The Black Swan Theory or Theory of Black Swan Events is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept that The event is a surprise (to the observer) and has a major impact. After the fact, the event is rationalized by hindsight. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain: The disproportionate role of high-impact, hard to predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance and technology; the non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities); and the psychological biases that make people individually and collectively blind to uncertainty and unaware of the massive role of the rare event in historical affairs. Unlike the earlier philosophical "black swan problem", the "Black Swan Theory" (capitalized) refers only to unexpected events of large magnitude and consequence and their dominant role in history. Black Swan Events were characterized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his 2007 book (revised and completed in 2010), The Black Swan. Taleb regards almost all major scientific discoveries, historical events, and artistic accomplishments as "black swans"—undirected and unpredicted . He gives the rise of the Internet, the personal computer, World War I, and the September 11 attacks as examples of Black Swan Events. The term black swan was a Latin expression—its oldest known reference comes from the poet Juvenal's characterization of something being "rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno" (6.165). In English, this Latin phrase means "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan." When the phrase was coined, the black swan was presumed not to exist. The importance of the simile lies in its analogy to the fragility of any system of thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory
Read interview with Taleb by Charlie Rose in the February 28-March 6, 2011 issue of Bloomberg Business Week at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218047676960.htm

In 2004, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first listed the Santa Cruz Island fox as an endangered species, fewer than 100 remained. Their evolutionary story likely began when a pair of errant gray foxes somehow rafted across the 20-mile ocean channel from the California mainland around 15,000 years ago. They coexisted with the Chumash Indians and the island’s last remaining pygmy mammoths, whose fossils are still lodged in the soils. Only in the past 150 years did the ecological insults begin to pile up. Ranchers brought sheep and pigs, which denuded the island of much of its native vegetation. By the 1960s, a legacy of DDT disposal in the waters south of Los Angeles wiped out resident bald eagles. The DDT accumulated in the tissues of the fish and carrion the eagles fed on, weakening their eggshells so that the eggs were easily crushed. With the territorial bald eagles out of the way, golden eagles moved into the island’s cliffside perches in the 1990s, lured by a steady diet of feral pigs. The decision was made to round up 10 pairs of the remaining foxes for a captive breeding program. The Conservancy and the National Park Service, which owns the eastern quarter of the island, began a multimillion-dollar effort to restore ecological balance. The plan was to capture and relocate the golden eagles, re-establish bald eagles and set them free on the island, and eradicate the non-native feral pigs, which had nearly devoured the island’s rare and endangered native plants. With the threat of golden eagles diminished, the foxes have bounced back. At last count, Conservancy scientists estimated that more than 1,200 foxes live on the island, and Conservancy biologist Lotus Vermeer is waiting to see whether this year the population returns to its historical size of 1,500. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33121.html

Nationally acclaimed writer T.C. Boyle has written a new novel dramatizing efforts to restore the endangered species of Santa Cruz Island. The book, When the Killing’s Done, Viking Press, is loosely based on the efforts of the Conservancy’s island program director, biologist Lotus Vermeer, and dramatizes the challenges and difficulties of restoring several species that would likely now be extinct but for the quick work of conservationists. T.C. Boyle has written often about the environment, but this is the first time he has set a book on Santa Cruz Island, located just 20 miles south of his Santa Barbara home. The novel explores the question of who owns nature, says Boyle. “Can you separate yourself from everybody else and live in the wild, and do you take advantage of the wild?” he asks. “Are you making a profit from it, by running sheep for instance, but at the same time degrading it? And who has the right to do that and who has the right to say no?” Boyle says he was fascinated by the history of the Channel Islands, and he read many memoirs and accounts of shipwrecks and early ranching efforts. Although largely set in modern times, the novel looks at the history of the island and how human activity launched a chain of unintended changes. http://www.nature.org/magazine/spring2011/features/art33132.html

Media Influence
Actor Martin Sheen, whose birthname is Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez, adopted his stage name early in his career, in honor of Fulton John Sheen, born Peter John Sheen, a popular religious figure on television during the 1950s, whose radio broadcasts he admired since childhood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_J._Sheen

Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff attended Beverly Hills High School. During his high school years, he managed both the Beverly Hills and Westwood United Artists movie theater; his father had left Arnold Palmer Enterprises to become president of the Diner's Club franchises. At the age of 12, after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, Jack decided to become a devout, orthodox Jew. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff

The 1940 animated film Fantasia is the third animated feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. The film features eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music, seven of which were performed by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. Music critic and composer Deems Taylor provides live-action introductions to each segment. The idea for Fantasia arose in 1937 while Disney planned to revive the declining popularity of Mickey Mouse with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, a more elaborate edition of the Silly Symphonies series. As production costs grew, Disney reconsidered Stokowski's suggestion to expand the concept and produce a feature-length film with a variety of illustrations set to musical pieces. The soundtrack was recorded with an early stereo sound process called Fantasound, making Fantasia the first commercial film released in multi-channel sound. In May 1992, the Philadelphia Orchestra filed a lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company and Buena Vista Home Video, believing that as a co-creator of the film, it was entitled to half of the estimated $120 million in profits from video and laser disc sales. The suit ended after the orchestra dropped its case, in October 1994. British music publisher Boosey & Hawkes filed a further lawsuit in 1993, contending that Disney did not have the rights to use The Rite of Spring in the VHS release of Fantasia. The company had bought the rights to the piece in 1947. Boosey & Hawkes won the case in August 1996. Music in Fantasia: Johann Sebastian Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor; Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite – selection of pieces from the ballet depicts the changing of the seasons from summer to autumn to winter, with no plot; Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice – based on Goethe's 1797 poem Der Zauberlehrling. Mickey Mouse, an apprentice of sorcerer Yen Sid, attempts some of his master's magic tricks before knowing how to control them; Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring – a reinterpretation of the history of Earth is shown to select pieces of the ballet, from the planet's formation to the first living creatures, followed by the reign and extinction of the dinosaur; Ludwig van Beethoven's The Pastoral Symphony – a mythical ancient Greek world of centaurs, fauns and other creatures of classical mythology; Amilcare Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours – featuring Madame Upanova and her ostriches followed by Hyacinth Hippo and her servant; Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain and Franz Schubert's Ave Maria http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasia_(film)

In 1950, nearly half of the more than 10,000 New Yorkers living in the heart of Little Italy identified as Italian-American. The narrow streets teemed with children and resonated with melodic exchanges in Italian among the one in five residents born in Italy and their second- and third-generation neighbors. By 2000, the census found that the Italian-American population had dwindled to 6 percent. Only 44 were Italian-born, compared with 2,149 a half-century earlier. Sambuca’s Café, at 105 Mulberry Street, is listed by Yelp, the food-oriented Web site, as being in Chinatown—it is owned by the president of the Little Italy Merchants Association. Last year, the National Park Service designated a Chinatown and Little Italy Historic District with no geographic distinction between the neighborhoods. The two neighborhoods have begun organizing a Marco Polo Day and an East Meets West Christmas Parade. City Hall will soon further erase the boundaries. Following the lead of three local community boards, the City Planning Commission is expected in March to approve the creation of a Chinatown Business Improvement District, which would engulf all but about two square blocks of a haven that once spanned almost 50 square blocks and had the largest concentration of Italian immigrants in the United States. Paolucci’s, a popular restaurant that opened on Mulberry in 1947, moved to Staten Island after the owner’s rent was raised in 2005 to $20,000 a month from $3,500, he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/22/nyregion/22littleitaly.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

More companies are jumping into the business of refurbishing and reselling the used cellphones and other electronic gadgets clogging Americans' drawers and closets. Within a few years, the used market could account for a fifth of all cellphone sales in the U.S., says Stephen Manning, chief executive of ReCellular Inc., one of the largest U.S.-based cellphone refurbishers. ReCellular resold or recycled 5.2 million cellphones last year, up from 2.1 million five years earlier. ReCellular sells about 60% of its phones in the U.S. and the rest mostly to dealers in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. Until recently, the privately owned company acquired phones only in bulk, getting them from charities that held collection drives and retailers or others with returned merchandise. Now ReCellular advertises on cable TV that it is willing to buy phones one at a time from individuals via the Usell.com Web site. Big retailers including Best Buy Co., phone makers, wireless carriers and a profusion of Web-site operators are all selling the reconditioned phones and offering cash or store credit for castoff devices. Some have recently begun advertising on television and radio to persuade more people to sell their old electronic gadgets, including game consoles and MP3 music players as well as phones. ReCellular and its rivals offer a few dollars for many basic phones with several years of wear and up to about $400 for the most advanced Apple Inc. iPhones. The phones are then often resold in the U.S. or abroad via retailers or Web sites. Others end up as replacement phones provided under warranty or insurance programs. At a ReCellular plant in Dexter, Mich., a 57,000-square-foot building formerly used to make automotive plastics receives thousands of old cellphones each day. About three-quarters of them can be buffed up or reconditioned and sold. The others—including 20-year-old car phones—are so dated they can only be mined for metals and plastics at a nearby recycling plant to partially cover the company's costs. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704520504576162431091194572.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us_business