Rexfeng

For most of the fall, some colleagues and I developed NYT 4th Down Bot, a news application that analyzed N.F.L. 4th down decisions in real time. I had been thinking about a project like this for a long time – Amanda Cox forwarded me David Romer’s paper at least three years ago – but the fall of 2013 was really the first time I felt like I was equipped to actually make a project like this happen.

Earlier in the year, while working on a graphic about the draft, I had spoken with Brian Burke, the creator of the popular football analytics web site Advanced NFL Stats. I explained my idea to him (roughly, a web site that analyzed every 4th down of every game) and asked him if he'd be willing to create an API for his 4th Down Calculator for a joint venture once the season started. He said yes, and I told him I'd be in touch in a few months.

The app turned out to be complicated. We're watching a live data feed of every NFL game (provided by a Canadian company called SportsDirect), processing the feed to determine the situation and result of the play, hitting an API representing Brian Burke's 4th Down calculator with that game situation, processing the response and publishing new data files to S3. There is no real backend, no database and no static content – just a bunch of Node scripts publishing JSON files every 15 seconds anytime an N.F.L. game is happening. (Not by design...it just happened that way. I'm not opinionated about these sorts of things.)

Start to finish, the whole process took about a minute. (Before Tom Giratikanon got involved, it took a lot longer than that – without him, the app would still be sitting on my Desktop.)

My first sketches were simply small tables designed for a phone using data from the 2012 season.

As the concept became clearer, the tables became bigger, more interesting, and much more opinionated.

I had been working on a demo for weeks before Shan Carter and Jen Daniel suggested the idea of personifying Brian's model. (Originally, the tables simply compared "Coach says" to "math says", clearly boring in retrospect.) This first started with "NYT Coachbot", a flat vector drawing from Jennifer.

We then started giving the robot more of a mouth.

A few sketches later, we were emphasizing the throwback style of 1980s computers and printers in the bot’s reports.

The more we designed, the more we realized most people would be coming to the "play" pages directly from Twitter, so we had to make them as clear as possible to the uninitated – this is why each robot decision comes with a dead simple sentence that says exactly what it is.

The drawings and renderings are from Jennifer Daniel and Shan Carter, who worked in a back-and-forth style, bringing the bot to life using Modo and Adobe Illustrator.

And what that looks like in Modo, the 3D program Shan used to render it.

Here are some of Jennifer's thoughts on reactions he could have. (Bummer about "ashamed" bot's lack of self-control.)

In the end, we didn't make all those poses, but we did do a lot of fun ones that really brought the concept to life. Here are all the things the 4th Down Bot liked to do (including dogging you for making nachos). It even fooled our friend Lynn Cherny when it signed off one night, which is almost as great as that time it was a copy editor on the foreign desk.

Here are all the poses Shan put the bot in at one point or another:

By the end of the season, it had more than 10,000 Twitter followers and caught the attention of various famous economists and CEOs of Twitter.

Still, it's certainly not perfect. Here are some things that are wrong with it:

• It probably took too long to launch. We published around Week 13. Officially, we missed our goal by only five days, but in retrospect we could have published something less polished and improved it as it gained momentum. (This is hard for us newspaper people to do.)

• It could feel more “live”. The lag between the end of the play and the analysis takes about a minute, but sometimes the delay on the play-by-play data lagged a bit, which meant you were getting bot analysis well after the other team started its drive. This isn't ideal, but there just wasn't much we could do about it.

• Because it was programmed to analyze decisions that already happened, some aspects of N.F.L. play aren't captured well. For example, when a team intentionally takes a penalty on 4th and 1 near midfield, the bot applauds the punt on 4th and 6 without properly scolding the 4th and 1. This particularly annoyed Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders, who later got over it.

• As many statisticians noted, it could display uncertainty better than it does. From my perspective, that's the most legitimate criticism, and we hope to improve on it next year.

Still, although we're biased, we think it was a successful, well-executed project and a novel use of technology for news. Tom Giratikanon even gave the project his highest praise: both "worth doing" and "not the worst."

Here's a list of notable NYT 4th Down Bot links for the offseason (and if there are others, I'm happy to add them):

• An intro post from Brian Burke when it was launched. "Even I'm tired of analyzing 4th downs."

• A thoughtful critique from a statistician's perspective.

• I talked about it on the Advanced NFL Stats podcast.

• Neiman Lab wrote a feature on it.

• Gigaom wrote a long post about it and then did a longer feature on Brian Burke, who developed the statistical model that drives the bot.

• For some reason, it had something to do with brands and content strategy, though to be honest, this article makes little sense.

• Nate Silver devoted a few paragraphs of his ESPN magazine cover story on the bot.

We're hoping to introduce a cousin or two this summer, too. If not, well, preseason is only 6 months away.

It's only around 30 seconds long, but this video showing a standard web maps interface paired with satellite video is pretty mindblowing:

This quick shot by Skybox's SkySat-1 shows multiple planes landing at Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) airport in Beijing on December 30, 2013. You can easily see a large plane landing on the runway at right. Using the video's timestamp and public flight logs, Bruno identified this plane as Air China Limited flight 1310, a wide-body Airbus 330 flying from Guangzhou to Beijing. Operating as a codeshare, that flight was also listed as Shenzhen Airlines 1310, United Airlines 7564, SAS 9510, Austrian 8010 and Lufthansa 7283.

I remember when satellite photography first became available in online maps; this feels similarly jawdropping. Gonna be more difficult to stitch video together into seamless interfaces than still images, but once it happens, it'll prove quite useful.

Tags: maps   video

Three years ago, Kayla Montgomery was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Faced with the prospect of being confined to a wheelchair someday, Montgomery, one of the slower runners on her high school cross country team, told her coach she was short on time and wanted to run faster. Now she's one of the fastest runners in the country and perhaps the MS has something to do with it.

Kayla Montgomery, 18, was found to have multiple sclerosis three years ago. Defying most logic, she has gone on to become one of the fastest young distance runners in the country -- one who cannot stay on her feet after crossing the finish line.

Because M.S. blocks nerve signals from Montgomery's legs to her brain, particularly as her body temperature increases, she can move at steady speeds that cause other runners pain she cannot sense, creating the peculiar circumstance in which the symptoms of a disease might confer an athletic advantage.

But intense exercise can also trigger weakness and instability; as Montgomery goes numb in races, she can continue moving forward as if on autopilot, but any disruption, like stopping, makes her lose control.

"When I finish, it feels like there's nothing underneath me," Montgomery said. "I start out feeling normal and then my legs gradually go numb. I've trained myself to think about other things while I race, to get through. But when I break the motion, I can't control them and I fall."

Montgomery's story reminds me of ultra-endurance racer Jure Robic, particularly this bit in a NY Times profile:

Researchers, however, have long noted a link between neurological disorders and athletic potential. In the late 1800's, the pioneering French doctor Philippe Tissie observed that phobias and epilepsy could be beneficial for athletic training. A few decades later, the German surgeon August Bier measured the spontaneous long jump of a mentally disturbed patient, noting that it compared favorably to the existing world record. These types of exertions seemed to defy the notion of built-in muscular limits and, Bier noted, were made possible by "powerful mental stimuli and the simultaneous elimination of inhibitions."

Questions about the muscle-centered model came up again in 1989 when Canadian researchers published the results of an experiment called Operation Everest II, in which athletes did heavy exercise in altitude chambers. The athletes reached exhaustion despite the fact that their lactic-acid concentrations remained comfortably low. Fatigue, it seemed, might be caused by something else.

In 1999, three physiologists from the University of Cape Town Medical School in South Africa took the next step. They worked a group of cyclists to exhaustion during a 62-mile laboratory ride and measured, via electrodes, the percentage of leg muscles they were using at the fatigue limit. If standard theories were true, they reasoned, the body should recruit more muscle fibers as it approached exhaustion -- a natural compensation for tired, weakening muscles.

Instead, the researchers observed the opposite result. As the riders approached complete fatigue, the percentage of active muscle fibers decreased, until they were using only about 30 percent. Even as the athletes felt they were giving their all, the reality was that more of their muscles were at rest. Was the brain purposely holding back the body?

"It was as if the brain was playing a trick on the body, to save it," says Timothy Noakes, head of the Cape Town group. "Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. In fatigue, it only feels like we're going to die. The actual physiological risks that fatigue represents are essentially trivial."

Tags: cycling   Jure Robic   Kayla Montgomery   medicine   multiple sclerosis   running   sports

If you go to the Getty Images website, you'll see millions of images, all watermarked. There are more than a hundred years of photography here, from FDR on the campaign trail to last Sunday's Oscars, all stamped with the same transparent square placard reminding you that you don't own the rights. If you want Getty to take off the watermark, you'll have to pay for it.

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China announced that it was increasing its military budget for 2014 to almost $132 billion. The expansion is being closely watched by other nations in the region and by the United States.

The College Board, the private nonprofit that administers the SAT, just announced radical changes coming in 2016. The college entrance exam will drop back to a 1,600-point score, make the essay optional, and replace arcane vocabulary words with more common ones, among other major reforms.

The test should offer "worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles," College Board President David Coleman says, admitting that the SAT has been confusing for students and "filled with unproductive anxiety." This year's ninth graders will be the first to take the new test.

The College Board is also restricting the use of calculators to certain parts of the math section and eliminating the negative points awarded as a "guessing penalty" for...

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The days of waiting around to see your latest Gmail messages on iOS are over. Google has just released an update for Gmail that supports iOS 7's background app refresh. In the company's own words, this means there will be "no more annoying pauses while you wait for your inbox to refresh." Gmail will now retrieve your email even when the app is closed to make sure everything is ready and up to date the next time you open it. To take advantage of the new feature, you'll need to have background refresh turned on in your iOS system settings, and Gmail notifications must also be turned on. But once you've checked off those two steps, you'll never be waiting for your messages to refresh ever again. Gmail for iOS might not be on par with the...

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Announced on February 19th, Facebook's $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp was a deal sealed between the two company CEOs a few days earlier, though it took years of amicable courtship to reach the accord. Forbes has taken a look at the relationship between WhatsApp's Jan Koum and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg in the buildup to their momentous agreement. It all started with an email from Zuckerberg in the spring of 2012 and culminated with an accepted takeover offer on the Facebook boss' couch a day after Valentine's Day. The two CEOs reportedly celebrated by opening up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and hugging one another.

If the story sounds familiar, that's because Zuckerberg used the same approach to woo Kevin Systrom — he...

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Twitch wants to let you start broadcasting gameplay from mobile titles, and it's preparing to make it easy for developers to enable just that. It announced today that it's working on a software kit that will allow developers to build Twitch broadcasting support right into their games. In addition to capturing a game's video and audio, it'll also be able to use a phone or tablet's microphone and front camera to record the player who's broadcasting. Twitch doesn't say what mobile platforms the broadcasting support might debut on though, nor when it'll launch.

This move over to mobile is just the latest step in Twitch's rapid expansion. While it's best known for streaming desktop PC games, it's moved over to console gaming too with...

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Respawn co-founder Vince Zampella confirmed Titanfall is getting a season pass, in news that isn't giant-mechs-dropping-out-of-the-sky levels of surprising. Speaking to GameSpot, Zampella revealed there are plans for a variety of updates, both free...

Video game broadcasting service Twitch announced an expansion of its streaming services to a new branch of gaming platforms today: mobile devices. Players will be able to stream, capture and archive gameplay on both Android and iOS once developers...

Yo, Hass.

Dramatic shifts in weather systems and climate change in general have thrown the avocado market into a tizzy, and as Chipotle stated in its 2013 report, the operations-side fix may ultimately come to nixing guacamole from the menu completely.

"[I]n the event of cost increases with respect to one or more of our raw ingredients, we may choose to temporarily suspend serving menu items, such as guacamole or one or more of our salsas, rather than paying the increased cost for the ingredients," it said. The chain uses 97,000 pounds of avocados every day.

Update: The so-called "Guacapocalypse" has been canceled, or at least postponed. Chipotle spokesperson Chris Arnold tells NPR that the wording in the report was part of a routine SEC filing pertaining to disclosure of risk factors, and that similar, previous price increases haven't yet bumped guacamole from the chain's menu.

Of course, the dreaded, fungus-spreading, avocado-industry-destroying Ambrosia beetle is still at large.

[PBS News Hour, Earlier]

Read more posts by Hugh Merwin

Filed Under: guacanomics, avocados, chipotle, guacamole

Subway systems are a fragile, finicky, frustrating, yet vital part of a city's ecosystem, and you'll never feel that more acutely than with Mini Metro. It's not so much a subway simulator as a subway map simulator: drag your brightly colored lines around to connect an ever-growing series of neighborhoods and watch the tiny passengers come and go, slowly getting agitated as your public transit system grinds towards its inevitable collapse.

If you're a regular subway rider, you find yourself accidentally or deliberately copying things you've seen on maps. Will a big ring around the whole system work? Should you try to make a transfer hub in the center? There's a sense of satisfaction when you come up with something that looks like your...

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Facebook spent millions as part of the move to its revamped headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and now it plans to shell out a little more for the city to hire another police officer. The company offered to spend $200,000 a year for at least three years on a full-time beat cop, a proposal that was unanimously accepted by the city this evening. As reported by NBC earlier, that officer's job won't be to protect the company's headquarters, which has its own private security personnel; nor will they be responding to local city emergency calls. Instead, the proposal calls for the officer to patrol schools, and be stationed in a newly-created neighborhood police substation nearby.

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Stephan Williams is a senior 3D artist at Carbine Studios, the team working on sci-fi MMO Wildstar.

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IGN reports that Amy Hennig, the lead writer and creative director on the Uncharted series, has left developers Naughty Dog.

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Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? She's currently lurking at The Strong museum in Rochester, New York. Broderbund Software founder Doug Carlston has donated company records, design documents and games for permanent archival at the The Strong's...

To prepare humanity for the March 25 arrival of the Reaper of Souls expansion, Blizzard has decreed that anyone playing Diablo 3 before March 24 will receive an additional 50 percent experience for each demon slain. Along with readying players for...

Apple PR:

“Peter has served as our CFO for the past decade as Apple’s annual revenue grew from $8 billion to $171 billion and our global footprint expanded dramatically. His guidance, leadership and expertise have been instrumental to Apple’s success, not only as our CFO but also in many areas beyond finance, as he frequently took on additional activities to assist across the company. His contributions and integrity as our CFO create a new benchmark for public company CFOs,” said Tim Cook, Apple CEO. “Peter is also a dear friend I always knew I could count on. Although I am sad to see him leave, I am happy he is taking time for himself and his family. As all of us who know him would have expected, he has created a professional succession plan to ensure Apple doesn’t miss a beat.”

On the surface, sounds like a man who’s ready to cash out. He took the helm as CFO after Fred Anderson took the hit for the stock options backdating scandal retired in 2004, but he’s been at Apple for 18 years — predating the NeXT reunification. He’s only 51, but that’s a long run.

But it’s only fair to recall MG Siegler’s observation back in April when Microsoft CFO Peter Klein retired:

Who is best positioned to know that winter is coming?

The CFO.

Like Oppenheimer, Klein’s stated reason for retiring was to spend more time with his family. By December, Klein must have had enough time with his family, because he took the CFO gig at William Morris. Oppenheimer yesterday took a board seat at Goldman Sachs, but my hunch is he really is just retiring. I doubt we’ll see him take a CFO gig at another company. We’ll see.

Correction, 7p: I scrambled the timeline of the Anderson-Oppenheimer succession. Anderson retired in 2004, on good terms with the company. The options backdating scandal didn’t occur until 2007 (although Anderson and then-chief counsel Nancy Heinen did take the fall for it.)

Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica:

The bug is the result of commands in a section of the GnuTLS code that verify the authenticity of TLS certificates, which are often known simply as X509 certificates. The coding error, which may have been present in the code since 2005, causes critical verification checks to be terminated, drawing ironic parallels to the extremely critical “goto fail” flaw that for months put users of Apple’s iOS and OS X operating systems at risk of surreptitious eavesdropping attacks. Apple developers have since patched the bug. […]

Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins University professor specializing in cryptography, characterized the vulnerability this way: “It looks pretty terrible.”

Coincidence?

Technology writer Julia Angwin wrote this op-ed piece in today’s Times about the mounting burden on consumers to protect their own privacy.

The more we learn about how our data is being harnessed — and how it may be exploited in the future — the more likely we are to re-evaluate the true cost of these supposedly free services. And some of us will start trying to buy our way out of the trade-your-data-for-services economy.

But, as I have learned, it isn’t cheap or convenient to start buying privacy. I spend annoying amounts of time updating software or trying to resolve technical difficulties when my different privacy-protecting services conflict with one another…

As more privacy-protecting services pop up, we need to consider two important questions: Can we ensure that those who can afford to buy privacy services are not being deceived? And even more important, do we want privacy to be something that only those with disposable money and time can afford?

I’m personally surprised and dismayed by how slow moving the public conversation around privacy has been for the last two decades, even as the intrusions on our privacy have gotten ever more aggressive. Full article here.

To follow me on Twitter click here.

This past Thursday at 10:26AM, Meetup CEO Heiferman got a strange email. "A competitor asked me to perform a DDoS attack on your website. I can stop the attack for $300 USD. Let me know if you are interested in my offer." Before Heiferman could finish reading the email, the site came under attack, swamped with an 8.2 gigabit attack that took it down almost immediately. It took 24 hours to bring the site back online, and it didn't stay online for long. The site came up Friday morning, only to go down again Saturday afternoon. It came back Saturday at midnight, then went down again Sunday night. As of press time, they were still struggling to keep the it live.

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Apple's chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer will retire at the end of September, after 18 years at the company. Luca Maestri, Apple's vice president of finance and corporate controller, will become his successor. The role will begin to transition to Maestri in June. "Luca has over 25 years of global experience in senior financial management, including roles as a public company CFO, and I am confident he will be a great CFO at Apple," Apple CEO Tim Cook says in a statement.

Maestri came to Apple about a year ago from Xerox, where he served as CFO. Apple appears to have known about Oppenheimer's retirement plans for some time now, and it says that Maestri was always intended as his replacement. "When we were recruiting for a...

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From Serious Eats: New York

[Photographs: Krista Garcia]

Country of origin: UK
Locations worldwide: 39 in the UK and US
NYC locations: One, in Times Square

Wasabi is just one of the latest imports to plop down near Times Square, yet despite the emphasis on Japanese food, the UK chain has more in common with nearby get-em-in-get-em-out Wok to Walk than Ootoya, an oasis in the neighborhood scrum.

Wasabi's selling point is individually wrapped pieces of sushi, which yes, kind of goes against the traditional a la minute ethos. Then again, it's not quite vending machine-level either (though that would probably win novelty points). Most office workers aren't seeking out omakase on their lunch breaks, and this operation is very much geared toward that harried audience—I know, because I work just one block away and the crowds were so thick on Wasabi's second week in business that I could barely squeeze in the door, let alone snap human-free photos.

It's easy to see why it's so popular. You get to pick and choose rolls from a shelf, similar to the tongs-and-trays approach of many Chinese and Korean bakeries—taking what you like, ignoring what you don't—and the prices are pretty cheap for the neighborhood, as low as 75 cents for two cucumber hosomaki to $3.50 for as many hamachi nigiri.

Salmon (two for $2) and Tuna (2 for $2.50) nigiri were serviceable, and the rice was well-seasoned with sweetened vinegar and surprisingly non-mushy for having been sealed in plastic. One benefit to the lunch mobs is the constant turnover with racks of sushi frequently being replaced.

There's no harm in going less traditional with poultry-centric futomaki like the Chicken Katsu and Teriyaki (two for $2).

You can also choose a hefty, vegetarian Gunkan topped with seaweed salad (two for $2.50) or the ika salad (two for $3.50), which combines squid and bamboo shoots in a sweet gingery soy dressing.

Noodle soups are also an option, and for the time being more weather-appropriate. Spicy Chicken ($4.95) has a tart Sriracha heat, which is the predominate flavor because the broth is a little wan, and is packed with spinach, bok choy and skinny rice noodles that the menu refers to as soumen but aren't somen at all.

Perhaps due to the packaging, the sushi feels more like snacks. The real value may lie in the bento boxes—if you can get one. I went closer to 2 p.m. on one visit to avoid the rush but that meant only chicken teriyaki was left. A second time, chicken teriyaki was once again the only choice so I acquiesced, grabbing it and getting in line. Of course, that's when the pork and chicken katsu, both naked and bathed in Japanese curry, were replenished. At that point, it seemed like poor line etiquette to swap.

Not that there's anything wrong with chicken teriyaki, plus it's a good amount of food for $7.95. The seared chunks of thigh meat sit on a pile of sautéed cabbage and edamame with a few weird little nuggets woven in that look like chicken but are actually potato. Tiny pickle coins are tucked into the corner. The sauce isn't as salty or sweet as you might expect from a glaze, and taken in conjunction with the purple adzuki rice, the meal projects unexpected healthiness, a plus or a minus depending on whether you prefer your fast food austere or junky.

About the author: Krista Garcia is a freelance writer and reformed librarian. Being obsessed with chain restaurants and Southeast Asian food, she would have no problem eating laska in Elmhurst and P.F. Chang's crab rangoon in New Jersey on the same day. She blogs at Goodies First.

UPDATE (10:36am): It's official—WB has announced Arkham Knight via this month's Game Informer. The game will feature a big open-world Gotham (supposedly bigger than Arkham City's); familiar Batman villains Scarecrow, Penguin, Two-Face, and Harley Quinn; and a driveable Batmobile.

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Announced today, Kanye West‘s creative house DONDA enters into partnership with Roc Nation to manage all DONDA Music.

The partnership will focus on Mr. West’s international recording brand and worldwide touring ventures.

A multi-discipline design and content company, DONDA saw its early beginnings seeded by the 2009 footwear collaboration with fashion house Louis Vuitton. That collaboration spurred demand for Mr. West’s design sensibilities with fashion and apparel brands around the globe, including Nike and Adidas. DONDA continues its influence in the world of apparel: two versions of the Nike AIR YEEZY – each of which has sold out worldwide in just minutes – two celebrated capsule lines with Parisian brand A.P.C. – also instantly sold-out – and the highly-anticipated new line with Adidas, slated to debut this fall.

Mr. West officially branded DONDA in 2011 with the groundbreaking packaging and tour design for Watch The Throne. The following year, DONDA conceptualized and introduced an immersive new way to experience cinema: the 7-Screen Surround Vision experience in Cannes, France. The short film Cruel Summer, a visual companion to the G.O.O.D. Music album of the same name, employed the new techniques in both filming and viewing. In 2013, DONDA oversaw the concept and design for Mr. West’s minimalist YEEZUS album packaging and groundbreaking global launch, including a guerilla-marketing campaign, the “New Slaves” projections. DONDA is at the center of concept, design and production of Mr. West’s lauded concert experience, the YEEZUS TOUR. DONDA has designed and produced album packaging, staging, music videos and content for Lil Wayne, 2 Chainz, Big Sean, Pusha T and more.

Founded in 2008, Roc Nation is a full-service entertainment company, inclusive of artist, songwriter, producer and engineer management; music publishing; touring & merchandising; film & television; new business ventures; and a music label. It is home to a diverse roster comprised of critically acclaimed recording artists, writers and producers including Rihanna, Shakira, Rita Ora, J. Cole, Timbaland, etc. Roc Nation has a partnership with global management company, Three Six Zero. Over the past several years, Roc Nation has been responsible a state-of-the-art recording and distribution deal with the Universal Music Group for JAY Z, Rihanna, and others; Rihanna’s rise as a huge global touring brand; and the launch of the Roc Nation Sports agency, which in its first year has built a roster of such all-star talent as Robinson Cano, Kevin Durant, Victor Cruz and more.

Comments

Om Malik:

These charts show that not only Whatsapp different, but it is exceptional and did well to capture the moment (i.e., rise of the mobile broadband) near perfectly. They are not just exceptional, they are a standout with highest rate of growth and getting to that point the fastest.

Some eye-opening numbers.

(And to think I was worried about seeing less of Om’s byline.)

Lots of people have business cards, but most cards are unfortunately kind of forgettable. Not this business card, though—this one is more likely to be a time sink, thanks to the playable Tetris it features.

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Twitter is erecting two log cabins originally built during the late 1800s inside the company's San Francisco office space. Once booths are added, each of the 20-by-20-foot cabins will be used as dining areas for Twitter employees. The 19th century relics actually came to Twitter thanks to a Craigslist posting; Lundberg Design — an architecture firm that works with the company — came upon a listing from Karl Beckmann, who salvaged the cabins from ranches in Montana. When the call from Lundberg came in, Beckmann initially thought he was being taken for a ride.

"At first I was concerned it was a scam," he told the Marin Independent Journal. "How often does it happen that you get a call to install two log cabins inside a building?"...

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