Love, money and the online dating industry

At the heart of the new book "Love in the Time of Algorithms" is a philosophical question: does the billion-dollar dating industry, whose currency is the perpetual promise of new relationships, signal the death of commitment?

It is the question posed to Sam Yagan, chief executive of free dating website OkCupid, by the book's author, Dan Slater. "That's really a point about market liquidity," replies Yagan, a graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Business School, and a self-confessed "math guy" who says he knows nothing about dating.

Justin Parfitt, a British dating entrepreneur, answers the question more bluntly. The industry is thinking: Let's keep this customer coming back to the site as often as we can, he said, "and let's not worry about whether he's successful. There's this massive tension between what would actually work for you, the user, and what works for us, the shareholders. It's amazing, when you think about it. In what other industry is a happy customer bad for business?"

These responses represent the dissonance between the romantic ideal of love held by many customers and the approach of the entrepreneurial nerds who set up the match­making sites. The disparity is well drawn in this lively book by Slater, a former legal affairs reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who had racked up quite a few of his own cyber dates by age 31, following the demise of a long-term relationship.

A book on the dating industry would be soulless without tales of the customers — the cyber daters. Published by Current, "Love in the Time of Algorithms: What Technology Does to Meeting and Mating" is strewn with stories of blossoming romances, bed-hoppers and borderline sociopaths.

There is Carrie, a single mom in New York, who clicks the box for "full figured," saying that while she is bigger than Kim Kardashian, she is not as big as "big and beautiful." (In the search for love, these things matter.) After several false starts with men who find the "kid thing" a sticking point, Carrie meets her match in a Puerto Rican computer technician who's an atheist.

There is also Jacob in Oregon, who knows he can afford to take things slow with the pharmacist because he can always have sex with another online date. Or, as he likes to think of it: "There's always a pepperoni pizza in the trunk."

The writer delves into his own personal history — his parents met in the 1960s through a pioneering computer dating service. His father's comments, that "these days they're all over the Internet. I think they're mostly for desperate people, though," indicate the stigma that has dogged the industry.

Slater's account of the history of the cyber dating industry — from huge clunky old computers to modern complex computer algorithms — is well detailed. And he brings out the fierce rivalry between free and paid-for sites and the new possibilities for finding a date across the street using smartphones and innovative "freemium" sites.

The stated aim of this book is how online dating is "remaking the landscape of modern relationships," which is an ambitious goal for 240 pages. The sweep is huge: Nigerian scammers preying on the lonely; paunchy middle-aged men trafficking poor young South American and Russian women; math geeks competing for a share of the love market; and adult babies seeking matronly diaper-changers.

The author also brandishes so many ideas — a bit of behavioral economics here, a bit of biological determinism there — that it is hard to focus when so much is competing for the reader's attention. It is a dizzying attempt to demonstrate the author's mastery of the zeitgeist.

In the final chapter, Slater writes that he has tried to avoid "passing judgment on all the many behaviors, new and old, facilitated by the date-o-sphere". Yet this well-reported romp through the digital love marketplace would have benefited from a slightly more domineering author.

Emma Jacobs is a columnist for the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.

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Doctor who admitted dealing drugs to get his license back

A West Hollywood psychiatrist who pleaded guilty to felony drug dealing after pills he prescribed turned up for sale on Craigslist will be able to get his medical license back in a year under an agreement announced Friday by the Medical Board of California.

The sanction, though harsh by board standards, allows Nathan Kuemmerle, 40, a former methamphetamine user, to treat patients again as soon as next February.

As a result of the criminal charges, Kuemmerle had lost his privilege to prescribe controlled substances and must apply to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration if he wants it restored. Kuemmerle agreed to undergo random drug testing, enroll in a physician ethics class and seek psychological counseling, among other conditions.

Kuemmerle was featured in a Dec. 30 Times report on the state's failure to use its vast prescription drug database to identify reckless prescribing by physicians.

In 2009, Kuemmerle was the state's most prolific prescriber of Adderall, a widely abused stimulant, records show. His prescribing drew scrutiny only after Redondo Beach narcotics detectives arrested a suspected drug dealer peddling Adderall pills on Craigslist. The suspect identified Kuemmerle as the source of the prescriptions.

Two months later, a second suspected drug dealer arrested in Arizona also pointed authorities to Kuemmerle. When drug agents checked the state's prescription drug database, known as CURES, they discovered that in 2009 Kuemmerle prescribed nearly four times as many of the highest-dose Adderall pills as the No. 2 doctor on the list, records show. Additionally, records show, he was the state's No. 2 prescriber of the most highly controlled narcotic painkillers.

Kuemmerle was arrested and pleaded guilty in 2011 to drug dealing and was sentenced to three years' probation.

Federal agents had alleged that Kuemmerle was selling prescriptions to people he had never seen, much less examined, records show. Kuemmerle wrote an average of 15 prescriptions per day for controlled substances over a four-year period, a figure a medical expert described as "remarkably high," records show.

Narcotics detectives said they were amazed that Kuemmerle was able to prescribe so many drugs undetected for so long, even though state authorities had access to a database that collected a record every time a pharmacy dispensed one.

Kuemmerle could not be reached for comment.

The types of drugs Kuemmerle prescribed are fueling an epidemic of overdose deaths that has drawn the attention of drug enforcement agencies, lawmakers and medical authorities. The response has largely focused on illicit sources of prescription drugs, such as pharmacy robberies and teens stealing from home medicine cabinets.

But a Times investigation of more than 3,700 prescription drug deaths in Southern California found that nearly half of the decedents had a doctor's prescription for one or more of the medications that caused or contributed to their deaths.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has urged states to mine prescription drug monitoring databases to identify and stop reckless prescribers. At least six states do so. California does not.

lisa.girion@latimes.com

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BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day

The biggest criticism of BlackBerry’s (RIMM) revamped mobile operating system and smartphone line so far is that they don’t give iOS or Android users any compelling reasons to switch brands. And this is certainly true — BlackBerry 10, for all its virtues, doesn’t do anything significantly better than the top two mobile operating systems and seems designed mostly to please the faithful and not win new converts. At the same time, I think this sort of criticism is based on somewhat unrealistic expectations for what a revamped BlackBerry would be able to achieve in its first iteration. Put simply, making its own loyal fans happy might have been the best that BlackBerry could do in this particular product cycle.

[More from BGR: GS: Ignore the chatter, BlackBerry rebound is coming]

Before we go further with this line of thinking, we should remind ourselves of the truly dire state that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins found the company in when he took it over just over a year ago.

[More from BGR: Here comes the PlayStation 4: Sony announces February 20th PlayStation event [video]]

Longtime customers were fleeing BlackBerry for iOS and Android after BlackBerry repeatedly shot itself in the foot by releasing devices that featured outdated hardware (the first-generation BlackBerry Torch) or that lacked some of the core capabilities that BlackBerry customers had come to expect (the BlackBerry PlayBook and its lack of native corporate email without a “bridge” connection). The company also got caught completely flat-footed by the rise of mobile apps as a vital component of the global smartphone ecosystem and typically wouldn’t get big-name apps on its platform for more than a year after they’d been out on iOS and Android, if at all.

Let’s also recall that when Heins announced last summer that BlackBerry 10 would be delayed until the first quarter of 2013, many of us wondered if the new operating system would ever be released or if the company would simply collapse under the weight of competitive pressures. That Heins has been able to not only get BlackBerry 10 launched but also get more than 100 carriers on board with the new platform is a pretty impressive feat. Add in that Heins has been able to score commitments from some important apps such as Skype, WhatsApp and Amazon Kindle, and you begin to appreciate just how far BlackBerry has come from almost going over the brink.

Of course, none of this is even close to being enough to make BlackBerry a force in the mobile industry anytime soon. But if ardent BlackBerry fans buy up the new BlackBerry 10 handsets and if the company maintains its corporate clients, it may be enough to let the company live to fight another day.

Benedict Evans, a strategy consultant for Enders Analysis, has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimates BlackBerry could sell as many as 20 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones in 2013, although he admits this number could be overly optimistic by as much as 50%. But even if BlackBerry sells just 15 million BB10 phones this year, that could be enough to give the company some breathing room while it works to recruit more app developers and generally improve its new operating system’s functionality.

This is not to say that BlackBerry has an easy road from here — the odds are still very much against it. But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, no one should have expected BlackBerry to return to its former glory overnight. As much as BlackBerry fans would love to see their favorite devices rise up and crush iOS and Android, that sort of comeback was never in the cards. The best BlackBerry can hope is that they’ve stopped the bleeding and can continue building from here.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Why is Beckham sitting on the bench for nothing?

PARIS (AP) — David Beckham has won league championships in three countries on two continents, earns millions of dollars in endorsements and his name is practically synonymous with celebrity itself. He has his own cologne, for goodness sake. So why is he even bothering to sit on the bench for the Paris Saint-Germain football club?

His royal highness of football doesn't need the money — and he's said he'll donate his PSG salary to charity — but he does need to start thinking about life after the game. At 37, Beckham is practically a dinosaur for the sport, and he acknowledged in his welcoming press conference on Thursday that he probably won't be in the team's starting lineup.

Instead, Beckham may be beginning to put in place a plan for life after the final whistle. Ellis Cashmore, a sociologist who writes about sports and media culture at Staffordshire University, said that prolonged exposure is always useful to celebrities building empires. In that way, the deal with PSG does double work: It keeps his name in lights for longer and also garners extra attention for the charitable contribution.

"When he does stop playing, which is going to be quite soon, his overall brand appeal will inevitably decline because we will inevitably forget about this guy," he said. "I think he's probably thinking, I want to stay in the shop window for a bit longer."

But Cashmore also cautioned against being too cynical in assessing Beckham's motives: "The guy is an athlete. He wants to do what he loves to do."

Bruno Satin, an independent players' agent who was with IMG for a decade, also said that the move to PSG — even if it's to sit on the bench — is a step up for Beckham.

"For him, to be on the PSG team, it's a higher level than being on the Los Angeles Galaxy," he said. "For the world of football, for real football, the Los Angeles Galaxy is nothing on the map of football."

Some wondered if Beckham was trying to avoid the notoriously sticky fingers of the French state with his plans to donate his salary.

But Sandra Hodzic, a tax lawyer with Salans, said the deduction an individual can take on such contributions is limited. Instead, it would be smarter for PSG to directly donate the salary — and take a big tax break in the process.

Doing so would have an added benefit for the club: UEFA, the governing body for European football, mandate that clubs break even. The donation could allow PSG to essentially write off Beckham's entire salary — a huge help for a team notorious for mega-contracts.

Beckham, meanwhile, would be better off trying to avoid becoming a French tax resident at all. So far, Hodzic said, he is making all the right moves: His family is staying in London, he plans to live only part-time in the country for less than six months, and his primary source of income —whether or not he donates his salary — isn't being earned in France.

Beckham's agent did not return calls for comment on specifics of the contract.

Still, the charitable contribution has raised the question about what Beckham is getting out of the deal. For one, he likely is still getting a cut of rights to his image. Jerseys with his name on them were already selling out at the PSG store on the Champs-Elysees on Friday.

Cashmore, who wrote a book called "Beckham," calls him a "marketing phenomenon" and estimates that about 70 percent of Beckham's income comes from endorsement deals — with Adidas, for instance. That makes salary almost irrelevant — especially for a man estimated by the Sunday Times Rich List to be worth 160 million pounds ($253 million).

But the football feeds the endorsements, Cashmore says.

"It makes an awful lot of business sense to perpetuate, to prolong his active competitive football career," he said, especially with a team that's doing fairly well this year. "It makes an awful lot of sense for him to showcase himself because it will generate more income from his various other sponsorship and licensing activities."

But certainly this move, as any at this late-stage in his playing career, is being made with an eye on what will come next. Cashmore said that when Beckham signed with the L.A. Galaxy, there was an understanding that he would eventually become an ambassador for American soccer. That plan clearly fell by the wayside — perhaps because Major League Soccer decided it was just too expensive to keep on the star after his presence on American soil failed to generate more interest in the game.

It's possible, Cashmore said, that Beckham is looking for a similar deal after his stint at PSG, which is Qatari owned. The tiny, wealthy nation is hosting the World Cup in 2022, and Beckham's contract with PSG will establish a relationship with it; from there, a role as, say, an ambassador for the tournament would seem more natural.

"For his after-career conversion, it's important to have links with major actors in the world of sports," said Satin. And Qatar is certainly one. It has poured money into PSG, drawing major names like striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic. It also funds the satellite network Al Jazeera, which could provide Beckham with a platform. And then there's the World Cup.

In the end, though, Satin said the clue to Beckham's thinking may be as simple as the eternal draw of Paris.

"PSG has become a glamorous club, a pretty nice club in a beautiful city," said Bruno Satin, an agent. "It's just two hours on the Eurostar (train) from London."

____

AP Sports Writer Rob Harris contributed to this report from London.

____

Follow Sarah DiLorenzo at http://www.twitter.com/sdilorenzo

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Ferrol Sams, Doctor Turned Novelist, Dies at 90

Ferrol Sams, a country doctor who started writing fiction in his late 50s and went on to win critical praise and a devoted readership for his humorous and perceptive novels and stories that drew on his medical practice and his rural Southern roots, died on Tuesday at his home in Lafayette, Ga. He was 90.

The cause, said his son Ferrol Sams III, also a doctor, was that he was “slap wore out.”

“He lived a full life,” his son said. “He didn’t leave anything in the tank.”

Dr. Sams grew up on a farm in the rural Piedmont area of Georgia, seven mud-road miles from the nearest town. He was a boy during the Depression; books meant escape and discovery. He read “Robinson Crusoe,” then Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. One of his English professors at Mercer University, in Macon, suggested he consider a career in writing, but he chose another route to examining the human condition: medical school.

When he was 58 — after he had served in World War II, started a medical practice with his wife, raised his four children and stopped devoting so much of his mornings to preparing lessons for Sunday school at the Methodist church — he began writing “Run With the Horsemen,” a novel based on his youth. It was published in 1982.

“In the beginning was the land,” the book begins. “Shortly thereafter was the father.”

In The New York Times Book Review, the novelist Robert Miner wrote, “Mr. Sams’s approach to his hero’s experiences is nicely signaled in these two opening sentences.”

He added: “I couldn’t help associating the gentility, good-humored common sense and pace of this novel with my image of a country doctor spinning yarns. The writing is elegant, reflective and amused. Mr. Sams is a storyteller sure of his audience, in no particular hurry, and gifted with perfect timing.”

Dr. Sams modeled the lead character in “Run With the Horsemen,” Porter Osborne Jr., on himself, and featured him in two more novels, “The Whisper of the River” and “When All the World Was Young,” which followed him into World War II.

Dr. Sams also wrote thinly disguised stories about his life as a physician. In “Epiphany,” he captures the friendship that develops between a literary-minded doctor frustrated by bureaucracy and a patient angry over past racism and injustice.

Ferrol Sams Jr. was born Sept. 26, 1922, in Woolsey, Ga. He received a bachelor’s degree from Mercer in 1942 and his medical degree from Emory University in 1949. In his addition to his namesake, survivors include his wife, Dr. Helen Fletcher Sams; his sons Jim and Fletcher; a daughter, Ellen Nichol; eight grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

Some critics tired of what they called the “folksiness” in Dr. Sams’s books. But he did not write for the critics, he said. In an interview with the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame, Dr. Sams was asked what audience he wrote for. Himself, he said.

“If you lose your sense of awe, or if you lose your sense of the ridiculous, you’ve fallen into a terrible pit,” he added. “The only thing that’s worse is never to have had either.”

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Making his own waves

The gig: Steve Pezman and his wife, Debbee, quit key roles at Surfer magazine in 1992 to try to create a National Geographic for wave-riding grown-ups. As other surf pubs focus on big-bucks competitions and apparel ads, the Surfer's Journal still runs long stories and lavish photo spreads celebrating surf history, lore and lifestyle. Published six times annually, sold in surf shops for $15.95 a pop and to subscribers for $63 a year, the magazine runs just six ads in each 128-page edition. Total circulation: 30,000.

Personal: Pezman, 71, took to the waves in the 1950s when his family moved from Brentwood to Long Beach. He got his first surfboard in 1957, two years before the movie "Gidget" created a surf craze. Pezman rode big waves on Oahu's North Shore in 1962. He was a Huntington Beach board shaper in the late 1960s when he began writing magazine articles. Twin sons Shaun and Tyler, 25, are accomplished recreational surfers. Steve and Debbee are major supporters of a Costa Mesa soup kitchen that her mother opened 25 years ago; Someone Cares serves 300 meals a day to homeless and low-income people.

Giant break: "I fell into the publisher's chair at Surfer when the founder, John Severson, sold to a holding company and looked around for a replacement in 1970. It got down to me being convenient, and I made the best of it, with an already staffed 10-year-old surf magazine propping me up until I learned the ropes. The surfboard ad-based surf market had slumped during Vietnam when I stepped in. Then the lifestyle surf-clothing boom started growing right under me, so I was suddenly the golden boy to the new owners."

Inside info: Debbee, 58, Pezman's second wife, is "the systems designer, marketing, people person who really runs the business. I was and am more about the content and our unique relationship surfer-to-surfer with our readers." Their staff of 16, not all full time, includes son Shaun, who has a business degree from San Diego State and manages finances. Son Tyler "is a welder, ceramicist, painter, sculptor who currently works for a civilian defense contractor, working on hovercraft at Camp Pendleton, where he keeps an eye on the surf." Other key players include photo editor Jeff Divine, 61; editor Scott Hulet, 51; and designer Jeff Girard, 60. But a new wave of 20-somethings are "phasing in, as we older ones are phasing out."

It's a trip: At Surfer, Pezman interviewed psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, who saw humans "evolving to become purely aesthetic beings ... surfing across the universe on cosmic waves. Leary saw surfers as the throw-aheads of mankind, in that we already had figured out that the dance was the object of the game rather than gathering and guarding more acorns than we could eat."

On his 21,000 subscribers: "Our business is based on making it for $5 and selling it for $10, like the book business, but selling subscriptions instead of single copies. Magazines typically make it for $5, sell it for $3, and have ad revenue overcome the loss. Readers buy the Journal for an unusually high price in return for an unusually high level of content. The revenue we receive from our [advertising] sponsors is important but secondary, and if we had to, we could live without it. The sponsors are mostly big businesses that are run by surfers, and their support of the soul of surfing exhibits that their own soul is still alive."

On plans to eventually sell the magazine and retire: "These things are like living organisms and you keep feeding them and changing their diapers long after they've grown up. If properly parented, they can and should be able to thrive without Mommy and Daddy hovering over them."

scott.reckard@latimes.com

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Cardinal Mahony relieved of duties over handling of abuse

In a move unprecedented in the American Catholic Church, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced Thursday that he had relieved his predecessor, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, of all public duties over his mishandling of clergy sex abuse of children decades ago.

Gomez also said that Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry, who worked with Mahony to conceal abusers from police in the 1980s, had resigned his post as a regional bishop in Santa Barbara.

The announcement came as the church posted on its website tens of thousands of pages of previously secret personnel files for 122 priests accused of molesting children.

"I find these files to be brutal and painful reading. The behavior described in these files is terribly sad and evil," Gomez wrote in a letter addressed to "My brothers and sisters in Christ."

The release of the records and the rebuke of the two central figures in L.A.'s molestation scandal signaled a clear desire by Gomez to define the sexual abuse crisis as a problem of a different era — and a different archbishop.

"I cannot undo the failings of the past that we find in these pages. Reading these files, reflecting on the wounds that were caused has been the saddest experience I've had since becoming your Archbishop in 2011," Gomez wrote.

The public censure of Mahony, whose quarter-century at the helm of America's largest archdiocese made him one of the most powerful men in the Catholic Church, was unparalleled, experts said.

"This is very unusual and shows really how seriously they're taking this. To tell a cardinal he can't do confirmations, can't do things in public, that's extraordinary," said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and Georgetown University fellow.

An archdiocese spokesman, Tod Tamberg, said that beyond canceling his confirmation schedule, Mahony's day-to-day life as a retired priest would be largely unchanged. He resides at a North Hollywood parish, and Tamberg said he would remain a "priest in good standing." He can continue to celebrate Mass and will be eligible to vote for pope until he turns 80 two years from now, Tamberg said.

The move further stained the legacy of Mahony, a tireless advocate for Latinos and undocumented immigrants whose reputation has been marred over the last decade by revelations about his treatment of sex abuse allegations.

Before Gomez's announcement, Mahony had weathered three grand jury investigations and numerous calls for his resignation. He stayed in office until the Vatican's mandatory retirement age of 75. No criminal charges have been filed against Mahony or anyone in the church hierarchy.

Terrence McKiernan, president of bishopaccountability.org, said that in a religious institution that values saving face and protecting its own, Gomez's decision to publicly criticize an elder statesman of the church and his top aide was striking.

"Even when Cardinal [Bernard] Law was removed in Boston, which was arguably for the same offenses, this kind of gesture was not made," he said.

Law left office in 2002 amid mounting outrage over his transfer of pedophile priests from parish to parish, but the church presented his departure as of his own accord and he was later given a highly coveted Vatican job in Rome.

Bishop Thomas J. O'Brien of Phoenix relinquished some of his authority in a deal with prosecutors to avoid criminal charges for his handling of abuse cases, but he kept his title and many of his duties. A Kansas City bishop convicted last year of failing to report child abuse retained his position.

The Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer and Dominican priest who has testified across the nation as an expert witness in clergy sex abuse cases, said the Vatican would have "absolutely" been consulted on a decision of this magnitude.

"This is momentous, there is no question," he said. "For something like this to happen to a cardinal.... The way they treat cardinals is as if they're one step below God."

Gomez's decision capped a two-week period in which the publication of 25-year-old files fueled a new round of condemnation of the L.A. archdiocese. The files of 14 clerics accused of abuse became public in a court case last Monday. They laid out in Mahony and Curry's own words how the church hierarchy had plotted to keep law enforcement from learning that children had been molested at the hands of priests.

To stave off investigations, Mahony and Curry gave priests they knew had abused children out-of-state assignments and kept them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities.

Mahony and Curry both issued apologies, with the cardinal saying he had not realized the extent of harm done to children until he met with victims during civil litigation. "I am sorry," he said.

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CES gadget show host drops CNET as awards picker

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The industry group that hosts the annual gadget show known as International CES is dropping reviews website CNET as the picker of its “Best of CES” awards. It says CNET reviewers’ objectivity was compromised by the site’s corporate parent, CBS Corp.

The Consumer Electronics Association also elevated the CNET writers’ initial pick for the best gadget of the show, Dish Network Corp.‘s Hopper with Sling, to co-winner along with a gaming tablet called Razer Edge.

CBS had annulled an earlier vote by CNET staff to award the Hopper because it is in a legal dispute with Dish over the product. The Hopper allows users to automatically skip commercials from prime-time TV shows, undercutting a key source of revenue for CBS, advertising.

After CBS removed the Hopper from contention, CNET staff re-voted and chose Razer Edge as the winner.

The association says it is looking for a new partner for its awards.

The association’s president, Gary Shapiro, blasted CBS in an opinion article in the USA Today newspaper on Wednesday, saying its interference damaged its own editorial integrity. CBS also owns TV shows such as “60 Minutes,” ”CBS Evening News” and “Face the Nation.”

“It not only tainted the CES awards, but it hurt one of the world’s classiest media companies,” Shapiro wrote.

The association, which has hosted the gadget show since 1967, had contracted with CNET to pick the awards since the 2007 show. It normally chooses not to get involved, partly because of its relationship with its many exhibitors.

Mark Larkin, the general manager of CNET, said in a statement the website is “committed to delivering in-depth coverage of consumer electronics” and will continue to cover the show, as it has for more than a decade.

Dish appeared to bask in the controversy, which drew more attention to its device.

“We appreciate the International CES’ decision to stand with the consumer in the acknowledgement of this award,” said Dish CEO Joseph Clayton in a statement. “I regret that the award has come in the face of CBS’ undermining of CNET’s editorial independence.”

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Appeals judges: Anti-paparazzi law appears legal

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An appeals panel says California's anti-paparazzi statute appears to be constitutional based on a brief filed by prosecutors.

A preliminary statement by three judges in Los Angeles requires a judge who dismissed charges aimed at a paparazzo who authorities say was driving recklessly to review his order. The judge may stick to his ruling, which would trigger a full appeal, or he could schedule further arguments on the case against freelance photographer Paul Raef.

Raef was the first person charged under the new law after a high-speed chase involving Justin Bieber last year.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed two charges in November, ruling the law is too broad and is unconstitutional.

Raef's attorney David S. Kestenbaum says he is asking Rubinson to stand by his ruling and allow a full appeal.

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The New Old Age Blog: Caregiving, Laced With Humor

“My grandmother, she’s not a normal person. She’s like a character when she speaks. Every day she’s playing like she’s an actress.”

These are words of love, and they come from Sacha Goldberger, a French photographer who has turned his grandmother, 93-year-old Frederika Goldberger, into a minor European celebrity.

In the photos, you can see the qualities grandson and grandmother have in common: a wicked sense of humor, an utter lack of pretension and a keen taste for theatricality and the absurd.

This isn’t an ordinary caregiving relationship, not by a long shot. But Sacha, 44 years old and unmarried, is deeply devoted to this spirited older relation who has played the role of Mamika (“my little grandmother,” translated from her native Hungarian) in two of his books and a photography exhibition currently underway in Paris.

As for Frederika, “I like everything that my grandson does,” she said in a recent Skype conversation from her apartment, which also serves as Sacha’s office. “I hate not to do anything. Here, with my grandson, I have the feeling I am doing something.”

Their unusual collaboration began after Frederika retired from her career as a textile consultant at age 80 and fell into a funk.

“I was very depressed because I lived for working,” she told me in our Skype conversation.

Sacha had long dreamed of creating what he calls a “Woody Allen-like Web site with a French Jewish humor” and he had an inspiration. What if he took one of the pillars of that type of humor, a French man’s relationship with his mother and grandmother, and asked Frederika to play along with some oddball ideas?

This Budapest-born baroness, whose family had owned the largest textile factory in Hungary before World War II, was a natural in front of the camera, assuming a straight-faced, imperturbable comic attitude whether donning a motorcycle helmet and goggles, polishing her fingernails with a gherkin, wearing giant flippers on the beach, lighting up a banana, or dressed up as a Christmas tree with a golden star on her head. (All these photos and more appear in “Mamika: My Mighty Little Grandmother,” published in the United States last year.)

“It was like a game for us, deciding what crazy thing we were going to do next, how we were going to keep people from being bored,” said Sacha, who traces his close relationship with his grandmother to age 14, when she taught him how to drive and often picked him up at school. “Making pictures was a very good excuse to spend time together.”

“He thought it was very funny to put a costume on me,” said Frederika. “And I liked it.”

People responded enthusiastically, and before long Sacha had cooked up what ended up becoming the most popular character role for Frederika: Super Mamika, outfitted in a body-hugging costume, tights, a motorcycle helmet and a flowing cape.

His grandmother was a super hero of sorts, because she had helped save 10 people from the Nazis during World War II, said Sacha. He also traced inspiration to Stan Lee, a Jewish artist who created the X-Men, The Hulk and the Fantastic Four for Marvel comics. “I wanted to ask what happens to these super heroes when they get old in these photographs with my grandmother.”

Lest this seem a bit trivial to readers of this blog, consider this passage from Sacha’s introduction to “Mamika: My Might Little Grandmother”:

In a society where youth is the supreme value; where wrinkles have to be camouflaged; where old people are hidden as soon as they become cumbersome, where, for lack of time or desire, it is easier to put our elders in hospices rather than take care of them, I wanted to show that happiness in aging was also possible.

In our Skype conversation, Sacha confessed to anxiety about losing his grandmother, and said, “I always was very worried about what would happen if my grandmother disappeared. Because she is exceptional.”

“I am not normal,” Frederika piped up at his side, her face deeply wrinkled, her short hair beautifully coiffed, seemingly very satisfied with herself.

“So, making these pictures to me is the best thing that could happen,” Sacha continued, “because now my grandma is immortal and it seems everyone knows her. I am giving to everybody in the world a bit of my grandma.”

This wonderful expression of caring and creativity has expanded my view of intergenerational relations in this new old age. What about you?

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