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Western Bulldogs veteran Daniel Giansiracusa says the club has learnt the hard way that a slow build through the AFL pre-season competition is better than winning it.

The Dogs made a modest start under new coach Brendan McCartney in Blacktown on Saturday night, losing narrowly to a vastly under-strength Collingwood after scraping past newcomers Greater Western Sydney.

But Giansiracusa said after spending the past five months working on their new gameplan, there was enough to like in their first competitive hit-out, with the results not too important.

“I’d hope that we weren’t playing at our best in the first round of the NAB Cup,” Giansiracusa told reporters on Wednesday.

“We’ve probably learnt at this club that we won a (pre-season) premiership a couple of years ago and we were cooked by about round 18.

“So it’s a timing thing, we’re putting things in place with our training and as I said, we’ll build up until round one against West Coast.

“There’s things to work on definitely.

“We didn’t walk away going, ‘Yep, we’re ready to go and we’re ready to win 17 or 18 games.’

“But we were happy with the competitive effort.”

The 29-year-old forward said winning the 2010 pre-season competition had been a thrill at the time, but hindsight showed they suffered later from going too hard, too soon.

“I know I’d prefer to be going that well at the business end of the season,” Giansiracusa said.

The Bulldogs have this weekend off, before meeting Carlton in round two of the pre-season competition on Sunday week.

Stars Adam Cooney and Brian Lake, who had injury-hampered 2011 seasons and did not play on Saturday night, are likely to return for that match.

The Bulldogs’ top national draft pick, hard-nosed 18-year-old midfielder Clay Smith, had his first taste of senior football on Saturday night.

Smith has already earned lavish praise from McCartney, who last week said the teenager “plays football the way you like to see it played” and was set to become an instant fan favourite.

“That’s just how I’ve been playing my whole life and obviously that’s the way he likes the game played,” the youngster said on Wednesday.

“I’ve come to a club and I’m lucky that the coach, it’s his sort of game style.”

Slow pre-season suits Bulldogs

A.J. Burnett was happy to escape from New York.
“It was fun the first couple of years. Then it got like, I’m never going to get out of this funk,” he said Monday, a day after the Yankees dealt him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for a pair of low-level prospects.

After signing an $82.5 million U.S., five-year contract, Burnett helped the Yankees to their 27th World Series title in 2009. Then he slumped to a 21-26 record with a 5.20 ERA over the following two seasons.

He led the major leagues with 25 wild pitches last year and allowed a career-high 31 homers.

“I let a few too many people tinker with me, maybe,” Burnett said. “When you let that happen, you start doubting yourself sometimes. You wonder, ‘Am I doing it right? Is this how it’s supposed to feel?’ and things like that. In ’09, nobody messed with me. I was able to do what I wanted to do on the mound, whether it was turn around, close my eyes and pitch upside down. Then you have a few bad games and you start changing and listening.”

Pittsburgh is paying just $13 million of Burnett’s salary: $5 million this year and $8 million in 2013. The Yankees are paying the rest.

In a smaller market with reduced expectations, there should be less pressure on the 35-year-old right-hander.

“It’s going to be a fresh start,” Burnett said. “It’s going to be fun. I’m going back to the National League, where I can hit and bunt and get the joy back into the game.”

A 13-year veteran, Burnett will move into the top spot in the Pirates’ starting rotation. General manager Neal Huntington thinks Burnett can return to his form of a few years ago.

“Our scouts still saw very good stuff,” Huntington said. “They saw power to the fastball, although the velocity is down from four or five years ago. He’s still got good movement. He was still one of the better ground-ball pitchers in the American League last year, which is going to play well in our ballpark.”

Burnett also will be expected to provide a leadership role for younger players.

“Hopefully, I can just lead by example,” Burnett said. “I’ll take the ball every five days. I’m not going to make excuses. One thing I can take from my time in New York is I’ll never back down from anything. I’m not a cheerleader, shaking pompoms. But I know right and wrong and, hopefully, I can share that with the younger players.”

Escape from Bronx suits A.J. Burnett just fine ‘I let too many people tinker with me’

FT. LAUDERDALE (CBSMiami) – The fight for the Novack family fortune is underway.
Attorneys representing several Novack family relatives filed a claim in Broward County arguing they alone are the rightful heirs to the estate. The attorneys represent Maxine Fiel, Ben Novack’s aunt, as well as a couple of cousins, including Andrea Wynn, wife of Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn..
“They are entitled to what belongs to them and their family,” attorney Mark Hanson said Wednesday at his offices in Palm Beach Gardens. “And to have some unrelated person come in and benefit from the fruits of their labor is something our client finds objectionable. We’re not here as money grabbers, if you will. We’re here to do justice on behalf of our clients.”
Ben Novack Jr. was beaten to death in a New York hotel room in July 2009. His wife, Narcy Novack, was charged a year later with his killing. She is also accused of arranging the murder of Novack’s mother, Bernice. Prosecutors claim Narcy hatched her “diabolical plot” to kill off Ben and Bernice so she could take over the family’s estate estimated to be worth between $6 and $10 million. Ben Novack’s father once owned the famed Fontainebleau Hotel and Ben had created a successful convention planning business.
Hanson said the purpose of his claim was to “cut off the blood line” of Narcy Novack so that neither Narcy, nor any of her descendants, would profit from Narcy’s alleged crimes.
But that may not be so easily done. Ben and Narcy Novack were married more than eighteen years, and Ben considered Narcy’s daughter, May Abad, to be like his own child. And when May started a family of her own, Ben considered her two boys to be his grandsons – even though technically they were his step-grandchildren.
Ben’s will leaves the two young boys a portion of the estate, but Hanson and the other attorneys are seeking to block those provisions.
Hanson said under what’s known as “slayer’s law” the killer can not in benefit from the crime by inheriting the victim’s money. Hanson said the “theory” they are working on is that if any of the Novack money goes to May Abad or her two boys, then there is the “potential” that they could turn around and give some of that money to Narcy Novack.
Neither May Abad nor her attorney responded to numerous requests for an interview.
On Wednesday, Bernice Novack’s 85-year-old sister, Maxine Fiel, explained she was moving forward with the claim on the money because she didn’t want to see it end up in the wrong hands.
“Not one of my children or I have ever discussed the money,” she said by phone from Saratoga Springs, New York. “I want justice. I want that woman [Narcy Novack] put away forever and never see the light of day.”
When confronted with the fact the lawsuit she was filing was, indeed, about money, Fiel responded: “Yeah, well, now it is. Everybody else seems to be after it. I want to make sure it goes to the family where it belongs.”
The attorneys representing the Novack relatives also raised doubts about the size of the estate. They said they believed the publicly stated estimates that the estate is worth between $6 and $10 million – including a $2 million collection of Batman memorabilia – may be low. They said they think Ben may have hidden millions of dollars in offshore bank accounts.
“There is the possibility that Ben may have had money in the Cayman Islands,” said attorney Michael Zweig.
Added attorney Harvey Morse: “Ben’s business was worth approximately $50 million a year. So where did the money go? Where is it?”
Morse said FBI agents were looking for hidden bank accounts and had questions Maxine. “The FBI has interviewed Maxine to see if she has any information – and she does not,” Morse said. “But she also believes there is significantly more money than what is currently known to us.”
Broward Suit Will Lay Claim To Novack Fortune

If you want to feel way older than you are, give Agnes a call. She’s guaranteed to make you feel bent and creaky before your time.

“Agnes” is an acronym for “Age Gain Now Empathy System,” a head-to-toe “old-age suit” developed by engineers at MIT’s AgeLab. Using Dickies coveralls as a base, the suits feature bungee-cord-like bands that prevent full extension of limbs, braces that make it harder to move them, shoes that impede balance and glasses that blur the fine print. It makes anyone who puts one on feel like he or she has the body of the average 75-year-old.

Used first by engineers in their mid-20s, the adjustable suits are now being tried out by corporate designers, product developers and even sales executives who want to understand the difficulties of opening a jar, maneuvering through a store or just walking down the street when you have a dowager’s hump, diabetes or arthritis.

“Most people are so fatigued after five minutes of wearing one that they have to fight the urge to sit down,” said Angelina Gennis, the MIT research associate in charge of Agnes management.

“One guy tried to open a box of his own company’s cake mix and said, ‘This is too hard, I’ll just buy a ready-made one.’ It really allows you to pick up on things that older adults have just learned to cope with over time, like having more difficulty turning a doorknob.”

Another reason that Agnes may become increasingly useful for market research is that no previous generation has ever been more against appearing old.

“Baby boomers, especially, want their stuff to look cool,” Gennis said. “They don’t want anything that screams ‘geriatric,’ like those bulky gray cellphones with four buttons.”

Agnes is also providing a public service, Gennis said, by persuading at least some of her wearers to improve their health habits while they’re young

‘Old-age suit,’ aka Agnes, mimics challenges, limitations of elderly

LOS ANGELES — A judge granted a motion Tuesday to dismiss concert promoter AEG Live from a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Michael Jackson’s father.
City News Service said Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos agreed with AEG attorneys who said Joe Jackson should have joined a separate suit filed by his wife, Katherine. The judge said the law does not favor multiple suits by individual heirs.

She said that to allow Joe Jackson’s suit against AEG Live to go forward would “allow the heirs of a decedent to file as many suits as there are heirs.”

“Allowing Joseph Jackson to continue with his subsequent suit against AEG Live, alleging the same wrongful death claims as the related case, would contravene the purpose of the one-action rule,” she said.

AEG also argued that Joe Jackson is not a legitimate heir to his son’s fortune. The father was not mentioned in the King of Pop’s will.

“At the time Michael Jackson died, (his father) was estranged from his son, who repeatedly and publicly accused him of physical and other abuse,” the AEG Live court papers said.

The decision leaves Dr. Conrad Murray and Applied Pharmacy Services of Las Vegas as the only defendants in Joe Jackson’s suit. Murray is in jail after having been convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Michael Jackson’s death. He says he is broke.

Katherine Jackson alleges in her suit that AEG Live is responsible for medical decisions made by Murray.

AEG Live attorney Marvin Putnam called the ruling a major victory for the entertainment giant. Joe Jackson’s lawyer Maureen Jaroscak called it a temporary setback and suggested that the 83-year-old Jackson might now try to become a party to his wife’s lawsuit.

Michael Jackson died in June 2009 from an overdose of the anesthetic propofol, which Murray was administering to him as a sleep medication.

Joe Jackson Lawsuit: Judge Dismisses Concert Promoter

Looking line by line at $7.6 million worth of operational and maintenance budget items at a 2012-13 budget work session on Tuesday, East Hampton School Board members stopped the business administrator, Isabel Madison, in her tracks when she arrived at an anticipated $512,500 in legal expenses, an increase of nearly $200,000.

Board members laid the blame for the increase on the district’s battle with Sandpebble Builders over an $80 million construction project that predates almost everyone on the School Board and that both sides’ attorneys have said may now go to trial.

“This kills me,” said Jackie Lowey, a board member. “We had talked about this last week in executive session. … Those of us who inherited this train wreck. To say it was handled poorly is like saying it was a bad windstorm in Japan.”

“We have tried to settle,” she added. “We are being bled to death by a contractor at the expense of our children.”

“We have tried in every way possible to settle,” agreed School Board President Dr. Laura Anker.

Patricia Hope, another board member, asked if they were referring to a 133-percent increase in a budget line item for legal matters: from $150,000 in 2011-12 to $350,000 in 2012-13.

“That’s what Pinks is anticipating if we don’t settle,” Ms. Lowey answered, referring to the district’s legal counsel, Pinks, Arbeit and Nemeth of Hauppauge.

“We are preparing to release a statement,” said Alison Anderson, another board member. Board members did not indicate what it would say or when it might be expected, however.

“This is unfortunate, because it’s totally out of our hands,” Liz Pucci, another board member, commented.

Sandpebble sued the school district in 2006 for $3.75 million after the construction contract, whose scope had been greatly expanded, was awarded to another builder. The district has spent at least $2.3 million in legal fees on suits and countersuits so far, and the School Board replaced the original attorneys last year as a cost-saving measure.

The latest round of lawsuits filed by Fair Finance Co.’s bankruptcy trustee includes more people with family ties to

Indianapolis financier Tim Durham, including his ex-wife, Joan SerVaas.

Since early 2010, trustee Brian Bash has been trying to recover funds for investors of Ohio-based Fair Finance, which was

led by Durham until his financial empire collapsed in late 2009. Investors lost more than $200 million when the company

failed.

Besides SerVaas, the newest suits target B.J. Durham, SerVaas’ biological son who was adopted by Durham, and the

financier’s sister, Courtney Durham.

They are among a long list of Durham’s friends and business associates, as well as companies and charities, that records

say received loans or transfers from the indicted executive or his business in recent years. Bash contends the payments

were fraudulent transfers that must be repaid because they were made when Durham and his companies were insolvent.

The suit against Joan SerVaas alleges that she accepted money transfers from Tim Durham totaling at least $226,000. B.J.

Durham is accused of accepting $59,107 in transfers from Tim Durham, according to the suit.

Another complaint alleges that Courtney Durham accepted $64,700 in money transfers from her brother.

The suits against the three, filed this month, follow a lawsuit against Michael Durham, Durham’s stepson from his marriage

to SerVaas. Bash accuses Michael Durham of accepting $49,712 in transfers from Tim Durham.

And late last month, Bash sued Durham’s mother, Mitza Durham of Seymour, accusing her of receiving 58 checks or wire

transfers totaling $831,000 from Durham from February 2006 through November 2009.

So far in February, Bash has filed more than 40 lawsuits against notable defendants such as rapper Ludacris, former Playboy

playmate Jamie Ferrell and former O.J. Simpson confidant Kato Kaelin.

Other defendants include former IndyCar team Playa del Racing Inc., Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site Inc. and Henri

Najem, who owns the Bella Vita restaurants downtown and on Geist Reservoir. His brother Anthony Najem, who co-founded

Fishers-based construction firm Meyer Najem Corp., also is a defendant.

The amounts the latest defendants are accused of receiving from Durham are relatively small compared with the $1.2 billion

Bash is seeking from Fair’s lenders—Rhode Island-based Textron Financial Corp. and New York-based Fortress Credit Corp.

That suit, filed Feb. 7, charges the companies turned a blind eye to Durham’s fraudulent activities because they were

making millions of dollars on their lending relationship and held first liens on the only Fair assets with real value.

It accuses the two companies, which have billions in assets, of aiding and abetting theft, fraud and insiders’ breaches of

fiduciary duty.

The suits are part of Bash’s continuing quest to recover some of the more than $200 million that Fair owes more than 5,000

Ohio investors who purchased unsecured notes from the company.

Bash alleges Durham looted Fair after buying it in 2002, stripping the business of the financial wherewithal to repay the

investors.

Durham and two business partners, James Cochran and Ricky D. Snow, were arrested in March after being indicted on 12 felony

counts, including conspiracy to commit wire and securities fraud. They deny wrongdoing.
More Fair suits target Durham family members

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Chattanooga Guy within Course Motion Match Towards Ford.

THE all-male choir Men In Suits have an impressive record of being ordered out of Melbourne city venues. The management at

the Block Arcade banned them for life after one of last year’s ”city raids” – a classic MIS operation, during which 20

besuited blokes emerged from the camouflage of the morning crowds of businessmen and broke into their satiric anthem Let me

through, let me through/I’ve got very important things to do.

The choir has also alarmed security guards at various city stations by appearing on escalators and platforms to sing, in

glorious four-part harmony, their unofficial Metro hymn of mourning to late and cancelled trains – with lines such as ”Let

us remember the 10.53 from Epping which never made it through.”

The previous Christmas, security guards at Myer were ready to call the police when the group began serenading parcel-laden

shoppers with their anti-consumerism anthem Buy more stuff.

Men In Suits are now regularly invited to ”invade” corporate charity functions, while sometimes they are merely asked to

just get up on stage and sing. Next month they will perform at the Melbourne a Cappella festival and at the Yackandandah

Folk Festival, while this Thursday night they will be at the Melbourne Town Hall for the Victorian Women’s Trust’s ”Be The

Hero! Storming Against Violence” forum on violence against women.

Women’s Trust executive director Mary Crooks wanted the choir because she loves the line from their song Just Because that

goes ”Just because I’m trapped inside a suit/Doesn’t mean that I don’t yearn to play the lute”.

”To me it fits the idea of the real man emerging and taking a leadership role in the prevention of violence against

women,” she says.

The Men in Suits’ repertoire also contains non-political but musically complex folk songs from Georgia in the Caucasus,

while the choir also performs Leonard Cohen’s romantic ballad Dance Me to the End of Love – during which the singers

descend into the audience and invite women to dance. Their carefully pre-arranged ”intervention” at the welcome party for

the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ international forensic psychiatry conference in 2009

included this song, and scenes of the suits waltzing with female psychiatrists are on the medical organisation’s website.

Yet performing was the last thing on the mind of the inaugural choristers, who got together in early 2006, under the name

”Blokes Night Out”. Then, says property industry consultant and long-time member Bede Dempsey, 58, they were just a group

of middle-aged men doing the musical equivalent of ”going to our shed” with a series of guest conductors giving them

singing workshops.

One of these guests, Stephen Taberner, stayed on to lead them.

”I made that series of workshops last five years,” says Taberner, 50, instigator of many political ”flash mob” choir

events – including a 2007 election series in which singers popped up around the city carolling ”Vote the bastards out”.

He is also the founder of the cult choir Spooky Men’s Chorale, which completed a highly successful fourth UK tour last

year.

Now a full-time conductor of four different choirs, Taberner spent the 1990s living a double life – musician by night,

trapped in a suit by day. Accordingly, the satirical suit-themed songs he has written for Men In Suits also evoke sympathy

for the plight of men caught by financial necessity in what he calls the ”very dead, very non-celebratory” corporate

world.

The conductor is now ready to add to the MIS repertoire.

”On a bad day, Men in Suits [age range: 30-something to 70] act like a gang of 14-year schoolboys. So I have been thinking

of doing some ‘teen angst’ songs – songs that will express the fact that a lot of men are still just boys.”

Singing suits create a stir

No question – Darwin: How One Man’s Theory Turned the World on Its Head is a biggie.

The exhibition components arrived at the Witte Museum in seven tractor-trailers – one for the artifacts alone. That doesn’t

include transport for the live critters – a land iguana and two South American horned frogs – that will take up residence

in the show for its duration.

The exhibit’s size suits the story, said Bryan Bayles, curator of anthropology for the Witte, where the exhibit opens

Saturday.

“It’s a pretty epic story,” Bayles said. “It’s a big exhibit, and it really traces how this idea took shape.”

The idea is evolution, Charles Darwin’s theory that organisms change over time through the process of natural selection.

The show was pulled together by the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It debuted there about two years ago

and has since toured museums around the world. The Witte is the first Texas institution to get it.

“Especially when the exhibition launched, there was such a struggle in this country over natural selection and evolution,”

said Lauri Halderman, senior director of exhibitions for the New York museum. “We wanted visitors to understand that

natural selection is the scientific explanation for how life evolved. And it’s helpful to see Darwin’s thinking and how

Darwin spent so long making sure that he was right, and thinking hard about examples that might disprove his theory. He

wanted to look into every possible angle, every avenue, to make sure he was on the right track.

“We wanted people to understand the depth of Darwin’s thinking, and that, in the intervening decades, while we have many

additional insights now, nothing fundamentally changes Darwin’s theory.”

The exhibit begins with a look at the prevailing theories before Darwin introduced his ideas. It goes on to explore his

boyhood curiosity, his life-changing time as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle and the development of the theory of

evolution. It also deals with his concerns about how that theory would be received.

“(Darwin) knew that it would be very upsetting to people because it’s basically going against the idea that there was a

divine creator, rather than (the idea) that species could be created through a natural process,” Bayles said. “Before

Darwin, largely the notion was that animals and species were created by God, as is, and they did not change over time.

Things were sort of created in one fell swoop, and that was that.”

There’s a lot of attention-getting stuff in the exhibit, including life-size replicas of some of the animals Darwin ran

across on the Galapagos Islands and a detail-rich reproduction of his study. But the things that might have the most impact

are the journals – small, bound notebooks filled with cramped handwriting detailing his observations. One page holds what

is thought to be his first sketch of the tree of life: a simple trunk with a few branches jutting out, illustrating

relationships between groups of organisms. It’s drawn beneath the words “I think.”

The notebooks have proved popular with people who have seen the exhibit in other cities, Halderman said.

“They can see his mind at work and see his handwriting and get a sense of him as a person,” she said.
Darwin exhibit’s size suits scope of his epic story