Jack Hanlon, actor in Our Gang films, dies in NV

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Jack Hanlon, who had roles in the 1926 silent classic “The General” and in two 1927 “Our Gang” comedies, died Thursday in Las Vegas at the age of 96.

His niece, Wendy Putnam Park of Las Vegas, says the precocious, freckle-faced Hanlon was a natural as a child actor from 1926 to 1933.

After a small role with Buster Keaton in “The General,” he played mischievous kids in two of Hal Roach’s “Our Gang/Little Rascals” films: “The Glorious Fourth” and “Olympic Games.”

Hanlon also played an orphan in the 1929 drama “The Shakedown,” and got an on-screen kiss from Greta Garbo in the 1930 film “Romance.”

After leaving Hollywood, Hanlon became a furniture mover and moved to Las Vegas in 1994.

Burial will be in Santa Monica, Calif.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Mislabeled Foods Find Their Way to Diners’ Tables

ATLANTA — The menu offered fried catfish. But Freddie Washington, a pastor in Tuscaloosa, Ala., who sometimes eats out five nights a week and was raised on Gulf Coast seafood, was served tilapia.

Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

Consumers are misled most frequently when they buy fish, investigators say, because diners have such limited knowledge about seafood. 

It was a culinary bait and switch. Mr. Washington complained. The restaurant had run out of catfish, the manager explained, and the pastor left the restaurant with a free dinner, an apology and a couple of gift certificates.

“If I’m paying for a menu item,” Mr. Washington said, “I’m expecting that menu item to be placed before me.”

The subject of deceptive restaurant menus took on new life last week when Oceana, an international organization dedicated to ocean conservation, released a report with the headline “Widespread Seafood Fraud Found in New York City.”

Using genetic testing, the group found tilapia and tilefish posing as red snapper. Farmed salmon was sold as wild. Escolar, which can also legally be called oil fish, was disguised as white tuna, which is an unofficial nickname for albacore tuna.

Every one of 16 sushi bars investigated sold the researchers mislabeled fish. In all, 39 percent of the seafood from 81 grocery stores and restaurants was not what the establishment claimed it was.

“This thing with fish is age old, it’s been going on forever,” said Anne Quatrano, an Atlanta chef who opened Bacchanalia 20 years ago and kick-started the city’s sustainable food movement. “Unless you buy whole fish, you can’t always know what you’re getting from a supplier.”

Swapping one ingredient for a less expensive one extends beyond fish and is not always the fault of the person who sells food to the restaurant. Many a pork cutlet has headed to a table disguised as veal, and many an organic salad is not.

The term organic is regulated by the Department of Agriculture, but many other identifying words on a menu are essentially marketing terms. Unscrupulous chefs can falsely claim that a steak is Kobe beef or say a chicken was humanely treated without penalty.

In cases of blatant mislabeling, a chef or supplier often takes the bet that a local or federal agency charged with stopping deceptive practices is not likely to walk in the door. “This has been going on for as long as I’ve been cooking,” said Tom Colicchio, a New York chef and television personality. “When you start really getting into this stuff, there’s so many things people mislabel.”

At Mr. Colicchio’s New York restaurants, all but about 5 percent of the meat he serves is from animals raised without antibiotics, he said. It costs him about 30 percent more, so he charges more. “Yet I have a restaurant down the street that says they have organic chicken when they don’t, and they charge less money for it,” he said. “It’s all part of mislabeling and duping the public.”

Consumers are misled most frequently when they buy fish, investigators say, because there are so many fish in the sea and such limited knowledge among diners. The Food and Drug Administration lists 519 acceptable market names for fish, but more than 1,700 species are sold, said Morgan Liscinsky, a spokesman with the agency.

Marketing thousands of species in the ocean to a dining public who often has to be coaxed to move beyond the top five — shrimp, tuna, salmon, pollock and tilapia — is not an exact science.

The line between marketing something like Patagonian toothfish as Chilean sea bass or serving langostino and calling it lobster is a fine one.

Robert DeMasco, who owns Pierless Fish, a wholesaler in New York, used a profanity to describe someone who buys farm-raised fish and sells it as wild. “But on some of this, they’re splitting hairs,” he said.

In 2005, a customer sued Rubio’s, a West Coast taco chain, for misleading the public by selling a langostino lobster burrito. The FDA ruled that practice acceptable, which allowed chains like Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster to sell the crustacean called langostino and legally attach the word lobster to it. Maine lobstermen and lawmakers fought the decision unsuccessfully.

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China Plans on Continuity in Economic Policy in 2013

BEIJING — An annual conference that helps set economic policy in China ended with a lengthy government statement Sunday warning of difficulties in the global economy as well as industrial overcapacity and financial-sector risks at home.

But a review of the two-day conference’s activities, which was released by the official Xinhua news agency, suggested few changes in existing economic policies, calling for continuity for the time being.

The statement endorsed tax cuts, continued curbs on real estate speculation and a broader effort to increase domestic consumption and wean the economy from its dependence on exports and investment.

“The opportunities facing us are no longer the traditional ones of simply entering the international division of labor, expanding exports and accelerating investments, but rather new opportunities forcing us to expand domestic demand, improve innovative capacities and promoting the transformation of the mode of development,” the statement said.

Held in December each year, the Central Economic Work Conference in theory is jointly run by the Central Committee of the Communist Party and by the government’s cabinet of ministers. In reality, the Standing Committee of the Politburo has the power, and all seven of its members attended the conference, together with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who left the standing committee last month but remains in office as prime minister until the National People’s Congress next March.

While China has many economic opportunities, “we must soberly recognize that there are still many risks and challenges confronting our national development,” the overview released by Xinhua said. “Problems with imbalances, ill-coordination and lack of sustainability remain pronounced.”

“The contradiction between downward pressures on the economy and relative overcapacity in production is deepening,” the statement continued. “Business operating costs are rising while innovative capacities are inadequate. There are latent risks in the financial sphere.”

Previous annual conferences have lasted three days. The government issued no explanation of why the conference this year appeared to last only two days, opening Saturday and closing Sunday.

The conference called for the agricultural sector to pay attention to maintaining an adequate food supply for the population, and endorsed continued urbanization, a favorite theme of the incoming prime minister next March, Li Keqiang.

“Urbanization is a historic task of our country’s modernization, and also possesses the greatest potential for expanding domestic consumption,” the statement said.

The statement called for continued but unspecified industrial reforms to address the problem of overcapacity. It was not clear what would be done to address risks in the financial sector, but a government official had said before the conference that China’s leaders were eager to move toward the introduction of a system of bank deposit insurance.

The precise details of discussions at Central Economic Work Conferences sometimes take days or weeks to dribble out.

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L.A. County D.A. reassigns rival she beat in November election

Two weeks after taking office, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has reassigned a political rival she beat in the November election from a prestigious high-profile job to a post where he will no longer try cases — a move he contends is a backward step for his career.

In his new post, Alan Jackson will supervise deputy district attorneys handling what he described as "garden variety felony" and misdemeanor cases rather than the complex, high-profile murder cases he directed and tried for years in the office's elite major crimes division.

The reassignment comes despite Lacey's describing Jackson during and after the election as an "outstanding trial attorney." A nearly 18-year veteran of the office, Jackson was named as "prosecutor of the year" in 2010 by the county's bar association.

He was one of two prosecutors who won the conviction of famed music producer Phil Spector in 2009, marking the office's first victory in a celebrity murder trial in more than 40 years. He also won a conviction in the cold case murders of motor racing legend Mickey Thompson and his wife. Among his current workload was the capital murder case of a former Armenian army soldier accused of killing an 8-year-old girl, her mother and father, and a prostitute.

An office spokeswoman described Jackson's transfer as a "lateral move" that had nothing to do with the campaign. Jean Guccione said more than half of the office's managers were reassigned on Friday as part of a shake-up by the new administration. Jackson's salary, title and office location in downtown Los Angeles will remain the same, she said.

"This is not retaliation," Guccione said. "This new assignment provides an excellent opportunity for him to share his courtroom experience with other prosecutors."

Jackson, however, disputed that the transfer was a lateral move.

"It's a move backward in my career," Jackson said. "This decision is specifically designed to remove me from the courtroom and from access to complex and high-profile litigation."

Jackson stopped short of saying he believed the new assignment, which takes effect Jan. 7, was punishment for his criticism of Lacey during the campaign, but he said he could think of no other reason for the transfer.

"The only thing that has changed from the time I have been trying these cases ... is that I ran for office against her," he said. "Am I disappointed? Absolutely. Not just for me, but I'm disappointed for what it says about the mission of the district attorney's office."

Lacey, a registered Democrat who had the backing of incumbent Steve Cooley, beat Jackson, a registered Republican, in the Nov. 6 runoff by 55% to 45%. The nonpartisan campaign grew testy at times, with Jackson running a television commercial in which he referred to conflicting testimony Lacey gave at employee grievance hearings and accused her of being "dishonest under oath to protect her boss," Cooley.

After the election, Lacey acknowledged that she had felt hurt by the accusation but again called Jackson "a very talented trial lawyer" and promised that she would not retaliate against him.

"I'm not a vindictive person. I'm not a mean person. I don't believe in wasting energy on that kind of thing," she told The Times during an interview two weeks ago. "If he chooses to remain in the office, we will find an appropriate spot."

Lacey, however, did not say that Jackson would remain in the high-profile major crimes division, where he has worked for nearly a decade and most recently served as assistant head deputy.

"The choice won't be up to him. It will be up to us," she said. "I think in this office, you benefit from a variety of assignments."

Jackson on Saturday said he had not decided whether he would remain with the district attorney's office for the long term but added that he would work hard in his new assignment.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

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Stunning Views of Glaciers Seen From Space

To a geologist, glaciers are among the most exciting features on Earth. Though they seem to creep along at impossibly slow speeds, in geologic time glaciers are relatively fast, powerful landscape artists that can carve out valleys and fjords in just a few thousand years.

Glaciers also provide an environmental record by trapping air bubbles in ice that reveal atmospheric conditions in the past. And because they are very sensitive to climate, growing and advancing when it’s cold and shrinking and retreating when its warm, they can be used as proxies for regional temperatures.

Over geologic time, they have ebbed and flowed with natural climate cycles. Today, the world’s glaciers are in retreat, sped up by relatively rapid warming of the globe. In our own Glacier National Park in Montana, only 26 named glaciers remain out of the 150 known in 1850. They are predicted to be completely gone by 2030 if current warming continues at the same rate.

Here we have collected 13 stunning images of some of the world’s most impressive and beautiful glaciers, captured from space by astronauts and satellites.

Above: Bear Glacier, Alaska

This image taken in 2005 of Bear Glacier highlights the beautiful color of many glacial lakes. The hue is caused by the silt that is finely ground away from the valley walls by the glacier and deposited in the lake. The particles in this “glacial flour” can be very reflective, turning the water into a distinctive greenish blue. The lake, eight miles up from the terminus of the glacier, was held in place by the glacier, but in 2008 it broke through and drained into Resurrection Bay in Kenai Fjords National Park.

The grey stripe down the middle of the glacier is called a medial moraine. It is formed when two glaciers flow into each other and join on their way downhill. When glaciers come together, their lateral moraines, long ridges formed along their edges as the freeze-thaw cycle of the glacier breaks off chunks of rock from the surrounding walls, meet to form a rocky ridge along the center of the joined glaciers.

Image: GeoEye/NASA, 2005.

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“Modern Family” star’s dad granted control of her estate

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The father of “Modern Family” star Ariel Winter was given temporary control over the teenage actress’ estate on Wednesday in a court-approved settlement in Los Angeles after allegations that her mother had abused her.

Winter, 14, who plays the brainy and precocious teenager Alex Dunphy on the Emmy-winning ABC comedy, will remain under temporary guardianship of her older sister, Shanelle Gray, under the settlement, court officials said.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas scheduled a hearing for March 29 in which he could hand permanent guardianship over to Gray and control of Winter’s estate to her father, Glenn Workman.

Gray, 34, was first awarded temporary guardianship of the actress in October.

Winter’s mother, Chrisoula Workman, has denied allegations, earlier submitted in court documents, that she verbally and physically abused her daughter.

Messages left with Winter’s publicist and attorney seeking comment were not immediately returned.

“Modern Family” portrays the lives of three zany families and has won three consecutive Emmy awards as American television’s best comedy series.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sidney Gilman’s Shift Led to Insider Trading Case

Speaking in front of a packed convention hall in Chicago, a top Alzheimer’s researcher, Sidney Gilman, presented the results of a drug trial that had the potential to change the fate of elderly patients everywhere.

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Dr. Gilman’s lifestyle was a well-kept secret among colleagues at the University of Michigan medical school.

But as he worked through the slides, it became clear to the audience on that day in July 2008 that the drug was not delivering and that its makers, Elan and Wyeth, could lose out on blockbuster profits. Along with other Wall Street analysts in the front rows, David Moskowitz zapped messages to clients to dump shares of the companies. “I can remember gasping” at the results, Mr. Moskowitz said.

Little did anyone in the room know that 12 days earlier, Dr. Gilman had e-mailed a draft of the presentation to a trader at an affiliate of one of the nation’s most prominent hedge funds, according to prosecutors, allowing the fund, SAC Capital, and its affiliate to sell over $700 million of Elan and Wyeth stock before Dr. Gilman’s public talk.

Last month, the trader was arrested on insider trading charges after Dr. Gilman agreed to cooperate with prosecutors to avoid charges.

While he appeared a grandfatherly academic, Dr. Gilman, 80, was living a parallel life, one in which he regularly advised a wide network of Wall Street traders through a professional matchmaking system. Those relationships afforded him payments of $100,000 or more a year — on top of his $258,000 pay from the University of Michigan — and travels with limousines, luxury hotels and private jets.

The riddle for Dr. Gilman’s longtime friends and colleagues is why a nationally respected neurologist was pulled into the high-rolling life of a consultant to financiers and how he, by his own admission, crossed the line into criminal behavior.

“My first reaction was, ‘That can’t possibly be right,’ ” said Dawn Kleindorfer, a former student of Dr. Gilman’s at Michigan.

What is clear is that Dr. Gilman made a sharp shift in his late 60s, from a life dedicated to academic research to one in which he accumulated a growing list of financial firms willing to pay him $1,000 an hour for his medical expertise, while he was overseeing drug trials for various pharmaceutical makers. Among the firms he was advising was another hedge fund that was also buying and selling Wyeth and Elan stock, though the authorities have given no sign they have questioned those trades.

His conversion to Wall Street consultant was not readily apparent in his lifestyle in Michigan and was a well-kept secret from colleagues. Public records show no second home, and no indication of financial distress. Nevertheless, he was willing to share a glimpse of his lifestyle with a 17-year-old student whom he sat next to on a flight from New York to Michigan a few months ago, telling her how his Alzheimer’s research allowed him to enjoy fine hotels in New York and limousine rides to the airport.

“I wouldn’t say he was egotistical because he didn’t come across as obnoxious, but he definitely mentioned the kind of lifestyle that he had,” said the student, Anya Parampil, who had been upgraded to first class.

Dr. Gilman’s role in the case involving SAC Capital has largely been overshadowed by the possibility that investigators may be narrowing in on the firm’s billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen. Mr. Cohen and his firm have not been accused of wrongdoing in acting on the insider information.

Colleagues now say Dr. Gilman’s story is a reminder of the corrupting influence of money. The University of Michigan, where he was a professor for decades, has erased any trace of him on its Web sites, and is now reviewing its consulting policy for employees, a spokesman said.

The case also turns the spotlight back onto the finance world’s expert networks, which match sources in academia and at publicly traded companies — like Dr. Gilman — with traders at hedge funds and financial firms.

The networks have been a central target of prosecutors in the sprawling insider trading investigations that have resulted in dozens of convictions in recent years.

Some networks have closed, and many are shifting their focus outside the financial world, hoping to make up revenue by consulting for corporate America.

Days after the charges were filed, Dr. Gilman retired and has gone into seclusion at his home on a wooded lot overlooking the Huron River on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, which is listed in public records as worth $400,000. He declined to open the door to a reporter last week, directing questions to his lawyer. “I can’t discuss it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Stephanie Steinberg contributed reporting.

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Sidney Gilman’s Shift Led to Insider Trading Case

Speaking in front of a packed convention hall in Chicago, a top Alzheimer’s researcher, Sidney Gilman, presented the results of a drug trial that had the potential to change the fate of elderly patients everywhere.

Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times

Dr. Gilman’s lifestyle was a well-kept secret among colleagues at the University of Michigan medical school.

But as he worked through the slides, it became clear to the audience on that day in July 2008 that the drug was not delivering and that its makers, Elan and Wyeth, could lose out on blockbuster profits. Along with other Wall Street analysts in the front rows, David Moskowitz zapped messages to clients to dump shares of the companies. “I can remember gasping” at the results, Mr. Moskowitz said.

Little did anyone in the room know that 12 days earlier, Dr. Gilman had e-mailed a draft of the presentation to a trader at an affiliate of one of the nation’s most prominent hedge funds, according to prosecutors, allowing the fund, SAC Capital, and its affiliate to sell over $700 million of Elan and Wyeth stock before Dr. Gilman’s public talk.

Last month, the trader was arrested on insider trading charges after Dr. Gilman agreed to cooperate with prosecutors to avoid charges.

While he appeared a grandfatherly academic, Dr. Gilman, 80, was living a parallel life, one in which he regularly advised a wide network of Wall Street traders through a professional matchmaking system. Those relationships afforded him payments of $100,000 or more a year — on top of his $258,000 pay from the University of Michigan — and travels with limousines, luxury hotels and private jets.

The riddle for Dr. Gilman’s longtime friends and colleagues is why a nationally respected neurologist was pulled into the high-rolling life of a consultant to financiers and how he, by his own admission, crossed the line into criminal behavior.

“My first reaction was, ‘That can’t possibly be right,’ ” said Dawn Kleindorfer, a former student of Dr. Gilman’s at Michigan.

What is clear is that Dr. Gilman made a sharp shift in his late 60s, from a life dedicated to academic research to one in which he accumulated a growing list of financial firms willing to pay him $1,000 an hour for his medical expertise, while he was overseeing drug trials for various pharmaceutical makers. Among the firms he was advising was another hedge fund that was also buying and selling Wyeth and Elan stock, though the authorities have given no sign they have questioned those trades.

His conversion to Wall Street consultant was not readily apparent in his lifestyle in Michigan and was a well-kept secret from colleagues. Public records show no second home, and no indication of financial distress. Nevertheless, he was willing to share a glimpse of his lifestyle with a 17-year-old student whom he sat next to on a flight from New York to Michigan a few months ago, telling her how his Alzheimer’s research allowed him to enjoy fine hotels in New York and limousine rides to the airport.

“I wouldn’t say he was egotistical because he didn’t come across as obnoxious, but he definitely mentioned the kind of lifestyle that he had,” said the student, Anya Parampil, who had been upgraded to first class.

Dr. Gilman’s role in the case involving SAC Capital has largely been overshadowed by the possibility that investigators may be narrowing in on the firm’s billionaire founder, Steven A. Cohen. Mr. Cohen and his firm have not been accused of wrongdoing in acting on the insider information.

Colleagues now say Dr. Gilman’s story is a reminder of the corrupting influence of money. The University of Michigan, where he was a professor for decades, has erased any trace of him on its Web sites, and is now reviewing its consulting policy for employees, a spokesman said.

The case also turns the spotlight back onto the finance world’s expert networks, which match sources in academia and at publicly traded companies — like Dr. Gilman — with traders at hedge funds and financial firms.

The networks have been a central target of prosecutors in the sprawling insider trading investigations that have resulted in dozens of convictions in recent years.

Some networks have closed, and many are shifting their focus outside the financial world, hoping to make up revenue by consulting for corporate America.

Days after the charges were filed, Dr. Gilman retired and has gone into seclusion at his home on a wooded lot overlooking the Huron River on the outskirts of Ann Arbor, which is listed in public records as worth $400,000. He declined to open the door to a reporter last week, directing questions to his lawyer. “I can’t discuss it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Stephanie Steinberg contributed reporting.

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Gil Friesen dies at 75; longtime president of A&M recording label

A&M Records spent much of the 1960s, '70s and '80s as one of the leading independent labels in the music business, buoyed by a remarkably consistent string of hits from superstar acts, beginning with label co-founder Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass and continuing through the Carpenters, Carole King, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Peter Frampton, the Police, Sting, the Go-Go's, Janet Jackson, Bryan Adams and many others.

The one thing they had in common: Most weren't superstars when they came to A&M.

"We don't sign big names," Gil Friesen, the longtime president of the label founded in 1962 by Alpert and business partner Jerry Moss, told Forbes in 1988. "We would rather have an artist whose career you slowly build with great credibility over time than an artist with whom you have instant chart success and that's the end of it."

Friesen, who was sometimes referred to as "the ampersand in A&M," died Thursday of leukemia at his home in Brentwood, said his friend and Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner. He was 75.

Friesen spent a quarter century at the label until his resignation in 1990 shortly after Alpert and Moss sold the company to international conglomerate PolyGram for $500 million.

"Gil was a visionary," Alpert said Friday. "His door was always open to people looking for [new] thoughts and ideas.... He was always there to say things that maybe you didn't think of before."

He also contributed significantly to A&M's reputation for fair play among the musicians the label signed.

"The night the Byrds were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [in 1991], we were giving a press conference and I looked out into the small crowd and saw Gil Friesen, who in turn gave me a 'thumbs up,' as if to say 'well done.' I'll never forget that," Chris Hillman, the Byrds founding member who recorded for A&M after starting the Flying Burrito Brothers, said Friday. "He was one of the good guys."

Friesen's tenure at A&M began "in the heyday of the record business when the record business was a thriving, exciting place to be with the rise of a new generation of popular music, and A&M was at the forefront of it," Wenner said. A&M was "the leading independent label. It had a real reputation for style, class and integrity. It was a happening place to be, and Gil led that."

Gil Friesen was born March 19, 1937, in Pasadena and grew up in a musical family, which he credited with his own passion for music. His first job in the music business was at the lowest rung of the career ladder, processing mail for Capitol Records.

Later, he remembered visiting Santa Monica-based radio station KDAY to pitch a record to Alan Freed, the fabled East Coast deejay who moved to California after getting caught up in the radio payola scandal of the late 1950s.

"I was promoting a Peggy Lee record," Friesen recalled. Freed "was shocked to have a representative from Capitol show up. He introduced me to an independent promotion guy who was there for same reasons I was. His name was Jerry Moss. Jerry Moss and I became friends. Good friends."

In 1981, Friesen spearheaded the launch of A&M Films, the company's independent film division, and became executive producer of the 1985 hit "The Breakfast Club." He also produced two early John Cusack comedies, "Better Off Dead" (1985) and "One Crazy Summer" (1986), and the 1989 biopic "Blaze," about Louisiana Gov. Earl Long, starring Paul Newman.

Most recently he'd been working on a documentary titled "Twenty Feet From Stardom," about the backup singers who support rock and pop stars. It has been selected to be shown on opening night of the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Former A&M Senior Vice President and General Manager Jim Guerinot recalled Friday that Friesen would regularly invite groups of friends and co-workers to his home for dinner and engage them in conversations on topics far beyond that of day-to-day business affairs.

"He was friends with [historian] Bob Dallek, and after dinner, he'd say, 'Let's all go to the living room. What are we going to talk about tonight, Bob?' And Dallek would say, 'Tonight, let's talk about FDR' or 'Let's talk about Vietnam.' He made all those intellectual pursuits seem cool. And they were cool, because Gil did them."

An art aficionado, Friesen had been a board member and chairman of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He also was a founding partner of the Classic Sports cable channel, which was sold to ESPN in 1997 for $175 million, and a founding investor in Akamai, a prominent Internet content delivery platform.

In addition to Janet Friesen, his third wife, Friesen is survived by their two children, Theo and Uma, and a son, Tyler, from a previous marriage. No services have been announced.

randy.lewis@latimes.com

elaine.woo@latimes.com

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Meet the World?s Cheapest Venture Capitalist

Maciej Cegłowski’s new startup fund was the toast of Silicon Valley on Friday, lighting up Twitter, winning top billing on the elite Hacker News forum, and drawing dozens of applications from would-be portfolio companies. The fund’s draw: Extreme stinginess.

The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud, as the fund is called, offers chosen startups all of $37 in venture capital. Not $37 million, like you might get from the uber-investors on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, or $37,000, like what YCombinator and other incubators offer. Thirty-seven crisp George Washingtons.

“The thing that has really changed in the past couple of years that hasn’t been internalized by everyone is that startup costs are really very, very low,” says Cegłowski. “Even compared to 2008 it costs very little money to do stuff. You have these technologies that are pretty good at scaling up … but it’s still free, open source software. So as long as the labor is free, you’re fine.”

‘I want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers.’

— Maciej Cegłowski

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is more than a statement on the rapidly falling cost of scaling software. It’s also about a crucial shift in the role played by startup investors. The importance of the actual capital distributed by venture capitalists continues to fall along with the costs of deploying, distributing, and scaling up apps, websites, other software, and even hardware. Less tangible aspects of an investment, like the endorsement, expertise, and social graph of the investor have become correspondingly more important.

If Cegłowski can prove there is an extreme version of this trend — that there are compelling startups for which investment dollars are borderline meaningless, and for which social capital is paramount – he could help remake the tech investment pipeline from a glorified money hose into a system for primarily distributing social capital like prestige, attention, taste, and advice.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is an experiment in distributing just that sort of social capital. It offers not just the $37, but also Cegłowski’s vote of confidence – he’s only picking six winners – and “as much publicity as I can provide,” as the fund webpage says. That publicity will presumably come via the devoted online following Cegłowski has built over the years for his articles on bootstrapping his bookmark service Pinboard.in, as well as for his wide-ranging personal essays, including an indispensable meat-lover’s guide to visiting Argentina.

“I want to see if I can give people the social boost to get a chance to explain their idea and attract that initial group of customers,” Cegłowski says. “Because once you have a handful of people who use your product you can kind of claw your way up from that. It’s just that the first part is really tough.”

The former Yahoo engineer is hardly the first to capitalize on the changing nature of startup funding. YCombinator pioneered the pairing of tiny, low-five-figure funding rounds with intensive mentoring and an unconventional selection process. Its success stories include Dropbox, SocialCam, and Airbnb. The venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, meanwhile, bolsters its monetary investments with exceptional expertise in areas like human resources and public relations. Its investments have included Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.

Where the Co-Prosperity Cloud is different is in its lower ambitions. It aims to fund what Cegłowski calls “barely successful … modest” companies like his own Pinboard, a one-man operation that he says couldn’t pay a second employee but that covers his costs, salary, plus a contribution to his savings. Where YCombinator encourages two-founder teams and follow-on venture capital rounds that push startups toward a big-money exit, the Co-Prosperity Cloud actively encourages solo founders and slow-building, sustainable companies.

“I’m interested in this world of niche businesses no one will really fund,” Cegłowski says. “[I] want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers and aren’t going to grow into a giant business but are a perfectly great business.”

The fund is off to a promising start. As of this morning, it was a brand-new idea that had popped into Cegłowski’s head during an a.m. jog around San Francisco. By the end of the evening, he had upward of 40 applications, as well as offers to supplement each of his investments, to the tune of $50 apiece, from venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (of the aforementioned Andreessen Horowitz) and tech entrepreneur Thomas Ptacek.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud’s application deadline is Jan. 1, and Cegłowski anticipates announcing winners shortly thereafter. He jokes about how poorly things could go, but in the end resolved that this would be OK: “I decided I could spend $200 for this experiment.” That small outlay could result in big savings for future entrepreneurs. Or, at the very least, another blockbuster entry on Cegłowski’s blog.

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