengthens Microsoft is bound to influence, later if not sooner, its continuing competition with Google. For its own part, Google is keen to expand its foothold inside large companies. Last year, it acquired Postini, whose software filters corporate e-mail. Google has not done so well with corporate customers on its own, however. Google Apps has conspicuously failed to win adoption quickly.
If Microsoft is to rededicate its attention to its most valuable assets, business customers, a prerequisite is dropping its ill-advised bid for Yahoo. And to find the best acquisition strategy, ask, “What would Larry do?”
If Microsoft tries to fight Google with wobbly legs, scared witless, it will lose.
Image
A civilian guarding a defense checkpoint on the road to Zhytomyr, near the Ukrainian village of Mala Racha on Tuesday. Most of the civilians volunteering with the unit lacked military training.Credit...Nuno Veiga/EPA, via ShutterstockIf your representative is among them, Please rededicate yourself to ending his or her congressional career next year.
When Slate writer Deborah Copaken posted her sick son’s symptoms in a Facebook status, physician friends made a life-saving diagnosis that her doctors had missed.Post away, parents. Post away.
For Dasani, life as one of New York City's 22,000 homeless children means innocence is threatened at every turn.
|
In the past 18 months, despite the relentless pummelling it has received and the defeats it has suffered, al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have staged an extraordinary comeback. The terrorist network now holds sway over more territory and is recruiting more fighters than at any time in its 25-year history http://econ.st/1fC7kvU
For Bezos, Washington Post Deal Dovetails With Passions1
Jack wakes up to discover a beanstalk outside his window, climbs up, and befriends a lonely giant boy at the top. T
Japan police turned away Aum Shinrikyo cult member
Telegraph.co.uk
One of Japan's most wanted criminal suspects was turned away by police when he tried to turn himself in on New Year's Eve. By Julian Ryall in Tokyo Makoto Hirata had been on the run for more than 16 years for his alleged role in a series of crimes ...
Even after the ECB doled out nearly half a trillion euros of loans to banks last week, fears about financial problems are stalking the sector. One big reason: concerns about collateral.
Markets go into a panic about France(13)
a·way (ə-wā′)
a·way (ə-wā′)
adv.
1. From a particular thing or place: ran away from the lion; sent the children away to boarding school.
2.
a. At or to a distance in space or time: We live a block away from the park.
b. At or by a considerable interval: away back in the 17th century; away off on the horizon.
3.
a. In a different direction; aside: glanced away.
b. On the way: We want to get away early in the day.
4. In or into storage or safekeeping: put the toys away; jewels locked away in a safe.
5. Out of existence or notice: The music faded away.
6. So as to remove, separate, or eliminate: chipped the paint away; cleared away the debris.
7. From one's possession: gave the tickets away.
8. Continuously; steadily: toiled away at the project for more than a year.
9. Freely; at will: Fire away!
adj.
1. Absent: The neighbors are away.
2. Distant, as in space or time: The city is miles away. The game was still a week away.
3. Played on an opponent's field or grounds: an away game.
4. In golf, having the ball lying farthest from the hole and properly playing first among competitors.
5. Baseball Out: bases loaded, with two away.
[Middle English, from Old English aweg : a-, on; see a-1 + weg, way; see wegh- in Indo-European roots.]
The
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published
by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
at every turn
turn away
1. Send away, dismiss, as in They ran short and had to turn away many customers. [Late 1500s]
2. Repel, as in The high prices turned away prospective buyers.
3. Avert, deflect, as in She managed to turn away all criticism. [Late 1300s]
turn in
1. Hand in, give over, as in I turned in my exam and left the room. [c. 1300]
2. Surrender or inform on, especially to the police, as in The shoplifter turned herself in. [1920s]
3. Produce, as in He turned in a consistent performance every day. [Mid-1900s]
4. Go to bed, as in I turned in early last night. [Colloquial; late 1600s]
Since the 1970s, when Mao inspired his Red Guards to pummel every “reactionary” Confucius temple and Ming Dynasty statue they could find, Mr. Li has been salvaging architectural remnants and stowing them away, sometimes at considerable risk.
As bombs continued to pummel the Gaza Strip for the third straight day, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak declared "an all-out war against Hamas."
Even after the ECB doled out nearly half a trillion euros of loans to banks last week, fears about financial problems are stalking the sector. One big reason: concerns about collateral.
這名被倫敦老年婦女稱為「夜魔 王」（Night stalker）的嫌疑人名叫德爾羅伊·格蘭特（Delroy Grant），是7個孩子的父親，并有一位患有多發性硬化症的妻子，過去5年內一直坐在輪椅上，需要他全日照料。 格蘭特自1990年以來，在倫敦南部犯下強奸、性攻擊和盜竊等200多起案件， ...
stalk (FOLLOW)
verb
1 [T] to follow an animal or person as closely as possible without being seen or heard, usually in order to catch or kill them:
The police had been stalking the woman for a week before they arrested her.
2 [I or T] to illegally follow and watch someone, usually a woman, over a period of time:
He was arrested for stalking.
3 [T] LITERARY If something unpleasant stalks a place, it appears there in a threatening way:
When night falls, danger stalks the streets of the city.
stalker
noun [C]
a person who illegally follows and watches someone, especially a woman, over a period of time:
Several well-known women have been troubled by stalkers recently.pummel
verb [T] -ll- or US USUALLY -l-
1 to hit someone or something repeatedly, especially with your fists:
The boxer had pummelled his opponent into submission by the end of the fourth round.
2 INFORMAL to defeat someone easily at a sport:
They were pummelled in the second round.
pummel
Syllabification: (pum·mel)
Pronunciation: /ˈpəməl/
Translate pummel | into German | into Italian | into Spanish verb (pummels, pummeling, pummeled ; Britishpummels, pummelling, pummelled)
[with object]pummelling, US USUALLY pummeling
noun [C]
By RANDALL STROSS
OVER the years, Microsoft has pummeled countless rivals, including the superheavyweight I.B.M. But it has never faced a smaller foe as formidable as Google. The tale of the tape gives Microsoft a $100 billion advantage in market capitalization, but it counts for little: Google appears to be its superior in strength, speed, smarts.
Skip to next paragraph
David Paul Morris/Getty Images
Lawrence J. Ellison is chief executive of Oracle, which has made acquisitions that dovetail with its core business. Last month, it reached a deal to buy BEA Systems for $8.5 billion.
Having exhausted its best ideas on how to deal with Google, Microsoft is now working its way down the list to dubious ones — like pursuing a hostile bid for Yahoo. Michael A. Cusumano, who has written several books about the software industry and about Microsoft, is not impressed with Microsoft’s rationale for its Yahoo offer. He said the bid seemed to be a pursuit of “an old-style Internet asset, in decline, and at a premium.”
Determined to match Google in search and online advertising, Microsoft has managed to overlook a plain-vanilla strategy, the oldest one in the book: build on its own strengths. What it does best is to sell software to corporations, for all sorts of applications, visible and not so visible, at a handsome profit.
If Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should not pursue Yahoo. Rather, it should acquire another major player in business software, merging Microsoft’s strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happier outcome than yoking two ailing businesses, Yahoo’s and its own online offerings, and hoping for a miracle.
For an illustration of how Microsoft could select targets more judiciously, Mr. Cusumano, who is a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pointed to the Oracle Corporation’s strategic acquisitions and its prudent use of capital to “roll up firms with similar products and customers to its own.” With impressive regularity — 13 strategic acquisitions in 2005, another 13 in 2006 and 11 in 2007 — Oracle has picked up key products and customers while avoiding an “oops” slip, venturing too far away from its core business, or paying too much. At no point along the way has it acted in a fit of desperation.
Last month, Oracle pulled in another major prize, BEA Systems, a leading software company, for about $8.5 billion. You’ve probably never heard of BEA: it’s doubly obscure, producing the behind-the-scenes infrastructure that large companies use to build behind-the-scenes software systems for their entire business, or “enterprise software.” Both Oracle and BEA are based in Silicon Valley, but their side of the street is not lit by klieg lights and does not get the same attention as the Googles and Yahoos.
And, to be honest, it’s not much fun hanging out on the enterprise side of the software business. BEA says its software helps organizations “ensure that business processes are optimally defined, managed, executed and monitored.” Unless you’re playing Business Jargon Bingo, it’s hard to sit still and remain attentive. You have to admire Oracle’s ability to remain focused on the business that serves business and to not be distracted by the buzz of the Web crowd gathered across the street.
Microsoft does business software well. Approximately half its revenue comes from business customers for its e-mail infrastructure, database systems, developer tools, Office productivity applications and other mainstays. It has also assembled, through acquisitions, a fledgling line of enterprise software that it calls Microsoft Dynamics. Microsoft would like Dynamics to be viewed as competing head to head with the No. 2 name in enterprise software, Oracle, or the No. 1, SAP of Germany. For the moment, however, Microsoft Dynamics’ parity with those big names is nothing more than wishful aspiration.
Professor Cusumano has a suggestion: Rather than acquire Yahoo, Microsoft should pursue SAP.
It’s not an outlandish idea. The two companies held merger talks in late 2003, and perhaps since then, too. Microsoft is in an enviable position: it is a nearly universal presence in corporate data centers, and large enterprise customers are arguably the best customers a software company can have. Clients pay very dear prices for the complex, semicustomized software that runs their business. And once they’ve got their systems running — a process that can take years to complete — they aren’t inclined to change vendors lightly.
A few dozen well-paying Fortune 500 customers may actually be more valuable than tens of millions of Web e-mail “customers” who pay nothing for the service and whose attention is not highly valued by online advertisers.
Today, SAP’s market capitalization is about $59 billion, and a sizable premium to get a deal done would send its price well north of that. Microsoft cannot put both SAP and Yahoo in its shopping cart, deals that together might run well over $120 billion. Microsoft must pick one or the other.
Suppose that Lawrence J. Ellison, the chief executive of Oracle, were the head of Microsoft and was doing the shopping. Which deal would he choose? Past experience suggests that it would not be Yahoo. That acquisition would bring little but duplication headaches — and no large enterprise customers.
It’s amusing to note that the most Larry-like choice, Microsoft’s acquiring of SAP and leaving it alone as an autonomous division to avoid a cross-cultural integration fiasco, is the course that would be most discomfiting to Oracle. Frank Scavo, president of Computer Economics, an information technology research firm, in Irvine, Calif., said that “a Microsoft-SAP combination would be Oracle’s worst nightmare.”
Google would not be happy with a conjoined Microsoft and SAP, either. It has made a pro forma expression of its own opposition to a Microsoft-Yahoo merger, but we can speculate that it may be cheering that deal on. Working in Google’s favor are the hostile nature of Microsoft’s bid, the colossal potential for integration problems, and organizational paralysis in, and exodus of talent from, Yahoo.
But were Microsoft to turn and head in SAP’s direction, Google would have reason for concern. Whatever strengthens Microsoft is bound to influence, later if not sooner, its continuing competition with Google. For its own part, Google is keen to expand its foothold inside large companies. Last year, it acquired Postini, whose software filters corporate e-mail. Google has not done so well with corporate customers on its own, however. Google Apps has conspicuously failed to win adoption quickly.
If Microsoft is to rededicate its attention to its most valuable assets, business customers, a prerequisite is dropping its ill-advised bid for Yahoo. And to find the best acquisition strategy, ask, “What would Larry do?”
If Microsoft tries to fight Google with wobbly legs, scared witless, it will lose.
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