by David Goldman @DavidGoldmanCNNDecember 28, 2015: 12:43 PM ET
Despite the infamous hack that exposed millions of cheaters online, infidelity dating site Ashley Madison says its ranks are growing.
At the time of the hack, Ashley Madison said it had 39 million members. The website now says it has more than 43 million members, according to a rolling count on its homepage.
What’s behind the apparent customer growth? A spokesman for Ashley Madison parent company Avid Life Media isn’t saying. He said the website had no update to provide since its last statement on August 31, and it would not comment for this report.
In its last public statement, Avid Life said that reports of its imminent demise were “greatly exaggerated,” and cheaters continued to use the site more than ever — even though 32 million of its members’ identities were revealed in the massive data breach this summer.
The hack was bad enough, but the information revealed as part of the breach was pretty damning for the company. The list of names appeared to show that upwards of 95% of Ashley Madison’s members were men.
The company denied that, saying that journalists were misreading the exposed information. Instead, Ashley Madison said that the ratio of men to women who “actively used their account” was 1.2 to 1.
an article worth reading and so relevant to what Ridgewood is going through right now..
PUBLISHED BY LESLIE WRIGHT ON DECEMBER 22, 2015
At this time of year, when we gather with loved ones, often returning to, or remembering, the places we hold dear, the reflections of Orton Family Foundation Trustee Ed McMahon on the importance of place seem especially apropos. Ed is senior resident fellow at Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.
We live in a world of rapid change: immigration, new technologies, global trade, instantaneous communication, changing consumer tastes, rapid movement of people, ideas, and goods, etc. However, if I have learned anything over 25 years in the community planning arena, it is this: change is inevitable, but the destruction of community character and identity is not. Progress does not demand degraded surroundings. Communities can grow without destroying the things people love.
Place is more than just a location or a spot on a map. A sense of place is a unique collection of qualities and characteristics—visual, cultural, social and environmental—that provides meaning to a location. Sense of place is what makes one location (e.g. your hometown) different from another location (e.g. my hometown), but sense of place is also that which makes our physical surroundings valuable and worth caring about.
Land use planners spend too much time focusing on numbers—the number of units per acre, the number of cars per hour, the number of floors per building—and not enough time on the values, customs, characteristics, and quirks that make a place worth caring about. Unfortunately, many American communities are suffering the social, economic, and environmental consequences of being places that simply aren’t worth caring about. The more one place (one location) comes to be just like every other place, the less reason there is to visit or invest. Just take tourism, for example: the more a community comes to look like every other community, the less reason there is to visit. On the other hand, the more a community does to enhance its distinctive identity, whether that is natural, cultural, or architectural, the more reasons there are to visit. Why? Because tourism is about visiting places that are different, unusual, or unique; if one place was just like everyplace else, there would be no reason to go anyplace.
Similarly, when it comes to 21st century economic development, a key concept is “community differentiation.” If you can’t differentiate your community from any other community, you have no competitive advantage. Capital is footloose in a global economy. Natural resources, highway access, locations along a river or rail line have all become less important. Richard Florida, a leading economic development authority and author of The Creative Class, has said, “How people think of a place is less tangible, but more important than just about anything else.”
DECEMBER 24, 2015 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2015, 11:25 AM
BY BY DIANA OLIVEIRA
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
When discussing her hobbies, 8-year-old Chloe Fernandez appears no different from any other girl her age, but she has already accomplished more than some people do in a lifetime.
With the help of Make-A-Wish and the Macy’s Believe Campaign this holiday season, she is a published author who just had her first book preview.
The precocious 8-year-old loves being active. She plays dress-up and often pretends to be Rowan Blanchard from Disney Channel’s “Girl Meets World,” putting on a show in the living room for her dolls. She rides her scooter around the house, even though it “drives Mom crazy,” she said. She also swims and plays the piano and harmonica.
But when Chloe swims, she can only go to the pools at HackensackUMC Fitness & Wellness Center in Maywood because they contain filtered salt water as opposed to chlorine. And Chloe attends harmonica lessons at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck; she took up the activity because it’s been proven to help lung function.
Suddenly, the normal 8-year-old image is skewed. Chloe is afflicted with a rare genetic condition called primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD), a disease that attacks the cilia or “the natural hairlike extensions on the mucus membrane that help us clear our secretions,” according to Dr. Donna Lee, Chloe’s pulmonologist at Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital at HackensackUMC.
Ridgewood NJ , the Ridgewood Police department is investigating an alleged kidnapping and carjacking that was reported early Saturday morning.
In a statement the Ridgewood Police said that the “vehicle in question” has been located near the Thruway in Bergen County, N.J, and an investigation is ongoing. .The victim has also been recovered suffering only minor injuries.
Ridgewood Police have so far withheld any further information about the incident .New York State Police are also working with police in Ridgewood, N.J.
According to the NJ State Police Carjackings are relatively rare in Bergen County.Only one car jacking was reported for Bergen County in 2013.In two in 2014.
I am forwarding/resending an email that I sent to Roberta a year ago (12/9/14) on the traffic issue. Since that time, nothing meaningful or effective has been done to alleviate Residents’ traffic and safety concerns at Garber. To the Residents on this chain, I will say that Roberta did respond very quickly at the time (which I appreciated). However, in the email she put forth her belief that the Village never promised new signals, but rather a calibration of the existing signals.
My takeaway from the Underpass meetings was that the Village would clearly be looking at ways to better and more safely address traffic flow at this problematic bottleneck. I firmly believe there was specific discussion of traffic light changes as an option. At the very least, we need that. Turn signals that allow the train station and West RW Ave traffic to turn towards the underpass as separate times, without competing would be a great holiday gift to us all!
This morning at 8:50, traffic from Garber was backed up past Heights and even past the McNamara’s house. That’s a bad and unnecessary thing. Wasn’t like that before. And once again, a Ridgewood business (this time Sook) lost my breakfast business, because I couldn’t get there and had to reroute away from our CBD.
Roberta and Paul, please… let’s use this current stream of emails as a catalyst to effect something positive that your Residents are really asking for and clearly need: Something far simpler and less expensive than an almost football-field-sized parking garage, that will have an immediate positive impact for all Residents, especially the West-siders. Perhaps right after the New Year we can meet again to discuss this situation. Again, I see an OPPORTUNITY to fix something that’s broken, using real “data from the field… your Residents input.”
At those preconstruction Underpass meetings, there was a commitment from the Village to continue the discussions and situational monitoring once the work was complete. Now is a great time for us to talk again.
Happy and Merry Everything. May your New Year be fruitful and filled with many short trips through the underpass!
Cheers,
Dave Slomin
Subject: New Traffic Lights at Garber Square?
Good Morning Roberta,
Hope all is well with you and a happy almost New Year.
Back in the Spring, when we were discussing the Garber Square project, you indicated that an important facet of the project, to ensure proper traffic flow, was the installation of new traffic lights with turn signals. These were referred to as necessary to achieve the desired traffic flow goals of the project and to improve safety. As such, when will these be installed?
As a West-Sider, I am finding – especially at rush hour times when train station pickups and drop-offs are in full force – that traffic on W. Ridgewood Ave often backs up well past Washington Place due to the fact that cars leaving the train station lot, turning right, have the right of way. Now that there is only one vehicular lane of traffic heading East, cars on W. Ridgewood Ave have to wait until all the cars coming out of the station lot are through the light. Oftentimes only one or two vehicles on W. Ridgewood can get through the light before it changes, leading to this backup. On many recent occasions, I have sat through 4-5 turns of the light before reaching the intersection. I have also witnessed some problematic and unsafe jockeying for position at this intersection, as W. Ridgewood Ave drivers assert themselves more aggressively to get through the intersection.
Frustration aside, the downside to the Village and its businesses is that at rush hours – which are also the dinner and breakfast/coffee hours – my family and I have started avoiding that intersection. At the evening rush, we have been diverting from downtown Ridgewood to Midland Park more frequently than in the past. In the morning, I’ve been getting my coffee in Fairlawn or Glen Rock, rather than stopping in at Carlo’s or Ridgewood Coffee and having to deal with Garber Square. I hate doing this, but it’s just easier not to deal with Garber Square at those times. Again, bad for Ridgewood business. But fixable…
As we discussed earlier, that intersection is the “gatekeeper” to Ridgewood’s CBD from the west side. I hope that the lights will be going in soon to keep that gate more fully open.
Please let me know where this stands.
Thanks much,
Dave Slomin
David Slomin, President
Andover Properties
25 East Spring Valley Ave, Suite 280
Maywood, NJ 07607
Tel: 201-368-5900 x101
Fax: 201-368-5959
Eml: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]
DECEMBER 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY BETSY MURPHY
CORRESPONDENT |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Darlene Gidney sat in a booth at Daily Treat one recent morning happily sharing the Board of Directors Award she received from AUDELCO at Symphony Space in New York City last month for outstanding service to the theater community.
“It’s the black Tony of theater,” she said proudly of the award, from Audience Development Committee Inc. Gidney has put a lot of work, and a lot of love into the dedication that earned her this coveted award.
Born and bought up in the village, where her great-grandfather started Glidewell Taxi, later Ridgewood Taxi, she moved back to Ridgewood when her sons, Yates and Edward, were about to enter the fifth and first grades. Today, Yates Gidney is in the U.S. Navy and Edward Blair IV will graduate from college in 2016.
Gidney acknowledges her own “good strong foundation from the community of Ridgewood,” where she was “always encouraged to explore other things.” Among her mentors she counts Ella Rae and Dudley Saunders, who owned Colonial Post and who were among the founders of Order of the Lamp. Many Ridgewood students benefited from scholarships from Order of the Lamp.
photo courtesy of Helene Zgagowski’s Facebook page
DECEMBER 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY EILEEN LA FORGIA
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Helene Zgagowski has been a Ridgewood resident for 13 years and is having her first solo art show this month at the Stable.
“Diverse environments and the richness of the life around me inspire my work,” she said calling the exhibit, “a little glimpse of my life.”
“Whether it is in nature or riding horses, or spending time with family and friends, these are the things that give me joy,” explained the artist. “I’ve been there, done that and lived a good life, and I want to capture these moments forever and what better way than painting these memories on canvas.”
Born in Belgium, her Russian immigrant parents came to the United States sponsored by Tolstoy Farm in New York State. The family later moved to New Jersey.
Zgagowski studied at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art and Montclair State University – Fine Arts. She has also studied oil painting at the Fair Lawn Art League under Pauline Campanelli and at the Ridgewood Art Institute. She studied pottery at the Mudworks Company and jewelry making at the Art School at Old Church.
DECEMBER 25, 2015 LAST UPDATED: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2015, 12:31 AM
BY MATTHEW SCHNEIDER
STAFF WRITER |
THE RIDGEWOOD NEWS
Charles DiMarco, chairman of Ridgewood Citizens’ Safety Advisory Committee, outlined at last week’s Planning Board meeting proposed changes to future village parking lots to improve pedestrian safety. The presentation was a continuation of the Planning Board’s reexamination of the village’s master plan.
DiMarco said that parking lots can be dangerous to pedestrians walking through them, and that he hopes the village can reduce the risk of pedestrian-vehicle accidents by inserting special places for walkers to move through the lots safely.
“The committee plans to include pedestrian corridors to connect parking lot aisles to facilities,” he said. “The pedestrian corridors would furnish a walkway from the main areas of the parking lot to the main entrance or focal point of the development and thereby reduce the interaction between pedestrians and vehicles in the parking lot.”
He said that these proposed corridors “would also make it easier to walk down the aisle between parked cars” because of additional room and that they “would basically direct pedestrians to a defined location: a safer and clearer crosswalk.”
An example of a parking lot that fits DiMarco’s criteria is the one outside of the library and municipal building.
DECEMBER 22, 2015 LAST UPDATED: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2015, 10:51 AM
THE RECORD
North Jersey epicureans are in luck, therefore. In 2015, The Record’s restaurant critic Elisa Ung reviewed a number of first-rate formal restaurants that either opened their doors this year or experienced a significant change (for example, a new chef or new owners, new look) during the year. She also reviewed a few eating establishments that have been around for sometime and continue to dazzle.
Our council lurches from project to project without a common theme or goal perhaps other than “if someone with money asks for it, then lets give it to them.” The majority on this council exhibit no sense of serving the Village of Ridgewood. They’ve never shown that they looked into the future to ask or try to divine what’s best for the Village as a whole. Instead, they appear only to react to and be driven by the demands of developers, land speculators, restaurant owners and other profiteers.
I have lived in town quite a few years now, and have had agreements and disagreements with many that always ended with a friendly handshake. Sadly, this crew has engendered an entirely different feeling. More sadly yet, they seem to smugly relish what the discord have sown.
I can think of two reason for this. One is payback to the supporters of the gang of three in the last election. The second is to secure votes and financial backing for the gang of three for the upcoming election. If our current Mayor chooses not to run next year then you can be sure that our Deputy Mayor will make a run for Mayor and Gwen will be Deputy Mayor. The plans are already in the works for this. Im sure Albert has already pick a candidate that will support his bid for Mayor .
Make no mistake readers Albert and Paul are smart people. We will not know this mystery candidate until after the election. We will again have four years of block votes and the systematic destruction of the Village . I would suggest to all voters to do their due diligence next year. Know your candidate and their history not just their talking points for the election.
Reducing lanes at Garber Square Has made congestion hard to bare Bike lanes to nowhere not so great This plus over development need not be our fate
The council has heard our many suggestions It’s not too late to change direction We love this town so charming and rare Let’s move forward with caution and care
Happy Holidays to all and a Happy New Year too May the spirit of the season last all year through For the good people working so hard for us all Let’s hope they are listening especially Roberta and Paul!
Three Vehicle Collision at the Intersection of North Monroe and West Glen in Ridgewood
December 23,2015
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ ,A Toyota MR2 Spyder was the loser in a three (3) vehicle chain reaction collision at the intersection of North Monroe Street and West Glen Avenue in Ridgewood on Tuesday afternoon. The adult female driver of the MR2 was transported by ambulance to The Valley Hospital with a non-life threatening facial injury. Ridgewood PD, FD and EMS responded to the incident, which occurred shortly before 4PM. The sandwiched vehicle was removed from the scene by a flatbed tow truck.
RPPs will be sold each business day from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Be sure to bring for both new applications as well as renewals, both their driver’s license and the registration for the cars they wish to register for the permits.
file photo by Boyd Loving
December 22,2015
Chief John M. Ward
Ridgewood NJ , With the holiday shopping season in full swing I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone happy and joyous holiday. Additionally I would like to share some holiday safety tips with you. While savvy shoppers are seeking out the best bargains so are the criminals. This is a peak time for crimes such as home burglaries, thefts, and even muggings. I hope these safety tips help prevent you from being the victim of a crime during the holidays.
At Home
Be extra cautious about locking doors and windows at all times.
Don’t display gifts and other valuables where they can be seen from a window or doorway.
If you go out in the evening, turn on lights and a radio or television so the house looks occupied.
If you go on vacation, get an automatic timer for your lights. Ask a neighbor or trusted friend to watch your house, pick up the mail and newspapers and park their car in your driveway from time to time.
If your lights are on timers, please remember to adjust for the changing sun set times, so the lights do not come on during day light hours.
Beware of package deliveries where couriers have the “wrong” address. Write down license plate numbers of suspicious delivery attempts.
Schedule deliveries while someone is home. Often criminals will grab unattended packages left at front doors. Unattended packages at the door are also a signal to criminals that a home may be vacant.
After Christmas, don’t advertise your new electronics and/or other new valuables that you have just received by putting the boxes out on the curb for the garbage collectors. Break the boxes down and fold them to where the words are on the inside.
If you believe someone’s actions are suspicious please don’t wait, call the police while the individual(s) are still in the area.
Shopping
Stay alert to your surroundings and the people around you. If you see people “hanging around” parking garages, parking lots, or the outside of stores, avoid the area. Notify the police or security department.
Shop before dark if possible. Coordinate shopping trips with a friend if you plan to be out late. Never park your car in an unlit area, no matter how convenient it is.
Lock your car doors and windows even if you are only gone for a few minutes.
Keep packages and other valuables out of public view, preferably locked in the trunk.
Park near street lights if possible and have your keys in hand when you return to your car. Always check the interior of your car before you unlock the door to get in.
To discourage purse snatchers, don’t overburden yourself with packages. Have your purchases delivered whenever practical.
Avoid carrying large amounts of cash. Pay for purchases with a check or credit card whenever possible.
Be extra careful with purses and wallets. Carry a purse under your arm with the strap across your body. Keep a wallet in an inside jacket pocket, not a back trouser pocket.
Teach your children to go to a store clerk or security guard and ask for help if they should become separated in a store or shopping mall. They should never go into a parking lot alone.
