Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:40:27 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Leon Neyfakh :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Leon+Neyfakh istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/brooklyn-soon-will-fete-its-literary-stars/37981/ Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The president of Brooklyn, Marty Markowitz, is throwing a party at Borough Hall on September 16. Guests will include Jonathan Safran Foer and his wife, Nicole Krauss, who moved to Park Slope last summer; Jonathan Lethem, who was born many years ago in Boerum Hill, and Jhumpa Lahiri, Rick Moody, and Colson Whitehead, who all live in Brooklyn. The list goes on and the shelves fill up. A lot of them have written articles for the New Yorker, and visitors to the Tea Lounge have probably witnessed... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/debate-is-electric-over-shock-therapy-in-schools/37900/ Tue, 15 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST After a lawyer for the New York Civil Liberties Union, Beth Haroules, concluded her statement yesterday condemning the use of electric shocks in schools, an angry, exasperated mother followed her out of the meeting room and into the hall. The mother, Linda Doherty of Long Island, wanted to know why the NYCLU was trying to convince the New York State Education Department to ban aversive behavioral therapy, the only type of treatment that had worked on her severely autistic, violently... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/national/bloomberg-backs-lieberman-in-sign-that-2008-is/37674/ Thu, 10 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST Mayor Bloomberg's decision to give a rousing endorsement to Senator Lieberman's vow to run for election as an independent is stirring speculation on the possibility of the mayor's own independent campaign for the presidency in 2008. Mr. Bloomberg, who is now publicly in the midst of weighing his own bid for the highest office in the land, threw his support behind Mr. Lieberman's third-party candidacy yesterday, saying the country needs "nonpartisan elected officials who think doing the right... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/multiple-architecture-firms-work-on-coney-island/37534/ Tue, 8 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The architects responsible for the 45-story Westin Hotel in Times Square have been quietly working on plans for a new Coney Island. The flashy Miami-based firm Arquitectonica said yesterday that since March it has been working with the city's Coney Island Development Corporation on plans to restore the area surrounding the storied but relatively rundown amusement park. The project stretches roughly from Surf Avenue to the boardwalk, all the way from the Brooklyn Aquarium to 24th Street. The... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/foreign/american-who-devoted-his-life-to-zionism-is/37242/ Thu, 3 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST An American-born 22-year-old who served in the Israel Defense Force, Sergeant Michael Levin decided to devote his life to Zionism after reading, as a young boy, his grandfather's book about surviving the Holocaust. Levin was killed in southern Lebanon on Tuesday morning, Israeli time, along with two other soldiers, when Hezbollah forces reportedly attacked his platoon with anti-tank missiles. Levin had moved to Israel after graduating from high school four years ago, and after living... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/prostitution-hotel-allowed-to-reopen-if-hourly/36855/ Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Brooklyn's Prince Lefferts Hotel, shut down by police earlier this month due to prostitution charges, will be allowed to reopen on October 1 if landlord Moses Fried stops offering hourly rates, according to City Council Member Letitia James. Ms. James, who said she was not familiar with all the specifics of the agreement signed on Saturday, said Mr. Fried will make renovations to the hotel before it is reopened. Once business resumes, police will monitor the area with video cameras. The hotel... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/standards-board-halts-construction-due/36805/ Thu, 27 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST A zoning dispute in Brooklyn came to a close on Tuesday with authorities sending a message to the city's real estate entrepreneurs: Developers who try to lie and cheat to push their projects through legal loopholes should step lightly. In an apparently unprecedented move, the city's Board of Standards and Appeals, which hears arguments from property owners looking to bypass various city regulations, ruled that the construction of an 11-story apartment building in South Park Slope should be... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/anti-semitic-volumes-removed-from-brooklyn/36361/ Thu, 20 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Maybe it was all the rabbis gathered out front, but Vladimir Trainin looked downright panicked yesterday morning as he ran out of his Russian bookstore on Brighton Beach Avenue and worked his way toward the trash can by the street. The crowd of people outside his store, which sells imported Russian books and movies to local immigrants, had shown up to protest the anti-Semitic Russian literature in Mr.Trainin's history section — literature Mr. Trainin swore he did not know his store had been... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/brooklyn-is-hosting-book-sellers-as-authors-flock/36208/ Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Jonathan Safran Foer moves to Brooklyn, and before you know it, all the independent bookstore proprietors in the country are following him there like camels to water. Well, at least they will for a few days next summer, when the American Booksellers Association brings about a thousand of them to a hotel near the Brooklyn Bridge for the publishing industry's annual BookExpo America convention. The industrywide conference is a busy, four-day affair during which about 20,000 publishing executives... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/williamsburgs-water-taxi-signals-new-era/36184/ Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Williamsburg's tenure as "the new East Village" may have ended yesterday morning when the new ferry port at Schaefer Landing sent its first bright yellow Water Taxi on its way to Wall Street. Not so long ago, Williamsburg was considered a hip new frontier for Brooklyn's artists, writers, and musicians.The arrival of the Water Taxi — with its grandmotherly onboard offerings of cookies and hot chocolate — suggests that the wealthy financiers, consultants, and entrepreneurs who have recently made... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/dead-doctor-wanted-to-destroy-himself-house/36166/ Mon, 17 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST There were two things Dr. Nicholas Bartha's broker knew never to bring up with his client: politics, and the possibility of selling Bartha's $6.2 million home on the Upper East Side. The broker, Mark Baum, a vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, had been working with Bartha for six years, finding tenants for the extra apartments in the four-story townhouse, when the building was leveled in an explosion last Monday morning. After lying injured and comatose for six days at New... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/russian-brighton-beach-residents-react-to-death/35862/ Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Oleg Sibukhov was 19 years old when he arrived in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, having left his birthplace of Krasnodar, Russia, behind. Krasnodar is a city that sits on the Kuban River in southern Russia and borders the Caucasus. Mr. Sibukhov, now 25, served two years as a soldier stationed in Chechnya, where he says he lost two friends to the conflict between Russian forces and local insurgents. When asked about the recent death of the Chechen terrorist Shamil Basayev, Mr. Sibukhov said he had... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/paul-newmans-grand-prix-ambitions-foiled-by/35786/ Tue, 11 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST The Savannah Sparrow, a rather small bird, seems to have triumphed over the Grand Prix ambitions of the rather large screen actor Paul Newman. At least for now, Mr. Newman's proposal to throw a yearly, 10-day auto-racing festival at historic Floyd Bennett Field, where the Savannah Sparrow likes to hunt, has come to a halt. Mr. Newman, a devoted racing enthusiast, pitched the idea for the event to park officials in April. According to his partner in the project, Geoffrey Whaling, a longtime... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/police-shutter-prince-lefferts-hotel-citing/35689/ Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Police shut down Clinton Hill's Prince Lefferts Hotel on Friday, citing reports from undercover officers that prostitution was being conducted there. An officer parked near the hotel on Sunday afternoon said police had been monitoring the area 24 hours a day since the court order to close the building, which stands at 127 Lefferts Place, came on Friday. Police had been trying to get permission from the Brooklyn Supreme Court to close the hotel under the nuisance abatement law ever since nearby... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/latest-boom-in-brooklyn-is-in-failures-of-glossy/35443/ Wed, 5 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Just last summer, Brooklyn had a whole stack of glossy magazines devoted to chronicling the borough's supposed renaissance. Since then, all of those magazines have run out of money, and today, the only one still standing is the Brooklyn Rail, a nonprofit that gets most of its operational budget through arts grants. The latest to fold is the Brooklynite, a free, glossy quarterly that has called it quits after just one year due to lack of funds. Until a few months ago, the editor, Daniel Treiman... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/arts/headed-for-the-country/34955/ Fri, 23 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Alec Ounsworth's voice first found an audience last summer, when his band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah became the subject of massive internet hype and won a legion of young, excited fans across the country. Up to that point, Ounsworth had mostly played around Brooklyn, where he lives. All that changed when CYHSY did a North American tour in the fall of 2005, following it up with an international tour that started in January and continues through the end of summer. During a short break, Ounsworth's... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/national/greek-professor-barred-from-america/34921/ Thu, 22 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST A Greek professor of economics with ties to a radical left-wing organization was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport and sent home to Athens after American authorities questioned him and Customs and Border Protection discovered problems with his visa. John Milios, an associate professor from the National Technical University of Athens, was traveling to a conference at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "After being detained for a number of hours at the airport, I was... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/regents-votes-to-put-limits-on-schools-behavioral/34806/ Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST The New York Board of Regents voted unanimously yesterday to regulations that will put limits on schools both in and out of state from administering aversive behavioral therapy - including electric shocks, bodily restraints, and food deprivation - to New York children. According to an ongoing survey being conducted by the state's Education Department, only three schools under the state's jurisdiction - including two preschools - currently use aversive therapy. According to the Education... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/arts/editors-knew-of-critics-board-seat/34707/ Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Freelance New York Times art critic Grace Glueck, who resigned from her seat on the Clark Art Institute's board of trustees last week, had informed her editors of her role at the museum in 1995, according to the newspaper's standards editor, Craig Whitney. The editors at the time, which included culture editor Daniel Lewis, decided the situation did not pose a problem, Mr. Whitney told the Sun, as long as Ms. Glueck did not write about the Clark. Ms. Glueck resigned from the board after Tyler... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/arts/art-critic-resigns-from-clark-board/34644/ Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST A freelance art critic for the New York Times, Grace Glueck, resigned from the Clark Art Institute's board of trustees after a report on ArtsJournal.com questioned her affiliation with the museum. In a Web log entry posted on June 7, a writer, Tyler Green, suggested that Ms. Glueck might have influenced the paper's coverage to favor the Clark. He called her position on the board "a direct violation of the Times' own ethics policies." Ms. Glueck, who has been under contract with the Times since... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/new-york/fear-of-hurricane-stirs-russians-in-brighton-beach/34558/ Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach are living in fear of a hurricane threat to which the rest of New York City seems largely oblivious. Speculation that a severe storm could soon descend on Brooklyn has been rife among immigrant senior citizens, many of whom are reportedly stocking up on water and medicine in preparation for an emergency that is much less likely to happen than some of the local Russian press and broadcast outlets have reported. "They say we should be afraid, that it'll come... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/arts/bright-young-things-trawling-for-magazines/34312/ Tue, 13 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Joe Salvatore stood outside of Housing Works Book Café, trying to figure out how to carry five heavy bags stuffed with 80 literary journals. On a normal day, a haul that big would have cost him more than $1,000. On Sunday, he paid only $160, thanks to the discount offered at the Seventh Annual Literary Magazine Fair. The magazine fair, offering more than 120 literary journals for only $2 each, was part of this weekend's Literary Magazine Magathon, which also included a Saturday afternoon... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iran-presidents-world-cup-trip-put-at-risk/34131/ Thu, 8 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST The head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center sent an open letter to Chancellor Merkel of Germany urging her to bar the Iranian president from attending the World Cup. Rabbi Marvin Hier, who founded the international Jewish organization in 1977 and currently serves as its dean, sent the letter on behalf of the center's 400,000 members on Monday. "President Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and called for the obliteration of the state of Israel," Rabbi Hier wrote. "It is inconceivable that a head... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/national/harvard-starts-human-cloning-for-stem-cell/33999/ Wed, 7 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Researchers from Harvard University will clone human embryos for the purposes of developing stem cell lines, the Harvard provost, Steven Hyman, announced yesterday. The contentious cloning program, spearheaded by a co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Douglas Melton, will be the first of its kind in America. The Harvard development will increase the number of stem cells available for American research. At present, American scientists working in stem cell research have a limited... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/national/regents-consider-action-on-school-that-uses-shocks/33367/ Thu, 25 May 2006 00:00:00 EST The top governing board of the New York State Education Department is weighing a proposal that would prohibit New York schools from sending severely troubled and mentally ill students to a facility in Massachusetts that uses electric shock as a form of punishment. The Judge Rotenberg Center, in Canton, Mass., counts about 150 New Yorkers among its 250 students, most of whom suffer from emotional and psychiatric disorders or developmental disorders such as autism. About half are fitted with... LEON NEYFAKH http://www.nysun.com/national/whats-happening-at-harvard-try-performativity/33127/ Mon, 22 May 2006 00:00:00 EST CAMBRIDGE, MASS. - Inviting students to come to class in drag. Assigning a six- to eight-page paper about their sexual coming of age. Asking them to create a Wikipedia entry as their final project. That's what's happening these days at Harvard College, as professors move beyond the old-fashioned diet of papers and exams and embrace some less traditional ways of teaching their material. Advocates say the innovative techniques help students learn, while critics like the Harvard professor Harvey...