Theo một kết quả nghiên cứu, được đăng trên tạp chí The Lancet, các nhà khoa học Anh đã phát hiện ra rằng phẫu thuật mở rộng động mạch cảnh nhằm tăng cường lưu lượng máu lên não có thể làm giảm nguy cơ đột quỵ trong khoảng thời gian 10 năm.
Động mạch cảnh có kích thước khá lớn, nằm ở cổ, gồm có động mạch cảnh trái và động mạch cảnh phải, ta có thể sờ thấy được nhịp đập của chúng ở hai bên cổ.
Động mạch cảnh có chức năng đưa máu từ tim lên nuôi dưỡng não. Việc phẫu thuật mở rộng động mạch này sẽ khôi phục dòng máu lưu thông lên não.
Tuy nhiên, các nhà khoa học cho rằng việc phẫu thuật cũng có nguy cơ khoảng 3% gây ra đột quỵ ngay lập tức. Đối với một số người già thì nguy cơ có thể cao hơn so với những lợi ích.
Trong nghiên cứu của mình, các nhà khoa học tại Đại học Oxford đã chọn ngẫu nhiên 3.120 bệnh nhân bị hẹp động mạch cảnh để phẫu thuật hoặc không phẫu thuật tùy thuộc vào điều kiện của từng trường hợp.
Tổng cộng có 1.979 ca phẫu thuật đã được thực hiện. Trong số những bệnh nhân này, nguy cơ xảy ra đột quỵ trong vòng 30 ngày là 3%, bao gồm 26 ca bị dạng nhẹ và 34 ca bị nặng hoặc đột quỵ gây tử vong.
Trong khoảng thời gian theo dõi trung bình năm năm sau đó, có 4,1% những người đã trải qua phẫu thuật bị đột quỵ, so với tỷ lệ 10% ở những người bị hẹp động mạch cảnh nhưng chưa phẫu thuật. Và nếu tính trong 10 năm thì có 10.8% những người đã phẫu thuật hẹp động mạch cảnh bị đột quỵ, so với tỷ lệ 16,9% ở những người chưa phẫu thuật.
Tai biến mạch máu não (hay còn gọi là đột quỵ) rất thường gặp và là nguyên nhân gây tử vong đứng hàng thứ ba sau bệnh tim mạch và ung thư.
Có nhiều nguyên nhân gây tai biến mạch máu não, trong đó hẹp động mạch cảnh là một trong những nguyên nhân khá thường gặp (chiếm khoảng 30% các trường hợp).
Hẹp động mạch cảnh là do các mảng xơ vữa bám lên thành động mạch, tại chỗ động mạch cảnh bị hẹp, các mảng xơ vữa và máu đông có thể gây tắc tại chỗ, hoặc tự vỡ ra tạo thành các mảnh nhỏ trôi theo dòng máu đến lấp một nhánh động mạch nào đó trong não, gây nên hoại tử một vùng não tương ứng do nhánh động mạch đó nuôi dưỡng./.
Khắc Hiếu (Vietnam+)
Sunday, September 26, 2010
WP: Should Christians practice yoga? Shouldn't everyone?
By David Waters
Yoga, the Hindu-inspired spiritual practice that bears a strong resemblance to stretching, is said to relieve pain and lower blood pressure, boost mental (and spiritual) awareness and reduce stress.
Ironically, it's having the inverse effect on some religious leaders.
Earlier this week, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and On Faith panelist), set off a bit of an interfaith fuss by suggesting that Christians should not practice yoga. "Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a 'post-Christian, spiritually polyglot' reality."
Seems to me there are many more serious threats to the spiritual lives of Christians: Greed, envy, lust, fear, hate, violence. But Mohler isn't the only religious leader stressed out by yoga's growing popularity in America. He isn't even the only concerned On Faith panelist.
Earlier this year, On Faith panelists Aseem Shukla and Deepak Chopra created a bit of a ruckus with their friendly debate about whether Americans had ripped yoga from its Hindu roots. "The severance of yoga from Hinduism disenfranchises millions of Hindu Americans from their spiritual heritage," Shukla wrote.
It would be easy to categorize these concerns as Y'all are Overreacting to God stuff Again. (YOGA). But the concerns expressed by Shukla and Mohler, in particular, shouldn't be summarily dismissed. In fact, from very different perspectives, these wise and learned men, neither of them reactionaries, are raising important questions for an increasingly pluralistic world.
Should we adopt, adapt or adjust the rituals and practices of other faiths for our own purposes?
According to the Hindu American Foundation, "Yoga is a combination of both physical and spiritual exercises, entails mastery over the body, mind and emotional self, and transcendence of desire. The ultimate goal is moksha, the attainment of liberation from worldly suffering and the cycle of birth and rebirth."
Moksha. Is that why you take yoga classes?
"The form of yoga that is practiced in much of the Western world is but merely a focus on a single limb of yoga: asana (posture) . . . which is only a form of exercise to control, tone and stretch muscles. Ignored are both the moral basis of the practice and the ultimate spiritual goal.
Does your yoga instructor discuss the moral basis and spiritual goals of yoga?
"Even when Yoga is practiced solely in the form of an exercise, it cannot be completely delinked from its Hindu roots. ..The Hindu American Foundation concludes from its research that Yoga, as an integral part of Hindu philosophy, is not simply physical exercise . . . but is in fact a Hindu way of life."
Some Hindus are concerned that yoga has been confiscated. Some Muslims are concerned that Hindus are using yoga as a tool of conversion. Buddhists remain detached from the issue. But some Christians are concerned that practicing yoga will lead to theological confusion.
Should Christians or Muslims or any non-Hindus practice yoga? If they practice the physical aspects of the ancient spiritual discpline, should they call it yoga?
More importantly, if it reduces stress, why aren't we all praticing yoga?
Yoga, the Hindu-inspired spiritual practice that bears a strong resemblance to stretching, is said to relieve pain and lower blood pressure, boost mental (and spiritual) awareness and reduce stress.
Ironically, it's having the inverse effect on some religious leaders.
Earlier this week, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and On Faith panelist), set off a bit of an interfaith fuss by suggesting that Christians should not practice yoga. "Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a 'post-Christian, spiritually polyglot' reality."
Seems to me there are many more serious threats to the spiritual lives of Christians: Greed, envy, lust, fear, hate, violence. But Mohler isn't the only religious leader stressed out by yoga's growing popularity in America. He isn't even the only concerned On Faith panelist.
Earlier this year, On Faith panelists Aseem Shukla and Deepak Chopra created a bit of a ruckus with their friendly debate about whether Americans had ripped yoga from its Hindu roots. "The severance of yoga from Hinduism disenfranchises millions of Hindu Americans from their spiritual heritage," Shukla wrote.
It would be easy to categorize these concerns as Y'all are Overreacting to God stuff Again. (YOGA). But the concerns expressed by Shukla and Mohler, in particular, shouldn't be summarily dismissed. In fact, from very different perspectives, these wise and learned men, neither of them reactionaries, are raising important questions for an increasingly pluralistic world.
Should we adopt, adapt or adjust the rituals and practices of other faiths for our own purposes?
According to the Hindu American Foundation, "Yoga is a combination of both physical and spiritual exercises, entails mastery over the body, mind and emotional self, and transcendence of desire. The ultimate goal is moksha, the attainment of liberation from worldly suffering and the cycle of birth and rebirth."
Moksha. Is that why you take yoga classes?
"The form of yoga that is practiced in much of the Western world is but merely a focus on a single limb of yoga: asana (posture) . . . which is only a form of exercise to control, tone and stretch muscles. Ignored are both the moral basis of the practice and the ultimate spiritual goal.
Does your yoga instructor discuss the moral basis and spiritual goals of yoga?
"Even when Yoga is practiced solely in the form of an exercise, it cannot be completely delinked from its Hindu roots. ..The Hindu American Foundation concludes from its research that Yoga, as an integral part of Hindu philosophy, is not simply physical exercise . . . but is in fact a Hindu way of life."
Some Hindus are concerned that yoga has been confiscated. Some Muslims are concerned that Hindus are using yoga as a tool of conversion. Buddhists remain detached from the issue. But some Christians are concerned that practicing yoga will lead to theological confusion.
Should Christians or Muslims or any non-Hindus practice yoga? If they practice the physical aspects of the ancient spiritual discpline, should they call it yoga?
More importantly, if it reduces stress, why aren't we all praticing yoga?
WP: Five myths about Facebook
By David Kirkpatrick
Sunday, September 26, 2010; B02
Movies often have Web sites, but it's not so often that Web sites have movies. Facebook, of course, is not just any Web site; in the 6 1/2 years since founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg started the social networking service in his Harvard dorm room, it has acquired 500 million active users worldwide. It may be the fastest-growing company in history. And now, yes, it is the inspiration for a movie, "The Social Network," opening Oct. 1. Even before Hollywood got involved, however, Facebook was the subject of quite a bit of lore -- not all of it true.
1. Facebook is used mostly by college kids.
When Zuckerberg started Facebook in the spring of 2004, it was just for his classmates -- but that chapter lasted only a matter of months. The site opened to students with e-mail addresses from other colleges later that year, to high schoolers in 2005 and to all adults in 2006. While Facebook's base still skews young, about two-thirds of its 134 million American members are older than 26. Outside the United States, Facebook's fastest growth has been among middle-age women.
In country after country, it has become so central to social life that if you are not on it -- regardless of your age -- you are probably not in very close contact with your friends. In my own research, for example, I have found that Facebook messaging is beginning to replace e-mail among the Italian educated elite and among businesspeople in Colombia. And in Indonesia, Facebook's third-largest country, if you use the Internet you are almost certainly a member: Of the 30 million people online there, 27.8 million of them use Facebook.
2. Facebook keeps changing to help sell advertising.
Zuckerberg is constantly making changes to Facebook's features and interface, and some of these changes have left users with less control over how their personal data is displayed to the outside world. In one such instance late last year, each user's list of friends was made public; the resulting outcry by privacy advocates and a small but vocal group of users forced Facebook to retreat this spring.
The company's critics presume that these changes reflect a profit motive -- they note that exposing users' data makes it easier for advertisers to target them. While it may, my many interviews with Zuckerberg suggest a different agenda. For one thing, he doesn't seem to see ad revenue as an end in itself; he sees it as a way to pay the bills as he expands his service. (If his primary motivation were short-term financial success, he might have accepted Microsoft's 2007 offer, which would have paid him, at age 23, more than $4 billion for his share of the company. He didn't even consider it.)
Zuckerberg seems to see himself less as an entrepreneur than as a social revolutionary who is using his company as a lever to change the world. "Making the world more open and connected" is the company's motto; for Zuckerberg, it is a mantra. He believes that Facebook offers people worldwide a broadcast platform, and he hopes they will use it to become more effective citizens. As a result, decisions at Facebook are calibrated not so much for short-term profitability as for their effect on extending the service to more users. Staffers unabashedly used the word "ubiquity" to describe the company's goal to me.
Zuckerberg's fixation on constant development is also motivated by a healthy dose of paranoia: Over the course of my conversations with him, it became clear that he believes that if Facebook ever stops changing, a smaller, nimbler competitor -- something like Facebook once was -- will sneak up and eat his lunch.
3. Facebook users are up in arms about privacy.
Some say they are, but actions speak louder than words, and Facebook has continued to grow through each privacy controversy. The biggest one took place in September 2006, when Facebook introduced its News Feed feature, which presents the latest information about each user to all of his or her friends. Although 10 percent of users initially joined Facebook groups protesting this change, the News Feed quickly became the most popular feature on the site. Today, it more or less defines Facebook.
Another indication that most users don't care much about privacy is that so many of them accept friend requests from people they don't know very well -- if at all. This is in part because a culture of competition, driven by a desire to rack up the most friends, has caught hold among many users. Others are uncertain about whether they can politely decline such requests. Yet, becoming someone's "friend" on Facebook typically means giving that person access to personal information. In an experiment, security firm Sophos invited Facebook users to befriend someone named Freddi Staur, whose profile contained almost no information but showed a photo of a small green plastic frog. The request was accepted by 41 percent of users.
4. Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from other students at Harvard.
Whether he did is the dramatic question at the heart of "The Social Network," based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires." Zuckerberg briefly worked for a group of older students who were building an online social network they called Harvard Connection (later renamed ConnectU), but he launched his own site, which he originally dubbed Thefacebook, before they could complete theirs. The older students felt betrayed and filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, charging that he'd ripped off their idea. He settled the claim out of court, reportedly paying the students stock worth tens of millions of dollars.
But a little context is helpful. Zuckerberg and the older students were greatly influenced by services already in operation, including Friendster, which launched in March 2003. Moreover, social networks were appearing at colleges all over the country that school year, including at Yale, Columbia and Baylor. A sophisticated service called Club Nexus had launched at Stanford in 2001.
So while Zuckerberg might have borrowed some ideas from Harvard Connection, many of these ideas were already borrowed -- from Friendster and Club Nexus.
5. Facebook could soon go the way of Friendster and MySpace.
Friendster was created by a guy who said part of his motivation was to help people find dates; MySpace (which launched in August 2003) was initially used for much the same purpose. Facebook, by contrast, was conceived as a much broader communication tool. Friendster and MySpace were never as technologically sophisticated as Facebook, nor did their leaders possess a fraction of Facebook's paranoia about competitors.
And neither of those services ever became nearly as large as Facebook. It is the largest service on the Internet by far in terms of hours of use, and it has become the world's largest repository of photos; its users would be loathe to abandon all those pictures, since many don't keep copies elsewhere.
All this means that Facebook has grown into something much more than a fad. It may eventually be replaced by something else, but not without a fight.
David Kirkpatrick is the author of "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World." He will be online to discuss this piece on Wednesday, Sept. 29, at 11 a.m. ET. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
Sunday, September 26, 2010; B02
Movies often have Web sites, but it's not so often that Web sites have movies. Facebook, of course, is not just any Web site; in the 6 1/2 years since founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg started the social networking service in his Harvard dorm room, it has acquired 500 million active users worldwide. It may be the fastest-growing company in history. And now, yes, it is the inspiration for a movie, "The Social Network," opening Oct. 1. Even before Hollywood got involved, however, Facebook was the subject of quite a bit of lore -- not all of it true.
1. Facebook is used mostly by college kids.
When Zuckerberg started Facebook in the spring of 2004, it was just for his classmates -- but that chapter lasted only a matter of months. The site opened to students with e-mail addresses from other colleges later that year, to high schoolers in 2005 and to all adults in 2006. While Facebook's base still skews young, about two-thirds of its 134 million American members are older than 26. Outside the United States, Facebook's fastest growth has been among middle-age women.
In country after country, it has become so central to social life that if you are not on it -- regardless of your age -- you are probably not in very close contact with your friends. In my own research, for example, I have found that Facebook messaging is beginning to replace e-mail among the Italian educated elite and among businesspeople in Colombia. And in Indonesia, Facebook's third-largest country, if you use the Internet you are almost certainly a member: Of the 30 million people online there, 27.8 million of them use Facebook.
2. Facebook keeps changing to help sell advertising.
Zuckerberg is constantly making changes to Facebook's features and interface, and some of these changes have left users with less control over how their personal data is displayed to the outside world. In one such instance late last year, each user's list of friends was made public; the resulting outcry by privacy advocates and a small but vocal group of users forced Facebook to retreat this spring.
The company's critics presume that these changes reflect a profit motive -- they note that exposing users' data makes it easier for advertisers to target them. While it may, my many interviews with Zuckerberg suggest a different agenda. For one thing, he doesn't seem to see ad revenue as an end in itself; he sees it as a way to pay the bills as he expands his service. (If his primary motivation were short-term financial success, he might have accepted Microsoft's 2007 offer, which would have paid him, at age 23, more than $4 billion for his share of the company. He didn't even consider it.)
Zuckerberg seems to see himself less as an entrepreneur than as a social revolutionary who is using his company as a lever to change the world. "Making the world more open and connected" is the company's motto; for Zuckerberg, it is a mantra. He believes that Facebook offers people worldwide a broadcast platform, and he hopes they will use it to become more effective citizens. As a result, decisions at Facebook are calibrated not so much for short-term profitability as for their effect on extending the service to more users. Staffers unabashedly used the word "ubiquity" to describe the company's goal to me.
Zuckerberg's fixation on constant development is also motivated by a healthy dose of paranoia: Over the course of my conversations with him, it became clear that he believes that if Facebook ever stops changing, a smaller, nimbler competitor -- something like Facebook once was -- will sneak up and eat his lunch.
3. Facebook users are up in arms about privacy.
Some say they are, but actions speak louder than words, and Facebook has continued to grow through each privacy controversy. The biggest one took place in September 2006, when Facebook introduced its News Feed feature, which presents the latest information about each user to all of his or her friends. Although 10 percent of users initially joined Facebook groups protesting this change, the News Feed quickly became the most popular feature on the site. Today, it more or less defines Facebook.
Another indication that most users don't care much about privacy is that so many of them accept friend requests from people they don't know very well -- if at all. This is in part because a culture of competition, driven by a desire to rack up the most friends, has caught hold among many users. Others are uncertain about whether they can politely decline such requests. Yet, becoming someone's "friend" on Facebook typically means giving that person access to personal information. In an experiment, security firm Sophos invited Facebook users to befriend someone named Freddi Staur, whose profile contained almost no information but showed a photo of a small green plastic frog. The request was accepted by 41 percent of users.
4. Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from other students at Harvard.
Whether he did is the dramatic question at the heart of "The Social Network," based on Ben Mezrich's book "The Accidental Billionaires." Zuckerberg briefly worked for a group of older students who were building an online social network they called Harvard Connection (later renamed ConnectU), but he launched his own site, which he originally dubbed Thefacebook, before they could complete theirs. The older students felt betrayed and filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, charging that he'd ripped off their idea. He settled the claim out of court, reportedly paying the students stock worth tens of millions of dollars.
But a little context is helpful. Zuckerberg and the older students were greatly influenced by services already in operation, including Friendster, which launched in March 2003. Moreover, social networks were appearing at colleges all over the country that school year, including at Yale, Columbia and Baylor. A sophisticated service called Club Nexus had launched at Stanford in 2001.
So while Zuckerberg might have borrowed some ideas from Harvard Connection, many of these ideas were already borrowed -- from Friendster and Club Nexus.
5. Facebook could soon go the way of Friendster and MySpace.
Friendster was created by a guy who said part of his motivation was to help people find dates; MySpace (which launched in August 2003) was initially used for much the same purpose. Facebook, by contrast, was conceived as a much broader communication tool. Friendster and MySpace were never as technologically sophisticated as Facebook, nor did their leaders possess a fraction of Facebook's paranoia about competitors.
And neither of those services ever became nearly as large as Facebook. It is the largest service on the Internet by far in terms of hours of use, and it has become the world's largest repository of photos; its users would be loathe to abandon all those pictures, since many don't keep copies elsewhere.
All this means that Facebook has grown into something much more than a fad. It may eventually be replaced by something else, but not without a fight.
David Kirkpatrick is the author of "The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World." He will be online to discuss this piece on Wednesday, Sept. 29, at 11 a.m. ET. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.
NYT: In Arabian Desert, a Sustainable City Rises
September 25, 2010
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Back in 2007, when the government here announced its plan for “the world’s first zero-carbon city” on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, many Westerners dismissed it as a gimmick — a faddish follow-up to neighboring Dubai’s half-mile-high tower in the desert and archipelago of man-made islands in the shape of palm trees.
Designed by Foster & Partners, a firm known for feats of technological wizardry, the city, called Masdar, would be a perfect square, nearly a mile on each side, raised on a 23-foot-high base to capture desert breezes. Beneath its labyrinth of pedestrian streets, a fleet of driverless electric cars would navigate silently through dimly lit tunnels. The project conjured both a walled medieval fortress and an upgraded version of the Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland.
Well, those early assessments turned out to be wrong. By this past week, as people began moving into the first section of the project to be completed — a 3 ½-acre zone surrounding a sustainability-oriented research institute — it was clear that Masdar is something more daring and more noxious.
Norman Foster, the firm’s principal partner, has blended high-tech design and ancient construction practices into an intriguing model for a sustainable community, in a country whose oil money allows it to build almost anything, even as pressure grows to prepare for the day the wells run dry. And he has worked in an alluring social vision, in which local tradition and the drive toward modernization are no longer in conflict — a vision that, at first glance, seems to brim with hope.
But his design also reflects the gated-community mentality that has been spreading like a cancer around the globe for decades. Its utopian purity, and its isolation from the life of the real city next door, are grounded in the belief — accepted by most people today, it seems — that the only way to create a truly harmonious community, green or otherwise, is to cut it off from the world at large.
Mr. Foster is the right man for this kind of job. A lifelong tech buff who collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, he talks about architecture in terms of high performance, as if his buildings were sports cars. And to some extent his single-minded focus on the craft of architecture — its technological and material aspects — has been a convenient way of avoiding trickier discussions about its social impact. (It’s hard to imagine Mr. Foster embroiled in the kind of public battles over modern architecture that his former partner, Richard Rogers, has fought with the traditionalist Prince Charles in London.)
Not that Mr. Foster doesn’t have ideals. At Masdar, one aim was to create an alternative to the ugliness and inefficiency of the sort of development — suburban villas slathered in superficial Islamic-style décor, gargantuan air-conditioned malls — that has been eating away the fabric of Middle Eastern cities for decades.
He began with a meticulous study of old Arab settlements, including the ancient citadel of Aleppo in Syria and the mud-brick apartment towers of Shibam in Yemen, which date from the 16th century. “The point,” he said in an interview in New York, “was to go back and understand the fundamentals,” how these communities had been made livable in a region where the air can feel as hot as 150 degrees.
Among the findings his office made was that settlements were often built on high ground, not only for defensive reasons but also to take advantage of the stronger winds. Some also used tall, hollow “wind towers” to funnel air down to street level. And the narrowness of the streets — which were almost always at an angle to the sun’s east-west trajectory, to maximize shade — accelerated airflow through the city.
With the help of environmental consultants, Mr. Foster’s team estimated that by combining such approaches, they could make Masdar feel as much as 70 degrees cooler. In so doing, they could more than halve the amount of electricity needed to run the city. Of the power that is used, 90 percent is expected to be solar, and the rest generated by incinerating waste (which produces far less carbon than piling it up in dumps). The city itself will be treated as a kind of continuing experiment, with researchers and engineers regularly analyzing its performance, fine-tuning as they go along.
But Mr. Foster’s most radical move was the way he dealt with one of the most vexing urban design challenges of the past century: what to do with the car. Not only did he close Masdar entirely to combustion-engine vehicles, he buried their replacement — his network of electric cars — underneath the city. Then, to further reinforce the purity of his vision, he located almost all of the heavy-duty service functions — a 54-acre photovoltaic field and incineration and water treatment plants — outside the city.
The result, Mr. Foster acknowledged, feels a bit like Disneyland. “Disneyland is attractive because all the service is below ground,” he said. “We do the same here — it is literally a walled city. Traditional cars are stopped at the edges.”
Driving from downtown Abu Dhabi, 20 miles away, you follow a narrow road past an oil refinery and through desolate patches of desert before reaching the blank concrete wall of Masdar and find the city looming overhead. (Mr. Foster plans to camouflage the periphery behind fountains and flora.) From there a road tunnels through the base to a garage just underneath the city’s edge.
Stepping out of this space into one of the “Personal Rapid Transit” stations brings to mind the sets designed by Harry Lange for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” You are in a large, dark hall facing a row of white, pod-shaped cars lined up in rectangular glass bays. (The cars’ design was based on Buckminster Fuller’s proposal for a compact urban vehicle, the D-45, which helps explain their softly contoured, timelessly futuristic silhouettes.) Daylight spills down a rough concrete wall behind them, hinting at the life above.
The first 13 cars of a proposed fleet of hundreds were being tested the day I visited, but as soon as the system is up, within a few weeks, a user will be able to step into a car and choose a destination on an LCD screen. The car will then silently pull into traffic, seeming to drive itself. (There are no cables or rails.)
It’s only as people arrive at their destination that they will become aware of the degree to which everything has been engineered for high-function, low-consumption performance. The station’s elevators have been tucked discreetly out of sight to encourage use of a concrete staircase that corkscrews to the surface. And on reaching the streets — which were pretty breezy the day I visited — the only way to get around is on foot. (This is not only a matter of sustainability; Mr. Foster’s on-site partner, Austin Relton, told me that obesity has become a significant health issue in this part of the Arab world, largely because almost everyone drives to avoid the heat.)
The buildings that have gone up so far come in two contrasting styles. Laboratories devoted to developing new forms of sustainable energy and affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are housed in big concrete structures that are clad in pillowlike panels of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene, a super-strong translucent plastic that has become fashionable in contemporary architecture circles for its sleek look and durability. Inside, big open floor slabs are designed for maximum flexibility.
The residential buildings, which for now will mostly house professors, students and their families, use a more traditional architectural vocabulary. To conform to Middle Eastern standards of privacy, Mr. Foster came up with an undulating facade of concrete latticework based on the mashrabiya screens common in the region. The latticework blocks direct sunlight and screens interiors from view, while the curves make for angled views to the outside, so that apartment dwellers never look directly into the windows of facing buildings. Such concerns are also reflected in the layout of the neighborhood. Like many Middle Eastern university campuses, it is segregated by sex, with women and families living at one end and single men at the other. Each end has a small public plaza, which acts as its social heart.
Still, one wonders, despite the technical brilliance and the sensitivity to local norms, how a project like Masdar can ever attain the richness and texture of a real city. Eventually, a light-rail system will connect it to Abu Dhabi, and street life will undoubtedly get livelier as the daytime population grows to a projected 90,000. (Although construction on a second, larger phase has already begun, the government-run developer, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, refuses to give a completion date for the city, saying only that it will grow at its own pace.)
But the decision of who gets to live and work in Masdar, as in any large-scale development, will be outside the architect’s control. That will be decided by the landlord, in this case, the government.
And even if it were to become a perfect little urban melting pot, Masdar would have only limited relevance to the world most people live in. Mr. Foster’s inspired synthesis of ancient and new technologies could well have applications elsewhere; it should be looked at closely by other architects. But no one would argue that a city of a few million or more can be organized with such precision, and his fantasy world is only possible as a meticulously planned community, built from the ground up and of modest size.
What Masdar really represents, in fact, is the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance.
That’s obviously not how Mr. Foster sees it. He said the city was intended to house a cross-section of society, from students to service workers. “It is not about social exclusion,” he added.
And yet Masdar seems like the fulfillment of that idea. Ever since the notion that thoughtful planning could improve the lot of humankind died out, sometime in the 1970s, both the megarich and the educated middle classes have increasingly found solace by walling themselves off inside a variety of mini-utopias.
This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a self-sufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens.
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Back in 2007, when the government here announced its plan for “the world’s first zero-carbon city” on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, many Westerners dismissed it as a gimmick — a faddish follow-up to neighboring Dubai’s half-mile-high tower in the desert and archipelago of man-made islands in the shape of palm trees.
Designed by Foster & Partners, a firm known for feats of technological wizardry, the city, called Masdar, would be a perfect square, nearly a mile on each side, raised on a 23-foot-high base to capture desert breezes. Beneath its labyrinth of pedestrian streets, a fleet of driverless electric cars would navigate silently through dimly lit tunnels. The project conjured both a walled medieval fortress and an upgraded version of the Magic Kingdom’s Tomorrowland.
Well, those early assessments turned out to be wrong. By this past week, as people began moving into the first section of the project to be completed — a 3 ½-acre zone surrounding a sustainability-oriented research institute — it was clear that Masdar is something more daring and more noxious.
Norman Foster, the firm’s principal partner, has blended high-tech design and ancient construction practices into an intriguing model for a sustainable community, in a country whose oil money allows it to build almost anything, even as pressure grows to prepare for the day the wells run dry. And he has worked in an alluring social vision, in which local tradition and the drive toward modernization are no longer in conflict — a vision that, at first glance, seems to brim with hope.
But his design also reflects the gated-community mentality that has been spreading like a cancer around the globe for decades. Its utopian purity, and its isolation from the life of the real city next door, are grounded in the belief — accepted by most people today, it seems — that the only way to create a truly harmonious community, green or otherwise, is to cut it off from the world at large.
Mr. Foster is the right man for this kind of job. A lifelong tech buff who collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, he talks about architecture in terms of high performance, as if his buildings were sports cars. And to some extent his single-minded focus on the craft of architecture — its technological and material aspects — has been a convenient way of avoiding trickier discussions about its social impact. (It’s hard to imagine Mr. Foster embroiled in the kind of public battles over modern architecture that his former partner, Richard Rogers, has fought with the traditionalist Prince Charles in London.)
Not that Mr. Foster doesn’t have ideals. At Masdar, one aim was to create an alternative to the ugliness and inefficiency of the sort of development — suburban villas slathered in superficial Islamic-style décor, gargantuan air-conditioned malls — that has been eating away the fabric of Middle Eastern cities for decades.
He began with a meticulous study of old Arab settlements, including the ancient citadel of Aleppo in Syria and the mud-brick apartment towers of Shibam in Yemen, which date from the 16th century. “The point,” he said in an interview in New York, “was to go back and understand the fundamentals,” how these communities had been made livable in a region where the air can feel as hot as 150 degrees.
Among the findings his office made was that settlements were often built on high ground, not only for defensive reasons but also to take advantage of the stronger winds. Some also used tall, hollow “wind towers” to funnel air down to street level. And the narrowness of the streets — which were almost always at an angle to the sun’s east-west trajectory, to maximize shade — accelerated airflow through the city.
With the help of environmental consultants, Mr. Foster’s team estimated that by combining such approaches, they could make Masdar feel as much as 70 degrees cooler. In so doing, they could more than halve the amount of electricity needed to run the city. Of the power that is used, 90 percent is expected to be solar, and the rest generated by incinerating waste (which produces far less carbon than piling it up in dumps). The city itself will be treated as a kind of continuing experiment, with researchers and engineers regularly analyzing its performance, fine-tuning as they go along.
But Mr. Foster’s most radical move was the way he dealt with one of the most vexing urban design challenges of the past century: what to do with the car. Not only did he close Masdar entirely to combustion-engine vehicles, he buried their replacement — his network of electric cars — underneath the city. Then, to further reinforce the purity of his vision, he located almost all of the heavy-duty service functions — a 54-acre photovoltaic field and incineration and water treatment plants — outside the city.
The result, Mr. Foster acknowledged, feels a bit like Disneyland. “Disneyland is attractive because all the service is below ground,” he said. “We do the same here — it is literally a walled city. Traditional cars are stopped at the edges.”
Driving from downtown Abu Dhabi, 20 miles away, you follow a narrow road past an oil refinery and through desolate patches of desert before reaching the blank concrete wall of Masdar and find the city looming overhead. (Mr. Foster plans to camouflage the periphery behind fountains and flora.) From there a road tunnels through the base to a garage just underneath the city’s edge.
Stepping out of this space into one of the “Personal Rapid Transit” stations brings to mind the sets designed by Harry Lange for “2001: A Space Odyssey.” You are in a large, dark hall facing a row of white, pod-shaped cars lined up in rectangular glass bays. (The cars’ design was based on Buckminster Fuller’s proposal for a compact urban vehicle, the D-45, which helps explain their softly contoured, timelessly futuristic silhouettes.) Daylight spills down a rough concrete wall behind them, hinting at the life above.
The first 13 cars of a proposed fleet of hundreds were being tested the day I visited, but as soon as the system is up, within a few weeks, a user will be able to step into a car and choose a destination on an LCD screen. The car will then silently pull into traffic, seeming to drive itself. (There are no cables or rails.)
It’s only as people arrive at their destination that they will become aware of the degree to which everything has been engineered for high-function, low-consumption performance. The station’s elevators have been tucked discreetly out of sight to encourage use of a concrete staircase that corkscrews to the surface. And on reaching the streets — which were pretty breezy the day I visited — the only way to get around is on foot. (This is not only a matter of sustainability; Mr. Foster’s on-site partner, Austin Relton, told me that obesity has become a significant health issue in this part of the Arab world, largely because almost everyone drives to avoid the heat.)
The buildings that have gone up so far come in two contrasting styles. Laboratories devoted to developing new forms of sustainable energy and affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are housed in big concrete structures that are clad in pillowlike panels of ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene, a super-strong translucent plastic that has become fashionable in contemporary architecture circles for its sleek look and durability. Inside, big open floor slabs are designed for maximum flexibility.
The residential buildings, which for now will mostly house professors, students and their families, use a more traditional architectural vocabulary. To conform to Middle Eastern standards of privacy, Mr. Foster came up with an undulating facade of concrete latticework based on the mashrabiya screens common in the region. The latticework blocks direct sunlight and screens interiors from view, while the curves make for angled views to the outside, so that apartment dwellers never look directly into the windows of facing buildings. Such concerns are also reflected in the layout of the neighborhood. Like many Middle Eastern university campuses, it is segregated by sex, with women and families living at one end and single men at the other. Each end has a small public plaza, which acts as its social heart.
Still, one wonders, despite the technical brilliance and the sensitivity to local norms, how a project like Masdar can ever attain the richness and texture of a real city. Eventually, a light-rail system will connect it to Abu Dhabi, and street life will undoubtedly get livelier as the daytime population grows to a projected 90,000. (Although construction on a second, larger phase has already begun, the government-run developer, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, refuses to give a completion date for the city, saying only that it will grow at its own pace.)
But the decision of who gets to live and work in Masdar, as in any large-scale development, will be outside the architect’s control. That will be decided by the landlord, in this case, the government.
And even if it were to become a perfect little urban melting pot, Masdar would have only limited relevance to the world most people live in. Mr. Foster’s inspired synthesis of ancient and new technologies could well have applications elsewhere; it should be looked at closely by other architects. But no one would argue that a city of a few million or more can be organized with such precision, and his fantasy world is only possible as a meticulously planned community, built from the ground up and of modest size.
What Masdar really represents, in fact, is the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance.
That’s obviously not how Mr. Foster sees it. He said the city was intended to house a cross-section of society, from students to service workers. “It is not about social exclusion,” he added.
And yet Masdar seems like the fulfillment of that idea. Ever since the notion that thoughtful planning could improve the lot of humankind died out, sometime in the 1970s, both the megarich and the educated middle classes have increasingly found solace by walling themselves off inside a variety of mini-utopias.
This has involved not only the proliferation of suburban gated communities, but also the transformation of city centers in places like Paris and New York into playgrounds for tourists and the rich. Masdar is the culmination of this trend: a self-sufficient society, lifted on a pedestal and outside the reach of most of the world’s citizens.
NYT: Sex Scandal Threatens a Georgia Pastor’s Empire
September 25, 2010
By JAMES C. McKINLEY and ROBBIE BROWN
LITHONIA, Ga. — Over the last two decades, Bishop Eddie L. Long has built a religious and financial empire from scratch, transforming a small, faltering church into a modern cathedral with one of the largest and most influential congregations in the country.
Today, Bishop Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church includes a multimillion-dollar network of charities and businesses, a private school and the Samson’s Health and Fitness Center, where he holds court and pumps iron with young people.
His message that God wants people to prosper has attracted celebrities, professional athletes and socialites, swelling the membership to 25,000. The church hosted four United States presidents for the funeral of Coretta Scott King in 2006.
The rapid expansion of the church — often called “Club New Birth” because it attracts so many young black singles — has also made Bishop Long a powerful political player, especially in DeKalb County, home to one of the wealthiest black communities in the country. The church has become a mandatory stop for many politicians — local, state and national — and Bishop Long supports candidates of both parties.
But Bishop Long’s reputation and sprawling enterprises now stand threatened by a sex scandal.
Four former members of a youth group he runs have accused him of repeatedly coercing them into homosexual sex acts, and of abusing his considerable moral authority over them while plying them with cash, new cars, lodging and lavish trips.
Bishop Long has denied the accusations in a letter sent to a local radio station and has promised to address them from the pulpit on Sunday. He declined, through his lawyer, to comment for this article.
The accusations are all the more explosive because Bishop Long styles himself a social conservative, rails against homosexuality and calls for a ban on same-sex marriage. His church even holds seminars promising to “cure” homosexuals.
“When this comes out, it gives at least the perception of hypocrisy — it’s like red meat to a lion, everyone’s pouncing on this story,” said the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, a friend of Bishop Long who heads the First Iconium Baptist Church. “This is the issue: how can you be against homosexuality and you are allegedly participating in it? That is the epitome of hypocrisy.”
The accusations center on the LongFellows Youth Academy, an exclusive group of teenage boys handpicked by Bishop Long for spiritual mentoring.
The boys went through a bonding ritual, known as a “covenant ceremony,” in which Bishop Long gave them jewelry and exchanged vows with them while quoting from Scripture as ceremonial candles burned, according to court complaints filed against the pastor. Reciting Bible verses, the pastor promised to protect them from harm and called them “spiritual sons.”
But four former members of the group now say the real purpose of the academy was to provide Bishop Long with young men whom he could lure into sex. The men say they were past the legal age of consent when Bishop Long initiated the relationships. Still, the charges have shaken Atlanta’s church-going society, spurring painful conversations from kitchen tables to talk radio.
Bishop Long cuts a flashy figure in Lithonia, the Atlanta suburb where he lives and has built his church. He is often seen in a Bentley attended by bodyguards. He tends to wear clothes that show off his muscular physique. He favors Gucci sunglasses, gold necklaces, diamond bracelets and Rolex watches. He lives in a 5,000-square-foot house with five bedrooms, which he bought for $1.1 million in 2005.
His lavish display of wealth is in keeping with his theology. In his sermons, he often tells his congregation that God wants them to be wealthy and asserts that Jesus was not a poor man. By all accounts, he has been well compensated for his leadership in building New Birth from a church with a few hundred members into the largest congregation in Georgia. His televised sermons reach 170 countries.
In 2005, for instance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published tax records showing that from 1997 to 2000 Bishop Long had accepted $3 million in salary, housing, a car and other perks from a charity he controlled.
“We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation,” he told the newspaper in justifying his compensation. “We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.”
After the article about his compensation, Bishop Long hired a public relations firm and went on a campaign to improve his image, Mr. McDonald said. He began charitable programs to feed the poor, help struggling people with mortgages and even offer haircuts to the homeless.
“The bishop used to be perceived as aloof, untouchable, with his entourage all around him,” Mr. McDonald said. “He started putting himself in a different light, a more positive light.”
Bishop Long’s critics and his defenders are waiting for an explanation of the accusations against him. Some members of the church believe he is the victim of a smear campaign by people in favor of gay rights, though they offer no proof.
“It’s propaganda, man,” said Anthony M. Harris, 30, a businessman who says Bishop Long has served as his role model. “It’s retaliation for the 2004 march, the anti-gay-marriage march.”
But the accusations have turned others away from Bishop Long. William Abernathy, 25, a music producer, said that he had attended the church several times this year and was considering joining, but that the accusations, coupled with Bishop Long’s opulent lifestyle, persuaded him to go elsewhere.
“I’m going to pass on that,” Mr. Abernathy said. “It’s like hot milk now, sitting on the curb, getting sour.”
Many in the congregation, meanwhile, have been wrestling with feelings of betrayal. “My heart just kind of sank,” said Cheryl Jenkins, 43, who owns an accounting firm. “If he says he didn’t do it, we believe in him. If it turns out that he did and he apologizes, we have to accept it. No one is above reproach.”
Bishop Long was born in Charlotte, N.C., where his father, Floyd Long, was a Baptist minister and owned a service station. In interviews and his books, he has described his father as a drinker and emotionally distant.
“To be candid, I’ve been working to remove the tentacles of nearly 40 years’ worth of pain and complications that came my way against my will during the first 12 years of my life, and my father was a preacher,” he wrote in his 2002 self-help book, “What a Man Wants, What a Woman Needs.”
He studied business at North Carolina Central University, then went to work as a sales representative for the Ford Motor Company, but was fired over inaccuracies in his expense accounts. He moved to Atlanta to study theology and became the pastor of a small church in Jonesboro, Ga.
In 1987, when he took over New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, it had only 300 members and a small building. He adopted a modern image, using slang and dressing like a hip-hop mogul. He borrowed ideas from evangelical and charismatic churches and expanded his reach through cable TV.
He also adopted what has become known as “muscular Christianity,” a male-dominated view that emphasizes a warriorlike man who serves as the spiritual authority and protector in a family. His books on relationships suggest that men get in touch with their inner “wild man” and channel their fighting instincts into taking responsibility for their lives. Women are to submit to their husbands, he says.
Bishop Long has been married twice and has four children.
B. J. Bernstein, a lawyer for the four young men who claim to have been coerced into sexual affairs with Bishop Long, said the pastor exerted a paternalistic and, at times, autocratic influence over young men.
The four complaints filed in court describe how Bishop Long arranged for the church to provide cars to the young men and put them on the church payroll. Two of them also said they received free lodging in church-owned houses, where, they said, Bishop Long visited them for sessions of kissing, oral sex or masturbation. He also took them on trips to other cities and abroad, sharing rooms with them, with the knowledge of several church officials, the complaints say.
“There are biblical and spiritual passages that were given to them to make them comfortable and make them believe that they were not gay,” Ms. Bernstein said.
In the letter to the radio station, Bishop Long called the accusations false. “We continue to categorically deny each and every one of these ugly charges,” he said.
By JAMES C. McKINLEY and ROBBIE BROWN
LITHONIA, Ga. — Over the last two decades, Bishop Eddie L. Long has built a religious and financial empire from scratch, transforming a small, faltering church into a modern cathedral with one of the largest and most influential congregations in the country.
Today, Bishop Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church includes a multimillion-dollar network of charities and businesses, a private school and the Samson’s Health and Fitness Center, where he holds court and pumps iron with young people.
His message that God wants people to prosper has attracted celebrities, professional athletes and socialites, swelling the membership to 25,000. The church hosted four United States presidents for the funeral of Coretta Scott King in 2006.
The rapid expansion of the church — often called “Club New Birth” because it attracts so many young black singles — has also made Bishop Long a powerful political player, especially in DeKalb County, home to one of the wealthiest black communities in the country. The church has become a mandatory stop for many politicians — local, state and national — and Bishop Long supports candidates of both parties.
But Bishop Long’s reputation and sprawling enterprises now stand threatened by a sex scandal.
Four former members of a youth group he runs have accused him of repeatedly coercing them into homosexual sex acts, and of abusing his considerable moral authority over them while plying them with cash, new cars, lodging and lavish trips.
Bishop Long has denied the accusations in a letter sent to a local radio station and has promised to address them from the pulpit on Sunday. He declined, through his lawyer, to comment for this article.
The accusations are all the more explosive because Bishop Long styles himself a social conservative, rails against homosexuality and calls for a ban on same-sex marriage. His church even holds seminars promising to “cure” homosexuals.
“When this comes out, it gives at least the perception of hypocrisy — it’s like red meat to a lion, everyone’s pouncing on this story,” said the Rev. Timothy McDonald III, a friend of Bishop Long who heads the First Iconium Baptist Church. “This is the issue: how can you be against homosexuality and you are allegedly participating in it? That is the epitome of hypocrisy.”
The accusations center on the LongFellows Youth Academy, an exclusive group of teenage boys handpicked by Bishop Long for spiritual mentoring.
The boys went through a bonding ritual, known as a “covenant ceremony,” in which Bishop Long gave them jewelry and exchanged vows with them while quoting from Scripture as ceremonial candles burned, according to court complaints filed against the pastor. Reciting Bible verses, the pastor promised to protect them from harm and called them “spiritual sons.”
But four former members of the group now say the real purpose of the academy was to provide Bishop Long with young men whom he could lure into sex. The men say they were past the legal age of consent when Bishop Long initiated the relationships. Still, the charges have shaken Atlanta’s church-going society, spurring painful conversations from kitchen tables to talk radio.
Bishop Long cuts a flashy figure in Lithonia, the Atlanta suburb where he lives and has built his church. He is often seen in a Bentley attended by bodyguards. He tends to wear clothes that show off his muscular physique. He favors Gucci sunglasses, gold necklaces, diamond bracelets and Rolex watches. He lives in a 5,000-square-foot house with five bedrooms, which he bought for $1.1 million in 2005.
His lavish display of wealth is in keeping with his theology. In his sermons, he often tells his congregation that God wants them to be wealthy and asserts that Jesus was not a poor man. By all accounts, he has been well compensated for his leadership in building New Birth from a church with a few hundred members into the largest congregation in Georgia. His televised sermons reach 170 countries.
In 2005, for instance, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published tax records showing that from 1997 to 2000 Bishop Long had accepted $3 million in salary, housing, a car and other perks from a charity he controlled.
“We’re not just a church, we’re an international corporation,” he told the newspaper in justifying his compensation. “We’re not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can’t talk and all we’re doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation.”
After the article about his compensation, Bishop Long hired a public relations firm and went on a campaign to improve his image, Mr. McDonald said. He began charitable programs to feed the poor, help struggling people with mortgages and even offer haircuts to the homeless.
“The bishop used to be perceived as aloof, untouchable, with his entourage all around him,” Mr. McDonald said. “He started putting himself in a different light, a more positive light.”
Bishop Long’s critics and his defenders are waiting for an explanation of the accusations against him. Some members of the church believe he is the victim of a smear campaign by people in favor of gay rights, though they offer no proof.
“It’s propaganda, man,” said Anthony M. Harris, 30, a businessman who says Bishop Long has served as his role model. “It’s retaliation for the 2004 march, the anti-gay-marriage march.”
But the accusations have turned others away from Bishop Long. William Abernathy, 25, a music producer, said that he had attended the church several times this year and was considering joining, but that the accusations, coupled with Bishop Long’s opulent lifestyle, persuaded him to go elsewhere.
“I’m going to pass on that,” Mr. Abernathy said. “It’s like hot milk now, sitting on the curb, getting sour.”
Many in the congregation, meanwhile, have been wrestling with feelings of betrayal. “My heart just kind of sank,” said Cheryl Jenkins, 43, who owns an accounting firm. “If he says he didn’t do it, we believe in him. If it turns out that he did and he apologizes, we have to accept it. No one is above reproach.”
Bishop Long was born in Charlotte, N.C., where his father, Floyd Long, was a Baptist minister and owned a service station. In interviews and his books, he has described his father as a drinker and emotionally distant.
“To be candid, I’ve been working to remove the tentacles of nearly 40 years’ worth of pain and complications that came my way against my will during the first 12 years of my life, and my father was a preacher,” he wrote in his 2002 self-help book, “What a Man Wants, What a Woman Needs.”
He studied business at North Carolina Central University, then went to work as a sales representative for the Ford Motor Company, but was fired over inaccuracies in his expense accounts. He moved to Atlanta to study theology and became the pastor of a small church in Jonesboro, Ga.
In 1987, when he took over New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, it had only 300 members and a small building. He adopted a modern image, using slang and dressing like a hip-hop mogul. He borrowed ideas from evangelical and charismatic churches and expanded his reach through cable TV.
He also adopted what has become known as “muscular Christianity,” a male-dominated view that emphasizes a warriorlike man who serves as the spiritual authority and protector in a family. His books on relationships suggest that men get in touch with their inner “wild man” and channel their fighting instincts into taking responsibility for their lives. Women are to submit to their husbands, he says.
Bishop Long has been married twice and has four children.
B. J. Bernstein, a lawyer for the four young men who claim to have been coerced into sexual affairs with Bishop Long, said the pastor exerted a paternalistic and, at times, autocratic influence over young men.
The four complaints filed in court describe how Bishop Long arranged for the church to provide cars to the young men and put them on the church payroll. Two of them also said they received free lodging in church-owned houses, where, they said, Bishop Long visited them for sessions of kissing, oral sex or masturbation. He also took them on trips to other cities and abroad, sharing rooms with them, with the knowledge of several church officials, the complaints say.
“There are biblical and spiritual passages that were given to them to make them comfortable and make them believe that they were not gay,” Ms. Bernstein said.
In the letter to the radio station, Bishop Long called the accusations false. “We continue to categorically deny each and every one of these ugly charges,” he said.
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