Shortcuts: The Meaning in a Drawer Full of Old Family Snapshots

Eric Thayer/Reuters

A resident found photos as she sifted the debris of a house destroyed by Hurricane Sandy in Union Beach, N.J.

I WASN’T going to write about Hurricane Sandy. I was going to write about the changing nature of photographs and our relationship to them in this digital age.

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Picture-taking is now mainly digital, making prints of photos uncommon.

But as I began my research, I came across a Facebook page where lost photos from the storm were posted. Called “Union Beach — Photos and Misplaced Items,” the page shows photos of newborns and birthday parties, weddings and family gatherings.

Starting the morning after the storm devastated her community of Union Beach, N.J., Jeanette Van Houten and her niece have collected over a thousand photos and some photo albums. She is making it her mission to scan and post to Facebook as many as possible, including those turned into the fire department, police station and borough hall.

In addition, she was handed a drawerful of over a thousand family photos that must have been wrenched from a dresser.

About 60 photos have been claimed so far, and some professionals have offered to restore damaged photos free.

“These photos were passed down through families and they survived Sandy, even if the structures they were in didn’t,” Ms. Van Houten said. “They tell our story.”

With the Facebook page, Ms. Van Houten uses newer technology to help people reconnect with their old-fashioned snapshots. And seeing the photographs of mundane scenes and milestones on Facebook, along with the grateful comments from people who got back a bit of their lives, reminded me of both the fragility and strength of photos and their continuing importance in our lives. Judith Dupré, author of “Monuments: America’s History in Art and Memory” (Random House, 2007), and other books, teaches a class at her local library in Mamaroneck, N.Y., called “Stories from My Life,” for older residents. They use photos and stories to write about their lives.

“They bring in a basketful of photos,” Ms. Dupré said. “Each one of these photos contains a story — they’re like a key that opens the door to a life.”

And a printed photo “is a different species than a digital photo,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s figured out the place of digital photos in terms of memory keeping.”

When an elderly aunt of hers died and left behind lots of photographs, Ms. Dupré said the family took them to the memorial service.

“We had a table and people could select and take what they wanted,” she said. “It was a very moving part of the memorial.”

Of course, even prints can lose their meaning and poignancy through the generations.

And in some cases, as with Hurricane Sandy, photos may be safer in cyberspace than in an album on a bookshelf — as long as you remember to upload them to a site like Flickr, Shutterfly, Snapfish or countless other photo sites available. (And make sure you know how long a site will keep your photos. Some, for example, require you to show some activity at least once a year.) That way, if you lose your hard drive, you don’t lose your photos.

But Ms. Dupré said she worried that photos that existed only online somewhere might die with the photographer.

“I don’t even know what my parents have in terms of digital photography,” she said. She said she put the password to her photos safely away with her will and other documents, so her children can access them.

Now I’m not trying to say that the old-fashioned way is the only way. Photography has constantly evolved. The Brownie camera, first sold by Kodak for $1 in 1900, radicalized photography by making it available to just about everyone.

But, and I know this largely a generational thing, I can’t help but wonder about the ubiquity of the cellphone photo. As Ms. Dupré said, “The infinite number of digital photos that can be taken has devalued the single image and made one-of-a-kind prints that much more precious.”

E-mail: shortcuts@nytimes.com

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Israel Sticks to Tough Approach in Conflict With Hamas

TEL AVIV — With rockets landing on the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Friday and the Egyptian prime minister making a solidarity visit to Gaza, the accelerating conflict between Israel and Hamas — reminiscent in many ways of so many previous battles — has the makings of a new kind of Israeli-Palestinian face-off.

The combination of longer-range and far deadlier rockets in the hands of more radicalized Palestinians, the arrival in Gaza and Sinai from North Africa of other militants pressuring Hamas to fight more, and the growing tide of anti-Israel fury in a region where authoritarian rulers have been replaced by Islamists means that Israel is engaging in this conflict with a different set of challenges.

The Middle East of 2012 is not what it was in late 2008, the last time Israel mounted a military invasion to reduce the rocket threat from Gaza. Many analysts and diplomats outside Israel say the country today needs a different approach to Hamas and the Palestinians based more on acknowledging historic grievances and shifting alliances.

“As long as the crime of dispossession and refugeehood that was committed against the Palestinian people in 1947-48 is not redressed through a peaceful and just negotiation that satisfies the legitimate rights of both sides, we will continue to see enhancements in both the determination and the capabilities of Palestinian fighters — as has been the case since the 1930s, in fact,” Rami G. Khouri, a professor at the American University of Beirut, wrote in an online column. “Only stupid or ideologically maniacal Zionists fail to come to terms with this fact.”

But the government in Israel and the vast majority of its people have drawn a very different conclusion. Their dangerous neighborhood is growing still more dangerous, they agree. That means not concessions, but being tougher in pursuit of deterrence, and abandoning illusions that a Jewish state will ever be broadly accepted here.

“There is a theory, which I believe, that Hamas doesn’t want a peaceful solution and only wants to keep the conflict going forever until somehow in their dream they will have all of Israel,” Eitan Ben Eliyahu, a former leader of the Israeli Air Force, said in a telephone briefing. “There is a good chance we will go into Gaza on the ground again.”

What is striking in listening to the Israelis discuss their predicament is how similar the debate sounds to so many previous ones, despite the changed geopolitical circumstances. In most minds here, the changes do not demand a new strategy, simply a redoubled old one.

The operative metaphor is often described as “cutting the grass,” meaning a task that must be performed regularly and has no end. There is no solution to security challenges, officials here say, only delays and deterrence. That is why the idea of one day attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, even though such an attack would set the nuclear program back only two years, is widely discussed as a reasonable option. That is why frequent raids in the West Bank and surveillance flights over Lebanon never stop.

And that is why this week’s operation in Gaza is widely viewed as having been inevitable, another painful but necessary maintenance operation that, officials here say, will doubtless not be the last.

There are also those who believe that the regional upheavals are improving Israel’s ability to carry out deterrence. One retired general who remains close to the military and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that with Syria torn apart by civil war, Hezbollah in Lebanon discredited because of its support for the Syrian government, and Egypt so weakened economically, Israel should not worry about anything but protecting its civilians.

“Should we let our civilians be bombed because the Arab world is in trouble?” he asked.

So much was happening elsewhere in the region — the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions, the Syrian civil war, dramatic changes in Yemen and elections in Tunisia — that a few rockets a day that sent tens of thousands of Israeli civilians into bomb shelters drew little attention. But in the Israeli view, the necessity of a Gaza operation has been growing steadily throughout the Arab Spring turmoil.

In 2009, after the Israeli invasion pushed Hamas back and killed about 1,400 people in Gaza, 200 rockets hit Israel. The same was true in 2010. But last year the number rose to 600, and before this week the number this year was 700, according to the Israeli military. The problem went beyond rockets to mines planted near the border aimed at Israeli military jeeps and the digging of explosive-filled tunnels.

“In 2008 we managed to minimize rocket fire from Gaza significantly,” said Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman. “We started that year with 100 rockets a week and ended it with two a week. We were able to give people in our south two to three years. But the grass has grown, and other things have as well. Different jihadist ideologies have found their way into Gaza, including quite a few terrorist organizations. More weapons have come in, including the Fajr-5, which is Iranian made and can hit Tel Aviv. That puts nearly our entire population in range. So we reached a point where we cannot act with restraint any longer.”

Gazans see events in a very different light. The problem, they say, comes from Israel: Israeli drones fill the Gazan skies, Israeli gunboats strafe their waters, Palestinian militants are shot at from the air, and the Gaza border areas are declared off limits by Israel with the risk of death from Israeli gunfire.

But there is little dissent in Israel about the Gaza policy. This week leaders of the leftist opposition praised the assassination of Ahmed al-Jabari, the Hamas military commander, on Wednesday. He is viewed here as the equivalent of Osama bin Laden. The operation could go on for many days before there is any real dissent.

The question here, nonetheless, is whether the changed regional circumstances will make it harder to “cut the grass” in Gaza this time and get out. A former top official who was actively involved in the last Gaza war and who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it looked to him as if Hamas would not back down as easily this time.

“They will not stop until enough Israelis are killed or injured to create a sense of equality or balance,” he said. “If a rocket falls in the middle of Tel Aviv, that will be a major success. But this government will go back at them hard. I don’t see this ending in the next day or two.”

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Automated Bidding Systems Test Old Ways of Selling Ads

Publishers and broadcasters have long tried to offer advertisers the right audience for their products. Want to sell pick-ups to people who like sports? Buy ads at halftime during a football game. Selling luggage or airline tickets? Buy ads in the travel section of a newspaper or Web site.

In digital advertising, that formula is being increasingly tested by fast-paced, algorithmic bidding systems that target individual consumers rather than the aggregate audience publishers serve up. In the world of “programmatic buying” technologies, context matters less than tracking those consumers wherever they go. And that kind of buying is the reason that shoe ad follows you whether you’re on Weather.com or on a local news blog.

That shift is punishing traditional online publishers, like newspaper, broadcast and magazine sites, who are receiving a much lower percentage of ad dollars as marketers use programmatic buying across a much broader canvas. Some sites, like CNN.com, refuse to even accept advertising through programmatic buying because they do not want to cede control over what ads will appear.

“It’s allowing advertisers to assign value to media rather than publishers,” said Ben Winkler, the chief digital officer at OMD, an agency in the Omnicom Media Group. Publishers, he said, “can’t control the price, but they can control the quality of the content and the audience on that site.”

About 10 percent of the display ads that consumers see online have been sold through programmatic bidding channels, according to Walter Knapp, the executive vice president of platform revenue and operations at Federated Media, one of the world’s largest digital advertising networks.

Advertisers like Nike, Comcast, Progressive and Procter & Gamble are now using the programmatic buying, and luxury advertisers are starting to follow. According to data from Forrester Research, all ads traded on exchanges, as programmatic ads are, increased more than 17.5 percent to about 629 billion impressions (the number of times an ad appears) in 2012, from 535 billion in 2011.

That growth is affecting publishers of all stripes, but few are willing to discuss their internal numbers. “For a publisher to admit they’ve been hurt is tough for the big guys,” said John Ebbert, the executive editor and publisher of the Web site AdExchanger.

When The New York Times Company announced its earnings last month, the company posted a profit, but said that digital advertising fell 2.2 percent. Jim Follo, the company’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, attributed the dip, in part, on a “shift toward ad exchanges, real-time bidding and other programmatic buying channels that allow advertisers to buy audience at scale.”

Programmatic buying began as a way for advertisers to place lower-cost ads for products like teeth-whitening products and belly fat pills that filled up the back pages of Web sites. But the practice has gained in sophistication and breadth, with major advertisers and many of the world’s largest ad agencies creating private exchanges to automate the buying and selling of ads.

Programmatic buying includes a number of different technologies and strategies, but it essentially allows advertisers to bid, often in real time, on ad space largely based on the value they have assigned to the consumer on the other side of the screen. Say, for example, that Nike wants to sell running gear to a particular consumer who has a high likelihood of buying shoes based on the data it has collected, including the type of Web sites that consumer typically visits. Because the ad-buying is done through computer trading, the price for that space can change rapidly.

“Accessing media is a commodity now,” said Sheldon Gilbert, the founder and chief executive of Proclivity Media, a company that specializes in digital advertising technologies. “Instead of having to commit four months in advance, you can now bid and buy an individual impression in real time.”

In the short run, the growth in programmatic buying has forced overall ad prices to fall. A media buyer who would have once spent $50,000 worth of advertising on a publisher’s site, at, say, an $8 cost-per-thousand, can now buy ad impressions on any Web site on which they happen to find their intended audience and pay less per ad, Mr. Ebbert said.

“There is no scarcity of premium online,” said Dan Salmon, an equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “There’s only one Super Bowl, but there are lots of different places to buy banner ads online.”

While the “halo effect” of buying an ad against premium content has not disappeared entirely — many advertisers still want front-page placement on popular Web sites — the shift is prompting publishers to rethink how they sell their ads.

Clark Fredricksen, the vice president for communications at eMarketer, a data company, said that publishers were “going to have to double down to prove the value of their inventory as they compete with other, cheaper inventory.”

And some publishers are jumping into the game themselves. During the most recent AOL earnings call, Tim Armstrong, the company’s chairman and chief executive, said it was bullish on programmatic buying, despite being a publisher itself with properties that include TechCrunch and The Huffington Post. The company trades its ads through its own ad network, Ad.com, and others like it.

“We will continue to invest in people and technology to capture the programmatic business of advertising,” Mr. Armstrong said.

Like AOL, Weather.com is also aggressively moving into programmatic bidding. “Instead of thinking of us a publisher, think of us as a marketing engine,” said Curt Hecht, the chief global revenue officer for the Weather Company.

Neal Mohan, the vice president for product management at Google, which sells advertising though its DoubleClick network, says that in the long run, publishers could see higher returns from programmatic advertising. In the last year, the number of advertisers and publishers using the DoubleClick platform has doubled, Mr. Mohan said, while the rates for those using the platform have increased 11 percent. But that means publishers will have to play by different rules.

“Context still matters and so does placement,” Mr. Ebbert said. “But it’s only one element.”

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I Was Misinformed: The Time She Tried Viagra

I have noticed, in the bragging-rights department, that “he doesn’t need Viagra” has become the female equivalent of the male “and, I swear, she’s a real blonde.” Personally, I do not care a bit. To me, anything that keeps you happy and in the game is a good thing.

But then, I am proud to say, I was among the early, and from what I gather, rare female users.

It happened when the drug was introduced around 1998. I was 50, but after chemotherapy for breast cancer — and later, advanced ovarian cancer — I was, hormonally speaking, pretty much running on fumes. Whether this had diminished my sex drive I did not yet know. One may have Zorba-esque impulses when a cancer diagnosis first comes in; but a treatment that leaves you bald, moon-faced and exhausted knocks that out of your system pretty fast.

But by 1998, the cancer was gone, my hair was back and I was ready to get back in the game. I was talking to an endocrinologist when I brought up Viagra. This was not to deal with the age-related physical changes I knew it would not address, it was more along the feminist lines of equal pay for equal work: if men have this new sex drug, I want this new sex drug.

“I know it’s supposed to work by increasing blood flow,” I told the doctor, “But if that’s true for men, shouldn’t it be true for women, too?”

“You’re the third woman who asked me that this week,” he said.

He wrote me a prescription. I was not seeing anyone, so I understood that I would have to do both parts myself, but that was fine. I have a low drug threshold and figured it might be best the first time to fly solo. My memory of the directions are hazy: I think there was a warning that one might have a facial flush or headaches or drop dead of a heart attack; that you were to take a pill at least an hour before you planned to get lucky, and, as zero hour approached, you were supposed to help things along by thinking beautiful thoughts, kind of like Peter Pan teaching Wendy and the boys how to fly.

But you know how it is: It’s hard to think beautiful thoughts when you’re wondering, “Is it happening? Do I feel anything? Woof, woof? Hello, sailor? Naaah.”

After about an hour, however, I was aware of a dramatic change. I had developed a red flush on my face; I was a hot tomato, though not the kind I had planned. I had also developed a horrible headache. The sex pill had turned into a bad joke: Not now, honey, I have a headache.

I put a cold cloth on my head and went to sleep. But here’s where it got good: When I slept, I dreamed; one of those extraordinary, sensual, swimming in silk sort of things. I woke up dazed and glowing with just one thought: I gotta get this baby out on the highway and see what it can do.

A few months later I am fixed up with a guy, and after a time he is, under the Seinfeldian definition of human relations (Saturday night date assumed) my official boyfriend. He is middle aged, in good health. How to describe our romantic life with the delicacy a family publication requires? Perhaps a line from “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronica, Spring Is Here”), a song popularized by the German group the Comedian Harmonists: “Veronika, der Spargel Wächst” (“Veronica, the asparagus are blooming”). On the other hand, sometimes not. And so, one day, I put it out there in the manner of sport:

“Want to drop some Viagra?” I say.

Here we go again, falling into what I am beginning to think is an inevitable pattern: lying there like a lox, or two loxes, waiting for the train to pull into the station. (Yes, I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but at least I didn’t bring in the asparagus.) So there we are, waiting. And then, suddenly, spring comes to Suffolk County. It’s such a presence. I’m wondering if I should ask it if it hit traffic on the L.I.E. We sit there staring.

My reaction is less impressive. I don’t get a headache this time. And romantically, things are more so, but not so much that I feel compelled to try the little blue pills again.

Onward roll the years. I have a new man in my life, who is 63. He does have health problems, for which his doctor prescribes an E.D. drug. I no longer have any interest in them. My curiosity has been satisfied. Plus I am deeply in love, an aphrodisiac yet to be encapsulated in pharmaceuticals.

We take a vacation in mountain Mexico. We pop into a drugstore to pick up sunscreen and spot the whole gang, Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, on a shelf at the checkout counter. No prescription needed in Mexico, the clerk says. We buy all three drugs and return to the hotel. I try some, he tries some. In retrospect, given the altitude and his health, we are lucky we did not kill him. I came across an old photo the other day. He is on the bed, the drugs in their boxes lined up a in a semi-circle around him. He looks a bit dazed and his nose is red.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if he had a cold.

Then I remember: the flush, the damn flush. If I had kids, I suppose I would have to lie about it.

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I Was Misinformed: The Time She Tried Viagra

I have noticed, in the bragging-rights department, that “he doesn’t need Viagra” has become the female equivalent of the male “and, I swear, she’s a real blonde.” Personally, I do not care a bit. To me, anything that keeps you happy and in the game is a good thing.

But then, I am proud to say, I was among the early, and from what I gather, rare female users.

It happened when the drug was introduced around 1998. I was 50, but after chemotherapy for breast cancer — and later, advanced ovarian cancer — I was, hormonally speaking, pretty much running on fumes. Whether this had diminished my sex drive I did not yet know. One may have Zorba-esque impulses when a cancer diagnosis first comes in; but a treatment that leaves you bald, moon-faced and exhausted knocks that out of your system pretty fast.

But by 1998, the cancer was gone, my hair was back and I was ready to get back in the game. I was talking to an endocrinologist when I brought up Viagra. This was not to deal with the age-related physical changes I knew it would not address, it was more along the feminist lines of equal pay for equal work: if men have this new sex drug, I want this new sex drug.

“I know it’s supposed to work by increasing blood flow,” I told the doctor, “But if that’s true for men, shouldn’t it be true for women, too?”

“You’re the third woman who asked me that this week,” he said.

He wrote me a prescription. I was not seeing anyone, so I understood that I would have to do both parts myself, but that was fine. I have a low drug threshold and figured it might be best the first time to fly solo. My memory of the directions are hazy: I think there was a warning that one might have a facial flush or headaches or drop dead of a heart attack; that you were to take a pill at least an hour before you planned to get lucky, and, as zero hour approached, you were supposed to help things along by thinking beautiful thoughts, kind of like Peter Pan teaching Wendy and the boys how to fly.

But you know how it is: It’s hard to think beautiful thoughts when you’re wondering, “Is it happening? Do I feel anything? Woof, woof? Hello, sailor? Naaah.”

After about an hour, however, I was aware of a dramatic change. I had developed a red flush on my face; I was a hot tomato, though not the kind I had planned. I had also developed a horrible headache. The sex pill had turned into a bad joke: Not now, honey, I have a headache.

I put a cold cloth on my head and went to sleep. But here’s where it got good: When I slept, I dreamed; one of those extraordinary, sensual, swimming in silk sort of things. I woke up dazed and glowing with just one thought: I gotta get this baby out on the highway and see what it can do.

A few months later I am fixed up with a guy, and after a time he is, under the Seinfeldian definition of human relations (Saturday night date assumed) my official boyfriend. He is middle aged, in good health. How to describe our romantic life with the delicacy a family publication requires? Perhaps a line from “Veronika, der Lenz ist da” (“Veronica, Spring Is Here”), a song popularized by the German group the Comedian Harmonists: “Veronika, der Spargel Wächst” (“Veronica, the asparagus are blooming”). On the other hand, sometimes not. And so, one day, I put it out there in the manner of sport:

“Want to drop some Viagra?” I say.

Here we go again, falling into what I am beginning to think is an inevitable pattern: lying there like a lox, or two loxes, waiting for the train to pull into the station. (Yes, I know it’s a mixed metaphor, but at least I didn’t bring in the asparagus.) So there we are, waiting. And then, suddenly, spring comes to Suffolk County. It’s such a presence. I’m wondering if I should ask it if it hit traffic on the L.I.E. We sit there staring.

My reaction is less impressive. I don’t get a headache this time. And romantically, things are more so, but not so much that I feel compelled to try the little blue pills again.

Onward roll the years. I have a new man in my life, who is 63. He does have health problems, for which his doctor prescribes an E.D. drug. I no longer have any interest in them. My curiosity has been satisfied. Plus I am deeply in love, an aphrodisiac yet to be encapsulated in pharmaceuticals.

We take a vacation in mountain Mexico. We pop into a drugstore to pick up sunscreen and spot the whole gang, Cialis, Viagra, Levitra, on a shelf at the checkout counter. No prescription needed in Mexico, the clerk says. We buy all three drugs and return to the hotel. I try some, he tries some. In retrospect, given the altitude and his health, we are lucky we did not kill him. I came across an old photo the other day. He is on the bed, the drugs in their boxes lined up a in a semi-circle around him. He looks a bit dazed and his nose is red.

Looking at the picture, I wonder if he had a cold.

Then I remember: the flush, the damn flush. If I had kids, I suppose I would have to lie about it.

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If I Hire You, What’s Your 100-Day Plan?

John Duffy of 3C Interactive says he asks job candidates to describe what their first months on the job would be like, partly to “learn what their expectations are, and where they think we’re at.”

Find the best job in the New York metro area and beyond.

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BP to Admit Crimes and Pay $4.5 Billion in Gulf Settlement

LONDON — BP, the British oil company, said Thursday it would pay $4.5 billion in fines and other payments to the United States government and plead guilty to 14 criminal charges in connection with the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago.

US Coast Guard, via Associated Press

The explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was connected to a well owned by BP killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil.

The payments include a $4 billion fine to be paid over five years, with much of it to go to government environmental agencies, BP said in a statement.

As part of the settlement, BP pleaded guilty to 11 felony misconduct or neglect charges related to the deaths of 11 people in the Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010, which unleashed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

A law enforcement official familiar with the case also said that two BP employees would be charged with manslaughter in the case. The United States attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., was scheduled to hold a news conference in New Orleans later Thursday.

“Today’s agreement is consistent with BP’s position in the ongoing civil litigation that this was an accident resulting from multiple causes, involving multiple parties, as found by other official investigations,” the company said in a news release.

The company said earlier Thursday it was in advanced talks with the United States about settling all criminal claims stemming from the spill.

Even with a settlement on the criminal claims, BP would still be subject to other claims, including federal civil claims and claims for damages to natural resources.

In particular, this settlement does not include what is potentially the largest penalty: fines under the Clean Water Act. The potential fine for the spill under the Clean Water Act is $1,100 to $4,300 per barrel spilled. That means the fine could be as much as $21 billion, according to Peter Hutton of RBC Capital Markets in London.

BP repeatedly said it would like to reach a settlement with claimants if the terms were reasonable. The unresolved issue of the claims has been weighing on BP’s share price as the oil company has been under pressure from investors to move on from the disastrous oil spill that had hurt the company’s reputation and finances.

An explosion in 2010 on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico that was connected to a well owned by BP killed 11 oil workers and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the surrounding water.

BP in March agreed with the lawyers for plaintiffs to settle claims on economic loss, including from the local seafood industry, and medical claims stemming from the oil spill. BP said at the time it expected the cost of that settlement to be about $7.8 billion, which it will pay from a trust the company set aside to cover such costs.

The company returned to profitability in the third quarter and increased its dividend, it said in October. It has been shrinking as it sold assets to raise funds to pay for costs related to the oil spill.

Stanley Reed contributed reporting from London. Charlie Savage contributed from Washington.

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Heavy Metal Rocker Now Lifts Spirits as the Yogi Raghunath

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Ray Cappo performing with Youth of Today.

THE packed crowd celebrating the 25th anniversary of Revelation Records at Irving Plaza in Manhattan on an October night was predominately pierced, tattooed and male. The uniform was black T-shirts for hard-core rock bands like Behemoth (“100% Satanic”), Chain of Strength (“True Till Death”) and accessories like a “Sick of It All” baseball cap.

Ray Cappo, 46, one of the label’s founders, took his place on the stage as the singer for the band Youth of Today, and shouted at the mosh pit, “It’s been 20 years but the message is still the same: Tear down the waaaalllll.”

The assembled responded with pumping one-arm salutes and staccato head jerks. Few questioned in the crowd knew that the heavy metal rocker on stage had left the Lower East Side in the late ’80s, spending six years as a celibate monk, changing his name to Raghunath and becoming famous within the yoga world for classes featuring crazy inversions, variation upon variation of headstands, arm stands, handstands: a playbook of anti-gravity poses.

Raghunath left rock in a search for a personal true north, he said in an interview. “The pleasure of fame at a young age was not what it was supposed to be,” he recalled, quickly adding that the band was not Led Zeppelin. “And it was juxtaposed with the sudden death of my father. Any idea of shelter or safety in a material world was getting dismantled.”

He found comfort in studying ancient yogi texts, meditation, chanting and long stints at an ashram in India. “My passion is how to apply ancient philosophy in the modern world,” he said. “I teach a fun class so people come. A strong acrobatic class is the best way to get New York type-A personalities on the mat, and then the class is peppered with song and chanting and philosophy and ancient sacred texts.”

The classes, playfully dubbed Flight School, developed name recognition among yogis — especially fellow teachers — and they can credit or blame Raghunath’s influence with the grade inflation on the mat these days, where open-level classes integrate a crow pose, or what children call frog, transitioning into handstands.

In early October, Raghunath taught a workshop to 40 students at House of Jai, a serene Upper East Side studio. On the surface, it is a stark contrast to the Irving Plaza gig. But in a way, Raghunath’s metamorphosis is not as stark. The Youth of Today was a loud heavy metal band, but one with a message the lead singer characterizes as one of positivity rather than nihilism. The transition to monk guru makes more sense in that context. “We were unique in trying to have a positive attitude,” Raghunath said. “It was a radical message.”

In the class, Raghunath led devotional chanting in a melodic voice, accompanied by the harmonium. Then he began demonstrating poses in slow, controlled motions: in one acrobatic maneuver, he ended up upside down on one arm with legs spread — no wall. By the end of the sequences, he was simply balancing on his head, arms and hands not touching the floor. Assisting students physically, weaving from mat to mat and laughing about the fleeting “sensual pleasure” of hitting the click button on Amazon, he repeated mantras as sweat poured down the students’ faces.

Raghunath began teaching in Los Angeles in 2002, moving in 2008 to New York, where he had attracted a cultlike following at popular studios like Pure Yoga and Kula Yoga Project. His reputation grew: New York Magazine ran his photo doing a twisted human pretzel pose, and he was one of the select elite teachers christened Lululemon ambassadors by the high-end yoga line.

Over a year ago, Raghunath made another radical move. He and his wife, Bridget, who is known as Brij, decided to leave New York City for an upstate town for the well-being of his four children (ages 15, 13, 7 and 5), he said. Catching a Flight class became a little bit like a unicorn spotting. “Watching the ridiculous asanas that he can do is a humbling experience,” said Mike Patton of New York’s Yoga Vida, where Raghunath has helped train teachers. “There’s no one like him, and then he packed up shop.”

Now that his family is settled, Raghunath is back on the circuit. His yoga career is being helped by YAMA Talent (Yoga Artists Management Agency), which is like the Creative Artists Agency for yoga stars. The concept may be anathema to yoga-world purists, but on deck is an embryonic clothing line starting with T-shirts. Next year, there will be two pilgrimages to India, an upstate retreat and continued training of teachers.

Ava Taylor of the agency explained that it has software to keep track of Raghunath bookings and it has worked on a sorely needed update of his Web site, which made its debut in May. “I’m not the most organized person, so with YAMA it’s like having a personal assistant so I can teach,” Raghunath said.

An online series of live Webcam experiences of Raghunath teaching will be introduced soon, with devotional chanting, lectures on philosophy and nutrition, music tutorials and his calling card, crazy poses.

At the House of Jai workshop, Misa Watanabe, visiting from Tokyo, suggested that the yogi’s appeal is broad. “I cannot believe I took a class with him,” she said, seeming surprised when asked how she knew about him. “YouTube,” she answered. Ms. Watanabe shyly went up to Raghunath and asked for a photo. He flashed a charismatic high-voltage grin, equal parts rock star and guru. Then he dashed to catch his flight to India.

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Heavy Metal Rocker Now Lifts Spirits as the Yogi Raghunath

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times

Ray Cappo performing with Youth of Today.

THE packed crowd celebrating the 25th anniversary of Revelation Records at Irving Plaza in Manhattan on an October night was predominately pierced, tattooed and male. The uniform was black T-shirts for hard-core rock bands like Behemoth (“100% Satanic”), Chain of Strength (“True Till Death”) and accessories like a “Sick of It All” baseball cap.

Ray Cappo, 46, one of the label’s founders, took his place on the stage as the singer for the band Youth of Today, and shouted at the mosh pit, “It’s been 20 years but the message is still the same: Tear down the waaaalllll.”

The assembled responded with pumping one-arm salutes and staccato head jerks. Few questioned in the crowd knew that the heavy metal rocker on stage had left the Lower East Side in the late ’80s, spending six years as a celibate monk, changing his name to Raghunath and becoming famous within the yoga world for classes featuring crazy inversions, variation upon variation of headstands, arm stands, handstands: a playbook of anti-gravity poses.

Raghunath left rock in a search for a personal true north, he said in an interview. “The pleasure of fame at a young age was not what it was supposed to be,” he recalled, quickly adding that the band was not Led Zeppelin. “And it was juxtaposed with the sudden death of my father. Any idea of shelter or safety in a material world was getting dismantled.”

He found comfort in studying ancient yogi texts, meditation, chanting and long stints at an ashram in India. “My passion is how to apply ancient philosophy in the modern world,” he said. “I teach a fun class so people come. A strong acrobatic class is the best way to get New York type-A personalities on the mat, and then the class is peppered with song and chanting and philosophy and ancient sacred texts.”

The classes, playfully dubbed Flight School, developed name recognition among yogis — especially fellow teachers — and they can credit or blame Raghunath’s influence with the grade inflation on the mat these days, where open-level classes integrate a crow pose, or what children call frog, transitioning into handstands.

In early October, Raghunath taught a workshop to 40 students at House of Jai, a serene Upper East Side studio. On the surface, it is a stark contrast to the Irving Plaza gig. But in a way, Raghunath’s metamorphosis is not as stark. The Youth of Today was a loud heavy metal band, but one with a message the lead singer characterizes as one of positivity rather than nihilism. The transition to monk guru makes more sense in that context. “We were unique in trying to have a positive attitude,” Raghunath said. “It was a radical message.”

In the class, Raghunath led devotional chanting in a melodic voice, accompanied by the harmonium. Then he began demonstrating poses in slow, controlled motions: in one acrobatic maneuver, he ended up upside down on one arm with legs spread — no wall. By the end of the sequences, he was simply balancing on his head, arms and hands not touching the floor. Assisting students physically, weaving from mat to mat and laughing about the fleeting “sensual pleasure” of hitting the click button on Amazon, he repeated mantras as sweat poured down the students’ faces.

Raghunath began teaching in Los Angeles in 2002, moving in 2008 to New York, where he had attracted a cultlike following at popular studios like Pure Yoga and Kula Yoga Project. His reputation grew: New York Magazine ran his photo doing a twisted human pretzel pose, and he was one of the select elite teachers christened Lululemon ambassadors by the high-end yoga line.

Over a year ago, Raghunath made another radical move. He and his wife, Bridget, who is known as Brij, decided to leave New York City for an upstate town for the well-being of his four children (ages 15, 13, 7 and 5), he said. Catching a Flight class became a little bit like a unicorn spotting. “Watching the ridiculous asanas that he can do is a humbling experience,” said Mike Patton of New York’s Yoga Vida, where Raghunath has helped train teachers. “There’s no one like him, and then he packed up shop.”

Now that his family is settled, Raghunath is back on the circuit. His yoga career is being helped by YAMA Talent (Yoga Artists Management Agency), which is like the Creative Artists Agency for yoga stars. The concept may be anathema to yoga-world purists, but on deck is an embryonic clothing line starting with T-shirts. Next year, there will be two pilgrimages to India, an upstate retreat and continued training of teachers.

Ava Taylor of the agency explained that it has software to keep track of Raghunath bookings and it has worked on a sorely needed update of his Web site, which made its debut in May. “I’m not the most organized person, so with YAMA it’s like having a personal assistant so I can teach,” Raghunath said.

An online series of live Webcam experiences of Raghunath teaching will be introduced soon, with devotional chanting, lectures on philosophy and nutrition, music tutorials and his calling card, crazy poses.

At the House of Jai workshop, Misa Watanabe, visiting from Tokyo, suggested that the yogi’s appeal is broad. “I cannot believe I took a class with him,” she said, seeming surprised when asked how she knew about him. “YouTube,” she answered. Ms. Watanabe shyly went up to Raghunath and asked for a photo. He flashed a charismatic high-voltage grin, equal parts rock star and guru. Then he dashed to catch his flight to India.

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App Smart: News360, Edge Extended, Need for Speed and Other Great Android Apps

Tablets are changing computing, there’s no doubt. I realized this when I saw my 2-year-old son pick up an iPad and master its basic controls, including discovering a child’s app, in about half an hour. The iPad led the way into this brave new world more or less alone at first. It has taken until now for the sheer pressure of innovation inside Apple’s rivals to lead to some great Android-based tablets finally making a mark.

The Need for Speed Most Wanted app for Android.

The Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper app lets you select different trees and watch their leaves descend.

A "tiled" news item display on News360.

If you’re a new owner of one of these, you’ll be happy to know that there’s many an app that will simultaneously thrill you, inform you and welcome you into the world of tablet computing.

For a great news experience, the free app News360 has to be one of the better news-aggregating ones I’ve seen on any platform. When you first open the app, you are presented with a long list of topics that it can aggregate for your convenience into different categories, from arts through science to zombies.

The app uses this profile to grab news from the Web and present it to you within its elegant interface. This is dominated by picture-based “tiles” for each news article the app collects. Each tile tells you the appropriate category, where the news item came from and when. Tapping on one of these tiles takes you to a new page that contains a screen grab of the original online source, alongside the text the app has collected from the article.

The pleasure of News360 is that you can either satisfy your curiosity by tapping on a link to read the original article or decide you have learned enough and navigate on. You can also mark the article as interesting, save it for reading offline — perhaps on a commute — or share it on a social network. These controls are also accessible from the initial “tiles” screen, where you flip over an article’s tile to see the controls. The flip is accompanied by a very pleasing animation. It’s just a little graphical touch, but small details like this make an app great fun.

Part of the fun of having a new tablet is showing off its graphical prowess. Games are a great way to do this. I’ve had immense fun with Edge Extended (about $3 on Google Play). In this game, you play a multicolored cube that you roll around a blocky terrain to collect targets. You swipe your finger on the screen to make the cube flop onto its faces to move. There are all the classic elements of collecting points, avoiding pitfalls, activating switches and so on. But despite its graphical simplicity, the app is swift-paced and very satisfying; it even gave me that sensation of falling from a height in some of its trickier parts.

If you really want to impress people with your tablet’s screen, then you’ll probably get a kick out of a game like Need for Speed Most Wanted ($7 on Google play). It’s a racing game that uses motion to control steering and simple tap controls to brake, slide the car in a drift or turn on a nitrous turbo boost. True to the “Most Wanted” title, you race on regular roads, not racetracks, and can get in trouble with the police. This app has all the typical racing fun, along with the ability to earn points that unlock better cars and so on. But the standout feature is the attractiveness of the graphics, and the image rendering even includes reflections of passing buildings in puddles. It’s really eye-popping, and it even works on a diminutive tablet like the Nexus 7.

If racing’s not your thing, you may like SoulCraft THD instead. In this hack-and-slash role-playing game, you control your character from above as it fights its way through a fantasy landscape of dungeons and cities. As on a standard computer action game, you can earn spells and improve your character’s powers.

The game is “freemium” so it’s free to download and play, but you have to make in-game purchases with real money to advance quickly. The graphics are slick, but don’t expect the kind of detailed rendering you would see on a gaming PC.

If you want to make your pals who own iPads jealous, turn on an animated background. This shows off the computing power of your tablet and Android’s skills, too.

Right now my tablet is rocking the seasonal Autumn Tree Live Wallpaper, which is $1. You can control all sorts of aspects of the app, including what type of trees wave their autumnal leaves in the wind, and it’s delightful. It’s also something that a stock iPad absolutely can’t do.

Have fun, but here’s a big reminder for you: Not all Android tablets will play nicely with all tablet apps, and some features depend on installing the latest edition of the operating system.

Quick Calls

Fresh and free on Android and iOS is a highly unusual “experimental” game, Curiosity. It’s a cube with faces made of millions of smaller cubes. Players all around the world hack away at these by tapping on their devices. A single prize is hidden inside an unknown number of layers. It’s weirdly fun to play ... One of the earliest and slickest apps for Windows 8/RT devices is the official Wikipedia app (free), which shows the online encyclopedia in its most elegant, graphical format yet.

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