Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

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SUBJECT: EYE DISORDERS (90%); CATARACTS (89%); OPHTHALMIC PHARMACEUTICALS (89%); OPHTHALMOLOGY (89%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (89%); VENTURE CAPITAL (88%); MEDICAL DEVICES (78%); ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT (78%); ENGINEERING (77%); BIOMEDICAL & DENTAL MATERIALS (76%); RESEARCH (76%); SURGERY & TRANSPLANTATION (74%); FUNDRAISING (74%); HEALTH CARE (74%); ECONOMIC NEWS (73%); MEDICAL LASERS (71%); COLLEGE & UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS (69%); PHARMACEUTICALS INDUSTRY (67%); COMPANY RELOCATIONS (50%); MEDICAL RESEARCH (69%)
COMPANY: ALLERGAN INC (58%)
ORGANIZATION: PURDUE UNIVERSITY (56%)
TICKER: AGN (NYSE) (58%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS333314 OPTICAL INSTRUMENT & LENS MANUFACTURING (58%); NAICS325412 PHARMACEUTICAL PREPARATION MANUFACTURING (58%); SIC2834 PHARMACEUTICAL PREPARATIONS (58%)
GEOGRAPHIC: LOS ANGELES, CA, USA (79%) CALIFORNIA, USA (94%) UNITED STATES (94%)
LOAD-DATE: May 15, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: May 30, 2008

CORRECTION: The Entrepreneurial Edge column in Business Day on May 15, about the development of biomedical companies in Orange County, Calif., misidentified the developer of a stent used to prevent glaucoma. He is Dr. Rick Hill, an ophthalmologist formerly with the University of California, Irvine -- not Dr. Richard Little, who is still an ophthalmologist there.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO: Thomas Berryman is president of WaveTec Vision, which is developing a device to get better measurements of corrected vision. (PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHANIE DIANI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
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Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
May 14, 2008 Wednesday

The New York Times on the Web

In Paris, Owning an Eleventh of an Apartment
BYLINE: By LINDA HERVIEUX
SECTION: Section ; Column 0; Real Estate Desk; Pg.
LENGTH: 1280 words
PARIS

When Steve Navaro throws open the thick silk drapes framing the large windows in his Paris pied-a-terre, he enjoys a rare luxury in this tightly packed city: a lush garden.

The garden isn't his alone. Nor, in fact, is the apartment. Mr. Navaro, a lawyer from Denver, shares his two-bedroom apartment in the Marais neighborhood of Paris with several other owners.

As the founding investor in the property -- and two other apartments in Paris -- Mr. Navaro, 56, was driven by a desire to find an economical way to visit Paris often despite a steadily sinking dollar. And, as a real estate investor and entrepreneur, he also wanted to make those vacations pay.

''I was trying to combine my love of Paris with real estate,'' he said.

Although the concept of fractional ownership has been slow to catch on in Europe, real estate experts say that Americans looking to buy abroad are increasingly exploring group properties, in response to economic uncertainty and the all-time-low exchange rates of the dollar.

For example, six dozen inquiries came flooding in last month after an American woman posted an advertisement on a Web site for expatriates. She was looking for partners to help her buy a 42-square-meter (452-square-foot) loft in the popular Ile Saint-Louis neighborhood. Two buyers quickly pledged $158,000 each, joining two others who had already signed on, said Adrian Leeds, an American property consultant in Paris who runs the Web site, parlerparis.com.

''The dwindling dollar means people saving up their pennies to buy property in Paris have less to spend,'' said Ms. Leeds, who is planning her own move into fractionals. ''This allows them to make an investment in a euro asset, which is crucial.''Mr. Navaro and his wife, Sue, signed the contract last August, agreeing on a price of 730,000 euros (then about $997,727). As they began searching for partners, the dollar had already fallen to $1.37 to the euro and was still dropping.

Still, they decided a renovation was essential. The previous owners had remodeled with a modern industrial look that Mrs. Navaro described as ''hideous.'' The Navaros replaced the concrete floors with dark Brazilian wood and added recessed lighting to the living room ceiling, highlighting the 18th-century wooden beams. They also placed a decorative plaster arch over the living room doorway, complementing patches of the original stone that still can be seen in walls newly painted in soft hues of yellow.

With their buying power diminishing by the week, they searched for quality furniture. The only decent deals seemed to be the antiques they found at flea markets, including bronze sconces and a claw-footed dining table. ''The best time to do this was last year,'' Mr. Navaro said.

Yet 2001 was actually the year that the Navaros began to contemplate buying their first place in Paris -- this one in the 17th Arrondissement, on the city's western side. Back then, the dollar was worth about 90 cents to the euro. Then it began to slide, as Paris real estate prices continued to climb.

''Each year I wanted to buy,'' Mr. Navaro said, ''and each year it got more expensive to justify. And that's when I had the idea to get partners.''

The couple walked every street in the arrondissement before buying a 57-square-meter (614-square-foot) apartment near the Parc Monceau in 2006. They found nine other buyers to invest in the cozy one-bedroom, and liked the arrangement so much that last summer they set about looking for another property. Within three weeks they were bidding on the Marais apartment.

By last fall the euro was on a relentless march toward the $1.50 mark -- a figure Mr. Navaro called a ''mental threshold'' for would-be investors. The couple worried that Americans would no longer be eager to buy shares in the Marais apartment (which they had named Jardin Saint-Paul).

But they needn't have been concerned. Of the 11 shares for sale, each at 92,000 euros ($146,000), Americans bought five. The other three owners are British, Australian and Venezuelan. Three shares remain unsold.

In addition, annual dues of 1,130 euros ($1,792) cover expenses like building fees and utilities. Each owner has use of the apartment during one month a year, on a three-month rotation, eliminating the thorny issue of who gets the place on holidays and summer vacations -- so someone who came in March 2008 can return in June 2009. Owners also may trade unused time with one another.

The Navaros' stake in the two properties allows them to spend two months a year in Paris -- one month in each apartment -- at cost of less than $55 a night, a bargain in a city where four-star hotels start around $300 a night. ''Before, we could never afford to stay in Paris a month,'' Mr. Navaro said, ''but now we can.''

Most fractional arrangements in Paris are organized to make the deal as easy as possible for foreign buyers. Day-to-day matters, like cleaning and repairs, are handled by local employees; the Navaros have two full-time workers who do all that, as well as stocking the apartments with chocolates, Champagne and fresh flowers.

The legal structure used for fractional ownership here is designed to avoid French bureaucracy and inheritance taxes that can total two-thirds of a property's value. In Mr. Navaro's case, he formed an American company, Paris Home Shares LLC, that is the primary shareholder of his French company, a Societe Civile Immobilier. The arrangement means American law governs the operating agreement among owners -- although, if an owner dies, the inheritance laws of that person's home country prevail, Mr. Navaro said.

Today one of the best reasons to buy in Paris, where market values have risen 9 percent to 16 percent a year in recent years, is to diversify your assets at a time when the dollar shows no signs of bouncing back, several industry experts said.

''It's not always easy for Americans to buy euro-based assets,'' said Andy Sirkin, an American lawyer in Paris whose international practice deals only in group properties. ''Buying a fractional is basically painless, because for all intents and purposes, it's an American transaction. It gives you all the benefits and removes all the problems.''

But there are risks to fractional ownership, particularly if a would-be buyer's main motivation is to make money, said Tony Tidswell, a real estate consultant in the South of France who lists fractional properties for sale on his Web site, nizas.com.

One of those issues is renting. Experts are divided on whether owners could face French commercial taxes if they accepted renters for unused time. Although many fractionals allow it, the Navaros do not, just to be safe.

The purchase of a fractional should be viewed as a ''luxury product, a personal indulgence,'' said Mr. Tidswell.

And in the end, many buyers do listen to their hearts, not their wallets.

Sandra Quesenberry didn't let the dollar ruin her dream of owning a ''little piece of France.'' She bought the first available share of Jardin Saint-Paul after seeing pictures on the Internet -- and cried when Mr. Navaro handed her the keys.

''I don't have a Gucci bag,'' said Ms. Quesenberry, 58, an office manager in Decatur, Ga., who stayed at the apartment for three days in December. ''I don't live extravagantly. If I was going to penny-pinch, I wouldn't have done it.''

For his part, Mr. Navaro is so sure of the future of Paris real estate that he recently bought a third property, a two-bedroom apartment in the Seventh Arrondissement, near the Eiffel Tower, and braced for another large renovation. ''I've retired twice and I go nuts,'' he said. ''This was a perfect job.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: REAL ESTATE (91%); CURRENCIES (89%); REAL ESTATE INVESTING (89%); REAL ESTATE AGENTS (76%); LAWYERS (73%); EXCHANGE RATES (69%)
GEOGRAPHIC: PARIS, FRANCE (90%) FRANCE (92%); UNITED STATES (91%); EUROPE (76%)
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LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
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The New York Times
May 13, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

An Artist's Concocted World, Starring Himself, Is Too True to Be Real
BYLINE: By KEN JOHNSON
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; The Arts/Cultural Desk; ART REVIEW; Pg. 5
LENGTH: 1016 words
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA
Michael Smith, an undersung hero of the New York contemporary art world, is like putty in his own hands. He turns himself at will into his own living artwork: a hapless, naive, tackily dressed, endlessly puzzled Everyman named Mike. Mike is the magic glue that holds together ''Mike's World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators),'' a terrifically entertaining and philosophically compelling survey, at the Institute of Contemporary Art here, of Mr. Smith's 30-year career as a performance artist, video maker and installation artist.

Organized by Mr. Smith in collaboration with Mr. White, an artist, television director and former producer of psychedelic light shows, the show had its debut last fall at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin, where Mr. Smith teaches. (He lives in New York.)

As Mr. Smith tells the artist Mike Kelley in an interview for the catalog, the exhibition was designed to spoof museums dedicated to single historic figures, like the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum in Austin. At the start you pause in a dark vestibule for a five-minute video welcome to ''Mike's World,'' a hilarious, pitch-perfect parody of a typical introductory video. It shows clips from many of Mr. Smith's videos, and a resonant male voice describes ''Mike's World'' as ''not just one world but a many-faceted amalgam of many different worlds.''

From there you pass into an initially bewildering, cacophonous environment occupying the institute's entire ground floor. There are areas displaying drawings, comic books, photographs as well as memorabilia, but several room-size installations predominate. There's the ''Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter/Snack Bar,'' built by Mike (along with Alan Herman) according to Federal Emergency Management Agency plans in 1983. Another amazingly detailed installation simulates the office and show rooms of Mus-Co, a seedy operation that specializes in equipment for psychedelic light shows.

Scattered throughout are monitors playing videos dating from 1980 to the present. If you have two or three hours to spare, it is worth watching them all. Among those not to miss is ''The World of Photography'' (1986), in which Mike takes absurd lessons in photography from a weaselly pro played by William Wegman.

A more recent gem is ''Portal Excursion'' (2005-7) in which Mike tells the pathetic story of his lifelong effort systematically to increase his vocabulary. In midlife he comes to view that project as misguided, and he tries to rectify it by plowing through a self-study Internet program of college-level courses created by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The video was produced at M.I.T.) It sounds confusing, but it is a heady trip, and it nicely skewers the fantasy of self-improvement through better technology.

Mr. Smith has the makings of a natural-born clown. Short, stocky and beetle browed, he is blessed with a rubbery face whose expressions he controls with the precision of a well-trained actor. Often in his videos he appears in his boxer-style undershorts. He does more-than-competent stand-up comedy and he sings and dances like a summer-stock hoofer. The best-known non-Mike character that he plays, Baby Ikki, an 18-month-old in diapers, sun bonnet and shades, is a wonder of comic body control.

Given Mr. Smith's riveting presence as a performer, the thought may cross some minds that he could do well in television or the movies. But ''Mike's World'' reveals a creative spirit that is too complex, multidimensional, idiosyncratic and open ended for mainstream packaging. In his inventive engagement with diverse forms, including drawing, comic books, sculpture, photography, musical theater and puppet shows as well as installations and video, he has followed a determinedly unpredictable, exploratory course. Aiding him have been many collaborators. The catalog lists 18 artists with whom Mr. Smith has worked on various projects.

Out of all this multifariousness and Pop-Surrealist wackiness, however, there does emerge a certain thematic preoccupation, which you might describe as the gap between the mundane and the transcendental. That theme is embodied in the character of Mike himself, an ordinary guy par excellence who seems always to be hoping, however naively or fruitlessly, for some life-changing event. In early videos that parody television sitcoms, a phone will ring and he will gaze at it anxiously and say, ''I wonder who's on the phone?'' as though some supernatural entity were calling.

In a 1996 video Mike receives a letter informing him that he has been nominated as one of the Outstanding Young Men of America. He decides to celebrate. He dons a powder-blue disco suit, practices some hip-thrusting dance moves and goes into a dark, empty room where he directs flashlights at a revolving disco ball and ponders its reflections. Ridiculous yet mysterious, the video poignantly captures a feeling that many Americans may share: the more or less conscious, quasi-religious fantasy that one day some great good fortune will rescue them from their humdrum, terrestrial lives.

Curiously, love and sex are not the paths to transcendence for Mike that they are for many people. He's a solitary guy, and his issues evidently are more existential than relational.

Sometimes the usually passive Mike takes a more active, entrepreneurial role. An installation produced in collaboration with Mr. White in 2001-2 simulates an amateurish exhibition that narrates the history of a failing bucolic arts colony and envisions its transformation into the corporate QuinQuag Arts and Wellness Centre. Under the direction of the huckster-utopian developer, the center promises a synergistic convergence of art, business and science. ''When I look out on the horizon,'' Mike intones in the mock-promotional documentary video, ''I see the future.'' But you know it will just be more of the same.

''Mike's World'' continues through Aug. 3 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 118 South 36th Street, Philadelphia; [phone] or icaphila.org.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: ARTISTS & PERFORMERS (92%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (90%); ART & ARTISTS (90%); MUSEUMS & GALLERIES (90%); FILM (89%); VIDEO INDUSTRY (89%); PHOTOGRAPHY (89%); EXHIBITIONS (77%); INTERVIEWS (75%); LIBRARIES (67%); DISASTER & EMERGENCY AGENCIES (62%)
COMPANY: MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (60%)
ORGANIZATION: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: AUSTIN, TX, USA (91%); PHILADELPHIA, PA, USA (79%) NEW YORK, USA (93%); TEXAS, USA (91%); MASSACHUSETTS, USA (79%); PENNSYLVANIA, USA (79%) UNITED STATES (93%)
LOAD-DATE: June 4, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: From left, Michael Smith in ''Portal Excursion,'' ''The World of Photography'' with William Wegman, and the fallout shelter/snack bar installation, a collaboration with Alan Herman.(PHOTOGRAPH BY IMAGES COURTESY OF MICHAEL SMITH)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

775 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
May 13, 2008 Tuesday

Late Edition - Final

This, From That
BYLINE: By JOHN SCHWARTZ
SECTION: Section F; Column 0; Science Desk; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1848 words
DATELINE: SAN MATEO, Calif.
The muffins are rolling.

The muffin cars, electric-powered vehicles built to resemble cupcakes, scoot around the open spaces of the San Mateo Event Center & Expo, a sprawling fairground about 20 miles south of San Francisco and, on this day, a million miles from normal.

Just inside the gates of the third annual Maker Faire, a converted fire engine belches an occasional explosive flare that sends a chest-pounding Pfoomp! throughout the fairground, startling bystanders over and over again. That contraption was made by folks from the Crucible, an industrial arts studio based in Oakland where people can take lessons in welding, blacksmithing and many, many other ways to play with heat and flame.

Nearby is the Swarm, a set of 30-inch cut-aluminum orbs that roll around on the grass, self-powered but guided by remote control. Children are playing keep-away with them.

But they are definitely not playing tag with Justin Gray's fire sculptures around the corner. It could have something to do with the fact that they look like menacing tanks on clanking treads. Or it could be the way Robot Libby, the one that emits a horrifying turbine whine from a metallic ball bobbing on a heavy iron chain, spits gouts of multicolored flame. (As Mr. Gray manipulates the remote control, the machine mixes powders into the flame to change its color: strontium for red, copper for bluish green, steel powder for a fireworks effect.) Each burst sends a heat wave that rocks the onlookers back a step or two.

At first blush, then, this festival, sponsored by Make magazine, is a gathering place of pyromaniacs and noise junkies, the multiply pierced and the extensively tattooed. But wander awhile, and the showy surface gives way to a wondrous thing: the gathering of folks from all walks of life who blend science, technology, craft and art to make things both goofy and grand.

''We are grabbing technology, ripping the back off of it and reaching our hands in where we are not supposed to be,'' says Shannon O'Hare, who has brought his three-story Victorian mansion on wheels, one of the most prominent examples of the anachronistic style known as steampunk, to the Faire. He is holding forth in a vintage British military uniform and pith helmet, and is gesturing with a hand that holds a sloshing tankard of ale.

''We've been told by corporate America that we cannot fix the things we own,'' says Mr. O'Hare, who goes by Major Catastrophe and works as a fabricator for the stage and businesses. ''All we can do is buy their stuff and like it.'' Cars have become too complex to work on under a shade tree, and people have no idea what is inside their cellphones and cameras. ''All this technology, and it's not ours. It's somebody else's,'' Mr. O'Hare says. '' Make is about taking that back off and making it yours.''

The makers, as they call themselves, are a varied bunch. Cris Benton, the former chairman of the architecture department at the University of California, Berkeley, stood at the Faire, patiently explaining how he and his like-minded friends take aerial photographs by hoisting cameras on kites, a cunning combination of high tech and old crafts.

In the darkened building next door, Terry Schalk, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, fires up an enormous, arc-throwing Tesla coil in hopes of getting youngsters more interested in science.

''This is a real geek fest,'' says Professor Schalk, a high-energy physicist in both senses of the phrase.

''If I was a kid, I'd wet my pants here,'' he joked.

Some 65,000 people came to see the sprawling display of inventiveness and potentially hazardous fun. Many of them read Make magazine and its sister publication, Craft, and go to Web sites like Instructables.com that encourage people to take on projects and share what they learn. (Recent online projects have shown people how to convert a novelty French-fry telephone into a carrying case for an iPod; how to make a computer-powered coffee warmer from an old Intel Pentium chip plugged into a P.C.'s U.S.B. port; and how parents and children can build a small vibrating robot together.)

Armchair MacGyvers visit Web sites like BoingBoing.net that lovingly chronicle the more audacious projects here and at events like the anarchic Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. These overlapping, even incestuous, communities form the ''maker movement'' of do-it-yourself enlightenment. In an age where just about every human activity, from shopping to sex, can be performed in the virtual world, they choose to get their hands dirty.

This is part of the Bay Area's high-tech, adamantly nonconformist culture, steeped in engineering and art and innovation in garages that incubate billionaires and crowded with guys who make late-night runs to the pharmacy for bandages and burn cream. But it is not just a California thing. Make has fans around the world, with a paid circulation of 100,000; its Web site gets 2.5 million visitors each month. The publisher has started a second Faire in Austin, Tex., with hopes of further expansion.

The founders of the magazine and the Faire are tugging on a thread that makes its way across America's gearhead culture, zigzagging back through the Homebrew Computer Club, which helped produce the first personal computers, and Roy Doty's how-to cartoons in Popular Mechanics magazine. But it goes farther still, back to those two bicycle mechanics, Orville and Wilbur Wright, and even back to those tinkerers Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, whose hand-designed folding chairs are an elegant marvel.

What the makers are doing, then -- mixing and matching technologies and hacking and tinkering -- is encoded within the nation's DNA.

''It's deeply American,'' said Xeni Jardin, an editor of BoingBoing. As for the family-friendly setting, she said, ''It's like Burning Man without all the icky hippie elements, without the pants-free guy on a bike.''

Edward Tenner, an author of works on the ways that technology affects society, said tinkering had waxed and waned but never disappeared in American culture. A great deal of mechanical know-how, he said, came from people raised on farms, where they had to fix their own equipment. But these days, he said, ''this improvisation is starting to flourish in a mainly suburban and perhaps urban milieu.''

As important as tinkering has been to the nation's past, it could become a much bigger deal before long, said David Pescovitz, a research director at the Institute for the Future, a consultancy in Silicon Valley. A new report from the institute argues that the makers could force enormous changes in the ways that goods and services are designed and manufactured. The renewed urge to tinker, along with flexible manufacturing technologies, could shift production from big companies and stores to communities of makers and consumers, Mr. Pescovitz said.

''It's about having a deeper connection with the stuff around you, and through that with the people around you,'' he said. That is why his research group took the slogan from the pins given out at the Futurama pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair -- ''I have seen the future'' -- and edited it for the report to ''I am making the future.''

''If you want something done right, do it yourself. That's really what it's about,'' Mr. Pescovitz said.

It is, then, a new realm of hacking, in the fine original meaning of the term among techies. That now-debased term, as the author Steven Levy put it in his book ''Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution,'' originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology model railroad club in the 1960s in the context of solutions to problems that showed ''innovation, style and technical virtuosity.''

Hacking moved from model trains to software. But now it is returning to its roots in the physical world, as hobbyists hack their computers, their cars and just about anything else they can pry open, even if it voids the warranty.

Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Media, the company that publishes Make and Craft, said he felt echoes of the urge to transform tools and toys that he saw with the original personal-computer hobbyists in the 1970s and with the open-source software movement more recently. ''We've ridden this wave before,'' Mr. O'Reilly said. ''We see hackers first, and then we see entrepreneurs and then we see it become part of the mainstream. And we're still in that early hacker-enthusiast phase, but I'm really convinced that there is a manufacturing revolution on its way as part of what we're seeing here.''

Which brings us back to the muffin cars. Keith Johnson and his daughter Karydis zip around the fairground in his cupcake-shaped runabout, which conceals a tiny electric all-terrain vehicle and the handlebars from a Hello Kitty bicycle. The ''frosting'' is sprinkled with oversize Prozac capsules. His head, and his baby's, poke up out of a hole in the frosting.

His is one of more than a dozen cupcakes at the Faire. A founder of the cupcake makers group, Greg Solberg, is an engineer with Tesla Motors, a company that makes high-performance electric cars. Mr. Johnson is a specialist in preserving digital materials at Stanford University. The community of cupcake-car makers once rigged each car with speakers tied into an FM radio transmission system so they could all play the same music, whether the soundtrack from Disney's Main Street Electrical Parade or Wagner's ''Ride of the Valkyries.''

When you see the members of the Acme Muffineering team rolling through their formations, however, it is difficult to suppress a single word trying to bubble up through the mists of consciousness: Shriners.

The Bay Area, Mr. Johnson notes, has a community of people whose left brains and right brains are on speaking terms, and who like to make things -- as he put it, ''to combine the skills that they use in their professions with their creativity to create whimsical and wonderful and sometimes useful things.''

The transport may be silly, Mr. Johnson acknowledges, but the theme is green. ''We like to encourage people to use their imaginations and build energy-efficient and fun cars,'' he said.

Those who came to the show did not necessarily take such a philosophical approach. Matt Miller, a postdoctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco, said he was back for his second Faire because ''I like fire.'' He said he subscribed to Make because he didn't have a lot of time but lived ''vicariously through others' hobbies.''

Roxanne Stafford, a designer who visited the Faire without knowing much about it, said she was ''a little overwhelmed'' by the size, the variety and the noise.

She added, however, that she found an underlying message in it all. With the ghastly images from the Iraq war and the uses of technology that usually make the news, it is easy to conclude that people simply make things and use technology ''to destroy one another,'' she said.

''Things like Maker Faire give people hope,'' she said. ''Creativity is the best expression of humanity.''