Subject: Looks like bad weather From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 17:10:22 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: ADAM POSEN GLOBAL IMBALANCES IN 2006 Batten down the hatches in case the economic storm hits People complain about the weather all the time, but no one does anything about it. So it goes with the potential economic storm that will be generated by the inevitable adjustment of global imbalances. We are told repeatedly that the US current account deficit is unsustainable, that the US housing bubble and government deficits bring the day of reckoning closer and that underlying protectionist pressures imperil the Doha round of trade negotiations, if not the entire trading system. The recommended policy responses are limited to those that would simply bring on the adjustment contraction of US domestic demand, direct political conflict with agricultural interests, a sharp dollar decline, rising interest rates - a little bit earlier and perhaps only a little less severely. Yet, we can at least prepare for bad weather before it hits. Imagine if knowing that New Orleans was likely someday to be hit by a powerful hurricane had actually induced reasonable preparations. Levees could have been built more strongly, evacuation plans drawn up, early warning systems made credible to suspicious citizens. No one could have prevented Katrina, but the damage from it could have been significantly reduced. Similarly, there are policy steps that should be taken to batten down the global economy ahead of a potentially severe shock from renewed trade protectionism or dollar adjustment. Little has been done to prepare, however, because policymakers have little incentive to plan ahead. Trade negotiators and the special interests trying to constrain them benefit from pursuing a strategy of brinkmanship and so will do nothing to reduce the chances or costs of a Doha crack-up. The US and Chinese finance officials have not yet gone to the brink over revaluing the renminbi, but they are sufficiently tempted to draw lines in the sand that they, too, have little interest in lowering the stakes of economic conflict. If the governments of the big economies wanted to learn from Katrina, though, they would take action to limit the damage that resolving the current global imbalances could bring. First, they should strengthen economic linkages. Foreign direct investment and capital flows link economies even when trade barriers constrain commerce. The US, the European Union and Japan (Mundell!) could reverse the effect of their recent decisions to block cross-border mergers by simplifying the process in three ways: agreeing on a narrow definition of what constitutes a 'national security' exception; bringing accounting standards negotiations to a close, which would remove uncertainty for prospective investors; and publicly repudiating the often-invoked image of foreign investors as 'vultures' who prey on employees. All this would help protect the ties between economies, encouraging continued cross-border integration of production as well as flows of capital, whatever happens with the trade round. Second, they should enhance financial stability. Financial fragility is the primary means by which limited shocks get escalated into macroeconomic crises. Right now, with interest rate spreads at historic lows, any international adjustment that pushed up interest rates and reversed current account surpluses outside the US could lead to sharp declines in asset values and therefore in financial sector capital. Bank supervisors in the big economies should be tightening their scrutiny and encouraging increased provisioning by banks. Financial regulators should be warning householders of the risks presented by investments that have appeared stable in recent years. Where crisis response infrastructure is lacking - as arguably the decentralised system in the EU is - now would be a good time to rationalise. Third, they must commit to macro-economic stabilisation. Central banks and budgetary officials could reassure the public that they will respond strongly to swings in growth (thereby avoiding the mistakes of Japanese officials in the 1990s and EU officials in recent years). In fact, if they credibly commit to stabilisation policy, private-sector expectations may limit overshooting of exchange rates and investment levels. For the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank, this is a matter of adopting inflation targets that would oblige monetary policy to offset excessive movements in prices up or down; for the budgetary authorities, this means giving automatic stabilisers full room to work (for example, by the EU reworking the stability and growth pact) or authorising sufficient unemployment benefits in the US and Japan. There are constructive measures that governments can and should take to prepare for the adjustment process, independent of their present politically determined approaches to trade negotiations or exchange rate policy. They probably have time to do so before the storm arrives. The US practice of selling off assets to fund a consumption boom today may be a lousy idea for anyone who cares about future American income, but that does not make it immediately unsustainable. As 2005, 2004 and 2003 have shown, there is plenty of foreign appetite for US assets and thus room for the current account deficit to continue to expand. Given growth differentials and liquidity of investment assets, both still favouring the US over other markets, 2006 will probably show more of the same. Instead of wondering why the hurricane has not yet hit, let us take advantage of that fact to prepare for when it comes. The writer is senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics in Washington FT WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 28 2005

Subject: Muslim Women in Europe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 10:38:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/international/europe/29women.html?ex=1293512400&en=ee7e9a1030c0c599&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Muslim Women in Europe Claim Rights and Keep Faith By MARLISE SIMONS PARIS - Hanife Karakus, the soft-spoken daughter of Turkish immigrants, is a thoroughly European Muslim. She covers her hair with a scarf, but she also has a law degree and married the man of her choice. Matchmakers exerted no pressure. The couple met on the Internet. Perhaps even more telling, Mrs. Karakus this year became the first woman to lead one of France's 25 regional Islamic councils. 'At first, the men didn't speak to me,' she said. 'They were uncomfortable. They didn't know how to work with a woman.' Mrs. Karakus, 24, does not call herself a feminist; she simply says she is a French lawyer. But she qualifies as part of a quiet revolution spreading among young European Muslim women, a generation that claims the same rights as its Western counterparts, without renouncing Islamic values. For many, the key difference is education, an option often denied their poor, immigrant mothers and grandmothers. These young women are studying law, medicine and anthropology, and now form a majority in many Islamic studies courses, traditionally the world of men. They are getting jobs in social work, business and media, and are more prone to use their new independence to divorce. Also, French, English, German or Dutch may be their native languages. 'We are not fully accepted in France, but we are beginning to be everywhere,' said Sihem Habchi, 30, who was born in Algeria, grew up in France and works as a multimedia consultant. Unlike their homebound elders, these emancipated Muslim women use the Internet and spend hours in proliferating Islamic chat rooms. Web sites are now favorite trysting places, a chance for risk-free 'halal dating,' that is, interacting with men in a way that violates no social or religious codes. In the crowded immigrant suburbs ringing Paris, the scene of recent riots mostly led by young Muslim men, high school teachers say girls are the most motivated students because they have the most to gain. In interviews in France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, young women repeated this belief like a mantra: studying offers an escape from the oppressive housing projects, from controlling young Muslim radicals and from strict social codes enforced by fathers and brothers. 'We all understood that education was our passport to freedom,' said Soria Makti, 30, the daughter of an Algerian factory worker, who left her Marseille housing project and is a museum curator in the city. The emancipation of Muslim women, like that of Western women before them, is often slow and sometimes deeply painful when women feel they must break with their families. But nowhere is this quiet new form of Islamic feminism more evident than in the realm of religion, the centuries-old domain of men. Young women are increasingly engaging in Islamic studies, a fast-growing field across Europe that offers a blend of theology, Koranic law, ethics and Arabic. Diplomas from the two-year courses allow women to teach in mosques and in Islamic schools, or to act as religious advisers. 'This is a big shift,' said Amel Boubekeur, a social scientist at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, who is writing her doctoral thesis on Europe's 'new Islamic elites.' 'Instead of having to be passive, women now become teachers,' she said. 'It used to be taboo for women to recite the Koran.' But now, she added, 'It offers them a new prestige, new jobs and, not least, it gives them a stronger voice in dealing with their parents, brothers and husbands.' In fact, Ms. Boubekeur said, women found religious texts more effective than secular arguments. Today, Islamic studies courses, often taken on weekends and accessible to secondary school graduates, are expanding in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain. In the six institutes for Islamic studies in France, almost 60 percent of this year's nearly 1,000 students are women. La Grande Mosquée in Paris, a large white and green compound from the 1920's with a finely chiseled minaret and students milling about under arcades, is France's leading religious institution. It has its own theological school, largely financed by Algeria. Abdelkrim Bekri, the director, said that the school started a program in 2002, unavailable elsewhere, to train young women as spiritual counselors for hospitals and prisons, much like the ministry of Christian chaplains. Twenty women had graduated, and others were in training, he said. 'There is a great need here,' he said. Although women are not allowed to perform the most prestigious ritual of leading the mosque in Friday Prayer, Ms. Boubekeur said women were pushing to have a voice and participate in religious debates. 'What is new is that they want direct access to religion, without depending on the rigid views of the clergy,' she said. Change can be measured in other small steps. At the Islamic University of Rotterdam, a small group of theology students, most of them speaking Dutch but all tightly veiled, chatted after classes about the need to end the social segregation of men and women. 'In class, we sit anywhere we choose,' said a student who gave her name only as Aisha. 'In the mosques, we don't want to sit in separate or hidden spaces.' Ertegul Gokcekuyu, the university registrar, said more than 60 percent of his students were women. 'The motivation of the girls is very remarkable,' he said. Mrs. Karakus, who heads the Muslim Council in Limoges, has not studied theology, but her tasks, long the work of men, touch on religion as well. She has negotiated with local authorities to obtain plots for Muslim burials at the local cemetery, and has reserved sites for the slaughter of sheep for Eid-el-Kebir, a major Muslim holiday. She also helps to organize courses for imams who arrive with little knowledge of French or French traditions. As educated Muslim women assert themselves, they appear to be forging a strand of Euro-Islam, a hybrid that attempts to reconcile the principles laid out in the Koran with life in a secular, democratic Europe. 'I tell women, 'We can honor the Koran from our perspective and apply it to our experience today,' ' said Dounia Bouzar, an anthropologist who is both Algerian and French. 'We must recover the religious texts and free them from an exclusively male interpretation that belongs to the Middle Ages. Most important right now is that women get into the universities.' The implications of women flocking to Islamic studies are disturbing to some, who see a potential for them to become radical. Tokia Saifi, a former deputy minister for development who remains one of the few women of Arab descent to reach a high post in the French government, said she worried that many young people studied religion because it was socially acceptable, not because it was an informed choice. 'I see it as a regression,' she said. 'It means we need less discrimination, more ways to promote integration.' Such debates are far from the concerns of Muslim girls who are harassed or punished for being too Western. Latifa Ahmed, 25, arrived in the Netherlands from Morocco when she was 8. As she grew up near Amsterdam, her family turned against her because she preferred to be with her Dutch classmates. 'They were bad, they were infidels, I was told,' she said. 'My parents and my brothers started hitting me.' Ms. Ahmed, who lived at home until she was 23, said, 'I was going crazy from all the fights and the lies, but I was afraid to run away and lose my family.' One evening, when she returned from a concert with a Dutch friend, her father yelled, ' 'Let's take a knife and we'll finish with her,' ' she said. 'He didn't kill me, but he put a curse on me. It was very frightening.' She ran away, and although she lives in another city, she said she was still afraid of her brothers, who had sworn to kill her. She has put herself through college doing odd jobs and does not care about religion. 'I don't feel discriminated here,' she said. 'Moroccan girls can find work easier than Moroccan boys. Boys have a bad name.' Changes in the lives of Muslim women in Europe are uneven. Many are still pressed into arranged marriages, while others are finding independence. Change is hard to measure in France, where the law forbids the census to collect data by ethnic origin or religion. But in the Netherlands one telling signal is the rise in divorce among immigrants. According to Dutch government statistics, divorces among Moroccan families have increased by 46 percent since 2000, and among Turkish families by 42 percent in that period, with a majority believed to be instigated by wives. Women are also often at the forefront of liberal tendencies among Muslims, publishing critiques and studies about the obstacles and abuses women face. In Germany, Seyran Ates, a Turkish-born German lawyer, and Necla Kelek, a Turkish-born sociologist, have recently published books that have been read widely on the oppression of Muslim girls by their own families. Ms. Kelek's book 'The Foreign Bride,' a best seller, denounces the plight of often illiterate girls, brought from the Turkish countryside 'as modern slaves' for their husbands and in-laws in Germany. Other women are fighting for change through the law. Mimount Bousakla, whose family is from Morocco, is a member of Parliament in Belgium. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia, is one in the Netherlands. They were reared as Muslims, and have pressed for policies to aid women, including raising the legal age for marriage to protect young 'imported' brides and imposing tougher sentences on men who kill women to save the honor of their families. In France, a movement called 'Neither Whores nor Doormats,' begun in 2003, helps many Muslim women who have been abused get services from lawyers, doctors or psychologists. As Muslim women take advantage of democracy and civil liberties in Europe, the question remains whether the impact of an educated minority will be continually blunted by the arrival of often poorly educated young brides from North Africa, Pakistan, Turkey and the Middle East. And as Europe rethinks its faltering integration policies, the place of Muslim women is a new target of scrutiny. Critics, including immigrants themselves, argue that in the name of respecting other cultures, Europeans have allowed the oppression of Muslim women in their midst. Increasingly, women are saying that integration policies have been too male-oriented and must focus more on women. Senay Ozdemir, a Turkish-born Dutch citizen and the editor of Sen, a new glossy magazine aimed at immigrant women, is among those voices. Sen means you in Turkish. 'Obviously women are a key to integration,' Ms. Ozdemir said. 'If the woman cannot or will not integrate in a new country, it affects the whole family. She will isolate her children.'

Subject: Nick's Cultural Revolution From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 10:36:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/arts/television/29nick.html?ex=1293512400&en=962cc0588935a2c6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Nick's Cultural Revolution By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI - When Nickelodeon's popular 'Kids' Choice Awards' program came to China last month, the producers were forced to make some serious modifications. There would be no voting on favorite burp. Nor would children judge which movie character was the best at breaking wind. There was, however, sliming, a highlight of the American version of the show, which involves dumping, squirting and otherwise propelling green gooey stuff at people. And adults repeatedly were whacked by children - with balloon bats, of course - just to give the Chinese a taste of the freedoms afforded to children in the United States. Perhaps the most surprising thing about the show's national television broadcast was that children in China seemed to think that even this much kinder, gentler version of the program was wonderfully, outrageously transgressive. 'This is just so much fun,' said Wang Yinong, a shy 12-year-old girl who watched the show at home with her parents in Shanghai. 'I'd really like to go there and do the same thing: slime people.' Sliming remains a novelty in China. While every American industry that comes here faces its own obstacles, the bar that exporters of children's television programming must vault is particularly high: a traditional culture of respect for parents and authority reinforced by decades of Communist discipline and the ruthless competitiveness of an educational system that favors rigor over imagination. Still, Viacom, which dominates youth-oriented programming in the United States and other parts of the world with its MTV and Nickelodeon networks, is aggressively courting Chinese youngsters, hoping to introduce them to its brand of playfully antiauthoritarian programming. After all, China has roughly 300 million people younger than 14, and Viacom executives warm to the idea of capturing even a sliver of a demographic that now exceeds the population of the entire United States. 'There's no such thing as a global strategy without China,' said Bill Roedy, vice chairman of MTV Networks and a prime mover behind Viacom's international planning. Viacom already has a 24-hour MTV channel in southern Guangdong province. China Central Television and the Shanghai Media Group broadcast Nickelodeon's 'Wild Thornberries' and 'CatDog' cartoons. 'SpongeBob SquarePants' is due to premiere here next month. But with television programming in China entirely state-controlled, Western media companies must negotiate every nuance of programming. And experts say that parents here may be even more restrictive than the government, viewing American-style television as too unruly. 'It wouldn't be surprising if the government said no to programs like these,' says Lei Weizhen, who teaches about television at People's University in Beijing. 'The public may question whether or not these shows are good for Chinese children.' In the cutthroat competition of contemporary Chinese society, parents invest heavily in what is often their only child. Urban children especially may attend school from 7 a.m. till 4 p.m., followed by hours of homework, music lessons and other enrichment courses. Deviating from this rigorous program is not encouraged. 'We don't allow him to watch too much TV,' Qiu Yi, a 41-year-old advertising salesman in Shanghai, said of his 11-year-old son. 'I'm not against cartoons. But I try to encourage him to watch documentaries on dinosaurs and the Second World War. These programs are useful to his study.' What's on television in China seems to be not all too dissimilar from what's happening in the classroom. Youth programming in China tends to be dry, conservative and pedantic. It consists mostly of quiz shows, team competitions and endless lineups of youngsters, dressed uniformly, standing at attention and answering questions like Boy and Girl Scouts. Indeed, in a society where authorities worry about a little anarchy quickly getting out of hand, there are no rock fashion shows, no 'Wild 'N Out' or 'Homewrecker,' no Chinese-made 'SpongeBob SquarePants' and certainly no Chinese equivalent of 'Beavis and Butt-Head.' 'The children would probably love these shows, but the parents may find them hard to accept,' said Xie Limin, a vice dean at the Shanghai Normal School. 'Traditional Chinese culture requires children to behave in every moment of their life.' The names of children's programs here often reveal their content: 'Seeking Answers to 100 Questions,' 'Reading Books,' 'Visiting Schools,' 'Chess Boy' and 'Studying the Arts.' 'The Big Windmill,' a nationally broadcast program on China Central Television, recently featured a typical skit. It involved a couple of people who opened a new hotel and then overcharged travelers for their stay. Two of these travelers turned out to be government investigators, looking into just such crimes. The message of this show, which is intended for children 3 to 14? 'Don't lie or cheat customers! And beware of undercover authorities!' But even some educators and parents say that Chinese television's striving for the didactic skews too far to the dull and unimaginative, which is why some families buy pirated DVD's of popular Japanese cartoons. It is also why Viacom and other media giants are betting that China will change and develop a taste for some of the same hyperactive programs that are so attractive to young people in the United States, Europe and other parts of the world. 'A lot of children's programming is really bad in China,' said Li Yifei, managing director of MTV Networks China and considered one of the most powerful women in Chinese television. 'It's condescending and more about lecturing to children. Fun - that's what's desperately needed.' And experts here note that many Chinese children are already well plugged into global entertainment: They carry cellphones, download music on their MP3's, sometimes dye their hair blond and even, on occasion, wear baggy pants and talk in their own hip-hop way. 'In terms of their appearance, I don't think you can tell a Chinese kid from a Western kid anymore,' said Hung Huang, chief executive of China Interactive Media Group, a media and publishing company in Beijing and a longtime observer of youth trends. 'They've got that whole hip-hop look. They listen to Linkin Park, Eminem and 50 Cent. But they probably identify a little more with Japanese and Korean kids, who grow up with the same pressures to conform and succeed.' 'The Kids' Choice Honors,' as the program was called here, was an early step in establishing a Nickelodeon presence in China, though the government forbade the use of the Nickelodeon logo, which is ubiquitous in the network's programming elsewhere. There were other compromises as well. The show's producers felt compelled to tone down the program, eliminating not just onstage burping and flatulence but also appearances by male celebrities dressed up as women. When the show was taped in Beijing, the children in the audience cheered loudly and waved banners. But they voted for their favorite scientist, rather than a favorite movie star. And their Chinese pop idols mostly sang saccharine lyrics to an audience better described as adoring than raucous. Viacom executives say China is simply not ready for certain things. A Green Day video was banned because of provocative images of the United States Army. 'Hung Up,' a recent Madonna video, 'got some protests from older age group viewers, saying it is too vulgar,' Ms. Li said. 'Maybe the audience tolerance is much lower,' said Ms. Li. 'They haven't seen as much.'

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 09:18:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/28/05 Australia 16.9 Canada 29.3 Denmark 26.1 France 12.6 Germany 12.4 Hong Kong 9.4 Japan 26.7 Netherlands 16.7 Norway 26.0 Sweden 12.1 Switzerland 17.6 UK 8.1

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 09:17:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/28/05 Australia 25.4 Canada 25.5 Denmark 44.3 France 28.5 Germany 28.2 Hong Kong 9.1 Japan 45.1 Netherlands 33.2 Norway 40.4 Sweden 33.2 Switzerland 35.3 UK 20.1

Subject: Blue-Collar Napa Joins the Gold Rush From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 07:23:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/dining/28napa.html?ex=1293426000&en=9a4b0be4bd10e757&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Blue-Collar Napa Joins the Gold Rush By R. W. APPLE Jr. NAPA, Calif. YOU can size up the new Napa and the old in a single sidelong glance down the 800 block of Main Street, where a jampacked tapas spot and a welcoming bistro rub shoulders with a bar that has been shuttered since 1975 and an Asian cafe whose fading sign advertises that great Chinese-American gastronomic anachronism chop suey. This has always been a blue-collar city, home for decades to many of the workers at the nearby Mare Island Naval Shipyard, which is now closed. As vineyards filled the valley north of here over half a century, Napa has been content to leave the tourists, the inns, the boutiques and the fashionable watering holes to St. Helena, Yountville and other 'upvalley' towns and villages. For many years, Napa's only consequential restaurant was the bubbly, locally beloved little Bistro Don Giovanni, which is not really in the city at all but out on busy Highway 29, which skirts Napa to the west. Come the culinary revolution: suddenly there are a dozen worthwhile dining destinations in town. Malpeque oysters on the half shell, roasted quail and braised pork belly are displacing pizza and burgers as foods of choice in this city of 75,000 about an hour northeast of San Francisco, and visitors are flocking here to try them. 'We used to drive up to Oakville or Calistoga to eat,' said Mark Pope, the wine-loving owner of the Bounty Hunter, one of the more idiosyncratic of the new Napa restaurants. 'Now a lot of people there drive here.' None of the chefs working in Napa is likely to knock Thomas Keller, the king of Napa Valley cuisine, off his throne anytime soon. Like its Manhattan progeny, Per Se, his Yountville flagship, the perennially booked-up French Laundry, wins fresh acclaim every week for the originality and consistency of its American-modern haute cuisine. But James McDevitt's winning Asian-accented food at Budo and Victor Scargle's accomplished offerings at Julia's Kitchen, the newly invigorated restaurant at Copia: the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts can easily stand comparison with such established, often-honored places as Terra and the Martini House, both in St. Helena. And Napa is rich in small, modestly priced grills, bistros and brasseries. Some of the impetus for change came from the opening of Copia, a culinary museum and cultural center, in 2001 and the reopening of the Napa Valley Opera House in two stages in 2002 and 2003, following a lengthy campaign that saved that 1880 building from demolition. The opera house now regularly stages dance, recitals and concerts of many kinds. Equally important, however, have been the valley's swiftly changing demographic patterns. 'Hip young people who wanted to live in the wine country found that they couldn't afford housing farther north,' said Patricia Perini, a documentary-film maker who worked on the campaign to save the opera house. 'So after a while they started buying up workers' bungalows in the city of Napa and restoring them.' Soon they found themselves spoiled for choice at dinnertime as restaurants proliferated - Cole's Chop House, a first-class steak joint; ZuZu, the tapas bar, which construes its genre broadly, with plenty of not-so-Spanish but oh-so-good dishes like hummus with grilled lamb and goat yogurt; and NV, a clublike establishment also riding the trend toward small plates, owned by Peter Halikas, who once cooked at Gary Danko in San Francisco. NV? The letters don't stand for nonvintage, Napa Valley or anything else, or so Mr. Halikas insists. Copia has struggled financially since its opening. (In the interest of disclosure, I should mention that I served for a brief period as an honorary trustee of Copia in the years when it was under construction.) But Julia's Kitchen, named for Julia Child, an early backer of the center, has clearly turned a corner. A softened look in the dining room and a talented new team in the kitchen are reeling in the customers. Nicole Plue, a pastry chef who made her name at Hawthorne Lane in San Francisco and Eleven Madison Park in New York, turns out delicate, enticing desserts at Julia's, among them a cookie-crust tart with a stack of mini-crepes, both flavored with California's daintily perfumed Meyer lemons. I can't wait to try the butterscotch pot de crème, which was off the menu on my visit. Ms. Plue's work tracks well with that of Mr. Scargle. He, too, is more interested in immediacy of flavor than in flourishes. He uses local ingredients ignored by others, like petrale sole, and he coaxes every bit of potential from his duck breast with his brussels sprouts and from braised chicken bathed in a marjoram-flavored jus. Many of his herbs and vegetables come from a 3½-acre garden adjacent to the dining patio. At Budo Mr. McDevitt and his wife, Stacey, have created a rectangular, high-ceilinged dining room, accented with ornamental ironwork at either end. In the center stands a long stone-top serving counter that was crowned, when I visited, by an enormous display of flowers and fruits, including persimmons still on their branches. The son of a Japanese mother and an American father, Mr. McDevitt expertly combined the two elements of his heritage at Hapa, near Phoenix, which he sold in 2003 to move to California, and he works similar wonders at his new restaurant in Napa. The Asian aesthetic is as evident in the fastidiousness of his dishes' presentation as in the arc of their flavors. An eye-popping selection of sashimi is arrayed, for example, on a glistening glass plate: crimson big-eye tuna; hamachi (yellowtail) with mango and hijiki seaweed on a forest-green shiso leaf; a Nantucket bay scallop in its shell, moistened with sparkling wine and topped with American sturgeon caviar; a Santa Barbara sea urchin poised on a lime slice; yellowfin tuna or ahi, firm and mild-tasting; flakes of fluke with wasabi. I hated the thought of finishing this piscine masterpiece so much that I must have dawdled over it for all of 20 minutes. As you may gather, fish is Mr. McDevitt's thing, and he brings in fine specimens from all over, including Maine lobster, opakapaka (pink snapper) from Hawaii and barramundi from Australia. I sneaked a taste of his John Dory, from New Zealand, with a superb sake beurre blanc. But the Midwesterner in me could not resist the kurobuta pork chop from a small Iowa farm, and instinct did not fail me. Rich, bronzed and profoundly piggy-tasting, it had been treated to a sourish tamarind glaze and came with contrasting sides (Japanese sweet potato purée, honey-roasted onions). For me Budo is the best thing to hit the area in many a moon, though I fear that it is having trouble winning the kind of local following that it deserves. I was much less excited by Press (as in wine press), up the highway toward St. Helena. Its pedigree is impeccable. The principal owner is Leslie Rudd, the proprietor of Dean & Deluca and of Rudd Vineyards and Winery, and one of his partners is Reuben Katz of the Culinary Institute of America. The chef is Keith Luce, late of Chicago's esteemed Spruce. But bloodlines and past performance don't always count; if you don't believe me, ask anyone recently betrayed by The Daily Racing Form. As Mr. Rudd wrote in a letter to me in the spring, Chez L'Ami Louis, the bare-bones Paris bistro famous for its mythic roast chicken and rare côte de boeuf, provided the inspiration for his new place. The idea, he said, is to serve 'the best regional ingredients, very simply prepared and presented,' and that's exactly the problem. Minimalist cuisine leaves little margin for error. My 16-ounce Angus strip from a Kansas farm ($48, no less) hit the spot, rosy and tender inside, beneath a salty, oxblood-colored crust. But the $36 chicken for two, turned on a spit in a big fireplace at one end of the dining room, missed the target. Carved at tableside, it was as dry as a Thanksgiving turkey cooked by a nervous neophyte, miles less tasty than California's choicest bird - the roasted chicken at Zuni in San Francisco. My dining partners, valley dwellers, reported confronting the same problem on earlier visits. For me, though, the crushing letdown was the potato and garlic cake, a near replica of another of Louis's trademark dishes. Louis's version is one of the masterpieces of Paris, worthy of induction into the Académie Française. It is one of the many reasons that I, an unapologetic potato freak, celebrated my 70th birthday there. Unhappily, what Mr. Luce sent out was unpleasantly mealy, possibly as a result of his use of russet potatoes instead of the firmer and waxier French varieties used at Louis. Ah, well. The high-ceilinged room's oversize windows give captivating views of the mountains on either side of the valley, the service is efficient and affable, and the long all-Napa wine list is stuffed with treasures, extravagant and less so. The Bounty Hunter began life as the retail offshoot of Mr. Pope's catalog wine business, and it shows. Bottles line the walls (although you may not notice them at first, because it's hard to take your eyes off the towering stuffed bears that flank the door), and the kitchen is the size of a stall shower for two. Fortunately, a grill and a smoker out back give Jake Southworth, the chef, a little more flexibility. It's good times all the time at the Bounty Hunter, whose brick walls, stamped-tin ceiling and marble-top tables give it the feeling of a saloon. Go at lunch, and you'll encounter winemakers and politicians; turn up at dinner, and you'll meet tourists and locals celebrating a birthday. 'It needs to be fun,' said Mr. Pope, the son of a Michigan welder. 'If you go too highbrow, it won't appeal to people on vacation.' As casual as it is, the cooking is based on prime ingredients, cooked with care but without undue fuss. Take the lunchtime sandwiches: a succulent cheeseburger with just the right amount of fat (Wednesdays only, unless you get lucky); a 'T.L.B.' made with house-smoked turkey, perfectly crisp baby greens, Nueske's nonpareil bacon from Wisconsin and chipotle mayonnaise; and tender pulled pork barbecue on soft buns, which would earn the grudging respect of even the pickiest North Carolinian. It prompted my friend Stan Bromley, the recently retired general manager of the Four Seasons in San Francisco, to exclaim uncharacteristically, 'Oooh, now that's a real saliva driver!' Evenings you can order cowboy steak or assorted sausages. Thursdays through Sundays, try remarkably moist whole chicken cooked on the grill with a lime inside or smoked pork ribs - fat, juicy, expertly charred hunks of meat served with red (tomato-based) and yellow (mustard-based) barbecue sauces. The chicken is a steal at $20, salad included, and so are Mr. Pope's wines, 40 by the glass, 400 by the bottle. If the Bounty Hunter excels at old-fashioned American comfort food, Pilar excels at sophisticated modern dishes from around the world. A spartan, low-key storefront decorated with culinary woodcuts and oversize blown-glass replicas of fruits and vegetables, Pilar shares with the Bounty Hunter a nice lack of pretension. Didier Lenders and Pilar Sanchez, husband and wife, have both cooked in big-time Napa Valley kitchens (Meadowood, Greystone at the Culinary Institute of America), and both cook at Pilar, although Ms. Sanchez, a tiny figure in T-shirt and blue jeans, also helps out in the dining room. Serrano ham with snappy Manchego cheese and fig compote made a fine nibble with a glass of white wine before settling down to the heavy lifting. Then technical polish came to the fore, in plump grilled Monterey Bay sardines, their richness cut by a fennel and celery slaw and pickled red torpedo onions, and lightly sautéed Nantucket Bay scallops with mottled brown-and-beige skins, riding atop an unctuous black squid-ink risotto. A baked Belgian chocolate 'mousse' - more like a candy bar made for chief executives, it seemed to me - sent me sated and happy into Main Street. Angèle, a buzzy French-style brasserie, started fast, stumbled and seems lately to have recovered its balance under a new chef, Tripp Mauldin. The Rouas family, one of the legendary restaurant clans of the Bay Area, runs the place, which is tucked into one end of the 19th-century Napa Mill, overlooking the meandering Napa River. Lunching alone on a chilly Friday with every seat in the restaurant filled, I was pleased with the unusually large selection of half-bottles of wine and by the assortment of fresh Atlantic and Pacific oysters, correctly opened and well iced. A roasted beet, goat-cheese and mâche salad - what a terrific combination - and crisp sweetbreads with bacon, chestnuts and braised fall vegetables almost made me forget that the blanquette de veau, a brasserie classic that the critics and several of my friends had raved about, was absent from the menu. When I asked why, a waitress told me that the new chef had decided against continuing it. Consider this an appeal, Mr. Mauldin, to change your mind.

Subject: Billionaire Builder of China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 07:22:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/29/business/worldbusiness/29titans.html?ex=1293512400&en=3c5dd9c89b730a78&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 29, 2005 Billionaire Builder of China By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI - There are only 10 known billionaires in China, and he is one of them. His name is Xu Rongmao, and he is no Donald Trump, Sam Zell or Mortimer Zuckerman. He's bigger. Mr. Xu, who is the chairman of the Shimao Group, controls much more land than any private developer in America and builds luxury real estate projects that put even Mr. Trump to shame for their sheer scale and flamboyance. But unlike the ubiquitous Mr. Trump - who is never at a loss for words and goes out of his way to attract the attention of cameras - Mr. Xu almost never grants interviews and is highly secretive about his operations. For all his reserve, Mr. Xu, a former textile factory worker, is one of China's wealthiest entrepreneurs and a prime example of the nation's first generation of real estate tycoons. 'I don't know much about Mr. Xu, but Shimao has this uncanny ability to find the right projects at the right time,' says Michael T. Hart, director of research in Shanghai at Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate consulting firm. 'Their North Bund project has one of the best views in all of Shanghai.' In a country that started permitting people to buy homes only in the 1980's, developers like Mr. Xu (pronounced SHOO) found a way to gain rights to prime land in the nation's biggest cities. Now they reap huge profits by building large residential projects, often with hotels and other commercial buildings. An industry that emerged only a decade ago suddenly has annual sales of $130 billion, making real estate one of the biggest engines in this nation's roaring economy. The growth has helped propel Mr. Xu to No. 9 on the Forbes list of the richest people in China. With $1 billion in net assets, he runs two publicly listed real estate companies and a collection of private offshore companies, and is overseeing $9 billion in projects. The Shimao Group is expected to complete building about 145 million square feet of property by 2010, more than the entire 120 million square feet controlled by Sam Zell of Chicago, the commercial real estate baron who is the biggest individual property owner in the United States. By all accounts, Mr. Xu, who in his listed companies uses his Cantonese name, Hui Wing Mau, is a pioneer, willing to take big gambles. Through Shimao, he created one of China's first luxury real estate brands. He bought prime land in Shanghai in the late 1990's when others, fearing that the city was becoming overbuilt, were fleeing the market. And now, with housing prices rising, the Shimao Group is so profitable that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are negotiating to take the company public in 2006. Several of China's other real estate tycoons share Mr. Xu's rags-to-riches story. The developer of Shanghai's new Citigroup building, for example, was once a truck driver from impoverished Jiangxi Province. But little is known about Mr. Xu, 55, particularly how he earned his early fortune and developed his network of powerful political allies, who include several high-ranking Communist Party officials. He turned down repeated requests for an interview for this article, as did many other major Chinese developers. Some privately admitted they simply did not want the publicity and scrutiny in a country still officially communist and uneasy about the creation of individual wealth. 'The nail that sticks up gets hammered,' said Jack J. T. Huang, chairman of Asia for the law firm Jones Day, citing a common Chinese saying that is also popular in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. 'No one wants to be that nail and talk about this kind of business.' Perhaps for good reason. China's real estate industry, like those in many other places, has been dogged by scandal - tales of illegal land grabs, corruption, government bribery, shoddy construction work and the forced relocation of millions of peasants and urban poor. Yet almost everyone with means in China these days seems to want to play the real estate game. Of the 50 richest Chinese, according to Forbes's rankings in 2005, half rely on real estate as one of their primary businesses. People who have worked with Mr. Xu, a sprightly looking man with well-groomed black hair, say that he leaped to the top after he bought a collection of distressed properties in Shanghai in the late 1990's and began a huge riverfront development in the city's Pudong district, where some apartments now sell for more than $4 million. 'He's just smart,' said one developer who spoke anonymously out of fear of angering government officials. 'He got a lot of his land at ridiculously low prices, ridiculous. He knew where to go and when to buy.' Mr. Xu's start was inauspicious. Like just about every person in China who came of age in Communist China, he started out poor. He grew up in Shishi, an entrepreneurial city in coastal Fujian Province, the oldest of eight children born to a machinery worker and a doctor. After graduating from high school during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76, he was sent to the countryside to work as a barefoot doctor. In the late 1970's, he went to Hong Kong and worked in a textile factory. Then, he told friends, he got lucky and made a small fortune trading stocks. By the mid-1980's, he was investing in textile factories in western Gansu Province. His leap into real estate began in 1988 when he agreed to invest $1.2 million in a knitting factory in his hometown. Some say he intended all along to build a hotel instead, even though investments in private hotels were forbidden. 'He told others the construction was a factory,' said Cai Shijia, a Fujian official who worked with Mr. Xu. 'But the truth was, he was building a hotel. 'The construction on that land was all implemented according to hotel designs and standards. And as soon as the construction was completed, the government policy changed. Xu Rongmao became the owner of the first private three-star hotel in China.' Mr. Xu then plowed millions into developing residential complexes and resorts in Fujian. Along the way, he struck up friendships with powerful political figures, including Fujian's party secretary, Chen Guangyi, whom he had known in Gansu Province, and Jia Qingli, who succeeded Mr. Chen in Fujian before moving to Beijing to became a member of the Politburo. Mr. Xu recently met with Mr. Jia, who still holds a high position and was one of the highest-ranking Communist Party officials under Jiang Zemin, the former president. For all his personal connections, people close to Mr. Xu say much of his success came from his willingness to take risks and his ability to spot opportunities ahead of others. When business dried up in Fujian, he moved his family to Australia, where he invested in real estate in the early 1990's. Then he pushed his way into Beijing and Shanghai just before housing prices there took off. He made money the same way other developers in China have: he negotiated with government officials to acquire cheap land, often with a small down payment, by limiting the commitment to a small initial phrase; then created a design for a new building that could serve as the template for a larger development. 'You can use Phase I cash to pay for Phase II or III,' says one Shanghai developer who has observed Shimao's projects. 'It's all about cash flow - it's about how you use the money. That's how these guys got off the ground. The early guys were visionaries and now they're ridiculously wealthy.' The system in China favors developers. Homebuyers pay far in advance of their move-in date, often more than a year ahead of construction. Developers often use that presale money to build the project or buy additional land elsewhere. 'That was one way to go from a small amount of money to making a lot of cash,' said Mr. Hart at Jones Lang LaSalle. 'Many of these guys weren't necessarily good at developing, but they were in the right place at the right time.' Mr. Xu has worked the system to perfection. Following the money at Shimao, however, is difficult. Adapting a method honed to perfection by overseas Chinese, the Xu family controls a labyrinthine collection of public and private companies, official filings in China show, including offshore entities. The companies swap property, finance one another's projects and seem to shift profits around. For instance, the Shanghai Shimao Group, which is listed in Shanghai, said it had revenue of $280,000 in 2003 but profit of $16.3 million. A year later, revenue jumped to $134 million, with profit of $20 million. And in one of many related-party transactions, Shimao International, a company listed in Hong Kong, said it bought 100 percent of a company called Value Added from Dynamic Keen Developments, which was wholly owned by Mr. Xu. Value Added owned a construction company set up by Mr. Xu to develop a project on the China-Russia border. Avoiding investment bankers, two of his companies went public in Hong Kong and Shanghai a few years ago by acquiring listed companies and changing their names, in what is called a 'back-door' listing. The bulk of the Shimao Group's holdings would create a third company, which could go public soon. Real estate experts here say many developers create project companies and engage in related-party transactions, partly for tax reasons. Indeed, Mr. Xu operates another Shimao company. One public filing says the 'ultimate holding company' for Shimao's pieces is a shell corporation created in the British Virgin Islands called Perfect Zone. Shimao has acquired huge tracts of riverfront land in some of China's biggest cities and has used it to build developments packed with signature features, including gardens, palm trees, villas and luxury high-rises outfitted with marble interiors. In Harbin, Shimao acquired 43 million square feet in an area the city government is redeveloping, and then received approval to build a huge project north of Harbin, on both sides of the China-Russia border. The project includes a casino that would operate just over the border in Russia, escaping the legal prohibition on gambling everywhere in China but Macao. Meanwhile, the government has begun an aggressive campaign to crack down on gambling elsewhere along its borders. In Wuhan, Shimao outbid the Hong Kong billionaire Li Kai Shing and agreed to pay $380 million to develop 9.4 million square feet in the historic area of the provincial capital. With the market slowing because of worries about a looming real estate bubble, Mr. Xu and his management team, which includes his son and daughter, are stepping up their investments. They have lined up international architects and five-star hotels to work with them. People who work with Mr. Xu say he maintains his close ties to government officials and often makes large charitable donations to help stay in their good graces. When the chief executive of Warner Brothers Entertainment went to Beijing to meet Wu Yi, China's vice prime minister, Mr. Xu was there, too. And he often visits with Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Next up for Shimao? An initial public stock offering in Hong Kong early next year, which could value the company at billions of dollars and catapult Mr. Xu to the No. 1 spot on China's rich list. The name his parents gave him, Xu Rongmao, seems apt: in Chinese, it can be translated as 'Wealth and Success.'

Subject: When Chinese Sue the State From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 06:06:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/international/asia/28land.html?ex=1293426000&en=4f88869907b708e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 When Chinese Sue the State, Cases Are Often Smothered By JOSEPH KAHN SHIQIAO, China - The peasants surrounded the clerk in the busy court anteroom, badgering him to let them sue the officials who had seized their land. No, no, the clerk said, shaking his head and waving his hands, as the peasants recalled it. They were wasting his time and theirs. But as they withdrew, their legal papers remained on his desk in plain sight. Maybe, the peasants hoped, that meant the clerk had tacitly accepted their application to sue. 'In two years of trying every option under the law, this was a moment of optimism,' said Li Huitang, a leader of peasant resistance in Shiqiao, a village in Hebei Province, in northern China. 'We hoped he might rule on our request.' Even a written rejection would have been a bonanza, enabling them to appeal to a higher court. But it was not to be. The clerk soon called Mr. Li's home, ordering him to retrieve the documents. When Mr. Li declined, the clerk mailed them back in a plain manila envelope, unmarked, unprocessed and officially ignored. China's legal system often hands down verdicts that the powerless consider unfair. But a bigger problem is that courts often refuse to issue any verdict at all - or even acknowledge that some bothersome legal complaints exist. The English translation is simply 'put on the record' or 'register a case,' but in China 'li'an' is so fraught with official meddling that for many with complaints against the government, the judicial system is closed for business. Since Communist China first created the semblance of a modern legal system a quarter-century ago, criminal cases - the state suing individuals - mostly go through the courts. Private citizens and businesses now often resolve civil disputes in court. But the third and most sensitive use of the judicial system, a 1989 statute that entitles people to sue the state, remains a beguiling fiction, scholars say. 'The number of people wanting to sue the government is large and growing,' says Xiao Jianguo, a legal scholar at People's University in Beijing who has studied the issue. 'But the number of people who succeed in filing cases against the government is miniscule. So you could say there is a gap between theory and practice.' Though fast-rising China wants to persuade the outside world that it is governed by law, pressure to improve the system comes mainly from within. Protests are erupting around the country over land seizures, pollution, corruption and abuse of power, with 74,000 officially recorded incidents of mass unrest in 2004. China's leaders know they need to manage such unrest. Indeed, President Hu Jintao says 'democratic rule of law' is a crucial ingredient of his plan to build a 'harmonious society.' Such pledges spread awareness of legal rights, but have yet to change legal procedures. It is not clear how many protests follow failed attempts to settle disputes in court. But lawyers say the judicial system bars its doors to so many contentious cases that it effectively forces people to take to the streets. That is what happened here in Shiqiao, where residents protesting the loss of prime farmland for a government-backed road, office and residential development tried suing to protect their land-use rights. They met Kafkaesque obstacles at every turn. The only party that used the courts successfully was the state-linked construction company. It won an injunction in March declaring peasants' protests illegal. Every Man for Himself On the scale of land deals in China today, where hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland are converted each year into factories, shopping malls and housing, Shiqiao's 33 acres are just a tiny window box along the bank of the muddy Fuyang River in southern Hebei Province. Yet the dark, fertile soil and good irrigation made it prime land for growing vegetables. Scores of families depended on small plots there to earn a steady income selling cabbages, cucumbers and beans to city dwellers nearby. That was true until early 2004, just before spring planting, when the Fengfengkuang district of Hebei instructed peasants in Shiqiao to stay off their land. The Binhai Construction Company, linked to the district's construction bureau, was to build a road and housing there to 'raise the city's status.' Farmers who lost land would be compensated according to the National Land Management Law, a government notice said. For villagers, it was a call to arms. Peasants cannot own their land outright. Their land-use contracts remain firmly under the government's thumb, nominally to guard against the loss of arable land. The controls actually provide a perverse incentive for local officials to seize and develop as much farmland as possible. Farmers need only be compensated for lost farm income, generally far below soaring real estate market values. Government-linked middlemen can make a fortune. 'It's every man for himself,' says Li Yonglu, a 64-year-old resident who has taken part in the campaign against the Fengfengkuang district government. 'You get what you fight for, and no more.' Officials in Fengfengkuang did not respond to requests to talk about the matter. But in official documents and propaganda posters, they said that the development of Shiqiao's land met all local and national requirements and that peasants were compensated fairly. The district did offer compensation, from $2,500 to $5,000 a mu, a sixth of an acre. But local rumors had it that the market value exceeded $35,000 a mu and that government agents were pocketing the difference. Some villagers took the money. Others refused to cooperate. Mr. Li, who wears a French-style beret and once served as the leader of a collective farming brigade in Shiqiao, spurred opposition. He was joined by Li Huitang, a heavyset, gregarious man of 45. They share a family name but are not directly related. The two men filmed a short documentary praising their ancient alluvial soil. A narrator, speaking in a deep baritone, recited central government policies to prevent the loss of farmland. Beijing seemed like a possible ally. In the spring of 2004, the National People's Congress, the party-controlled legislature, passed China's first property rights law. Newspapers and television broadcasts heralded the leadership's commitment to govern 'according to law.' In Shiqiao, the principles seemed abstract, but potent. The local activists read national land laws and concluded that the laws protected their land-use contracts. The local government could not cancel those contracts against their will, they said. They decided to sue. An attorney in a neighboring city drafted the lawsuit. The two Mr. Lis brought it to Fengfengkuang's court. A clerk read their application, then disappeared for consultations. When he returned, he said the court would take the case, but only if they paid a filing fee of $2,300. The fee, several times their annual per capita income, seemed intended to scare them away. And in fact many villagers scoffed at paying even a small share. But the Lis rallied 11 families to join them. By the summer of 2004, they had the money. The case was established. That proved to be the low hurdle. Months passed with no trial date. They demanded explanations. Finally, early this year, they were granted an audience with Chen Xiuying, the top local court official. Ms. Chen, according to Li Huitang and two others who attended the meeting, struck a sympathetic tone. The court would like to see the case go to trial, but the matter was unfortunately too sensitive. 'She told us the court did not have the power to challenge the government,' Li Huitang said. 'It might be better for everyone if we withdrew the case. She said if we did, she would refund the fee.' Ms. Chen, reached in her court office, hung up the phone when asked about the exchange. Her phone was later answered by someone else, who said Ms. Chen had left town on business. Mr. Li said he declined to withdraw: 'I told her the law is either a tool that can be used by the people, or it isn't. You can't offer it and then take it away.' Street Justice Binhai Construction did not wait on the courts. It laid a broad new road, paved in concrete, through Shiqiao's old vegetable plots. Other sections were cordoned off by a high wall, decorated with billboards that show a river flowing through rich fall foliage. Behind the wall, high-rise residences sprouted. Frustrated by the court setback, the two Mr. Lis began a campaign of civil disobedience. They planted themselves in front of bulldozers, harassed workers and generally disrupted construction. On March 18, Binhai filed its own civil lawsuit naming Li Yonglu as a defendant, seeking an injunction against his interference. Four days later, the court issued a peremptory ruling without trial. Li Yonglu's actions were declared illegal. Local officials distributed copies of the ruling to every resident in Shiqiao, villagers said. A party boss read the text of the decision over the village's loudspeakers. It did not stop the Lis. They and other villagers said they were outraged that the court acted so quickly after suppressing their own suit. 'I discovered that the law is what they say,' Li Yonglu said. 'What they practice is power.' On March 25, Fengfengkuang dispatched the local police and paramilitary troops to stop the interference. The deployment brought hundreds of villagers from their homes. A tense standoff turned into a minor riot when the police confiscated cameras some local residents were using to record the event, participants said. Li Huitang's younger brother said he suffered a gash in his forehead when police officers ripped his camera off his neck. An elderly man fell and was trampled, photographs show. Villagers turned unruly and began smashing windows and trying to overturn police cars. Fifteen local residents went to jail; three remain behind bars nine months later, relatives said. Such conflagrations have become a fixture of rural life in boom-time China. Many go unnoticed or face reporting bans in the national news media. But shortly after the Shiqiao protest, in nearby Dingzhou City, a government effort to quell a land protest captured attention all over China. Hundreds of hired thugs armed with hunting rifles and clubs forced villagers to give up land for a power station. Six farmers died and dozens were injured in a bloody crackdown captured by a farmer's video camera. For Beijing, that went too far. The Communist Party boss in Dingzhou and 26 others went on trial for the killings in early December. China's top judge, Xiao Yang, also inspected Hebei's courts following the Dingzhou incident. He told state news outlets that the courts too often treated important cases as 'hot potatoes' better left untouched, marginalizing the judicial system. 'If the courts bow to the government every time, the people will have no faith in the judicial process,' he warned. Neither Yes Nor No Those sentiments seem to be widely held among officials at the top. There is little evidence, however, that Hebei heeded his warning, at least when cases threatening strong local interests came before the courts. The two Mr. Lis gave the law another try. This time they found a prominent Beijing-based attorney, Zhou Shifeng, who often pursues difficult cases against the authorities. After an investigation, Mr. Zhou concluded that the Binhai project violated national land laws, which require State Council approval to develop prime farmland. They could sue Hebei Province for allowing the project to proceed, he said. Mr. Zhou had low expectations. China's administrative law stipulates that cases against a local government must be filed first in its jurisdiction, where local party bosses hold sway. It can be appealed, but only after the local court rules or rejects the case. Courts legally must issue written rejection notices if they choose not take the case. But to avoid appeals, court clerks often decline to take possession of legal papers. No rejection notice is needed if the case does not, in China's political-legal cosmos, formally exist. 'The law is absurd,' Mr. Zhou said. 'But it is the only way.' In September Mr. Zhou, the two Mr. Lis and other villagers gathered at court in Shijiazhuang, Hebei's provincial capital. Qian Rendong, a court clerk, received them. They pleaded their case: they had legal right to sue; local officials had violated national land laws; their hope of obtaining justice depended on him. Mr. Qian, they said, was polite, but stubborn. He browsed through their papers and asked some questions, but in the end gave no ground. He urged them to appeal to higher authorities through the petition system rather than the courts. But whether out of deference or a simple oversight, he did not, as their session ended, hand back their documents. Technically, it seemed, he had accepted their application to sue. 'We talked excitedly among ourselves as we left the court,' Li Yonglu said. 'It seemed like a first step.' Two days later, Mr. Qian called Mr. Li's home. The papers must be collected immediately or he could not guarantee their safety. The case would not be registered and there would be no rejection notice, either. Mr. Zhou advised Mr. Li to stay home. They would press the clerk to reject the case in writing. Mr. Li said he was nervous - original documents he had spent months compiling were in the clerk's possession - but he held back. The risk, though, was not that the documents would be destroyed, but rather that they would be disregarded. Two weeks later they arrived by mail, incognito, at Mr. Zhou's office in Beijing. In Shiqiao's land case, it was the only verdict the court would render.

Subject: Marketing Fortified Food From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 29, 2005 at 05:59:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/business/28food.html?ex=1293426000&en=eb20a23d0989cd8f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Marketing Fortified Food to Those Leery of Drugs By MELANIE WARNER Ever since she gave birth to her fourth child in 2003, Michelle Celona, a 43-year-old part-time teacher in Philadelphia, had suffered from annoying bouts of constipation. Figuring it was the stress of carting three children around or the result of something that had changed in her body after pregnancy, she learned to live with it. But when the Dannon Company asked Ms. Celona in June if she wanted to participate in a two-week trial for Activia, a new fortified yogurt that the company said could help speed up what nutritionists delicately refer to as intestinal transit time, she jumped at the chance. 'I was skeptical that it would work,' she said. 'But if it's something I already like, then that's much better than popping a pill.' Dannon, the American division of the French company Group Danone, is counting on finding more people like Ms. Celona, who contend the yogurt worked as promised. The company expects to spend $60 million next year aiming at the 70 million Americans who suffer from digestive problems. With health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis and digestive disorders all on the rise, a growing number of food marketers are selling what the food industry calls functional foods, which promise a host of health benefits, from cholesterol reduction to immunity improvements to easing of intestinal problems. Marketing solutions to health problems has traditionally been the realm of drug companies, but that is starting to change. As the baby boom generation ages and Americans become increasingly concerned about their health, packaged food companies see a big marketing opportunity. Television, radio and print commercials scheduled for February for Activia yogurt, which contains specific beneficial bacteria that work in the colon along with the body's own bacteria, will feature women talking about their irregularity problems. Activia will be available in supermarkets in mid-January. Elations, a new flavored beverage from a company run by a team of former Procter & Gamble executives, promises 'joint flexibility' and contains the nutritional supplements glucosamine, which is believed to play a role in cartilage formation and repair, and chondroitin, a natural component of cartilage that is thought to help with elasticity. Next month, PepsiCo will start selling a new version of its Tropicana orange juice containing three grams of fiber per serving (in the form of starch in which molecules have been rearranged to resist digestion). It will join several brands of Tropicana that are already enhanced with various vitamins and minerals and that profess to benefit the heart and the immune system and to make children's bones strong. In making such assertions, companies are dodging Food and Drug Administration regulations that require a rigorous approval process for health claims. Marketers are not required to get agency approval for claims that talk about the body's 'normal, healthy structures and functions,' only for references to specific diseases or health conditions. As a result, Dannon's marketing promises that Activia will help 'regulate your digestive system,' but the word 'constipation' is not used. Ads and packaging for Elations will refer to 'joint flexibility' and 'ease of movement,' not arthritis. Most major food and beverage companies say they are working on functional food projects, though some are taking a wait-and-see approach. At an investor meeting a little over a year ago, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, E. Neville Isdell, said carbonated soft drinks would be 'carriers of health and wellness benefits.' But the company has yet to market any such products. How big is the functional foods market? According to some reports, it could be huge. A study by Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that 48.4 percent of all Americans in 2002 suffered from at least one chronic health condition, from hypertension to asthma to heart disease, up from 44.7 percent in 1996. Marketing surveys also show that more Americans are interested in natural solutions to health issues. 'People are getting nervous about pharmaceuticals,' said Faith Popcorn, who runs BrainReserve, a marketing company. 'If it's food, people trust it more. And people are also so happy to hear that something they love to eat is also good for them.' Ms. Popcorn cites the Vioxx situation - in which millions of pain sufferers were told that the anti-inflammatory drugs they were taking might increase their risk of heart attacks - and the high price of drugs as factors spurring consumers to seek out drug-free remedies. According to a BrainReserve survey in 2004, 65 percent of people said they were using diet to treat an illness, whether through a low-fat regimen, a diet of organic food or a higher intake of certain kinds of food. While many scientists promote the healing powers of a diet based on whole grains and lots of fruits and vegetables, some are skeptical of the idea that specific conditions should be treated through packaged food products. Alice H. Lichtenstein, a senior scientist at the nutrition research center at Tufts University, says she believes that people who may be in need of additional nutrients, cholesterol-lowering plant sterols or extra fiber should get them through a multivitamin or pill-based supplement. 'The danger with this is that people will add food to their diet, rather than substitute, and then they'll end up consuming more calories, which would not be good,' Dr. Lichtenstein said. Food companies say many people do not like to take pills and find it easier to get nutrients or supplements in a food or a beverage that they may be consuming anyway. But getting people with high cholesterol to buy a cholesterol-lowering cereal or those with constipation to eat more yogurt has proven difficult. Over the last 10 years, many attempts to market functional foods have fallen flat. Marketing experts say Americans crave quick, simple solutions for better health, but they are also wary of big promises that do not ring true. In 1999, the Kellogg Company devoted extensive resources to Ensemble - a line of cereals, cookies, lasagna, frozen entrees and baked potato chips that contained psyllium, a soluble fiber that has been proved to reduce cholesterol - only to take it off the market nine months later because of poor consumer response. Similarly, analysts say that Cadbury Schweppes's 7UP Plus, a soda fortified with calcium and vitamin C and marketed as good for bones, has underperformed relative to other recent soda introductions. Several months ago, the company took out the vitamin C and said it would introduce two new flavors. Lauren Radcliffe, a Cadbury spokeswoman, said that the company remained excited about 7UP Plus and was planning an ad campaign for the first quarter of 2006. Harvey Hartman, chief executive of the Hartman Group, a Seattle consulting firm, said consumers might be likely to respond to health claims for certain foods or beverages, but soda was not one of them. 'Juice, yogurt, cereal, bars, these things make sense,' Mr. Hartman said. 'They're already perceived as being relatively healthy.' Coca-Cola's Minute Maid brand, for instance, has had strong sales for its Heart Wise orange juice with plant sterols. Sales for Heart Wise are up 39 percent over the last year, versus a decline of 3.5 percent for regular Minute Maid juice, according to Information Resources Inc., a marketing information company. Juan Carlos Dalto, chief executive of Dannon, said yogurt was an ideal food for health benefits. 'Yogurt is already perceived as a health product and most people realize that it already has bacterial cultures,' he said. 'With Activia, we're just adding a specific strain that offers a specific benefit.' Dannon's bacteria strain, Bifidus regularis, is part of a class of bacteria that already exists in the digestive systems of most healthy people. The company has sponsored four studies showing that among people who are irregular, consumption of one four-ounce container of Activia yogurt a day leads to as much as a 40 percent reduction in the amount of time it takes food to exit the digestive system. People with constipation or other digestive maladies may have a shortage of beneficial bacteria as a result of improper diet or heavy use of antibiotics, which tend to kill good bacteria along with the bad. 'We are saying that, after two weeks, Activia naturally regulates your digestive system,' said Andreas Ostermayer, Dannon's senior vice president for marketing. Scientists say that healthy bacteria, or probiotics, can be effective in helping to alleviate minor intestinal disorders, but certainly are not a cure-all remedy and may not work for everyone. The yogurt is already a blockbuster product for Groupe Danone in Europe and Asia. The company says sales of the product, which was introduced in France in 1997, have grown by 24 percent a year from 2000 to 2004 and it is now its fastest-growing product, representing 4.1 percent of Groupe Danone's 2004 sales of $16.2 billion. Mr. Ostermayer said that Dannon waited to release the product in the United States until the company had done extensive testing and believed it could get the marketing right. The company spent the last two years doing consumer tests and going to medical conferences to educate doctors about the benefits of probiotic bacteria. The Elations Company is also trying to foster a greater awareness among doctors of its particular ingredients. The company is promoting the findings of a recent arthritis study that was done independently and without involvement from the company. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the government's main vehicle for conducting medical research, showed that glucosamine and chondroitin were effective in treating pain associated with osteoarthritis of the knee. Mr. Hartman, the Seattle consultant, said that while functional foods had always been a great idea, the category is an enigma. 'It hasn't been nearly as successful as people thought it would be,' he said. But Mr. Hartman added that if a manufacturer could crack the code, getting the product and the marketing right, the opportunity to appeal to the millions of Americans looking to food for health solutions was 'huge.'

Subject: Spurring Urban Growth in Vancouver From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 15:52:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/realestate/25nati.html?ex=1293166800&en=47a6f265a79b22f2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Spurring Urban Growth in Vancouver, One Family at a Time By LINDA BAKER Vancouver, British Columbia ELENITA TORRES and her husband, Dean Sherriff, didn't want to leave the city after having children. So about two years ago, the couple bought a two-bedroom, 1,440-square-foot town house in the Coal Harbour neighborhood, one of several waterfront developments that have sprung up in downtown Vancouver over the last few years. 'The area is safe, appealing and convenient,' said Ms. Torres, a Toronto native who owns a company with her husband that produces storyboard and art illustrations for movies. The couple live a few blocks from a large forested park and have enrolled their 5-year-old daughter, Sequoia, in a nearby child care center. They get to meet other families at a community center down the street. 'We have no intentions of moving,' Ms. Torres said. Over the last 10 years, cities across North America have attracted thousands of new residents to revitalized urban areas. Vancouver is no exception. About 40,000 people have moved into the downtown peninsula in the last 15 years; the downtown population is expected to reach 110,000 by 2015. But there is a difference between the urban growth taking place in Vancouver and the development occurring in many American cities. In the United States, many of the new urban residents are young professionals or older, wealthier people whose children are grown. In fact, enrollment in Portland, Ore., and Seattle public schools has dropped by thousands of students because of declining numbers of urban families with children. In Vancouver, the number of children living downtown has doubled since 1990; there are now 5,000 children living in the central core. Last year, the city opened the first new elementary school in an inner-city neighborhood in more than 30 years. 'We have to bus children out of the downtown because of the burgeoning numbers of school-age children,' said Michael Gordon, senior central area planner for Vancouver. 'It's happening more quickly than we expected.' Mr. Gordon, who is making a documentary about children in the city's new high-density neighborhoods, said the urban demographic is a result of ambitious policies established in the late 1980's, after the provincial government sold former Expo '86 world's fair property on the south side of the downtown peninsula to Li Ka-shing, one of Hong Kong's most powerful businessmen. As part of the $277 million deal, the city asked Mr. Li's company, Concord Pacific Developments, to provide an array of public amenities, including child care and community centers, parks, playgrounds and land for schools. Another goal was to set aside 20 percent of the housing units for low-income residents, and 25 percent for family-size units. The city's housing guidelines grew out of concerns that Vancouver was becoming an 'executive city' for the childless rich, Mr. Gordon said. 'As much as real estate is the ethos, there is also a consensus that this is a really important place and we have to do the right thing,' he said. On a recent Friday morning, children in the False Creek North neighborhood, site of the former Expo lands, streamed out of town houses and shimmering green glass residential towers and walked along the sea wall, a heavily used pedestrian and bicycle path, toward Elsie Roy Elementary School, which opened in the fall of 2004 directly on the marina. 'We're at capacity,' said the principal, Isabel Grant. 'It's a fabulous neighborhood.' The school has 330 children enrolled, and there is a waiting list for several grades. The bustling False Creek North community, which features 12-foot-wide sidewalks and double rows of street trees, houses a new Urban Fare grocery store, the Dorothy Lam Children's Center and the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Center, which offers arts, music and sports programs. There is no exterior distinction between affordable and market-rate housing. In one complex, two market-rate residential towers frame a midrise structure with low-income families and seniors. 'You quickly lose sight of the fact that one is market and one is subsidized,' said John B. Davidson, a local architect who helped develop the neighborhood plan. Ellen Clague and Michael Mortensen, who have two young children, live in a two-bedroom condo on the north side of the downtown peninsula. Their cylindrical glass high-rise is walking distance from the seawall, from Coal Harbour Community Center, which is underground and designed to resemble a submarine, and from the 1,000-acre Stanley Park, which features walking, biking and roller-skating trails, water parks, an outdoor swimming pool, several beaches and an aquarium. 'The element of spontaneity, surprise and fun in a city is wonderful for children,' said Ms. Clague, a Y.M.C.A. program coordinator. 'It's a giant cross section of society.' Large numbers of Pacific Rim and Eastern European immigrants, who are accustomed to high-rise living, also fuel Vancouver's downtown market, according to Michael Geller, a developer who managed the 880-unit Bayshore project in Coal Harbour. Most developers accept the 'social engineering' conditions the city has imposed, he said. Mr. Geller's $256 million development included, among other things, a seawall extension, two neighborhood parks and playgrounds, public art and a child care center. He also contributed to the community center and after-school facilities. The development was nonetheless profitable. 'Nobody is losing any money,' said Mr. Geller, who recently put his own three-bedroom Bayshore condo on the market for $1.9 million. Despite the public benefits, downtown Vancouver is not a utopia, residents and planners say. Housing prices are skyrocketing. An 800-square-foot condo sells for around $380,000, and on the water it would be double that, according to Bob Rennie, a local real estate agent. The city's housing guidelines encourage developers to reserve the first eight floors of residential buildings for family-size units and to design these apartments so they overlook outdoor play areas. But parents say the units, mostly two-bedrooms, are too small. 'When you have a boy and a girl, you need three bedrooms,' Ms. Clague said. She also said that the landscaping has not kept pace with the city's child-friendly amenity policy. Her 4-year-old son, Lucas, has toppled into the building's outdoor goldfish pond several times, she said. Mr. Gordon, who helped push for a new skateboard park in False Creek North, said the city also needs to provide more facilities for teenagers. But for many parents, the urban package is still hard to beat. Simon Hill, a magazine editor, enrolls his two children in False Creek Elementary School, which is on the seawall and has views of residential skyscrapers, snowcapped Grouse Mountain and English Bay. 'Just think of the mental landscape the kids are getting,' he said.

Subject: Africa's Brand of Democracy Emerges From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 15:19:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/africa/23uganda.html?ex=1290402000&en=b9846ace421fedc7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 By Fits and Starts, Africa's Brand of Democracy Emerges By MARC LACEY KAMPALA, Uganda - One way of judging the repressive nature of an African president is by standing in the center of that leader's capital city and calling him awful names. By that measure, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda could be worse. He is being called a dictator, a thug, a power-hungry autocrat and even harsher things than that these days, and for the most part he is taking it, not trying to round up or eliminate all those who dare speak ill of him, which has been done in this country in the past. On top of that, Mr. Museveni has been rather adept during his 19 years in power at rebuilding Uganda's tattered economy. He has won widespread praise for his early and activist leadership when it comes to combating AIDS. An erudite man, he speaks passionately of his desire for a modern, robust and, most of all, peaceful Uganda and he sounds very much as if he means it. But Mr. Museveni, billed during President Clinton's administration as one of Africa's new generation of enlightened, democratic leaders, has proved himself something far less grand than that. He and others like him - notably, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Paul Kagame of Rwanda - have disappointed those who were hoping for Western-style democracy to emerge in full flower in 21st-century Africa. But if they have fallen short of that goal - a naïve one, they say - they have succeeded in holding together troubled countries with undeveloped democratic institutions and traditions. If that has occasionally meant resorting to ugly and authoritarian methods, so be it, they say. That's African-style democracy, something the West would not understand. With a long tradition of tyrants in its midst, Africa does seem to have improved its leadership, even as television images from the eastern precincts of the continent recently seem to show a region in crisis. Mr. Museveni, however flawed, is nothing like the murderous Idi Amin or even Milton Obote, another Ugandan strongman of the past. Mr. Meles, Ethiopia's hard-line prime minister, is a far cry from the dictator he ousted, Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mr. Kagame, despite his tight grip on his country, did quell the ethnic slaughter in 1994 that was orchestrated by the government he replaced. But such leaders, promoted by Washington and other Western capitals as Africa's saviors, are increasingly seen as mere mortals. 'I don't think Museveni was ever the leader the world thought he was,' said Proscovia Salaamu Musumba, deputy president of the Forum for Democratic Change, a major Ugandan opposition group. 'It was an illusion.' The corruption is less blatant than it was with their predecessors, most here agree, the jailing of opponents far less prevalent. 'They are better than the ones before, but in their burning desire to remain in power they are the same,' said Ted Dagne, an Africa analyst with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. In what he called 'a policy blunder from which we have yet to recover,' American policy on Africa has focused too much on personalities, Mr. Dagne said. Perhaps the most prominent, and ambiguous, of those personalities is Mr. Museveni. While Uganda is preparing to hold its first multiparty presidential elections since he came to power 20 years ago, the government jailed the country's main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, last week, accusing him of treason. Mr. Besigye returned to Uganda from exile last month to huge enthusiastic crowds and declared himself a candidate for the 2006 elections. Now he is off the campaign trail and in Kampala's maximum security prison. Uganda's press, feisty and independent, frequently earns the wrath of the president, which happens in democracies the world over. But Mr. Museveni sometimes oversteps. His government has demanded that The Monitor, an independent paper, apologize and retract an article suggesting that Mr. Museveni offered the job of army chief to his younger brother, who declined, before settling on someone else. Government sanctions loom if the paper does not comply. The government has also put pressure on the paper to fire a reporter, Andrew Mwenda, who already faces sedition and other charges for reports that got under Mr. Museveni's skin. The police also entered the paper's printing plant the other night, objecting to an advertisement raising money for Mr. Besigye's legal defense. But Uganda at least has an independent press, a far cry from Eritrea, where reporters are in jail or in hiding and no voice other than that of President Isaias Afwerki is heard. He, too, was once one of Washington's favorite sons. African presidencies are no longer the lifetime positions they once were. In Kenya, Mwai Kibaki defeated the ruling party in 2002. In another display, 15 former African heads of state convened in Mali several months back to discuss the important role that retired leaders can play improving Africa from outside of government. Mr. Museveni should be on the verge of joining that group. But with his second and supposedly last term coming to a close, he pushed to have constitutional limits on his tenure lifted, allowing him to run again in elections next year. The question remains whether there is such a thing as African democracy. It's not a complete oxymoron. Rigging elections, while still part of the landscape, is becoming a cause for embarrassment, done surreptitiously. Putting up with criticism and dissent is increasingly seen as part of the job. For every leader who clings to power, there are others who go when it's time to go. Africa's heads of state do face extraordinary challenges, such as the scores or even hundreds of ethnic or tribal groups within their borders, as well as long histories with violent struggle. They have earned the right to define democracy for themselves and their countries - so long as they don't scrap democracy in the process. 'I believe he has been and still is a new generation of leader,' said John Nagenda, a top adviser to Mr. Museveni. 'But the almighty Americans are not going to decide the type of democracy in Uganda, no matter what they label him.'

Subject: Ferry Dispute Tests Ireland's Tolerance From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 13:00:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/business/worldbusiness/27strike.html?ex=1293339600&en=f1add312dd220e3f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Ferry Dispute Tests Ireland's Tolerance for Globalization By BRIAN LAVERY - International Herald Tribune DUBLIN - When nearly 100,000 people took to the streets of Ireland earlier this month to protest the hiring of cheap East European labor for Irish Ferries, they gave voice to old familiar fears about job security that many thought had been forgotten. The last time similar crowds demonstrated here over industrial issues was in 1979, when young people were leaving the country in droves to find work and Ireland's unemployment rate was hovering around 20 percent. These days, the Irish economy is no longer expanding at the double-digit rates of the 1990's, when it was called the Celtic Tiger, but it is still the fastest-growing in Western Europe. The country enjoys nearly full employment. But the outpouring of support for more than 500 unionized workers of Irish Ferries, who will be replaced by new workers, mainly from Latvia, who will work for less than half Ireland's minimum wage, is raising questions about whether the tolerance for globalization that helped bolster the Irish economy is waning. 'We have been a major beneficiary of outsourcing for the last couple of decades,' said Jim Power, chief economist at Friends First, an Irish subsidiary of the Dutch financial services firm Eureko, 'and now people are starting to see that it's a double-edged sword.' Sean Barrett, a professor of economics at Trinity College, Dublin, said, 'The Latvian sailor will become like the Polish plumber in Paris.' He was referring to the bogeyman invoked by French politicians trying to close the labor market to foreign workers. That prospect is starting to worry immigrant support groups, who say the ferry dispute comes at a critical time for newly arrived foreigners in Ireland. Bobby Gilmore, chairman of the Migrant Rights Center, a nonprofit group based in Dublin, said the dispute threatened to damage communities of newcomers trying to settle into a life in Ireland. 'They're beginning to see and understand that they're as vital to the Irish economy as anyone else,' he said. When the European Union expanded last year to include 10 new countries, mostly from the former Soviet bloc, Ireland, along with Britain, proudly kept its doors open to immigrants, while other countries, like France, sought to stem an influx of competitive labor. Of the 96,000 people who entered the Irish work force last year, 40,000 were migrants, mostly from Eastern Europe, according to the government statistics office. Young East Europeans, most of whom are well educated, work at building sites, wait on tables and work cash registers across the country. Up to now, that influx has not caused any local resentment, because the newcomers have not taken Irish jobs. But the tens of thousands of people who marched to the gates of the Irish Parliament were demonstrating because of the perception that that era may be coming to a close. Plans by Irish Ferries, a shipping and passenger ferry company, to register its ships in Cyprus so it can replace its staff with Latvians who will work for 3.60 euros an hour ($4.28), set off a nasty dispute three months ago. Passengers have been repeatedly stranded at sea as sympathetic dockworkers in Ireland and Wales refused to handle Irish Ferries' ships. In a gesture of protest, four crewmen locked themselves inside one ship's cabin three weeks ago, and have been there since. The company sent undercover security officers on board posing as passengers but denied reports it had considered using tear gas against employees who refused to leave the boats. The movement was reminiscent of a labor dispute in France in October that raised protests among unionized ferry workers and garnered the support of the French public, already concerned about high unemployment and outsourcing. The government's effort to privatize SNCM Ferries, which would have resulted in laying off about a fourth of its 2,400 employees, ended with a compromise that left the French state with a 25 percent stake in the company. As the ferry dispute unfolded in Ireland, it began to generate widespread public sympathy for Irish workers. Thousands of people lined the protest route earlier this month to applaud the demonstrators - a show of support that union activists said they had never seen before. Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who is known as a skilled negotiator in labor disputes, condemned Irish Ferries' decision as 'deplorable.' But unions are concerned that public support may be for the wrong reasons. 'The sad thing is that some of it may be racist,' said Paul Smyth, the docks and marine branch secretary for the largest Irish union, Siptu, which is in negotiations with Irish Ferries. 'That's a huge issue of concern.' Mr. Gilmore said he feared that migrants in other industries, and in Ireland's growing black-market economy, would suffer worsening conditions if Irish Ferries successfully employed cheap labor from Latvia, and if other employers were tempted to follow its lead. Mr. Barrett, the economics professor, said: 'We've let the racist genie out of the bottle. It can create a lot of trouble, and we haven't seen it before.' The dispute may also have implications for Ireland's 20-year-old 'social partnership' model of industrial relations, which uses broad pacts among unions, employers' groups and the government to guarantee modest annual wage increases in return for promises to refrain from the strikes that often cripple other European countries. The pact expires next year, but Siptu said it would not negotiate a new deal if the Irish Ferries situation was not resolved. 'Social partnership seems to have come up short,' Mr. Power, of Friends First, said. 'This dispute does not send out very positive signals about the industrial relations climate in this country.'

Subject: 35 and Pregnant? Assessing Risk From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 11:58:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27brod.html December 27, 2005 35 and Pregnant? Assessing Risk Becomes Easier By JANE E. BRODY Dawn will be 35 when her first child is born in April. Based on her age alone, she has 1 chance in 270 that her fetus has Down syndrome, a genetic defect caused by an extra chromosome that results in mental retardation and other problems. In recent decades, many thousands of older women have been offered the option of having an invasive test - amniocentesis, or more recently chorionic villus sampling, known as C.V.S. - to find out for sure whether their babies would be born with the syndrome. The tests are costly and can sometimes result in miscarriage, not a happy outcome for any woman who wants a baby, let alone an older woman who may have tried for years to become pregnant. But Dawn, who lives in Brooklyn, did not have to rely on age alone to decide whether to have an invasive test to determine the likelihood that her baby would be free of this serious abnormality. Testing Blood and Sound Instead, in the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy, she had three noninvasive tests, an ultrasound of the fetus and two blood tests. A third blood test, in the second trimester, showed a drastically reduced risk of Down syndrome, 1 in 9,000. 'With such a low risk, I'm not going to have amniocentesis,' Dawn said. For older pregnant women who would consider aborting a fetus with Down syndrome, noninvasive screening is fast becoming standard care in gynecological practices. And it now appears that such screening can be completed with great accuracy in the first trimester, before anyone other than the woman, her partner and her physician need know that she is pregnant. Based on a newly published study of more than 38,000 pregnant women, 117 of whom had a fetus with Down syndrome, a combination of three noninvasive tests conducted at 11 to 13 weeks of gestation was 87 percent accurate in predicting the presence of the syndrome in the fetus. The tests are an ultrasound evaluation of the thickness of the fetal neck, called nuchal translucency, and two blood tests, pregnancy-associated plasma protein A, or PAPP-A, and beta human chorionic gonadotropin, or H.C.G. Adding a second ultrasound of the fetal nasal bone may push the accuracy of these tests even higher, according to an editorial accompanying a report last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. These are indeed exciting findings, especially since many more women are now delaying pregnancy into their mid-30's and beyond, when the risk of Down syndrome increases exponentially. For those women who would consider aborting an affected fetus, the opportunity to assess the risk of Down by noninvasive tests early in pregnancy can be so reassuring that most would willingly forgo the riskier invasive procedures. In the editorial, Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson of the departments of obstetrics and gynecology and molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston recounted the progress in prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. In the 1970's, all that was available for prenatal screening was amniocentesis, a procedure done at about 18 weeks gestation in which a small sample of amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus is removed by a large needle inserted through the woman's abdomen. Fetal cells in the fluid are then analyzed for a possible chromosomal abnormality, a process that takes up to two weeks. A Second-Trimester Decision If an abnormality is found, the woman can choose to have a second-trimester abortion, which is physically and emotionally more traumatic than one performed earlier in pregnancy. In the 1980's, researchers established that certain blood tests in the second trimester could predict the risk of Down syndrome in the fetus and thus enable many women to avoid having amniocentesis. These tests measured alpha-fetoprotein, or AFP; a hormone called unconjugated estriol; and H.C.G. in a woman's blood. Later, a fourth blood test for inhibin A improved the ability to predict the presence of the syndrome. Taken together, the results of these tests provided a risk estimate that could be higher or lower, often much lower, than that based solely on a woman's age. But the goal was earlier determination of risk and, as Dr. Simpson wrote, 'a dazzling series of noninvasive screening options for trisomy 21,' the extra chromosome causing the defect, emerged. In the first trimester, an ultrasound exam that measured fetal nuchal translucency and maternal blood tests for PAPP-A and H.C.G. were shown to be effective in estimating the risk of Down syndrome. Detection rates above 80 percent of affected fetuses were demonstrated using these first-trimester tests. One major study of 44,613 pregnancies, directed by Dr. K. H. Nicolaides and published last year in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, found a detection rate of 87 percent using measures of nuchal translucency, PAPP-A and H.C.G. Adding the absence or presence of the fetal nasal bone increased the detection rate to 97 percent, with 5 percent of the women undergoing an invasive procedure. More Effective Testing The new study compared the accuracy of first-trimester screening with that of second-trimester screening and a combination of both. It found that screening at 11 weeks of gestation was 87 percent accurate, and more accurate than screening one or two weeks later. The most accurate prediction, 96 percent, occurred when the tests at 11 weeks were combined with four noninvasive tests in the second trimester. Thus, the detection rate associated with tests in the second trimester was really no better than what Dr. Nicolaides and others found with first-trimester screening, which can result in many fewer invasive tests and allow for safer, earlier terminations of affected pregnancies. Of course, for a woman who wants to know for sure in her first trimester that her fetus is free of the syndrome, chorionic villus sampling can be done at about 10 or 11 weeks of gestation or, if she is further along in her pregnancy, she can have amniocentesis at 16 weeks. As Dr. Simpson said, 'In experienced hands, neither procedure seems to be as risky as once thought.' So, women whose risk of having a child with Down syndrome is high based on the noninvasive tests - as well as those seeking certainty about the absence of this genetic defect regardless of their risk- can be less concerned about miscarriages resulting from C.V.S. or amniocentesis. There are even better options on the horizon, Dr. Simpson said. Under study now is the ability to examine the fetal chromosomes in cells found in the woman's blood or in fetal cells shed into her cervix. Such studies would provide definitive evidence of the presence or absence not only of Down, but also of other genetic disorders that might run in the family. Such determinations could be made from only one noninvasive test and without having to do a single invasive one. As a result of such progress, women who will be 35 or older when their babies are born and who are willing to consider abortion could obtain a high level of reassurance by having noninvasive tests in their first trimester. Most important to the accuracy of this risk assessment is having the ultrasound exam done with the most modern equipment by a highly skilled sonographer who is experienced at measuring nuchal translucency. Even better would be a sonographer who could reliably determine the presence of a nasal bone in the fetus.

Subject: Heat for Taking Mexico as Client From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 09:06:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/business/media/28adco.html?ex=1293426000&en=2b3a510ae0419548&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 Republican Strategist Is Taking Heat for Taking Mexico as Client By SIMON ROMERO DALLAS - Rob Allyn, the political consultant, meet Rob Allyn, the punching bag. A longtime Republican strategist, Mr. Allyn has found himself in the cross hairs of conservative critics in the last week after signing a contract with Mexico's foreign ministry to lead a campaign to strengthen the country's image in the United States. A CNN anchor asked Mr. Allyn whether Mexico was 'dabbling in U.S. policy' by hiring him as a marketer. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, describing Mexico as a 'corrupt, chaotic country' with 40 percent unemployment (it is closer to 4 percent) told him in another interview that he had his work cut out for him. Then protesters here in Dallas, where Mr. Allyn lives, held a news conference in front of the Mexican Consulate to assert that Mexico's government would have done better by hiring a Mexican-American firm. Allyn & Company is a unit of Fleishmann-Hillard, the public relations concern, itself part of the Omnicom Group, the international marketing company. 'I've had friends say on this latest one, should I congratulate you or extend condolences,' Mr. Allyn, 46, said in an interview at his office. Making news, rather than helping to shape it, is not what Mr. Allyn wants to do. Public relations consultants try to remain in the shadows. Perhaps that is impossible when the issue is as emotion-filled as immigration after the approval this month of a bill in the House of Representatives. That bill requires mandatory detention of many undocumented illegal immigrants, stiffer penalties for employers who hire them and a broadening of the immigrant-smuggling statute to include employees of social service agencies and church groups that offer services to undocumented workers. It also calls for building 700 miles of fence along the border with Mexico. Even some of the bill's supporters acknowledge that its requirements, once considered on the extreme fringe of the immigration debate, will make approval difficult in the Senate. Mr. Allyn's contract, worth about $720,000 over the next year, calls for him to represent Mexico in the United States in meetings with nongovernmental organizations; through polling and organizing tours of Mexican officials; and potentially with a small amount of advertising. Paramount among the Mexican government's concerns these days is fighting anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. More than 10 million undocumented immigrants live in this country, according to a recent report by the Pew Hispanic Center. Nearly 500,000 undocumented immigrants, most of them from Mexico, have moved to the United States each year since 2000, the Pew study said. The latest contract has a much higher profile than Mr. Allyn's last big foray into Mexican politics, in 2000, when he quietly helped orchestrate the campaign of President Vicente Fox. Attuned to sensitivities in Mexico over the involvement of foreigners in the country's elections, Mr. Allyn traveled to Mexico under pseudonyms like José de Murga and Alberto Aguirre to advise Mr. Fox on polling, wardrobe and speeches. Since then, Mr. Allyn has branched out to work on campaigns in other countries. He counts among his clients the Golkar Party in Indonesia; the prime minister of the Bahamas, Perry Christie; and, most recently, Dumarsais Siméus, the Haitian-born Texas millionaire who aspires to be elected president of Haiti. Mr. Allyn said most of his foreign political work is a result of his Republican contacts in Texas, where he did political consulting work for President Bush while he was governor of Texas, as well as worked for prominent Democrats like Mayor Laura Miller of Dallas and Mayor Bill White of Houston. Mr. Allyn is also co-chairman of Vox Global Mandate, a venture with other Omnicom companies, including GMMB and Mercury Public Affairs, to provide services from both Republican and Democratic strategists for political clients around the world. Still, none of his other campaigns generated as much controversy as his latest contract in Mexico. 'I know people roll their eyes and say the last thing we need to export from this country is spin,' said Mr. Allyn, a former writer, sitting next to a cutout from a magazine article describing him as Mexico's 'go-to gringo' in Texas. 'But everything you see there,' said Mr. Allyn, pointing to the skyline of downtown Dallas outside his window, 'was built largely by Mexican immigrants.' Few states have a Hispanic immigrant population as robust as Texas's. The United States Census Bureau said this year that Anglos make up less than half of the Texas population for the first time in more than a century, after a surge in the state's Hispanic population. Yet in Texas, Mr. Allyn said, a less-hostile view of immigration from Mexico generally holds sway because of a perception of interdependent economic ties with Mexico. He said one of his objectives would be educating people in other parts of the United States - particularly in nonborder states with fast-growing Mexican populations - about the economic importance of Mexico. After all, Mr. Allyn said, Mexico ranks ahead of Japan, China and Germany and behind only Canada as a trading partner with the United States. The most pressing part of his campaign may be dealing with an emerging schism in the Republican Party over immigration. Congressmen like Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia threaten to drown out the administration's guest-worker plan with proposals to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States. 'The conservative movement I signed up for stood for tearing walls down, not building them,' Mr. Allyn said. Many people in Mexico find it hard to comprehend how the debate over immigration has progressed to such a level. And amid the firestorm over Mr. Allyn's contract, there is a feeling among some Hispanics in the United States that their voice on the immigration debate has been shunted aside by political leaders in Washington and Mexico City. 'You don't promote Mexico by giving a contract to a friend who helped get you elected six years ago,' said Carlos Quintanilla, a Dallas entrepreneur who has publicly criticized Mr. Allyn's deal with Mexico's foreign ministry. 'You don't need an Anglo to advance Mexico's interests in the United States. It's a regression and a disconnect.' Shrugging, Mr. Allyn said he was steeling himself for more criticism. 'All I can say is that I'm working on my Spanish as hard as I can,' he said.

Subject: Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 08:44:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/health/27canc.html?ex=1293339600&en=302dc7e6ec8c6570&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Slowly, Cancer Genes Tender Their Secrets By GINA KOLATA Jay Weinstein found out that he had chronic myelogenous leukemia in 1996, two weeks before his marriage. He was a New York City firefighter, and he thought his health was great. He learned that there was little hope for a cure. The one treatment that could save him was a bone marrow transplant, but that required a donor, and he did not have one. By 1999, his disease was nearing its final, fatal phase. He might have just weeks to live. Then, Mr. Weinstein had a stroke of luck. He managed to become one of the last patients to enroll in a preliminary study at the Oregon Health & Science University, testing an experimental drug. Mr. Weinstein is alive today and still taking the drug, now on the market as Gleevec. Its maker, Novartis, supplies it to him free because he participated in the clinical trial. Dr. Brian Druker, a Howard Hughes investigator at the university's Cancer Institute, who led the Gleevec study, sees Mr. Weinstein as a pioneer in a new frontier of science. His treatment was based not on blasting cancer cells with harsh chemotherapy or radiation but instead on using a sort of molecular razor to cut them out. That, Dr. Druker and others say, is the first fruit of a new understanding of cancer as a genetic disease. But if cancer is a genetic disease, it is like no other in medicine. With cancer, a person may inherit a predisposition that helps set the process off, but it can take decades - even a lifetime - to accumulate the additional mutations needed to establish a tumor. That is why, scientists say, cancer usually strikes older people and requires an element of bad luck. 'You have to get mutations in the wrong place at the wrong time,' Dr. Druker says. Other genetic diseases may involve one or two genetic changes. In cancer, scores of genes are mutated or duplicated and huge chunks of genetic material are rearranged. With cancer cells, said Dr. William Hahn, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, 'it looks like someone has thrown a bomb in the nucleus.' In other genetic diseases, gene alterations disable cells. In cancer, genetic changes give cells a sort of superpower. At first, as scientists grew to appreciate the complexity of cancer genetics, they despaired. 'If there are 100 genetic abnormalities, that's 100 things you need to fix to cure cancer,' said Dr. Todd Golub, the director of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass., and an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. 'That's a horrifying thought.' Making matters more complicated, scientists discovered that the genetic changes in one patient's tumor were different from those in another patient with the same type of cancer. That led to new questioning. Was every patient going to be a unique case? Would researchers need to discover new drugs for every single patient? 'People said, 'It's hopelessly intractable and too complicated a problem to ever figure out,' ' Dr. Golub recalled. But to their own amazement, scientists are now finding that untangling the genetics of cancer is not impossible. In fact, they say, what looked like an impenetrable shield protecting cancer cells turns out to be flimsy. And those seemingly impervious cancer cells, Dr. Golub said, 'are very much poised to die.' The story of genes and cancer, like most in science, involves many discoveries over many years. But in a sense, it has its roots in the 1980's, with a bold decision by Dr. Bert Vogelstein of Johns Hopkins University to piece together the molecular pathways that lead to cancer. It was a time when the problem looked utterly complicated. Scientists thought that cancer cells were so abnormal that they were, as Dr. Vogelstein put it, 'a total black box.' But Dr. Vogelstein had an idea: what if he started with colon cancer, which had some unusual features that made it more approachable? Colon cancer progresses through recognizable phases. It changes from a tiny polyp, or adenoma - a benign overgrowth of cells on the wall of the colon - to a larger polyp, a pre-cancerous growth that, Dr. Vogelstein said, looks 'mean,' and then to a cancer that pushes through the wall of the colon. The final stage is metastasis, when the cancer travels through the body. 'This series of changes is thought to occur in most cancers, but there aren't many cancers where you can get specimens that represent all these stages,' Dr. Vogelstein said. With colon cancer, pathologists could get tissue by removing polyps and adenomas in colonoscopies and taking cancerous tumors in surgery. Colon cancer was even more appealing for such a study because there are families with strong inherited predispositions to develop the disease, indicating that they have cancer genes that may be discovered. So Dr. Vogelstein and his colleagues set out to search for genes 'any way we could,' Dr. Vogelstein said. Other labs found genes, too, and by the mid-1990's, scientists had a rough outline of what was going on. Although there were scores of mutations and widespread gene deletions and rearrangements, it turned out that the crucial changes that turned a colon cell cancerous involved just five pathways. There were dozens of ways of disabling those pathways, but they were merely multiple means to the same end. People with inherited predispositions to colon cancer started out with a gene mutation that put their cells on one of those pathways. A few more random mutations and the cells could become cancerous. The colon cancer story, Dr. Druker said, 'is exactly the paradigm we need for every single cancer at every single stage.' But scientists were stymied. Where should they go from there? How did what happens in colon cancer apply to other cancers? If they had to repeat the colon cancer story every time, discovering genetic alterations in each case, it would take decades to make any progress. The turning point came only recently, with the advent of new technology. Using microarrays, or gene chips - small slivers of glass or nylon that can be coated with all known human genes - scientists can now discover every gene that is active in a cancer cell and learn what portions of the genes are amplified or deleted. With another method, called RNA interference, investigators can turn off any gene and see what happens to a cell. And new methods of DNA sequencing make it feasible to start asking what changes have taken place in what gene. The National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute recently announced a three-year pilot project to map genetic aberrations in cancer cells. The project, Dr. Druker said, is 'the first step to identifying all the Achilles' heels in cancers.' Solving the problem of cancer will not be trivial, Dr. Golub said. But, he added, 'For the first time, we have the tools needed to attack the problem, and if we as a research community come together to work out the genetic basis of cancer, I think it will forever change how we think about the disease.' Already, the principles are in place, scientists say. What is left are the specifics: the gene alterations that could be targets for drugs. 'We're close to being able to put our arms around the whole cancer problem,' said Robert Weinberg, a biology professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of the Whitehead Institute. 'We've completed the list of all cancer cells needed to create a malignancy,' Dr. Weinberg said. 'And I wouldn't have said that five years ago.' The list includes roughly 10 pathways that cells use to become cancerous and that involve a variety of crucial genetic alterations. There are genetic changes that end up spurring cell growth and others that result in the jettisoning of genes that normally slow growth. There are changes that allow cells to keep dividing, immortalizing them, and ones that allow cells to live on when they are deranged; ordinarily, a deranged cell kills itself. Still other changes let cancer cells recruit normal tissue to support and to nourish them. And with some changes, Dr. Weinberg said, cancer cells block the immune system from destroying them. In metastasis, he added, when cancers spread, the cells activate genes that normally are used only in embryo development, when cells migrate, and in wound healing. But so many genetic changes give rise to a question: how does a cell acquire them? In any cell division, there is a one-in-a-million chance that a mutation will accidentally occur, Dr. Weinberg notes. The chance of two mutations is one in a million million and the chance of three is one in a million million million million. This slow mutation rate results from the fact that healthy cells quickly repair damage to their DNA. 'DNA repair stands as the dike between us and the inundation of mutations,' Dr. Weinberg said. But one of the first things a cell does when it starts down a road to cancer is to disable repair mechanisms. In fact, BRCA1 and 2, the gene mutations that predispose people to breast and ovarian cancer, as well as some other inherited cancer genes, disable these repair systems. Once the mutations start, there is 'a kind of snowball effect, like a chain reaction,' Dr. Vogelstein said. With the first mutations, cells multiply, producing clusters of cells with genetic changes. As some randomly acquire additional mutations, they grow even more. In the end, all those altered genes may end up being the downfall of cancer cells, researchers say. 'Cancer cells have many Achilles' heels,' Dr. Golub says. 'It may take a couple of dozen mutations to cause a cancer, all of which are required for the maintenance and survival of the cancer cell.' Gleevec, researchers say, was the first test of this idea. The drug knocks out a gene product, abl kinase, that is overly abundant in chronic myelogenous leukemia. The first clinical trial, which began seven years ago, seemed like a long shot. 'The idea that this would lead to therapy was something you wrote in your grant application,' said Dr. Charles Sawyers, a Howard Hughes investigator at the University of California, Los Angeles. 'It wasn't anything you believed would happen soon.' But the clinical trial of Gleevec, conducted at the Oregon Health & Science University, U.C.L.A. and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was a spectacular success. Patients' cancer cells were beaten back to such an extent that the old tests to look for them in bone marrow were too insensitive, Dr. Sawyers said. Gleevec is not perfect. It is expensive, costing about $25,000 a year. It is not a cure: some cancer cells remain lurking, quiescent and ready to spring if the drug is stopped, so patients must take it every day for the rest of their lives. And some patients are now developing resistance to Gleevec. Still, Dr. Sawyers says, 'Seven years later, most of our patients are still doing well.' Without Gleevec, he added, most would be dead. As for the future of cancer therapy, Dr. Golub and others say that Gleevec offers a taste of the possible. Dr. Golub said he expected that new drugs would strike the Achilles' heels of particular cancers. The treatment will not depend on where the cancer started - breast, colon, lung - but rather which pathway is deranged. 'It's starting to come into focus how one might target the problem,' Dr. Golub said. 'Individual cancers are going to fall one by one by targeting the molecular abnormalities that underlie them.' And some cancer therapies may have to be taken for a lifetime, turning cancer into a chronic disease. 'Seeing cancer become more like what has happened with AIDS would not be shocking,' Dr. Golub says. 'Does that mean cure? Not necessarily. We may see patients treated until they die of something else.' That is what Mr. Weinstein hopes will happen with him. The cancer is still there: new, exquisitely sensitive tests still find a few cells lurking in his bone marrow. And Gleevec has caused side effects. Mr. Weinstein says his fingers and toes sometimes freeze for a few seconds, and sometimes he gets diarrhea. But, he said, 'Certain things you put out of your mind because life is so good.'

Subject: Past Hot Times From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 07:13:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/earth/27warm.html December 27, 2005 Past Hot Times Hold Few Reasons to Relax About New Warming By ANDREW C. REVKIN Earth scientists with the longest frames of reference, particularly those whose specialties begin with the prefix 'paleo,' often seem to be the least agitated about human-caused global warming. This has been true even in 2005, a year that saw the biggest summer retreat of Arctic sea ice ever measured, a new sign that warming seas are rising at an accelerating pace and global temperatures continuing a sharp climb that began around 1990 and appears unmatched in 2,000 years. But these backward-looking experts have seen it all before. Recent studies have found that 49 million years ago the balmy Arctic Ocean, instead of being covered in ice, was matted with a cousin of the duckweed that cloaks suburban frog ponds. The forests on the continent now called Antarctica and on shores fringing the Arctic were once thick and lush. And through hundreds of millions of years, concentrations of carbon dioxide and the other trace gases that trap solar energy and prevent the planet from being an ice ball have mostly been far higher than those typical during humankind's short existence. Compared with that norm, the rapid buildup of carbon dioxide now from a binge of burning forests, coal and oil lasting for centuries (and counting) is but a blip In fact, the planet has nothing to worry about from global warming. A hot, steamy earth would be fine for most forms of life. Earth and its biological veneer are far more resilient than human societies, particularly those still mired in poverty or pushed to the margins of the livable. Only we humans have to be concerned, and species like polar bears that, like the poorest people, are pushed to an edge - in the bear's case the tenuous ecosystem built around coastal sea ice. Henk Brinkhuis, a paleoecologist and botanist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said it might be hard to get used to the idea, but the Arctic as we have known it for centuries 'is history.' He said this may spell doom for polar bears, a species that branched off from brown bears only about 250,000 years ago - an evolutionary blink of the eye. Still, this is a special case, not necessarily a blow to the prospects of mammals in general. The world's last huge warm spike, the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum some 55 million years ago, preceded 'the biggest radiation in mammals ever,' Dr. Brinkhuis said. 'The first horses, cows, the first primates had their origin right around then,' Dr. Brinkhuis said. 'It may be that the extinction of the polar bear would be followed by all kinds of new species in return.' None of this means that humans should simply embrace their fossil-fueled potency without regard to the effects. In fact, many scientists say, if we value the world as it is, there are still strong, and purely self-serving, reasons to start curbing releases of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases. That long-scale earth history, while speaking of nature's vagaries, holds supporting evidence. It is rife with thresholds, points at which a little warming turns into a lot in a hurry. Avoiding such thresholds could forestall things that societies decide matter, like rapidly rising seas or a farewell to cherished Arctic icons. The Arctic, particularly, is filled with what amount to flippable climate switches, including natural repositories of carbon, like boggy tundra, that could emit vast amounts of greenhouse gases should the current warming trend pass certain points, said Jonathan T. Overpeck, the director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. This could amplify warming and take the climate into a realm beyond anything experienced through human evolution. Another lesson of deep planetary history, Dr. Overpeck said, is that, once set in motion, such warm-ups can happen fast and then last a very, very long time. 'That's a condition that might be really hard to get out of for tens of thousands of years,' he said. Studies of the past also show that pace matters. The rise in temperature and greenhouse gases during the great heat wave 55 million years ago, while instantaneous on a geological time scale, took thousands of years to unfold. But the pace of the recent rise in carbon dioxide is as much as 200 times as fast as what has been estimated in past rapid climate transitions. Slowing that pace would help human endeavors as much as ecosystems, said David G. Barber, who holds the Canada research chair in Arctic systems science at the University of Manitoba. Those who speak of the potential benefits of warming, he noted, forget that a thawing, greening Arctic, for example, will not suddenly transform from spongy tundra to wheat-friendly farmland. 'You have to generate soil,' Dr. Barber said. 'It takes a long time to generate this kind of stuff. So it's not going to be an instantaneous sort of thing. There's going to be a lot of messiness in between.' Even for polar bears, there are reasons to think the end is not necessarily nigh. There was at least one significant period - the last gap between ice ages 120,000 years ago - when the global climate was several degrees warmer than it is today and they clearly squeaked through. So at least slowing or blunting the warming might allow them to squeak through once again. Dr. Barber said he was confident that biology would endure much of what humans throw at it. His concern is for the effects on people and the things they rely on or cherish. 'All of global warming has nothing to do with the planet,' Dr. Barber said. 'The planet will go on through its normal cycles, and it'll do its own thing. 'It only has to do with us - as people. Our economic side of things and our political side of things are really what are being affected by climate change. The planet could care less.'

Subject: Psychotherapy on the Road to ... Where? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:28:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27ther.html?ex=1293339600&en=a24a6dc3d375ea19&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Psychotherapy on the Road to ... Where? By BENEDICT CAREY ANAHEIM, Calif. - The small car careered toward a pile of barrels labeled 'Danger TNT,' then turned sharply, ramming through a mock brick wall and into a dark tunnel. A light appeared ahead, coming fast and head-on. A locomotive whistled. 'Uh-oh,' said one of the passengers, Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist and a pioneer in the study of positive emotions. But in a moment, the car scudded safely under the light, out through the swinging doors of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and into the warm, clear light that seemed to radiate from the Southern California pavement. 'Well,' Dr. Seligman said. 'I don't know that I expected to be doing that.' One of several prominent therapists who agreed to visit Disneyland at the invitation of this reporter, Dr. Seligman was here in mid-December for a conference on the state of psychotherapy, its current challenges and its future. And a wild ride it was. Because it was clear at this landmark meeting that, although the participants agreed it was a time for bold action, psychotherapists were deeply divided over whether that action should be guided by the cool logic of science or a spirit of humanistic activism. The answer will determine not only what psychotherapy means, many experts said, but its place in the 21st century. 'In the 1960's and 1970's, we had these characters like Carl Rogers, Minuchin, Frankl; psychotherapy felt like a social movement, and you just wanted to be a part of it,' said Dr. Jeffrey Zeig, a psychologist who heads the Milton H. Erickson Foundation, which every five years since 1980 has sponsored the conference in honor of Dr. Erickson, a pioneer in the use of hypnosis and brief therapy techniques. 'Now,' Dr. Zeig continued, 'well, therapists are becoming more like technicians, and we're trying to find the common denominator from the different schools and methods to see what works best, and where to go from here.' The meeting brought together some 9,000 psychologists, social workers and students, along with many of the world's most celebrated living therapists, among them the psychoanalyst Dr. Otto Kernberg, the Hungarian-born psychiatrist and skeptic Dr. Thomas Szasz, and Dr. Albert Bandura, the pioneer in self-directed behavior change. 'This is like a rock concert for most of us,' said Peggy Fitzgerald, 56, a social worker and teacher from Sacramento, holding up a program covered in autographs. Ms. Fitzgerald said she attended war protests during the 1960's, and 'this has some of that same feeling.' Calls to arms rang through several conference halls. In the opening convocation, Dr. Hunter 'Patch' Adams - the charismatic therapist played on screen by Robin Williams - displayed on a giant projection screen photos from around the world of burned children, starving children, diseased children, some lying in their own filth. He called for a 'last stand of loving care' to prevail over the misery in the world, its wars and 'our fascistic government.' Overcome by his own message, Dr. Adams eventually fell to the floor of the stage in tears. Many in the audience of thousands were deeply moved; many others were bewildered. Some left the arena. At the conference, many said they found it heartening that psychotherapy was finding some scientific support. For example, cognitive therapy, in which people learn practical thought-management techniques to dispel self-defeating assumptions and soothe anxieties, has proved itself in many studies. The therapy, some participants said, has even attracted the attention of the Nobel Committee. The two men who developed it, Dr. Albert Ellis, a psychologist in New York, and Dr. Aaron Beck, a psychiatrist at the University of Pennsylvania, brought crowds to their feet. A frequent theme of the meeting was that therapists could not only relieve anxieties and despair but help clients realize a truly fulfilling life - an idea based on emerging research. In his talk, Dr. Seligman spelled out the principles of this vision, called positive psychology. By learning to express gratitude, to savor the day's pleasures and to nurture native strengths, a people can become more absorbed in their daily lives and satisfied with them, his research has suggested. A just-completed study at the University of Pennsylvania found that these techniques relieved the symptoms of depression better than other widely applied therapies, Dr. Seligman told the audience. 'The zeit is really geisting on this idea right now,' said Dr. Seligman, who has consulted with the military on how to incorporate his methods. Dr. Dan Siegel, a child psychiatrist at the University of California, Los Angeles, was one of several speakers to emphasize how psychotherapy changes the wiring of the brain. For example, he said, brain imaging findings suggest that secure social interactions foster the integration of disparate parts of the brain. 'When I'm telling you my feelings, discussing memories, in this close relationship, I'm achieving better neurological integration,' Dr. Siegel said. 'I'm repairing the connections in the brain.' Many therapists at the conference said that if the field did not incorporate more scientifically testable principles, its future was bleak. Using vague, unstandardized methods to assist troubled clients 'should be prosecutable' in some cases, said Dr. Marsha Linehan of the University of Washington, who has developed a well-studied method of treating suicidal patients. Yet it was also apparent in several demonstrations of the spellbinding thing itself - artful psychotherapy - that some things will be difficult, if not impossible, to standardize. Dr. Donald Meichenbaum, research director of the Melissa Institute for Violence Prevention and Treatment in Miami, showed a film of the first session he conducted with a woman who was suicidal months after witnessing her boyfriend die in a traffic accident. After gently prompting her to talk about the accident, Dr. Meichenbaum then zeroed in on something he had noticed when the woman entered his office: she was clutching a cassette tape. He asked about the tape and learned that it was a recording of her late boyfriend's voice, expressing love for her. 'I play it over and over, and it makes me so depressed,' said the woman, in a tiny voice. And here Dr. Meichenbaum stopped the film and addressed the audience. 'The tape!' he said. 'When during the session do you go for the cassette tape? What do you do with the tape?' For several long moments not a creature stirred, not even a laptop mouse. This community of therapists was now trying to save a soul, a person who was alone and did not want to live. What to do with the tape? 'Consider between now and the next time I see you, in two days, consider whether you would be willing to play the tape,' Dr. Meichenbaum went on to say he had told the woman. 'I would be privileged and honored' to hear it. 'Why?' he now asked, turning to the audience. 'Because it not only increases the likelihood she'll return but empowers her to come back' and take an active role in therapy. Which is exactly what she did, he said. 'Now, is any research study ever going to tell you exactly the right thing to do when your client comes in with a tape of her dead lover's voice?' Dr. Meichenbaum asked. Most of the audience of more than 1,000 people wandered out of the talk wide-eyed. One, Terrina Picarello, 40, a marriage and family therapist from Greensboro, N.C., said, 'That is what you come for: inspiration.' Ms. Picarello said that the conference was well worth the money she spent, more than $800 in fees and travel, and the week she had taken off to attend, even though she found some of the presentations on marriage counseling disappointing. 'Way too much talking by the therapist, I thought,' she said, after one of them. 'It seemed so old-fashioned, like it was drawn from another era.' And there was the rub. As psychotherapy struggles to define itself for an age of podcasts and terror alerts, it will need ideas, thinkers, leaders. Yet the luminaries here, many of whom rose to prominence three decades ago, were making their way off the stage. And it was not clear who, or what, would take their place. Across the street at Disneyland, where just about any metaphor is available for the taking, Dr. Siegel was working out the meaning of the park for himself. A native of Los Angeles, he has many memories of visiting as a child, perhaps nowhere more so than the circular drive in front of Sleeping Beauty's Castle. 'The circle of choice,' he said, looking around. 'This is where you decide, where you think about your mood and which way you want to go - to Frontierland, Tomorrowland.' By all appearances in Anaheim, the field of psychotherapy has arrived at the circle of choice. The question is, How to get to Tomorrowland?

Subject: The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:26:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01/science/01eins.html?ex=1267851600&en=255ed5ddf8734523&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland March 1, 2005 The Next Einstein? Applicants Welcome By DENNIS OVERBYE He didn't look like much at first. He was too fat and his head was so big his mother feared it was misshapen or damaged. He didn't speak until he was well past 2, and even then with a strange echolalia that reinforced his parents' fears. He threw a small bowling ball at his little sister and chased his first violin teacher from the house by throwing a chair at her. There was in short, no sign, other than the patience to build card houses 14 stories high, that little Albert Einstein would grow up to be 'the new Copernicus,' proclaiming a new theory of nature, in which matter and energy swapped faces, light beams bent, the stars danced and space and time were as flexible and elastic as bubblegum. No clue to suggest that he would help send humanity lurching down the road to the atomic age, with all its promise and dread, with the stroke of his pen on a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, certainly no reason to suspect that his image would be on T- shirts, coffee mugs, posters and dolls. Einstein's modest beginnings are a perennial source of comfort to parents who would like to hope, against the odds, that their little cutie can grow up to be a world beater. But they haunt people like me who hanker for a ringside seat for the Next Great Thing and wonder whether somewhere in the big haystack of the world there could be a new Einstein, biding his or her time running gels in a biology lab, writing video game software or wiring a giant detector in the bowels of a particle accelerator while putting the finishing touches on a revolution in our perception of reality. 'Einstein changed the way physicists thought about the universe in a way the public could appreciate,' said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist from the University of Chicago and the director of math and physical sciences at the National Science Foundation. Could it happen again? 'Who or where is the next Einstein?' No question is more likely to infuriate or simply leave a scientist nonplussed. And nothing, of course, would be more distracting, daunting and ultimately demoralizing than for some young researcher to be tagged 'the new Einstein,' so don't expect to hear any names here. 'It's probably always a stupid question,' said Dr. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist at Case Western Reserve University, who nevertheless said he had yet to read a profile of a young scientist that does not include, at some level, some comparison to Einstein. Dr. Stephen Hawking, the British cosmologist and best-selling author, who is often so mentioned, has said that such comparisons have less to do with his own achievements than the media's need for heroes. A Rare Confluence To ask the question whether there can be a new Einstein is to ask, as well, about the role of the individual in modern science. Part of the confusion is a disconnect between what constitutes public and scientific fame. Einstein's iconic status resulted from a unique concurrence of scientific genius, historical circumstance and personal charisma, historians and scientists say, that is unlikely to be duplicated. Dr. David Gross, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics last year, said, 'Of course there is no next Einstein; one of the great things about meeting the best and the brightest in physics is the realization that each is different and special.' Physics, many scientists like Dr. Gross say, is simply too vast and sprawling for one person to dominate the way Einstein did a century ago. Technology is the unsung hero in scientific progress, they say, the computers and chips that have made it possible to absorb and count every photon from a distant quasar, or the miles of wire and tons of sensors wrapping the collision points of speed-of-light subatomic particles. A high-energy physics paper reporting the results from some accelerator experiment can have 500 authors. 'Einstein solved problems that people weren't even asking or appreciating were problems,' said Dr. Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., Einstein's stomping grounds for the last 32 years of his life. 'It could be there are big questions nobody is asking, but there are so many more people in physics it's less likely big questions could go unasked.' But you never know. 'One thing about Einstein is he was a surprise,' said Dr. Witten, chuckling. 'Who am I to say that somebody couldn't come along with a whole completely new way of thinking?' In fact, physicists admit, waxing romantic in spite of themselves, science is full of vexing and fundamental questions, like the nature of the dark energy that is pushing the universe apart, or the meaning of string theory, the elegant but dense attempt to unify all the forces of nature by thinking of elementary particles as wiggling strings. 'We can frame an Einsteinian question. As you know, asking the question is the key,' said Dr. Leon Lederman, a Nobelist and former director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. He likes to think, he added, that it will be solved by 'a Brazilian kid in a dirt floor village.' Dr. Turner said he hoped and expected that there would continue to be Einsteins. One way to measure their impact, he suggested, was by how long it took society to digest their discoveries and move on. By this metric, he said, Isaac Newton beats out Einstein as the greatest of all time (or at least since science was invented). Newton's world lasted more than 200 years before Einstein overthrew it. 'Einstein has lasted 100 years,' he said. 'The smart money says that something is going to happen; general relativity won't last another 200 years.' Looking the Part Would that make someone a candidate for a T-shirt, or an Einstein? It depends on what you mean by 'Einstein.' Do we mean the dark-haired young firebrand at the patent office, who yanked the rug out from under Newton and 19th-century physics in 1905 when he invented relativity, supplied a convincing proof for the existence of atoms and shocked just about everyone by arguing that light could be composed of particles as well as waves? Is it the seer who gazed serenely out at the world in 1919 from beneath headlines announcing that astronomers had measured the bending of light rays from stars during an eclipse, confirming Einstein's general theory of relativity, which described gravity as the warping of space-time geometry? Einstein had spent 10 years racking his brain and borrowing the mathematical talents of his friends trying to extend relativity to the realm of gravity. When this 'great adventure in thought,' as the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called it, safely reached shore, Einstein caught a wave that lifted him high above physics and science in general. The world was exhausted morally, mentally and economically from the Great War, which had shattered the pretensions of Enlightenment Europe. People were ready for something new and Einstein gave them a whole new universe. Moreover, the mark of this new universe - 'lights all askew in the heavens,' as this newspaper put it - was something everybody could understand. The stars, the most ancient of embodiments of cosmic order, had moved. With Whitehead as his publicist, Einstein was on the road to becoming the Elvis of science, the frizzy-headed sage of Princeton, the world's most famous Jew and humanity's atomic conscience. It helped that he wore his fame lightly, with humor and a cute accent. 'He was a caricature of the scientist,' said Dr. Krauss. 'He looked right. He sounded right.' When physicists are asked, what they often find distinctive about Einstein are his high standards, an almost biological need to find order and logical consistency in science and in nature, the ability to ferret out and question the hidden assumptions underlying the mainstream consensus about reality. Dr. Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario describes it as moral quality. 'He simply cared far more than most of his colleagues that the laws of physics should explain everything in nature coherently and consistently,' he wrote last year in Discover. It was that drive that led him to general relativity, regarded as his greatest achievement. The other discoveries, in 1905, physicists and historians say, would have been made whether Einstein did them or not. 'They were in the air,' said Dr. Martin Rees, a cosmologist at Cambridge University and Britain's astronomer royal. The quest for general relativity, on the other hand, was the result of 'pure thought,' Dr. Rees said. Dr. Peter L. Galison, professor of the history of science and of physics at Harvard, described Einstein as 'somebody who had a transformative effect on the world because of his relentless pursuit of what the right principles should be.' Others said they were impressed that he never swerved, despite a tempestuous personal and political life, from science as his main devotion. 'He fixed his concentration on important problems, he was unvarying in that,' Dr. Krauss said. Another attraction of Einstein as an icon is his perceived irreverence, and the legend of his origin as an outsider, working in the patent office while he pursued the breakthroughs of 1905. (Not that he was necessarily humble because of that; letters from his early years show him pestering well-known scientists and spoiling for a fight so much that his girlfriend and future wife, Mileva Maric, was always counseling him to keep a cool head.) 'Part of the appeal is that he comes from nowhere and turns things upside down,' Dr. Galison said. 'That's the fantasy,' he explained, saying that science has always represented the possibility that someone without a privileged background could intervene and triumph through sheer ability and brainpower. There is no lack of inventive, brilliant physicists today, but none of them are T-shirt material, yet. In the cozy turn of the century, Dr. Galison said, Einstein was able to be a philosopher as well as a physicist, addressing deep questions like the meaning of simultaneity and often starting his papers by posing some philosophical quandary. But philosophy and physics have long since gone their separate ways. Physics has become separated from the humanities. 'Everything tells us science has nothing to do with the ideas of ordinary life,' Dr. Galison said. 'Whether that is good or bad, I don't know.' As a result no one has inherited Einstein's mantle as a natural philosopher, said Dr. Galison. We might have to settle for a kind of Einstein by committee. The string theorists have donned the mantle of Einstein's quest for a unified theory of all the forces of nature. In the last half-century various manifestations of modern science have made their way into popular culture, including chaos theory and the representation of information in bits and bytes, as pioneered by Dr. Claude Shannon, the Bell Labs engineer. The discovery of the double helix of DNA, the hereditary molecule, which laid the basis for the modern genetics, is probably the most charismatic result of modern biology. But the world is not awash in action figures based on James Watson and Francis Crick, the molecule's decoders. Meanwhile Einstein's role of symbolizing the hope that you could understand the universe has at least been partly filled by Dr. Hawking, whose books 'A Brief History of Time' and 'The Universe in a Nutshell' have sold millions, and who has even appeared on 'Star Trek' and 'The Simpsons.' 'People know him,' said Dr. Krauss, and his work on black holes has had a significant impact on the study of gravity and the cosmos, but he has not reinvented the universe. The Next Big Idea One reason nobody stands out is that physics has been kind of stuck for the last half-century. During that time, Dr. Witten said, physicists have made significant progress toward a unified theory of nature, not by blazing new paths, but by following established principles, like the concept of symmetry - first used by Einstein in his relativity paper in 1905 - and extending them from electromagnetism to the weak and strong nuclear forces. 'It was not necessary to invent quantum field theory,' said Dr. Witten, 'just to improve it.' That, he explains, is collective work. But new ideas are surely needed. Part of Einstein's legacy was an abyssal gap in the foundations of reality as conceived by science. On one side of the divide was general relativity, which describes stars and the universe itself. On the other side is quantum mechanics, which describes the paradoxical behavior of subatomic particles and forces. In the former, nature is continuous and deterministic, cause follows effect; in the latter nature is discrete, like sand grains on the beach, and subject to statistical uncertainties. Einstein to his dying day rejected quantum mechanics as ultimate truth, saying in a letter to Max Born in 1924, 'The theory yields much but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secrets. I, in any case, am convinced that he does not play dice.' Science will not have a real theory of the world until these two warring notions are merged into a theory of quantum gravity, one that can explain what happens when the matter in a star goes smoosh into a dense microscopic dot at the center of a black hole, or when the universe appears out of nothing in a big bang. String theory is one, as yet unproven, attempt at such a quantum gravity theory, and it has attracted an army of theorists and mathematicians. But, Dr. Witten speculated, there could be an Einsteinian moment in another direction. Quantum gravity presumes, he explained, that general relativity breaks down at short distances. But what, he asked, if relativity also needed correction at long distances as a way of explaining, for example, the acceleration of the universe? 'Relativity field theory could be cracked at long distances,' Dr. Witten said, adding that he saw no evidence for it. But when Einstein came along, there was no clear evidence that Newtonian physics was wrong, either. 'I would think that's an opportunity for an Einstein,' he said. Another Einsteinian opportunity, Dr. Witten later added in an e-mail message, is the possibility that Einstein's old bugaboo quantum mechanics needs correcting, saying that while he saw no need himself, it was a mystery what quantum mechanics meant when applied to the universe as a whole. Dr. Smolin of the Perimeter Institute said it should give physicists pause that their leader and idol had rejected quantum mechanics, and yet what everybody is trying to do now is to apply quantum mechanics to Einstein's theory of gravity. 'What if he were right?' asked Dr. Smolin, who said he also worried that the present organization of science, with its pressures for tenure and publications, mitigates against the appearance of outsiders like Einstein, who need to follow their own star for a few lonely years or decades. But as Dr. Krauss said, it only takes one good idea to change our picture of reality. Dr. Smolin said, 'When somebody has a correct idea, it doesn't take long to have an impact.' 'It's not about identifying the person who is about to be the new Einstein,' he went on. 'When there is someone who does something with the impact of Einstein, we'll all know.'

Subject: London Calling, With Luck From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 28, 2005 at 06:22:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/movies/28matc.html?ex=1293426000&en=f0b942705179cce8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 28, 2005 London Calling, With Luck, Lust and Ambition By A. O. SCOTT Because Woody Allen's early films are about as funny as any ever made, it is often assumed that his temperament is essentially comic, which leads to all manner of disappointment and misunderstanding. Now and then, Mr. Allen tries to clear up the confusion, insisting, sometimes elegantly and sometimes a little too baldly, that his view of the world is essentially nihilistic. He has announced, in movie after movie, an absolute lack of faith in any ordering moral principle in the universe - and still, people think he's joking. In 'Match Point,' his most satisfying film in more than a decade, the director once again brings the bad news, delivering it with a light, sure touch. This is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine. You would have to go back to the heady, amoral heyday of Ernst Lubitsch or Billy Wilder to find cynicism so deftly turned into superior entertainment. At the very beginning, Mr. Allen's hero, a young tennis player recently retired from the professional tour, explains that the role of luck in human affairs is often underestimated. Later, the harsh implications of this idea will be evident, but at first it seems as whimsical as what Fred Astaire said in 'The Gay Divorcée': that 'chance is the fool's name for fate.' Mr. Allen's accomplishment here is to fool his audience, or at least to misdirect us, with a tale whose gilded surface disguises the darkness beneath. His guile - another name for it is art - keeps the story moving with the fleet momentum of a well-made play. Comparisons to 'Crimes and Misdemeanors' are inevitable, since the themes and some elements of plot are similar, but the philosophical baggage in 'Match Point' is more tightly and discreetly packed. There are few occasions for speech-making, and none of the desperate, self-conscious one-liners that have become, in Mr. Allen's recent movies, more tics than shtick. Nor is there an obvious surrogate for the director among the youthful, mostly British and altogether splendid cast. If you walked in after the opening titles, it might take you a while to guess who made this picture. After a while you would, of course. The usual literary signposts are in place: surely no other screenwriter could write a line like 'darling, have you seen my copy of Strindberg?' or send his protagonist to bed with a paperback Dostoyevsky. But while a whiff of Russian fatalism lingers in the air - and more than a whiff of Strindbergian misogyny - these don't seem to be the most salient influences. The film's setting is modified Henry James (wealthy London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books; and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser - hunger, lust, ambition, greed. Not that the tennis player, Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), seems at first to be consumed by such appetites. An Irishman of modest background, he takes a job at an exclusive London club, helping its rich members polish their ground strokes. He seems both easygoing and slightly ill at ease, ingratiating and diffident. Before long, he befriends Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the amiable, unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to the family box at the opera. From there, it is a short trip to an affair with Tom's sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), a job in the family firm and the intermittently awkward but materially rewarding position of son-in-law to parents played by Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton. When 'Match Point' was shown in Cannes last spring, some British critics objected that its depiction of London was inaccurate, a demurral that New Yorkers, accustomed to visiting Mr. Allen's fantasy Manhattan, could only greet with weary shrugs and sighs. Uprooting a script originally set in the Hamptons and repotting it in British soil has refreshed and sharpened the story, which depends not on insight into a particular social situation, but rather on a general theory of human behavior. London is Manhattan seen through a glass, brightly: Tate Modern stands in for the Museum of Modern Art; Covent Garden takes the place of Lincoln Center. As for the breathtaking South Bank loft into which Chris and Chloe move, it will satisfy the lust for high-end real estate that has kept the diehards in their seats during Mr. Allen's long creative malaise. In this case, though, what happens in the well-appointed rooms and fashionable restaurants is more interesting than the architecture or the décor. Mr. Rhys-Meyers has an unusual ability to keep the audience guessing, to draw us into sympathetic concord even as we're trying to figure him out. Is he a cipher or a sociopath? A careful social climber or a reckless rake? The first clue that he may be something other than a mild, well-mannered sidekick comes when Chris meets Tom's fiancée, an American actress named Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), in a scene that raises the movie's temperature from a polite simmer to a full sexual boil. (The scene also quietly acknowledges a debt to 'A Place in the Sun,' George Stevens's adaptation of Dreiser's 'American Tragedy.' The parallels don't stop there. Mr. Rhys-Meyers's hollow-cheeked watchfulness recalls Montgomery Clift. Which makes Ms. Johansson either the next Elizabeth Taylor or the new Shelley Winters. Hmm). What passes between Chris and Nola is not only desire, but also recognition, which makes their connection especially volatile. As their affair advances, Ms. Johansson and Mr. Rhys-Meyers manage some of the best acting seen in a Woody Allen movie in a long time, escaping the archness and emotional disconnection that his writing often imposes. It is possible to identify with both of them - and to feel an empathetic twinge as they are ensnared in the consequences of their own heedlessness - without entirely liking either one. But it is the film's brisk, chilly precision that makes it so bracingly pleasurable. The gloom of random, meaningless existence has rarely been so much fun, and Mr. Allen's bite has never been so sharp, or so deep. A movie this good is no laughing matter.

Subject: Ten Year International Dollar Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 11:28:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/26/95 - 12/26/05 Australia 11.3 Canada 14.4 Denmark 14.4 France 11.0 Germany 7.8 Hong Kong 5.5 Japan 0.1 Netherlands 8.2 Norway 12.0 Sweden 12.9 Switzerland 9.2 UK 8.7

Subject: Ten Year Domestic Currency Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 11:25:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/26/95 - 12/26/05 Australia 11.5 Canada 12.7 Denmark 15.8 France 12.3 Germany 9.3 Hong Kong 5.7 Japan 1.4 Netherlands 9.8 Norway 12.7 Sweden 14.9 Switzerland 10.6 UK 7.5

Subject: Huge Rise Looms for Health Care From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 07:48:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/nyregion/26benefits.html December 26, 2005 Huge Rise Looms for Health Care in City's Budget By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH and MILT FREUDENHEIM When the Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposed making new workers chip in more to its pension fund than current workers do, it was enough to send the union out on strike and bring the nation's largest mass-transit system to a halt for three days. But the cost of pensions may look paltry next to that of another benefit soon to hit New York and most other states and cities: the health care promised to retired teachers, judges, firefighters, bus drivers and other former employees, which must be figured under a new accounting formula. The city currently provides free health insurance to its retirees, their spouses and dependent children. The state is almost as generous, promising to pay, depending on the date of hire, 90 to 100 percent of the cost for individual retirees, and 82 to 86 percent for retiree families. Those bills - $911 million this year for city retirees and $859 million for state retirees out of a total city and state budget of $156.6 billion - may seem affordable now. But the New York governments, like most other public agencies across the country, have been calculating the costs in a way that sharply understates their price tag over time. Although governments will not have to come up with the cash immediately, failure to find a way to finance the yearly total will eventually hurt their ability to borrow money affordably. When the numbers are added up under new accounting rules scheduled to go into effect at the end of 2006, New York City's annual expense for retiree health care is expected to at least quintuple, experts say, approaching and maybe surpassing $5 billion, for exactly the same benefits the retirees get today. The number will grow because the city must start including the value of all the benefits earned in a given year, even those that will not be paid until future years. Some actuaries say the new yearly amount could be as high as $10 billion. The increases for the state could be equally startling. Most other states and cities also offer health benefits to retirees, and will also be affected by the accounting change. 'It's not likely that New York City has a way to fund current costs, its pension obligation and fund retiree health care without raising taxes or cutting services,' said Jan Lazar, an independent consultant specializing in city retirement finances. 'These are huge numbers, not a one-time cost.' The pay-as-you-go accounting method that New York now uses greatly understates the full obligation taxpayers have incurred because it does not include any benefits to be paid in the future. Most other state and local governments that offer significant health benefits to retirees use the same method and will also have to bring newer, larger numbers onto their books in the next two or three years. The increases will vary from place to place, but New York is expected to be at the high end because it offers richer benefits than many other cities and has many police officers, firefighters and sanitation workers who can retire with full pension at age 50. At the transit talks, pensions were pulled off the table in the end, and the final settlement is likely to reflect an increased health care payment by current workers, not retirees. But even though New York was pushed to a standstill over proposed changes in transit workers' pensions, virtually no one in government, outside of a tiny group of experts, is talking publicly about the far more daunting bill for citywide retiree health insurance. The total value of the pensions promised is probably bigger, but money has already been set aside to pay the pensions, to a significant degree. For retiree health care, nothing stands behind those promises except the expectation that taxes will be raised enough in the future to cover them. At last count, the city's biggest pension fund - the one for about 300,000 workers not covered by police, firefighter, teacher or school workers plans - said it had $42 billion set aside in trust for the $42.2 billion it owed. No money at all has been set aside for that same group of city employees' post-retirement health care. Determining the correct amount will be 'a tremendous undertaking,' a city official said, adding that rapid changes in the overall health care environment, including the Medicare and Medicaid programs, make it extremely difficult to see what future costs will be. No one really knows what the total health care obligation is for the 836,000 people already retired or now working for the city and state, much less who will pay for it. Neither side in the transit dispute, for example, has publicly mentioned retiree health care. A small group of city officials has been quietly working for months, gathering data on the dozens of city retiree health plans, large and small, but the process is not expected to be complete for months. Meanwhile, a handful of other states and cities have already done the same calculations. If their results are any guide, New York City and the state could ultimately find that they have each promised their retirees health care worth tens of billions of dollars. The transportation authority, a state entity whose retiree health care costs are partially borne by New York City, could find that it has already promised more than $5 billion worth of benefits to its current and future retirees. At the moment, the transportation authority is spending about $380 million a year on health care for its unionized workers. That covers both active workers and retirees; while a precise breakdown does not exist, citywide demographics suggest that about $165 million of that may be for retirees. Once the new accounting rule is in force, the transportation authority may find itself scrounging for 5 to 10 times that amount every year, $825 million to $1.6 billion, if an accounting rule of thumb devised by one of the chief credit rating firms, Fitch Ratings, holds up. By the time anybody knows for sure, the authority will probably be halfway through the union contract it is still struggling to complete. To find the money, the authority will have to turn to 'higher fares, less service, or more pressure on the city government to fork over subsidies,' said Robert A. Kurtter, an analyst with Moody's Investors Service who monitors New York's finances. The city's retirement system, meanwhile, will be struggling with the same problem on a much larger scale. The city has been offering free health care to its retirees for decades. In the private sector, companies that once offered health insurance for retirees began to stop doing so in the 1990's, for a number of reasons, including accounting rule changes like those now coming into effect for states and cities. Today, only 38 percent of companies with more than 200 workers offer retiree health insurance, according to the Citizens Budget Commission, a group that analyzes city and state finances. An even smaller number of companies, 9 percent, pay any part of the premiums that can be used to buy optional supplements to Medicare for retirees over 65. New York City and the state both pay the full cost of Medicare supplements for their retirees. 'They've stuck with that, although the rest of the world has changed,' said Charles M. Brecher, research director of the Citizens Budget Commission and a professor of public and health administration at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. While the private sector was curtailing retiree benefits, New York City and the state have been preserving and even expanding benefits in bargaining with their unions. Both sides focused mainly on the current cost of the benefits. No one was paying much attention to the deferred cost of the benefits that would come due once current workers retired. Meanwhile, health costs resumed rising at double-digit rates, and a large share of the public work force began to reach retirement age. Currently, the city administers a big health plan for its workers and retirees and contributes to dozens of smaller retiree health plans that are run by individual unions and supplement the city's coverage. The calculations are now being done, privately, because of the accounting rule change. In 2004 the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, a nonprofit body that writes accounting rules for governments, issued a new standard for retiree medical plans. It roughly follows a similar standard issued in 1994 for public pension plans. But rather than requiring local governments to finance their retiree medical plans, the rule simply requires them to lay out a theoretical financing framework, then report how they are dealing with it. Localities that create trust funds will get certain financial rewards. Localities that do not put money behind their promises risk being punished by falling credit ratings. When a city's credit rating falls, it becomes harder and more expensive to issue bonds or otherwise borrow money. Municipal bond analysts at Moody's and Standard & Poor's said they were taking a wait-and-see stance. 'How the city addresses the burden is another question - by reducing the benefit or funding the cost, or allowing this liability to mount,' said Mr. Kurtter, of Moody's. If the amount grows, 'at some point it will create a credit issue,' he said. Mr. Kurtter said city officials have acknowledged privately that the amounts will be large, 'in the billions, they say.' Labor officials say that even though the change is just a new way of accounting, not a price increase in the conventional sense, they fear that putting a number on the city's promises for future retiree health care will lead to sticker shock and renewed calls to cut benefits. 'There's a lot of fear that this kind of disclosure will reignite the whole battle of who assumes retiree health costs,' said Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers and the chairwoman of the Municipal Labor Committee. 'Even though it should be a data point, it will be used as a hammer.'

Subject: Sign Up for New Drug Plan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 07:19:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/politics/23drug.html?ex=1292994000&en=b3ada8f0b69e9339&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Over a Million on Medicare Sign Up for New Drug Plan By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced Thursday that slightly more than a million of the 42 million Medicare beneficiaries had voluntarily signed up for the new prescription drug benefit, while 10.6 million had been enrolled automatically by the federal government or by health maintenance organizations. In addition, the administration said, Medicare will pay subsidies to employers who provide drug benefits to 5.9 million retirees, and the government is reviewing applications for subsidies from employers with 600,000 additional retirees. Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said the data showed that 'the new prescription drug benefit is off to a strong start.' But Daniel N. Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a research and consulting company, said, 'We still have a long way to go.' He estimated that 17 million Medicare beneficiaries would receive drug coverage only if they voluntarily signed up for it. 'The stability of the new program depends on robust enrollment among higher-income seniors, who tend to be relatively healthy,' Mr. Mendelson said. Medicare, like any health insurer, needs large numbers of relatively healthy subscribers who will pay premiums without generating high costs. The Medicare drug benefit becomes available on Jan. 1. Enrollment began on Nov. 15. People have until May 15 to sign up. After that, they may face penalties in the form of higher premiums. Federal officials say they expect a surge in enrollment just before the May 15 deadline. In the Federal Register of Jan. 28, the administration predicted that 39 million people would receive drug coverage in 2006 through a Medicare drug plan or an employer-sponsored health plan subsidized by Medicare. In June, Secretary Leavitt scaled back the official estimate. He predicted that 28 million to 30 million people would receive drug coverage next year. He said those figures came from 'Wall Street analysts.' Many Medicare beneficiaries say they have been confused by the multiplicity of drug plans, with different premiums, deductibles, co-payments and covered drugs. But Mr. Leavitt and Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said they were pleased with enrollment to date, especially the response from employers. 'There had been predictions that employers would drop drug coverage, but that's proven wrong,' Dr. McClellan said. The law ignited political passions that exist to this day. Supporters and critics of the law seized on the new data in an effort to shape public perceptions of the drug benefit, which is likely to figure prominently in next year's Congressional elections. Those perceptions may also influence the success of the program, since they will be a factor in determining how many people enroll. Thus, Secretary Leavitt said, 'More than 21 million seniors and people with disabilities will get prescription drug coverage as of Jan. 1.' R. Alexander Vachon III, a health policy consultant for several Wall Street firms, said: 'Twenty-one million is impressive. But we don't know how many of those people already had drug coverage and how many will be getting it for the first time.' The administration said that 3.1 million of the 21 million beneficiaries had drug coverage from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program or from Tricare, the military health care plan. Daniel C. Adcock, a lobbyist at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association, said: 'Ninety-nine percent of retired federal employees in those two programs will not sign up for the Medicare drug benefit. They already have drug coverage superior to what Medicare provides.' Of the 10.6 million people automatically enrolled in Medicare drug plans, 6.2 million have been receiving drug coverage through Medicaid. Most of the others are in health maintenance organizations or other managed care plans.

Subject: No Left Turn From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:54:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/opinion/27llosa.html?ex=1293339600&en=7c58c501bd2e5367&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 No Left Turn By ÁLVARO VARGAS LLOSA Washington IN 1781, an Aymara Indian, Tupac Katari, led an uprising against Spanish rule in Bolivia and lay siege to La Paz. He was captured and killed by having his limbs tied to four horses that pulled in opposite directions. Before dying, he prophesied, 'I will come back as millions.' To judge by the overwhelming victory of Evo Morales, an Aymara, in Bolivia's elections on Dec. 18, he kept his promise. Mr. Morales's election has been interpreted as confirmation that South America is moving left. Mr. Morales does not hide his admiration for Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, and his proposals include the nationalization of the oil industry, the redistribution of some privately owned estates and the decriminalization of coca plantations in the Chapare region. He opposes the Free Trade Area of the Americas and blasts 'neoliberalism.' It would be a mistake, however, to think that Mr. Morales will become another Hugo Chávez even if that is his wish. The new Bolivian president will not have the resources that Venezuela commands and his popular base is shakier. Moreover, Brazil has an important presence in Bolivia and will be in a position to exercise a moderating influence. Unlike Venezuela, where skyrocketing oil prices brought Mr. Chávez a windfall that allowed him to build a strong social network based on patronage, Bolivia has little revenue. The only reason its fiscal account is not showing a $1 billion deficit is foreign aid, mainly from the United States. Because Mr. Morales's followers toppled the two previous presidents and forced the authorities to impose heavy royalties on multinational companies exploiting natural gas, foreign investment has dried up: only $84 million worth of investment came into the country this year. And the possibility of suddenly turning Bolivia's natural gas reserves (potentially a whopping 52 trillion cubic feet) into an exporting bonanza has been precluded by the cancellation of a project that sought to export natural gas to Mexico and California through Chilean ports. (Bolivia and Chile have been at odds since the late 19th century, when Bolivia lost its access to the sea to Chile in the War of the Pacific.) Bolivia's indigenous population, which wants results quickly, may also hold Mr. Morales in check. His party, Movement Toward Socialism, is a loose amalgam of competing social groups. If Mr. Morales tries to concentrate power, he will need a sturdy, permanent base of support that is by no means guaranteed. Furthermore, the residents of many provinces, especially in the east, are agitating for local autonomy and have warned that they will resist attempts to centralize even more power in La Paz. Bolivia has had left-wing governments before that were toppled by the same people who made them possible. President Carlos Mesa, who replaced Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 after violent demonstrations, had the support of the population when he reneged on natural gas contracts with foreign investors and led a virulent campaign against Chile. Yet the masses still turned against him, forcing his resignation in June. Finally, Brazil's pragmatic president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, could also constrain Mr. Morales's ambitions. Brazil is now effectively Bolivia's only foreign investor, and its role is likely to grow even more crucial, because Mr. Morales promises to nationalize the subsoil and keep the high royalties on oil and natural gas exploitation that have kept out investors from other countries. Bolivia therefore will need Petrobras, the Brazilian energy giant, to expand its investments. Mr. da Silva has not been able to rein in Mr. Chávez, but he will have leverage over the more vulnerable Mr. Morales. Of course, whether Mr. Morales will draw closer to Mr. Chávez will in part depend on American policy toward Bolivia. And that, in turn, will depend on whether Mr. Morales decriminalizes coca growing. If he does so, the United States should not overreact, because nothing much will change. Even with the restrictions that are in place now, there are already as many plantations in Chapare as the demand for coca - and Bolivia's capacity to make cocaine from it - warrant. In any case, cocaine production and distribution will still be banned in Bolivia, Mr. Morales says. If Washington were to respond to coca decriminalization by hindering Bolivia's exports of clothing and jewelry to the United States, tens of thousands of families in El Alto, one of Mr. Morales's indigenous power bases, would lose their source of income, and anti-American sentiment would pull Mr. Morales leftward. Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, recently told me that the United States aims to eliminate its remaining protectionist measures (which hamper some South American economies by restricting United States imports of their goods). Few Latin Americans have heard about this endeavor. If the goal is to promote development and foster good relations across the hemisphere, eliminating protectionist policies will be far more effective than making coca plantations the paramount issue in Bolivia-United States relations. Fractious politics and ethnic tensions already make for a delicate situation in the Andes. Let's not make it worse.

Subject: Indians Find They Can Go Home From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:49:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/business/worldbusiness/26recruit.html?ex=1293253200&en=667b6a84d2dcd825&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Indians Find They Can Go Home Again By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India - Standing amid the rolling lawns outside his four-bedroom villa, Ajay Kela pondered his street in the community of Palm Meadows. One of his neighbors recently returned to India from Cupertino, Calif., to run a technology start-up funded by the venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. Across the street from Mr. Kela is another Indian executive, this one from Fremont, Calif., who works with the outsourcing firm Infosys Technologies. On the other side is the top executive of Cisco Systems in India, who returned here after decades in the Bay Area and New York. Also on the block is a returnee from the United Kingdom, who heads the technology operations of Deutsche Bank. Mr. Kela's neighborhood is just a small sample of a reverse brain drain benefiting India. The gated community of Palm Meadows in the Whitefield suburbs, and many others in the vicinity, with names like Ozone and Lake Vista, are full of Indians who were educated in and worked in the United States and Europe, but who have been lured home by the surging Indian economy and its buoyant technology industry. 'Nothing unusual about this lane at all,' said Mr. Kela, 48, who moved from Foster City, Calif., to Palm Meadows last year and is president of the outsourcing firm Symphony Services, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif. Nasscom, a trade group of Indian outsourcing companies, estimates that 30,000 technology professionals have moved back in the last 18 months. Bangalore, Hyderabad and the suburbs of Delhi are becoming magnets for an influx of Indians, who are the top-earning ethnic group in the United States. These cities, with their Western-style work environment, generous paychecks and quick career jumps, offer the returnees what, until now, they could only get in places like Palo Alto and Boston. And now they offer something else: a housing boom. Homes have tripled in value in Palm Meadows over the last 12 months, and rents have quadrupled. 'Expatriates are returning because India is hot,' said Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys Technologies, India's second-largest outsourcing firm, which recruited 25 returnees from top American schools for its 100-seat summer internship this year. 'There is an increasing feeling that significant action in the technology industry is moving to India,' he said. While most returnees are first-generation expatriates, second-generation Indians living in the United States are also returning, said Lori Blackman, a recruitment consultant in Dallas. 'Among them I sense an altruistic pull to return to India to help build their home country to a greater power than the country had ever hoped to achieve,' she said. But the trend is raising fears among American specialists that it could deplete the United States of scientific talent and blunt its edge in innovation. 'The United States will miss the talents of people of Indian origin who return to India,' said Brink Lindsey, vice president for research at the Cato Institute in Washington, adding, that the moves could create greater possibilities for trade between the two countries. For many returnees, the newly challenging work environment in India has tied in neatly with personal reasons for returning, such as raising their children in Indian culture and caring for aging parents. 'When I left India 25 years ago, everybody was headed to the United States,' said Mr. Kela, who pursued a Ph.D. at the University of Rochester and stayed two decades, working for companies like General Electric and AutoDesk. For India's best and brightest, a technology or engineering career was an irresistible draw to the United States, even until four or five years ago. 'But now they all want to get on the plane home,' said Mr. Kela, who returned with his wife and two children. Once a regular at Silicon Valley job fairs, trying to woo Indians back home, Mr. Kela no longer needs to sell India. He receives 10 résumés a month from people with decades of work experience in the United States yearning to relocate. With globalization, many Americans of Indian origin in the high-technology industry are looking at India as a 'career-enhancing move,' said Anuradha Parthasarathy, the chief executive of Global Executive Talent, a search firm in Menlo Park, Calif., who is swamped by such job-seekers. Many technology companies - multinationals and Indian outsourcing firms as well as start-ups - are eager to hire returnees with Western managerial experience or technology specialization. Companies based in the United States, like ipValue, a company in Palo Alto that commercializes intellectual assets for large technology companies like British Telecom and the Xerox Corporation, are helping accelerate the trend. When ipValue recently decided to expand its operations, it chose to do so in India. 'We are really betting on the Indian diaspora returning home,' said Vincent Pluvinage, its chief executive. The firm just hired a top executive from Oracle to head its Indian operations and expects a third of its 20-member team in India to consist of returnees by January 2006. The passage back is no longer an ordeal, because much has changed in India. Whereas watching a movie in a dingy hall was once a weekend high point, now fancy multiplexes, bowling alleys and shopping malls offer entertainment, and pizzerias and cafes are ubiquitous at street corners. Indians who once could choose between only two car models and fly a single airline find they have returned to a profusion of choices. Even as the lifestyle gaps between India and the West have narrowed rapidly, salary differences at top executive levels have virtually disappeared. Annual pay packages of a half-million dollars are common in Bangalore, but even for those taking a pay cut to return home, the lower cost of living balances smaller paychecks. Starting salaries for engineers are about $12,000 in India, versus $60,000 in Silicon Valley. But relocating is not without its challenges, as Venki Sundaresan, 38, discovered a year ago when, after 15 years abroad, he moved to India with his wife and twin daughters to be the information technology director of Cypress Semiconductor. In atypical fashion, Mr. Sundaresan scorned the 'soft landing' that many returning Indians seek by living in gated communities. Instead, to have the 'true Indian experience,' the family opted to live in the teeming Indiranagar neighborhood. For his 5-year-old twins, he spurned upmarket international schools popular with other returnees and enrolled them in a neighborhood school. Mr. Sundaresan owns an Indian-made car, a Maruti Baleno. 'We've already driven the Mercedes and the BMW in the United States,' he said. 'What is the point of dodging around Bangalore's potholes in a limo?' Living in Palm Meadows, Mr. Kela and his neighbor Sanjay Swamy, 41, who heads the Indian operations of Ketera Technologies, face very little transition anxiety. Mr. Swamy bought and moved into a Palm Meadows villa with his wife, Tulsi, a financial consultant, and 8-year-old son, Ashwin. The communities buffer returnees from Bangalore's bumper-to-bumper traffic, unpaved sidewalks and swarming neighborhoods. Mr. Kela; his 9-year-old daughter, Payal; and 6-year-old son, Ankur, enjoy riding bikes on weekends, and they often play cricket, which Mr. Kela is passionate about. His daughter is learning the classical Indian dances of Kathak and Bharatanatyam. For Halloween this year, Mr. Kela led his children on a trick-or-treat walk. Mr. Kela says he misses the freedom to drive anywhere or go on long hikes. Yet, life is comfortable, with two live-in maids, a full-time driver and another on call, all of whom are 'outrageously affordable.' His neighbor Mr. Swamy is immersed in building a Silicon Valley-style team in Bangalore, but with some local adjustments. When he learned that the company routinely received calls from prospective fathers-in-law of employees, asking to verify their ages, titles and salary details, Mr. Swamy wrote a memo titled 'HR Policy on Disclosing Employee Information to Prospective Fathers-in-Law.' 'While I want to be entirely supportive of ensuring that our confidentiality agreement does not result in your missing out on the spouse of your dreams,' Mr. Swamy said, 'I don't want competitors to use this as a ploy to get at sensitive information.'

Subject: He Said No to Internment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:48:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25korematsu.html?ex=1293166800&en=f5c77c494c3302ed&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 He Said No to Internment By MATT BAI In February 1942, a little more than two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which effectively decreed that West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry - whether American citizens or not - were now 'enemy aliens.' More than 100,000 Japanese-Americans reported to government staging areas, where they were processed and taken off to 10 internment camps. Fred Korematsu, the son of Japanese immigrants, was at the time a 23-year-old welder at Bay Area shipyards. His parents left their home and reported to a racetrack south of San Francisco, but Korematsu chose not to follow them. He stayed behind in Oakland with his Italian-American girlfriend and then fled, even having plastic surgery on his eyes to avoid recognition. In May 1942, he was arrested and branded a spy in the newspapers. In search of a test case, Ernest Besig, then the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union for Northern California, went to see Korematsu in jail and asked if he would be willing to challenge the internment policy in court. Korematsu said he would. Besig posted $5,000 bail, but instead of freeing him, federal authorities sent him to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah. He and Besig sued the government, appealing their case all the way to the Supreme Court, which, in a 6-to-3 decision that stands as one of the most ignoble in its history, rejected his argument and upheld the government's right to intern its citizens. After the war, Korematsu married, returned to the Bay Area and found work as a draftsman. He might have been celebrated in his community, the Rosa Parks of Japanese-American life; in fact, he was shunned. Even during his time in Topaz, other prisoners refused to talk to him. 'Allof them turned their backs on me at that time because they thought I was a troublemaker,' he later recalled. His ostracism didn't end with the war. The overwhelming majority of Japanese-Americans had reacted to the internment by acquiescing to the government's order, hoping to prove their loyalty as Americans. To them, Korematsu's opposition was treacherous to both his country and his community. In the years after the war, details of the internment were lost behind a wall of repression. It was common for Japanese-American families not to talk about the experience, or to talk about it only obliquely. Korematsu, too, remained silent, but for different reasons. 'He felt responsible for the internment in a sort of backhanded way, because his case had been lost in the Supreme Court,' Peter Irons, a legal historian, recalled in a PBS documentary. Korematsu's own daughter has said she didn't learn of his wartime role until she was a junior in high school. Korematsu might have faded into obscurity had it not been for Irons, who in 1981 asked the Justice Department for the original documents in the Korematsu case. Irons found a memo in which a government lawyer had accused the solicitor general of lying to the Supreme Court about the danger posed by Japanese-Americans. Irons tracked down Korematsu and asked if he would be willing, once again, to go to court. Perhaps Korematsu had been waiting all those years for a chance to clear his name. Or maybe he saw, in Irons's entreaty, an opportunity to vindicate himself with other Japanese-Americans. Whatever his thinking, not only did Korematsu agree to return to court but he also became an ardent public critic of the internment. When government lawyers offered Korematsu a pardon, he refused. 'As long as my record stands in federal court,' Korematsu, then 64, said in an emotional courtroom oration, 'any American citizen can be held in prison or concentration camps without a trial or a hearing.' The judge agreed, ruling from the bench that Korematsu had been innocent. Just like that, the legality of the internment was struck down forever. In the last decade of his life, Korematsu became, for some Americans, a symbol of principled resistance. President Clinton awarded Korematsu the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Six years later, outraged by the prolonged detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Korematsu filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, warning that the mistakes of the internment were being repeated. Still, Korematsu's place among contemporaries in his own community remained obscured by lingering resentments and a reluctance to revisit the past. When he died from a respiratory illness in March, not a single public building or landmark bore his name. It wasn't until last month that officials in Davis, Calif., dedicated the Fred Korematsu Elementary School. It was an especially fitting tribute for Korematsu, whose legacy rested with a generation of Japanese-Americans who were beginning to remember, at long last, what their parents had labored to forget.

Subject: Guidant Foresaw Some Risks From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:37:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/business/24guidant.html?ex=1293080400&en=344ce8a8b0e0f668&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Files Show Guidant Foresaw Some Risks By BARRY MEIER Officials of the Guidant Corporation projected in an internal report that some patients might die as a result of short circuits in a company heart device, but it did not publicize the flaw because it apparently viewed the overall failure rate as acceptable, company records filed in connection with a lawsuit show. Guidant had also determined in mid-2002, a company report shows, that the consequences of the defibrillator's electrical failure, while rare, could be 'life threatening.' Despite that assessment, Guidant kept selling potentially flawed devices and did not notify doctors about the defect until last spring, when the problem was about to be made public. The Guidant documents were filed Thursday in a Texas state court by plaintiffs' lawyers in connection with a personal injury lawsuit involving the defibrillator, which is known as Prizm 2 DR. The records appear to be the first internal Guidant documents to have emerged in court filings since the company began facing a wave of lawsuits this year. A spokeswoman for Guidant, which is based in Indianapolis, said in an e-mail message yesterday that the company, as a matter of policy, did not comment on pending litigation. Guidant officials have previously said, however, that the company did nothing wrong. The emergence of the Guidant records could intensify the company's legal problems as well as intensify a broader debate about when manufacturers of heart devices should alert physicians about product risks. In addition, New York State and the city of Bethlehem, Pa., have filed lawsuits against Guidant seeking reimbursement for device-related health care costs. One of the Guidant records shows that the company projected in May, before disclosure of the defibrillator's problems, that about 0.15 percent of the units - or 15 units out of every 10,000 - were likely to short-circuit. In such episodes, Guidant estimated that 12 percent of the patients whose units failed, or about 1 in 10, would experience either a Severity Level 5 or Severity Level 4 event. A company chart defines Level 5 as death and Level 4 as life threatening. Another Guidant document filed in connection with the Texas lawsuit shows that the company determined in February that it would not reopen its own investigation into the device's problem until the number of failures exceeded a specific number at a given point. That acceptable failure rate, a chart on the document indicates, was about 15 devices a year, a rate of slightly more than one a month. The document does not state the internal standard that Guidant uses to notify doctors about product failures. Guidant did so in late May when it learned that The New York Times was preparing an article about the Prizm 2 DR failure. At that time, the number of device malfunctions reported to Guidant fell within the company's acceptable rate of failure, documents show. In a posting on its Web site yesterday, Guidant said that it knew of two patient deaths associated with short circuits in the Prizm 2 DR and five other patient deaths associated with short circuits in devices called the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2. The flaws are all associated with Guidant's use of an insulating material in a way that caused it to deteriorate. Dr. William H. Maisel, a cardiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said yesterday in a telephone interview that all heart device makers typically perform hazards assessments after discovering a device flaw. But Dr. Maisel said he remained troubled that Guidant did not disclose the data about the short circuits and the statistical analysis the company performed. 'For Guidant, these people are numbers,' said Dr. Maisel, who is the chairman of the Food and Drug Administration advisory committee that reviews heart devices. 'Their descriptions are full of numbers. But for me, these patients are people.' Largely as a result of the Guidant episode, device makers, doctors and the F.D.A. are trying to develop uniform guidelines for manufacturers to disclose product flaws to physicians. Doctors can then weigh such risks against those posed by added surgery in deciding whether to replace a device early. Guidant initially said that it believed that the risk of replacing a Prizm 2 DR might outweigh those posed by the device itself. It was in early 2002 that Guidant learned from reports that the Prizm 2 DR was prone to short-circuiting. In April and November of that year, company engineers took steps to prevent the short from occurring. But Guidant, which has said the April fix appeared to cure the problem, kept selling older models out of inventory even after an improved one was available. In its June 2002 assessment, Guidant described the flaws 'overall health risk index' as 'very low.' At about the same time that Guidant discovered the problem with the Prizm 2 DR, the company was awaiting approval from the F.D.A. to market the Contak Renewal. Company officials have repeatedly declined to describe the steps they took, if any, at that time to determine if the Contak Renewal might also short-circuit. The Guidant documents at issue were filed late Thursday in a Texas state court in Corpus Christi by a plaintiffs' lawyer, Robert C. Hilliard. His motion is seeking to have a judge lift a confidential order governing Guidant records produced in connection with a lawsuit. Two patients, Beatrice O. Hinojosa and Louis E. Motal, are seeking damages from Guidant, citing, among other things, a failure to warn them about the unit's defects. The Texas lawsuit, which is scheduled to begin in late February, could be the first Guidant case in the current wave of lawsuits to go to trial.

Subject: Ghana's Uneasy Embrace From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:35:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/international/africa/27ghana.html?ex=1293339600&en=2dbae1fae37dfea6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 27, 2005 Ghana's Uneasy Embrace of Slavery's Diaspora By LYDIA POLGREEN CAPE COAST, Ghana - For centuries, Africans walked through the infamous 'door of no return' at Cape Coast castle directly into slave ships, never to set foot in their homelands again. These days, the portal of this massive fort so central to one of history's greatest crimes has a new name, hung on a sign leading back in from the roaring Atlantic Ocean: 'The door of return.' Ghana, through whose ports millions of Africans passed on their way to plantations in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, wants its descendants to come back. Taking Israel as its model, Ghana hopes to persuade the descendants of enslaved Africans to think of Africa as their homeland - to visit, invest, send their children to be educated and even retire here. 'We want Africans everywhere, no matter where they live or how they got there, to see Ghana as their gateway home,' J. Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, the tourism minister, said on a recent day. 'We hope we can help bring the African family back together again.' In many ways it is a quixotic goal. Ghana is doing well by West African standards - with steady economic growth, a stable, democratic government and broad support from the West, making it a favored place for wealthy countries to give aid. But it remains a very poor, struggling country where a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day, life expectancy tops out at 59 and basic services like electricity and water are sometimes scarce. Nevertheless, thousands of African-Americans already live here at least part of the year, said Valerie Papaya Mann, president of the African American Association of Ghana. To encourage still more to come, or at least visit, Ghana plans to offer a special lifetime visa for members of the diaspora and will relax citizenship requirements so that descendants of slaves can receive Ghanaian passports. The government is also starting an advertising campaign to persuade Ghanaians to treat African-Americans more like long-lost relatives than as rich tourists. That is harder than it sounds. Many African-Americans who visit Africa are unsettled to find that Africans treat them - even refer to them - the same way as white tourists. The term 'obruni,' or 'white foreigner,' is applied regardless of skin color. To African-Americans who come here seeking their roots, the term is a sign of the chasm between Africans and African-Americans. Though they share a legacy, they experience it entirely differently. 'It is a shock for any black person to be called white,' said Ms. Mann, who moved here two years ago. 'But it is really tough to hear it when you come with your heart to seek your roots in Africa.' The advertising campaign urges Ghanaians to drop 'obruni' in favor of 'akwaaba anyemi,' a slightly awkward phrase fashioned from two tribal languages meaning 'welcome, sister or brother.' As part of the effort to reconnect with the diaspora, Ghana plans to honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., W. E. B. DuBois and others it calls modern-day Josephs, after the biblical figure who rose from slavery to save his people. The government plans to hold a huge event in 2007 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the end of the trans-Atlantic trade by Britain and the 50th anniversary of Ghana's independence. The ceremonies will include traditional African burial rituals for the millions who died as a result of slavery. Estimates of the trade vary widely. The most reliable suggest that between 12 million and 25 million people living in the vast lands between present-day Senegal and Angola were caught up, and as many as half died en route to the Americas. Some perished on the long march from the inland villages where they were captured to seaports. Others died in the dungeons of slave castles and forts, where they were sometimes kept for months, until enough were gathered to pack the hold of a ship. Still others died in the middle passage, the longest leg of the triangular journey between Europe, Africa and the Americas. Of the estimated 11 million who crossed the sea, most went to South America and the Caribbean. About 500,000 are believed to have ended up in the United States. The mass deportations and the divisions the slave trade wrought are wounds from which Africa still struggles to recover. Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African nation to shake off its colonial rulers, winning its independence from Britain in 1957. Its founding father, Kwame Nkrumah, attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania, and saw in African-Americans a key to developing the new nation. 'Nkrumah saw the American Negro as the vanguard of the African people,' said Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the African and African-American studies department at Harvard, who first traveled to Ghana when he was 20 and fresh out of Harvard, afire with Nkrumah's spirit. 'He wanted to be able to utilize the services and skills of African-Americans as Ghana made the transition from colonialism to independence.' Many African-Americans, from Maya Angelou to Malcolm X, visited Ghana in the 1950's and 60's, and a handful stayed. To Nkrumah, the struggle for civil rights in the diaspora and the struggles for independence from colonial rule in Africa were inextricably linked, both being expressions of the desire of black people everywhere to regain their freedom. But Nkrumah was ousted in a coup in 1966, and by then Pan-Africanism had already given way to nationalism and cold war politics, sending much of the continent down a trail of autocracy, civil war and heartbreak. Still, African-Americans are drawn to Ghana's rich culture, and the history of slavery. Ghana still has dozens of slave forts, each a chilling reminder of the brutality of the trade. At Elmina Castle, built by the Portuguese in 1482 and taken over by the Dutch 150 years later, visitors are guided through a Christian chapel built adjacent to the hall where slaves were auctioned, and the balcony over the women's dungeons from which the fort's governor would choose a concubine from the chattel below. The room through which slaves passed into waiting ships is the emotional climax of the tour, a suffocating dungeon dimly lit by sunlight pouring through a narrow portal leading to the churning sea. 'You feel our history here,' said Dianne Mark, an administrator at Central Michigan University who visited Elmina Castle, six miles from Cape Coast castle, in early December, tears welling in her eyes as she gazed across the massive, buttressed walls to the ocean. 'This is where our people are from. That is a deep, deep experience. I look at everyone and wonder, 'Could he have been my cousin? Could she have been my aunt?' ' Like any family reunion, this one is layered with joy and tears. For African-Americans and others in the African diaspora, there is lingering hostility and confusion about the role Africans played in the slave trade. 'The myth was our African ancestors were out on a walk one day and some bad white dude threw a net over them,' Mr. Gates said. 'But that wasn't the way it happened. It wouldn't have been possible without the help of Africans.' Many Africans, meanwhile, often fail to see any connection at all between them and African-Americans, or feel African-Americans are better off for having been taken to the United States. Many Africans strive to emigrate; for the past 15 years, the number of Africans moving to the United States has surpassed estimates of the number forced there during any of the peak years of the slave trade. The number of immigrants from Ghana in the United States is larger than that of any other African country except Nigeria, according to the 2000 census. 'So many Africans want to go to America, so they can't understand why Americans would want to come here,' said Philip Amoa-Mensah, a guide at Elmina Castle. 'Maybe Ghanaians think they are lucky to be from America, even though their ancestors went through so much pain.' The relationship is clearly a work in progress. Ghanaians are still learning of their ancestors' pivotal roles in the slave trade, and slave forts on the coast, long used to thousands of foreign visitors, have in recent years become sites for school field trips. When the United States and the United Nations gave Ghana money to rehabilitate and restore Cape Coast castle, the government agency responsible for the castle repainted it white. Residents of Cape Coast were thrilled to see the moisture-blackened castle spruced up, but African-Americans living in Ghana were horrified, feeling that the history of their ancestors was being, quite literally, whitewashed. 'It didn't go over too well,' said Kohain Nathanyah Halevi, an African-American who lives near Cape Coast. A recent African-American visitor to Cape Coast castle took the emotionally charged step through the door of no return, only to be greeted by a pair of toddlers playing in a fishing boat on the other side, pointing and shouting, 'obruni, obruni!' William Kwaku Moses, 71, a retired security guard who sells shells to tourists on the other side of the door of no return, shushed the children. 'We are trying,' he said, with a shrug.

Subject: Voice on China's 'Angry River' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 06:19:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/international/asia/26china.html?ex=1293253200&en=25d3622e12c095a0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Seeking a Public Voice on China's 'Angry River' By JIM YARDLEY XIAOSHABA, China - Far from the pulsing cities that symbolize modern China, this tiny hillside village of crude peasant houses seems disconnected from this century and the last. But follow a dirt path past a snarling watchdog, sidestep the chickens and ducks, and a small clearing on the banks of the Nu River reveals a dusty slab of concrete lying in a rotting pumpkin patch. The innocuous concrete block is also a symbol, of a struggle over law that touches every corner of the country. The block marks the spot on the Nu River where officials here in Yunnan Province want to begin building one of the biggest dam projects in the world. The project would produce more electricity than even the mighty Three Gorges Dam but would also threaten a region considered an ecological treasure. This village would be the first place to disappear. For decades, the ruling Communist Party has rammed through such projects by fiat. But the Nu River proposal, already delayed for more than a year, is now unexpectedly presenting the Chinese government with a quandary of its own making: will it abide by its own laws? A coalition led by Chinese environmental groups is urging the central government to hold open hearings and make public a secret report on the Nu dams before making a final decision. In a country where people cannot challenge decisions by their leaders, such public participation is a fairly radical idea. But the groups argue that new environmental laws grant exactly that right. 'This is the case to set a precedent,' said Ma Jun, an environmental consultant in Beijing. 'For the first time, there is a legal basis for public participation. If it happens, it would be a major step forward.' China's leaders often embrace the concept of rule of law, if leaving open how they choose to define it. For many people in China's fledgling 'civil society' - environmentalists, journalists, lawyers, academics and others - the law has become a tool to promote environmental protection and to try to expand the rights of individuals in an authoritarian political system. But trying to invoke the law is risky. Chinese nongovernmental organizations, few of which existed a decade ago, have taken up the Nu as a major cause. But the activism on the Nu and other issues has provoked deep suspicions by the Communist Party even as a broader clampdown against such NGO's has forced some to shut down. The government knows China has a drastic pollution problem and has passed new environmental laws. But top leaders also demand high economic growth and need to increase energy supplies to get it. The 'green laws' are becoming a crucible to test which side will prevail and whether ordinary people can take part in the process. The closed process that led to the Three Gorges Dam is what opponents of the Nu dams most want to avoid. In the late 1980's, a wide range of intellectuals and others tried in vain to force public hearings to discuss the environmental and social costs of a project that has flooded a vast region and forced huge relocations. Ultimately, opponents could only muster a symbolic victory as the final vote in the National People's Congress included an unusually high number of abstentions or nay votes. The central government is still deliberating how to proceed on the Nu. Domestic media coverage has been banned in recent months. Three central government ministries refused interview requests, as did provincial officials in Yunnan. Local officials along the Nu River, after initially agreeing to an interview, failed to reply to a list of written questions. Out in the jagged mountains along China's remote southwestern border, villagers in Xiaoshaba gather information about their future from rumors. In early December, a team of surveyors inventoried property and measured the narrow terrace of village farmland along the Nu. Several villagers say local officials have told them that everyone would be relocated around the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, which ends in early February - even if the dams have not yet been approved. 'If they tell me to move,' said one villager, Zhang Jianhua, 'I have no other choice.' A Legal Reprieve In the spring of 2003, a slender, studious man named Yu Xiaogang learned that the hydropower industry was eyeing the rivers of southwestern China. Mr. Yu, an environmental resources manager, knew that China believed that hydropower was a cleaner alternative for its energy shortages and that the Nu was considered one of the country's richest, untapped resources. But he and others believed that the Nu would be untouchable. The Nu, which translates as Angry River, roars out of the Tibetan Plateau east of the Himalayas and plunges through steep canyons just inside the border with Myanmar, formerly Burma, as it careers south before crossing the border. In China, it passes through a mountainous region with more than 7,000 species of plants and 80 rare or endangered animals and fish. Unesco said the region 'may be the most biologically diverse temperate ecosystem in the world' and designated it a World Heritage Site in the summer of 2003. 'We were very happy because we thought the Nu would be protected and would have no problems,' said Mr. Yu, who also led Green Watershed, an environmental NGO. But not long after the World Heritage designation, a state-run provincial newspaper announced that a public-private consortium planned to build 13 dams on the river. The project would be the largest cascade dam system in the world, and it appeared politically unstoppable. The majority partner, the China Huadian Corporation, was a state-owned goliath; the local government was a minority partner. In Beijing, the State Development and Reform Commission, a powerful government ministry, had approved the dams in August and planned to present the plan to the State Council, or the Chinese cabinet, for final approval. Construction would begin in September 2003. The environmental community was blindsided. More than 50,000 people, most of them from ethnic minority hill tribes, would be relocated. The Nu also was one of only two free flowing rivers in China. The State Environmental Protection Administration, or SEPA, the country's environmental watchdog, criticized the project in its official newspaper. But SEPA was considered one of the weakest ministries in the central government. Then, a snag arose - a bureaucratic delay, hardly uncommon in China. August became September and the proposal had not yet been presented for final approval. During the delay, a new environmental law took effect on Sept. 1. Based on an American model, the China Environmental Impact Assessment Law required comprehensive environmental reviews in the planning stages of major public and private development projects. Decades of relentless economic growth had left China with dire pollution problems and squandered natural resources. President Hu Jintao had made 'sustainable development' a new government mantra. The assessment law gave the environmental agency new powers to handle and approve environmental reviews before a project was approved. It also called for public participation, including hearings, as part of the review, though it did not detail specific guidelines. But it would take public pressure to force action on the Nu case. Despite its uniqueness and natural beauty, the Nu was not well known, largely because of its isolated location. In September 2003, an environmental conference in Beijing brought together academics, government environmental officials and NGO's to discuss the Nu. A month later, Pan Yue, the outspoken vice minister of the environmental agency, organized China's first 'Green Forum,' a public relations event that included Chinese music and film stars. One person at the forum was a woman named Wang Yongchen, a member of Green Earth Volunteers, an environmental NGO in Beijing. Initially, the Green Earth Volunteers had concentrated on tree planting and teaching children about the environment. But in recent years, the group had participated in efforts to stop a dam proposal in Sichuan Province. At the forum, Ms. Wang persuaded 62 celebrities and film stars to sign a petition in support of 'natural' rivers. She would later donate money to build 30 libraries in poor villages along the Nu. By early 2004, the controversy had attracted worldwide interest as 60 international organizations agreed to lobby the Chinese government about the Nu. Hundreds of volunteers in China called Unesco to protest the dam proposal. The country's most prominent NGO, Friends of Nature, embraced the cause, while an environmental group in Sichuan collected more than 10,000 signatures to stop the project. But the crucial factor was the Sept. 1 law. As the project appeared to be nearing approval, biologists, academics and environmentalists all argued that the government had not properly conducted an environmental review. In late winter, as Ms. Wang guided a tour of Chinese journalists, her cellphone rang. A friend informed her that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao had temporarily suspended the project so that it could be 'carefully discussed and decided on scientifically.' Ms. Wang began to cry with joy. Later, some Chinese newspapers speculated that Mr. Wen's edict meant that the project was dead. Mr. Yu thought otherwise. 'I thought this was the first success of public participation,' he said. 'But I did not think the decision was final.' Opening a Closed Process Located a short drive from the city of Liuku, Xiaoshaba is like countless poor villages along the Nu. Peasants live in crude homes, some under the same roof as their livestock and chickens. Some villagers have never gone farther than Liuku; some have never left the village. But on a May afternoon in 2004, a bus arrived. Inside was Yu Xiaogang, and he wanted to take villagers on a trip. The prime minister's order to suspend the project had stunned developers and provincial officials. A delegation had hurried to Beijing to try to restart the process. At the same time, the government's environmental agency focused on the assessment review. Mr. Yu was anxious to get villagers involved because the law had highlighted public participation. Most villagers knew nothing about the project or how it would change their lives. 'I thought we must let the Nu River people have their voice,' Mr. Yu said. So he offered to take a small group of villagers to the site of the Manwan Dam on the upper reaches of Mekong River in the southern Yunnan. In 2002, Mr. Yu had written an assessment of the social costs of the Manwan project, a report later endorsed by the prime minister at the time, Zhu Rongji. Leaving from Xiaoshaba, Mr. Yu took 14 peasants on a daylong journey to the Manwan, where they found many people living as scavengers. 'They heard how the government made promises but didn't follow through,' Mr. Yu said. 'Ten years later, nobody cared about them. The Nu River people were shocked.' Mr. Yu later led a small group of peasants to a Beijing hydropower conference jointly sponsored by the United Nations and China's National Development and Reform Commission. As several speakers extolled the virtues of dams, the dusty group of peasants sat in the upper reaches of the auditorium. Mr. Yu was allowed to speak at a sub-session of the conference. The villagers had practiced giving speeches but were not granted a speaking slot. Meanwhile, momentum seemed to be shifting in favor of dam supporters. Prime Minister Wen had visited Yunnan to confer with provincial officials. Two prominent scholars toured the Nu - on a trip sponsored by dam developers - and attracted wide public attention by attacking the environmentalists. But that criticism was insignificant compared to a broader governmental crackdown under way against nongovernmental organizations. In the spring of this year, President Hu ordered an intensive examination of NGO's because of concerns of the role that environmental groups had played in helping to topple governments in Central Asia. In a secret speech to top officials, Mr. Hu warned that the United States was using such groups to try to foment social unrest. Before, NGO's had hoped that onerous licensing restrictions were about to be repealed. Instead, environmental groups and other NGO's across the country were closely scrutinized, with some losing their licenses. Some groups began to fear that the 'legal space' granted to the civil society would be tightened, or closed. In Yunnan, officials began to pressure opponents. Mr. Yu would not comment about whether he had come under pressure. But acquaintances say he that has been forbidden from traveling to international conferences and that officials have put pressure on him. In Beijing, the environmental assessment report was finished by this summer. But the Ministry of Water Resources, noting that government reports about international rivers were considered proprietary information, declared a small section of the assessment to be a state secret and forbade its release. Dam opponents said the section could remain secret but argued that publicizing the rest of the report was essential for public discussion of the project. The government still had not outlined the potential environmental risks or explained what would happen to relocated villagers. So on Aug. 31, opponents mailed a letter to the State Council and later posted it on the Internet. It cited Chinese law and said any decision without public participation 'lacks public support and cannot tolerate history's scrutiny.' Nearly four months later, the government had not responded. An Uncertain Future A traffic sign on the narrow, unpaved road that passes through Xiaoshaba carries a propaganda message: 'A Model Village for Democratic Rule of Law.' A short walk away, beside the concrete block marking the proposed first dam, Guan Fulin, 55, said she had spoken to the surveyors who measured the village land in early December. 'The officials told us it is definitely going to happen,' Mrs. Guan said. She trusted that the government would take care of her but admitted that she did not yet know how she would be compensated or where she would go. Pointing to the village, she said, 'All these people will be moving.' If so, it would likely signal the start of a hydropower gold rush in Yunnan Province. One study estimated that China might build enough new dams, most of them in Yunnan, to double its hydroelectric output in the next five years. One plan would inundate one of the most popular tourist attractions in China - Tiger Leaping Gorge. Part of the frenzied hydropower development is driven by the thirst for new energy supplies. But part of it is caused by the breakup of the state monopoly that once controlled electrical generation in China. That breakup left regional state-owned energy giants who were each assigned 'assets' - like rivers or coal deposits. Each faces competitive pressures to develop new power plants quickly in order to claim market share. Mr. Ma, the environmental consultant in Beijing, said environmentalists understood that China faced a complex challenge in developing new energy sources even as it must reduce pollution. But he said this intense pressure to develop was why laws that provide oversight and public review must serve as safeguards. 'Before the Nu River proposal, you would hear about opposition to certain projects,' Mr. Ma said. 'But it was all based on the tremendous courage of individuals. This time, we see progress in Chinese law that makes it possible for a more systemic challenge.' He added: 'There is now more awareness of environmental rights and the rights of people as citizens. For such a major problem, they believe they have the right to know about it and at least have their views heard.' The dispute over the Nu seems at a standstill. Ultimately, the decision on holding hearings may fall to the prime minister. Earlier this year, Unesco issued a statement expressing its 'gravest concerns' about the potential damage to the World Heritage Site. In October, environmentalists boycotted a dam conference linked to the National Reform and Development Commission. Organizers had promised to show parts of the assessment report, but environmentalists believed it was an effort to avoid full public hearings. Ms. Wang, of the NGO Green Earth Volunteers, described the dilemma in simple terms. 'If the law is not enforced, what shall we do?' she asked. 'We have this law. Why doesn't this law work?'

Subject: Keeping Hope Alive From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 05:44:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/health/24patient.html?ex=1293080400&en=ece27aecb0f2101d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Doctors' Delicate Balance in Keeping Hope Alive By JAN HOFFMAN Dr. Joseph Sacco's young patient lay gasping for breath; she had advanced AIDS and now she was failing. Assessing her, Dr. Sacco knew her medical options amounted to a question of the lesser of two evils: either the more aggressive ventilator, on which she would probably die, or the more passive morphine, from which she would probably slip into death. But there was also a slender chance that either treatment might help her rally. He also knew that how he presented her options would affect her decision, the feather that would tip the balance of her hope scale. As Dr. Sacco, a palliative care specialist at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center, spoke to the woman on that chilly morning earlier this month, her eyes widened with terror: no intubation. He ordered morphine. He agonized about his approach. 'She's only 23,' he said later that day. 'Maybe I was too grim. Maybe I was conveying false hopelessness to her. Maybe I just should have said, 'Let's put you on the ventilator.' I may have spun it wrong.' The language of hope - whether, when and how to invoke it - has become an excruciatingly difficult issue in the modern relationship between doctor and patient. For centuries, doctors followed Hippocrates' injunction to hold out hope to patients, even when it meant withholding the truth. But that canon has been blasted apart by modern patients' demands for honesty and more involvement in their care. Now, patients may be told more than they need or want to know. Yet they still also need and want hope. In response, some doctors are beginning to think about hope in new ways. In certain cases, that means tempering a too-bleak prognosis. In others, it means resisting the allure of cutting-edge treatments with questionable benefits. Already vulnerable when they learn they have a life-threatening disease or chronic illness, patients can feel bewildered, trapped between reality and possibility. They, as well as doctors, are discovering that in the modern medical world, hope itself cannot be monolithic. It can be defined in many ways, depending on the patient's medical condition and station in life. A dying woman can find hope by selecting wedding gifts for her toddlers. An infertile couple moves on toward adoption. The power of a doctor's pronouncements is profound. When a doctor takes a blunt-is-best approach, enumerating side effects and dim statistics, in essence offering a hopeless prognosis, patients experience despair. A radiation oncologist told Minna Immerman's husband, who had brain cancer, that he had less than two years to live. 'That information was paralyzing,' Mrs. Immerman said. 'It wasn't helpful.' But when a doctor suggests that an exhausted patient try yet another therapy, in the hope that it may extend survival by weeks, the cost is also considerable - financially, physically and emotionally. 'We have to find a less toxic way to manage their hope,' said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, an internist and Harvard professor who is writing a textbook about prognosis. Efforts are being made across the medical community to grapple with the language and ethics of hope. Some medical schools pair students with end-stage disease patients so students can learn about anguish and compassion. Numerous studies have examined what doctors say versus what patients hear and the role of optimism in the care of the critically ill. Patient advocates have been teaching doctors how patients can be devastated or braced by a turn of phrase. A consensus is emerging that all patients need hope, and that doctors are obligated to offer it, in some form. To Dr. Sacco's boundless relief, his patient rallied. He began counseling her to take her AIDS medications, to find an apartment, a job. He wrote in an e-mail message: 'We prognosticate because people ask us to and trust our judgment. They do not know the depth of our uncertainty or that no matter how good or experienced we are, we are often wrong. That is why choosing where to put the feather is so damn hard.' False Hopelessness Robert Immerman, a 56-year-old Manhattan architect, knew that his brain cancer - a glioblastoma, Grade 4 - meant terrible news. After the tumor was removed, he asked the radiation oncologist his prognosis. 'The doctor was pleasant,' Minna Immerman recalled, 'as if he was telling you that hamburger was $2.99 a pound. He just said the likely survival rate with this tumor was, on the outside, 18 months. 'Bob purposely forgot it,' she said. 'I couldn't.' After radiation, Mr. Immerman began chemotherapy. But after one treatment, his white blood cell count dropped so precipitously that it was no longer an option. 'The medical oncologist said, 'The chances of survival with or without chemo are very, very slight,' ' said Mrs. Immerman, a special-education teacher. 'I think she was trying to make us feel better. What I heard was: 'With or without chemo, this won't end well, so don't feel so bad.' ' Mr. Immerman got scans every two months. Mrs. Immerman watched the calendar obsessively. Twelve months left. Six months. 'As time passed, instead of feeling better, I felt like it was a death sentence and it was winding down,' she said. She sweated the small stuff: should they renew their opera subscription? Mr. Immerman turned out to be one of those rare people who reside at the lucky tail end of a statistical curve. In February, it will be 10 years since he learned his prognosis. He is well. For years, Mrs. Immerman was shadowed by fear and depression about his illness, before she finally allowed herself to breathe out with gratitude. Candid exchanges about diagnosis and prognosis, especially when the answers are grim, are a relatively recent phenomenon. Hippocrates taught that physicians should 'comfort with solicitude and attention, revealing nothing of the patient's present or future condition.' A dose of reality, doctors believed, could poison a patient's hope, the will to live. Until the 1960's, that approach was largely embraced by physicians. Dr. Eric Cassell, who lectured about hope in November to doctors in the Boston area, recalled the days when a woman would wake from surgery, asking if she had cancer: ' 'No,' we'd say, 'you had suspicious cells so we took the breast, so you wouldn't get cancer.' We were all liars.' Treatments were very limited. 'Now when we're truthful,' Dr. Cassell added, 'it's in an era in which we believe we can do something.' Doctors in many third world countries and modernized nations, including Italy and Japan, still believe in withholding a bad prognosis. But the United States, Britain and other countries were revolutionized in the late 60's by the patients' rights movement, which established that patients had a legal right to be fully informed about their medical condition and treatment options. Now, whether a patient comes in complaining of a backache, a rash or a lump in the armpit, many doctors interpret informed consent as the obligation to rattle off all possibilities, from best-case to worst-case situations. Honesty is imperative. But what benefit is served by Dr. Dour? 'There are doctors who paint a bleaker picture than necessary so they can turn out to be heroes if things turn out well,' said Dr. David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford medical school, 'and it also relieves doctors of responsibility if bad things happen.' The fear of malpractice litigation after a bad outcome, he said, also drives doctors to be stunningly explicit from the outset. The medical community has nicknames for this bluntness: truth-dumping, terminal candor, hanging crepe. But some social workers call it false hopelessness. Given a time-tied prognosis, many patients become withdrawn and depressed, said Roz Kleban, a supervising social worker with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. 'Telling someone they have two years to live isn't useful knowledge,' she said. 'It's noise. Whether or not that prediction is true, they lose their ability to live well in the present.' Health care providers debate the wisdom of giving patients a precise prognosis: 'There's an ethical obligation to tell people their prognosis,' said Dr. Barron Lerner, an internist and bioethicist at Columbia University medical school, 'but no reason to pound it into their heads.' Others say that doctors should make sure they can explain the numbers in context, with the pluses and minuses of treatment options, including the implications of choosing not to have treatment. Though many patients ask how long they have to live, thinking that amid the chaos of bad news, a number offers something concrete, studies show that they do not understand statistical nuances and tend to misconstrue them. Moreover, though statistics may be indicative, they are inherently imperfect. Many doctors prefer not to give a prognosis. And, studies show, their prognoses are often wrong, one way or the other. Where does this leave the frightened patient? Meg Gaines, director of the Center for Patient Partnerships, a patient advocacy program at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, thinks false hopelessness is more debilitating than false hope. 'I tell people to ask the doctor, 'Have you ever known anyone with this disease who has gotten better?' If the answer is yes, just say, 'So let's quit talking about death and talk about what we can try!' ' Some patients do triumph against grotesque statistical odds; others succumb even when the odds are piled in their favor. But willful ignorance, she cautioned, can be dangerous. 'People should know about prognosis to the extent that it's necessary to make good decisions about monitoring your health care,' she said. 'You can't be an ostrich in the sand. When the stampeding rhinoceri are coming, you have to be able to get out of the way.' False Hope Perhaps just as harmful as false hopelessness, many experts believe, is false hope. 'If one patient in a thousand will live with pancreatic cancer for 10 years,' said Dr. Christakis of Harvard, and doctors hold out that patient as a realistic example, 'we have harmed 999 patients.' False hopelessness, in the name of reality, dwells on the dark view of a patient's condition, prematurely foreclosing possibility and a spirited fight. False hope sidesteps reality, leaving patients and family members unprepared for tragedy. When Anna Kyle was in labor, the umbilical cord dropped ahead of the baby, who was deprived of oxygen for critical moments. Mrs. Kyle had an emergency Caesarean section. The baby had to be resuscitated. The nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit told Mrs. Kyle, of Lonoke, Ark., that her son was a 'good baby,' because he didn't cry or fuss. Later, when he had developmental delays, her hopes were at war with her nagging fears. But doctors kept saying the child might outgrow them. Her son, now 5, received a formal diagnosis last year. 'Nobody wanted to say, 'Your kid has autism, your kid is mentally retarded, your kid will be in diapers most of his life,' ' said Mrs. Kyle, whose husband earns $10 an hour as a truck driver. 'It hurts, it's nasty, ugly stuff, but it has to be said, so kids can get the therapy they need as early as possible.' Because patients hunger for good news, experts say that doctors should choose their words carefully: 'If you get into the language of hope, you run the risk of over-promising things,' said Dr. Lerner of Columbia. The more useful discussion for patients, he added, is, 'what hopeful things can I do?' In his November lecture on hope, Dr. Cassell said that patients do not need 'false hope that is personified in useless therapy with nontherapeutic effect.' False hope is both a hangover from the centuries-old belief that doctors should withhold bad news, and a practice newly infused by the explosion of so many medical treatments and the tenuous promise held out by clinical trials. Consider the cost of false hope, experts note: not only the physical and emotional agony of dying patients who try last-ditch, occasionally unproven treatments, but also the depletion, financially and psychologically, of the patients' survivors. 'The battle cry of our culture is, 'Don't just stand there - do something!' ' said Dr. Richard Deyo, a Seattle internist and professor at the University of Washington who writes about the high cost of false hope. He added, 'Physicians have a natural bias for action, whereas it may be more honest to say, 'Whether I do something or not, the result is likely to be the same.' ' A 1994 study showed that Americans have greater faith in medical advances than people in many other countries. Thirty-four percent of Americans believed that modern medicine 'can cure almost any illness for people who have access to the most advanced technology and treatment.' By contrast, only 11 percent of Germans held the same belief. Accompanying the medical advances, however, are an increasing number of physician subspecialties. One downside is that patients hear from a variety of voices, and they can become inadvertently misled. Pat Murphy, a nurse and grief counselor who heads the family support team at University Hospital in Newark, said that, for example, when a patient has a critical stroke, a cardiologist, among others, will be called in for an evaluation: 'The doctor might say, 'This is a strong heart' and then he leaves,' she said. 'The patient will probably never regain consciousness. But the 'parts people' talk to the family out of context, and the family thinks they're hearing good news.' Another result of this medical renaissance is thousands of clinical trials. Phase 1 trials often try out doses of an unapproved drug; perhaps only 5 percent of volunteers may derive any benefit. 'Most people think they don't want to be an experiment,' said George J. Annas, author of 'The Rights of Patients.' But, he said, when desperately ill patients learn about a trial, 'all of a sudden there's no difference in their minds between research and treatment.' A 2003 study of advanced-stage cancer patients who volunteered for Phase I trials showed that at least three-quarters of them were convinced they had a 50 percent chance or greater of being helped by the drug. Because patients listen selectively, it can be difficult to tease out who owns responsibility for false hope: Patricia Mendell, a New York psychotherapist who works with fertility patients, noted: 'A doctor can tell a patient she has a 95 percent chance of an I.V.F. cycle not working. But the patient will feel it's her right to try for that 5 percent. ' Indeed, false hope can represent a complex entwining between terrified patient and well-intended doctor: both want the best outcome, sometimes so intensely that what emerges is a collective denial about the patient's condition. Hope Elissa J. Levy was a winter sports jock, with a buoyant social circle and a power job on Wall Street. But in January 2002, she received a diagnosis of secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, a less common version of the disease, for which there are few treatments and no known cures. Soon, Ms. Levy needed a cane, and could scarcely walk a block. Pain and fatigue dogged her. Her quick brain grew foggy, her right hand floppy. She cut back her new job as a deputy director of a Bronx charter school to three days a week. In the mornings, her mother had to help dress her. But though her body sagged, her neurologist helped prop up her spirits. 'Often I would come in crying,' Ms. Levy said, 'and he would hold my hand and say, 'We'll figure this out together.' Or 'We can hope that this treatment works.' ' Given the gravity of her disease, was it appropriate for the doctor to stoke her hope? 'Hope,' wrote Emily Dickinson, 'is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul.' Imprecise and evanescent, hope is almost universally considered essential to the business of being human. Few can define hope: Self-delusion? Optimism? Expectation? Faith? And that, say experts from across a wide spectrum, is the point: hope means different things to different people. When someone's medical condition changes, that person's definition of hope changes. A hope for a cure can morph into a hope that a relationship can be mended. Or that one's organs will be eligible for donation. For so many, hope and faith are inextricably linked. 'Truly spiritual people are amazing, ' said Ms. Murphy of University Hospital. 'Until the moment of death, families pray for a miracle and then at the moment of the death, they say, 'This is God's will' and 'God will get us through this.' ' As health care providers struggle with whether, how and when doctors should speak of hope, a consensus is building on at least two fronts: that what fundamentally matters is that a doctor tells the truth with kindness, and that a doctor should never just say, 'I have nothing more to offer you.' More doctors are embracing palliative care specialists as partners who work with critically ill patients and their families to help them redefine their hopes, from the improbable to the possible. Many doctors, whose specialties range from neurosurgery to infertility, retain therapists to counsel patients. 'Hope lives inside a patient and the physician's behavior can either bring it out or suppress it,' said Dr. Susan D. Block, a palliative care leader at Harvard. 'When a patient has goals, it's impossible to be hopeless. And when a physician can help a patient define them, you feel like a healer, even when the patient is dying.' Dr. Spiegel, the Stanford psychiatrist, recalled a woman who knew her death from cancer was imminent: 'She had 15-minute appointments scheduled all day with relatives, to set them straight on how to live their lives. Then she was going to die. This was a hopeful woman.' Harvard's medical school matches first-year students with critically ill patients - in essence, the patients become the teachers. One patient, Dr. Block recalled, was a high school teacher dying from lymphoma, who agreed with alacrity to participate. When her husband came into her room, the patient said, with tears in her eyes, 'Honey, I have one last teaching gig.' Last April, Ms. Levy's doctor started her on a drug that is still in clinical trials, but has long been available in Europe. Shortly after she began taking the daily pill, she went for a checkup and lay down on his examining table. He asked her to lift her leg. Normally, Ms. Levy struggled to budge her leg. But having taken the drug, she flung her leg into a 90-degree angle. She gasped. Usually, when her doctor pressed one finger against her leg, it collapsed. Now he pushed with his open hand. She held steady. Both she and her doctor grew teary-eyed. Finally, she walked down the hall without her cane. Both patient and doctor wept openly. The drug does not cure her disease; it treats symptoms. But Ms. Levy, 37, now walks 20 blocks at a clip, works four days a week, goes to the gym. She is dating. A recent test showed that her disease has not progressed. In a sense, Ms. Levy's relationship with her doctor combined the best of the old and new worlds. He was hopeful but also candid. And he could offer her promising treatments, including one that, at least temporarily, seems to help. 'And if I start feeling bad again?' Ms. Levy said. 'I have hope that I'll feel good again.'

Subject: Drug Prices Tend to Rise From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 05:36:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/26/business/26rahr.html?ex=1264482000&en=b7a98ed123fabd1f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland January 26, 2005 Making a Fortune by Wagering That Drug Prices Tend to Rise By STEPHANIE SAUL Stewart Rahr's new $45 million East Hampton estate, the most expensive house ever purchased in New York State, is just across the pond from Steven Spielberg's. Mr. Rahr plays golf with Donald Trump and practices putting on an indoor green in the basement of his warehouse in Queens. He and his wife, Carol, last drew attention in 2003 when they bought four works of art, including a Renoir and a Picasso, in one sitting at Sotheby's. But as he becomes increasingly visible as one of New York's wealthiest men, Mr. Rahr, a 58-year-old law school dropout, is girding himself for the elimination of the system that helped generate his fortune. His success offers a rare glimpse into a lucrative but little-known corner of the pharmaceutical industry - the once-mundane business of delivering drugs from manufacturers to pharmacies. Over the last 20 years, the packing and shipping of drugs evolved into a game of arbitrage, called speculative buying, with distributors like Mr. Rahr wagering on drug price increases. This common industry practice seems more fitting to a casino than a distribution warehouse. And in the 1990's and the early years of this decade, with prices far outstripping inflation, it was a sure bet. Knowing that drug manufacturers typically increased prices at the same time, often in January, drug middlemen like Mr. Rahr, the sole owner of Kinray, which is based in Queens, made millions by overstocking their warehouses before manufacturers announced price increases. By acquiring extra inventory at the lower price, distributors made quick profits once they sold the drugs at higher prices a short time later to retail pharmacies. Prescription drug prices are a combustible political issue, and manufacturers feel intense pressure to restrain them. With their historically large profits threatened, and with regulators questioning aspects of the speculative buying system, the manufacturers have taken steps to shut it by limiting distributors to just one month's worth of inventory. Drug manufacturers have also begun using special software to help detect speculative buying. Mr. Rahr would not disclose exactly how much he made through speculative buying. Goldman Sachs estimated that the distribution industry, which is dominated by three large public companies, made 60 percent of its profit, or $980 million, from speculative buying in 2001, when the practice was at its peak. More recently, Goldman Sachs estimated speculative buying's contribution at 40 percent of profits. Mr. Rahr, who honed the practice with the help of a computer program, said that his profit from the practice never reached 40 percent. Mr. Rahr also said that his and other distributors' fees accounted for a tiny portion of the cost of drugs to consumers, with manufacturers taking the major share of profits. 'We're talking an infinitesimal impact on the consumer, based on the total cost of the health care industry,' Mr. Rahr said. 'Whether there is spec buying or not is not the greatest factor in the high cost of pharmaceuticals.' In some ways, the practice helped drug manufacturers, who relied on speculative buying in lieu of paying distributors to get drugs to pharmacies. In effect, it was a form of hidden compensation that never showed up as a cost to manufacturers. But speculative buying fostered many problems, industry analysts and economists said. Some say it played a role in drug cost inflation by adding an incentive for manufacturers to raise prices repeatedly. It also sometimes gave drug makers false signals that products were in demand, prompting them to turn out excess product. By encouraging distributor stockpiling, the system also led to shortages in some regions of the country, a situation known as a 'stock out' and one that the industry does not like to discuss. Last year, Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $150 million to settle allegations, without admitting or denying guilt, that it misled investors by aggressively encouraging wholesalers to flood their warehouses, thus artificially inflating its sales. The case, brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, was the beginning of the end of speculative buying, as other manufacturers worried that they, too, might run afoul of securities laws. 'It was a dysfunctional model,' said Ken Abramowitz, an analyst and managing general partner at NGN Capital, a health care venture capital company in New York. Exactly how much retail drug prices have been affected by speculative buying is an open question. Adam J. Fein, a Philadelphia business economist, says that the end of speculative buying can reduce the rate of drug price inflation by one or two percentage points a year. Based on the 5.3 percent increase in retail drug prices in 2003, as calculated by IMS Health, a pharmaceutical-market research company, consumers could save $2.2 billion to $4.4 billion annually. Others agree that speculative buying created inflationary pressures, but are more concerned that ending the practice will drive up retail prices if distributors, who operate on slim profit margins, are forced to pass any costs to retail pharmacies. 'They'll have to make up their margins somewhere that they aren't getting from the manufacturer,' said Steven W. Schondelmeyer, a University of Minnesota professor who studies the economics of the pharmaceutical industry. 'They'll raise the prices to the pharmacies. The pharmacies have very thin margins to begin with, and all they can do is pass it on to consumers.' Experts agree, however, that consumers will benefit in at least one way. Speculative buying helped foster a secondary pharmaceutical market, with some distributors reselling extra drugs they did not need to other distributors. 'It invited the risk of the type of counterfeit and adulterated market that we saw with some of the biotech drugs and Lipitor,' said Christopher McFadden, an analyst with Goldman Sachs. The shift away from speculative buying has put pharmaceutical distribution at a critical point, according to Mr. Fein, whose company, Pembroke Consulting, advises both manufacturers and distributors. 'Of course it's affected our business,' said Mr. Rahr, who said he had no plans to raise prices to compensate for the loss of profit from speculative buying. Instead, he said that his company was working harder to control costs and expand its territory. 'Volume, volume, volume,' he said. The transformation has also affected bottom lines at the three large public pharmaceutical distribution companies - AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. Today, they deliver 90 percent of the $220 billion in drugs sold in the United States. As distributors try to recoup, they have become engaged in what Mr. Fein said were tough negotiations with manufacturers, asking that they pay fees for distributing drugs to pharmacies. 'The question is, How much more value or how much more fees is the manufacturing community going to be willing to pay?' Mr. McFadden said. 'It's kind of whatever you can negotiate.' In one of the first of these 'fee for service' deals, Eli Lilly recently announced it had struck an agreement with Cardinal Health, but neither side disclosed terms. Last week, Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical company, announced that it had broken off negotiations with Cardinal Health and warned patients of potential disruptions in the supply of drugs to treat Alzheimer's, epilepsy and gastrointestinal problems. Three days later, the companies announced that they had reached a deal, after all. Pfizer, the giant pharmaceutical manufacturer, said last week that it would not negotiate fee agreements with distributors. 'Someone like Pfizer says, 'the fact that you lost money is not my problem,' ' said Mr. Abramowitz, the health care analyst. As his profit margin narrows - Mr. Rahr describes it as 'razor thin' - Mr. Rahr is expressing confidence that Kinray will prosper even without speculative buying, based on its efficiency, low costs and the fact that he has no debt. His company has established a national telemarketing office that makes cold calls to pharmacies across the country. Mr. Rahr, whose company employs about 1,000 people, is expanding his business in home health equipment like walkers and bedpans, as well as generic drugs, both areas with higher profit margins than brand-name drugs, where he makes less than 2 cents on the dollar. 'We do all this work for pennies,' Mr. Rahr said. 'But like my father said, 'pennies do add up to dollars.' ' Last year, the pennies added up to $3.1 billion in sales. Mr. Rahr's business, he said, is dependent on a large computer-operated picking system that fills orders from among 34,000 items in the company's 400,000-foot warehouse. The items, he said, include anything a drugstore would sell. 'I'd be out of business without this technology,' he said. Despite his wealth, Mr. Rahr still exudes Queens from every pore. He is gregarious and down to earth, perpetually tanned, and seems both proud of his success and slightly apologetic about it, emphasizing that he still wears a $19.95 watch and drives himself to work in a 10-year-old Jeep Cherokee. He loves to tell stories about how a headwaiter or a security guard stopped him because he was wearing his usual attire, a baseball cap and jeans. 'My wife's used to it,' he said. 'I identify with the underdog.' He specializes in sales to 3,000 independent drugstores in seven Northeastern states. Mr. Rahr says he controls 75 percent of that market. Among the druggists, Kinray is known for its easy-to-use Web site. It has been 36 years since Mr. Rahr dropped out of New York Law School and persuaded his father, Joseph Rahr, not to sell the family's retail pharmacy in Brooklyn, which also supplied a few other drugstores. Mr. Rahr recently described the rejection he felt at first, when he tried to expand the wholesale business. 'I used to call the pharmacies and I would call and say, 'Kinray,' and they'd say, 'Nothing for you today.' And after about three or four in a row, I would get, 'Here's three aspirin for you and two Colgate toothpaste and one Mennen Speed Stick, if I were lucky,' ' Mr. Rahr recalled. 'And the sound of them hanging up on me, the 'nothing for you today,' just started to make me feel like I had to do something to get to become the primary jobber in these stores.' In 1973, Mr. Rahr and his wife, now a partner in a Manhattan jewelry design firm, Beach to Ballroom, bought their first home on one acre in suburban Dix Hills, N.Y. The Hamptons estate is considerably more grand, and Mr. Rahr sees it as his crowning achievement. It sits on 25 acres. The main house is 18,000 square feet, with 8 bedrooms and 14 baths, a private 2,000-foot beach with its own dock and boathouse, a waterside heated pool with waterfall and whirlpool, a tennis court and viewing pavilion, and a greenhouse. Mr. Rahr said that buying the property was an emotional experience for him. 'Here we were, 32 years later, walking on a much larger estate and feeling blessed that we were able to be in this position,' he said. Mr. Rahr says he has never borrowed a penny, so in a few days, when the deal closes on the oceanfront mansion, called Burnt Point, he will pay cash.

Subject: Move Over, Mondrian From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:42:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/26/books/26illu.html?ex=1293253200&en=a8a6205e90aafddb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 26, 2005 Move Over, Mondrian: It's Miffy's Turn By KATHRYN SHATTUCK To thousands of preschool-age viewers in the United States each morning, Miffy is the resolute television bunny seen tootling around the Noggin channel on her red scooter. But to millions of European children from an era when pablum wasn't served up with the remote, Miffy sprang not from a rabbit hutch in Cableland but from a book. In fact, since her birth in 1955, Miffy has become so popular in her home country, the Netherlands, that Dick Bruna, her creator, is popularly known as 'Miffy's father.' It makes sense, then, that Mr. Bruna's illustrated characters, who decorate signposts along the beaches of the Dutch North Sea and adorn posters for the Red Cross and Amnesty International, should greet visitors to 'Dutch Treats: Contemporary Illustration From the Netherlands,' an exhibition of about 80 works by 14 children's book illustrators whose forays into whimsy have beguiled readers of all ages for half a century. There is the old guard and the new - from the ubiquitous images by Mr. Bruna and Max Velthuijs, best known for the moral tales played out by his alter ego, Frog, to the inventive creations of relative newcomers, like Jan Jutte, illustrator of 'Get Up!' (1998), and Annemarie van Haeringen, who has won three Golden Brush awards, the top prize in the Netherlands for children's book, for works like 'The Princess With the Long Hair' (1999) and 'Bear Fancies Butterfly' (2004). The exhibition, presented by the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., will remain at the UBS Art Gallery, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, through Feb. 24, before moving to the Carle, where it will be on view from March 28 through July 9. 'We wanted to show very interesting children's books illustrators that are seen as normal artists in the Netherlands,' Truusje Vrooland-Löb, an expert on Dutch children's literature and the show's curator, said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam last week. 'Their work can hang on the wall as well as any other artwork.' Indeed, to view the illustrations in their original larger formats, with pencil marks, brush strokes and layered paper in high relief, is akin to watching a book's characters come to life and walk off the pages. Colors pop, details lost in pint-size renderings re-emerge and flat images suddenly gain dimension. Stare at Miffy head on, and Mr. Bruna's sculptural training becomes evident as the figure's straightforward unshaded body, outlined in firm ink strokes, assumes rounded proportions, colored in the primary hues favored by Mondrian and Matisse, two of his inspirations. 'I hope that the child's imagination is stimulated to see things in their simplest form,' Mr. Bruna says in the tiny booklet that accompanies the exhibition, 'so that life, with all its complications, becomes a little clearer.' Jip and Janneke, the terrible twosome who run through Fiep Westendorp's illustrations for books like 'The Wave' (1978), inevitably appear in silhouette, a pair of pointy-nosed, pitch-black cutouts with holes for eyes, superimposed on frothy color washes. 'These characters are so well known they're really part of the pictorial culture of the Netherlands,' Ms. Vrooland-Löb said. Yvonne Jagtenberg's 'Lady of Stavoren' (2000), starring a wimpled woman and a toothsome wolf, reveals the tattered edges of hand-torn paper layered in a collage. Its medieval setting and dour, muddy colors à la Edward Hopper - she's a fan - evoke a sophistication seldom seen in juvenile literature. But her latest works, centered on a redheaded mop-top named Balotje, or Kate in English, has all the innocence of a coloring book. 'Every story had its own atmosphere, and I want to evoke it,' Ms. Jagtenberg said by telephone. She has illustrated about 100 books and, at 38, is the youngest artist in the exhibition. 'Balotje is very young, and so she is done in crayon. The first thing children work with is their crayon, and you see it in their artworks, too. It's so direct that you see the soul of the children.' In Thé Tjong-Khing's pen-and-ink drawings for books like 'Little Sophie and Lanky Flop' (1985), minuscule crosshatches cause his feathery characters, produced by a few swift strokes and a lot of white space, to jump to the fore. Seen up close, you would swear there are at least a million of the tiny marks. Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Tjong-Khing, 72, whom Ms. Vrooland-Löb called 'one of the grand old men in Dutch illustrators,' had a career in erotically charged comic strips before abandoning that work for his first love, children's books. So, too, Philip Hopman dumped dreams of becoming a fashion designer because 'it was soon clear that I didn't have the talent,' he said in a telephone interview. 'I could draw, though. I was very influenced by Thé Tjong-Khing. His way of looking at things is remarkable, and he has a good eye for detail. He taught me to focus on what you want to say, and then tell a different story behind things.' Mr. Hopman's images, too, are chockablock with activity and hidden meanings. Consider a scene from 'Tamer Tom' (1994), in which a menagerie runs amok: a hippopotamus hoists a tiger into a tree; another hippo is ridden by a white-collared rabbit straight out of 'Alice in Wonderland'; a harnessed ferret is lassoed by a friend; and hedgehogs jump through hoops. 'I usually draw people, more or less,' Mr. Hopman said. 'I recently drew a very big rhino on a Harley-Davidson, a mid-life-crisis type of man with a cowboy hat on. Everyone knows that person.' Mr. Hopman, 44, recently abandoned the hurly-burly of Amsterdam for his childhood home a few miles away. 'I changed my father's tulip barn into a studio with light coming through the roof,' he said. 'It's right by the dunes and the sea, and very peaceful. It gives me a sort of rest, a focus on work.' 'It takes me a long time to think out the characters,' he continued, 'to start scribbling, to start figuring out the direction I'm going to go.' Wouldn't a computer speed up the process? 'Oh no, never!,' he said. 'I'm really old-fashioned. I just don't speak the language of the computer. I don't like the medium. I like paper and feeling the scratch of ink. It really works in my hand. It's much easier than writing.' Unlike Mr. Bruna and Ms. Jagtenberg, who often write the texts that accompany their drawings, Mr. Hopman only recently found comfort in words. 'Every Time I Think of You,' the first of his books to contain both his text and his illustrations, will be published next month. 'It's about love,' Mr. Hopman said. He has no children of his own, but he does have godchildren who routinely show up in his books in one guise or another. 'I think I stopped my development at 8, and so we get along like a house on fire,' he added. And though the art of these illustrators has made them famous in a very adult way - substantial royalty checks, works in major museums - for them success is apparently sweeter when viewed through small eyes. 'What's so nice when you make picture books is that nobody knows who you are,' Ms. Jagtenberg said. 'I'm not an actress; I'm not a famous person. But for children, you are famous. They want to touch you. And that's nice, too.'

Subject: Formats While DVD's Burn From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:14:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/technology/25cnd-format.html?ex=1293166800&en=4c96fefeee322675&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Fiddling with Formats While DVD's Burn By KEN BELSON The war for control of the next-generation DVD is approaching a critical juncture: next week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, companies championing the two competing high-definition DVD standards - Blu-ray and HD DVD - will unveil their lineups of new players and movie titles. There are growing signs, though, that the battle for supremacy in this multibillion-dollar market may yield a hollow victory. As electronics makers, technology companies and Hollywood studios haggle over the fine points of their formats, consumers are quickly finding alternatives to buying and renting packaged DVD's, high-definition or otherwise. 'While they fight, Rome is burning,' said Robert Heiblim, an independent consultant to electronics companies. 'High-definition video-on-demand and digital video recorders are compelling, and people will say, 'why do I need it?' ' when considering whether to buy a high-definition player. The fight between the Blu-ray and HD DVD groups is based on different views of what consumers want. The HD DVD camp, led by Toshiba, assumes that consumers will buy high-definition DVD's and players, but only at the right price. So it is improving existing DVD technology, which can be made cheaply and quickly. The Blu-ray group figures that something brand new is needed to get consumers interested, so it is developing discs with enough capacity to allow for innovative features in the future. Both sides agree, however, that now is the time to introduce high-definition DVD discs and players. Sales of high-definition televisions, with their sleek design and superior picture and sound quality, are soaring, and the major networks are broadcasting more programs in high-definition. Game makers like Sony see high-definition video games as a way to boost console sales, and Hollywood hopes that high-definition discs will offset slumping sales of current-generation DVD's in the $19 billion prepackaged disc market. Yet the alternatives to these new players and DVD's are growing by the day. The most promising is the on-demand programming, both standard and high-definition, being offered by cable companies. The percentage of cable customers who watch television on-demand has doubled in the past year, to 23 percent, according to the Leichtman Research Group. With thousands of free movies available at any time, consumers have fewer reasons to rent a DVD at Blockbuster or buy a new one at Best Buy. They are also likely to think twice before spending $1,000 or more for a new high-definition DVD player, or $25 or so to own a disc of a movie they might already have in standard definition. Of course, these newfangled ways of watching video are still a small piece of the overall video market, and industry executives and analysts say they expect most consumers to continue buying prerecorded DVD's for years to come. They also say they believe that high-definition programs - and the televisions to watch them on - are the way of the future. The question is how consumers will get that programming. Even without these alternatives, high-definition DVD's face a dicey start. The inability of the Blu-ray group and HD-DVD camp to agree on a single standard means that consumers must consider two sets of machines in the stores. Except for avid technophiles, consumers are likely to wait out the standards battle, lest they get stuck with a player that becomes obsolete if the other format wins. Machines will also be expensive - $1,000 or more - and consumers will need a television capable of playing high-definition programs, which can easily cost several thousand dollars more. The list of movies available in the formats will be skimpy at first. Sony, which leads the Blu-ray group, has said that its new video game consoles due out this spring will play Blu-ray DVD's. But few industry analysts expect consumers to buy the game machine just to watch movies. In the meantime, other companies are making it easier to watch and copy high-definition movies. Scientific-Atlanta has a new set-top box with a digital video recorder and DVD recorder built in, so cable subscribers can use a single machine to record programming and burn it onto blank discs. 'Consumers are getting hooked on video-on-demand and the flexibility of moving content around the home,' said Ted Schadler, an industry analyst at Forrester. 'Once you open that Pandora's box, you can't close it. The battle over the format is silly. For the product to grow, they have to promote the benefits of HD, not battle each other.' Yet the two sides are digging in their heels, not shaking hands. Sony, Panasonic, Samsung and other backers of the Blu-ray format expect to flood stores next year with high-definition DVD players, and half a dozen studios will make movies for their machines. Not to be outdone, the HD DVD camp led by Toshiba has won endorsements from Microsoft and Intel. Hewlett-Packard, a member of the Blu-ray group, agreed last week to work with the HD DVD camp as well. These allies say that the wall between computers and consumer electronics is blurring and that the new formats should let users move movies and other content among various devices seamlessly. Not surprisingly, they see computers at the main conduit, not standalone electronic devices. 'If PC's don't adopt these technologies, it will be a ho-hum 2006' for next-generation DVD's, said Maureen Weber, the general manager of the personal storage group at Hewlett-Packard. 'It all boils down to Microsoft and Sony wanting to dominate the connected home. It's a showdown between consumer electronics and personal computers over convergence.' Ms. Weber, like many other executives, acknowledges that the longer the format battle continues, the higher the likelihood that consumers will find other solutions, including video-on-demand. Comcast, the country's largest cable provider, already gives its 20 million subscribers access to 3,800 movies and television shows. The 44 percent of Comcast's subscribers who have the set-top box needed to see on-demand programs have watched more than 1 billion of them so far this year. There are signs that rising on-demand viewing is denting DVD sales and rentals, a worrying sign for Hollywood executives who increasingly rely on disc sales to offset the rising cost of producing movies. Since consumer electronics makers and Hollywood studios earn much of their profit on sales margins, they will feel the pinch if these new viewing options grab even 5 or 10 percent of video market. A poll by the Starz Entertainment Group this month showed that 60 percent of those who watch on-demand video buy fewer DVD's, while 72 percent of those surveyed are renting fewer movies. Starz has also broadened the definition of on-demand with Starz Ticket, which lets users download movies to their laptops or other devices for $12.95 a month. The service includes a rotation of 300 movies that can be watched multiple times and, like a digital video recorder, paused, rewound and fast-forwarded. Like store-bought DVD's, they also include directors' cuts, foreign language versions and other bonus material. 'We're on the verge of another major shift in terms of how consumers receive video,' said Tom Southwick, a spokesman for the Starz Entertainment Group. 'What's happening in the video arena is just like what is happening in the MP3 market. Over time, there's going to be so much available with cable on-demand and the Internet that having a library of tapes that you buy or borrow will become inconvenient.' For now, none of the Starz Ticket movies are in high-definition because typical broadband connections are too slow to make downloads feasible. The current generation of discs hold up to 8.5 gigabytes of memory, not enough for a full-length movie in high-definition. Consumer habits also die hard. 'You can change technology all you want, but you can't change people,' said Andy Parsons, a Blu-ray group spokesman who noted that the vast majority of music fans still buy CD's. 'Average folks still want to watch the movie and buy it. It's presuming a lot to think that they will replace the model they've used for decades.'

Subject: Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:08:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/magazine/25dee.html?ex=1293166800&en=5e51192381477d9e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Gidget Doesn't Live Here Anymore By DAPHNE MERKIN At the height of her spectacularly short-lived fame, coverage of everything from her dietary habits to her taste in men was enormous, with approximately 15 magazine articles appearing every month. The thing is, it all happened so fast, was over practically before it began, that we can almost be forgiven for misconstruing her as a cultural simulacrum: a blip on the monitor, a media invention, an adorable incarnation of a feminine ideal of the reluctant or unwitting nymphet, rather than a flesh-and-blood creature with needs and wishes (not to mention raging demons) of her own. The lightning speed with which Sandra Dee was first heralded and then discarded may have been just another example of the 'now you see her, now you don't' phenomenon endemic to the fever-dream of Hollywood, but it also suggests the dark 'Miss Lonelyhearts' side of the American manufacture of celebrity - the ruthlessness that drives it and the despair it feeds off. She went from being discovered in 1956, at 12, to winning a Golden Globe Award in 1958, to being hailed by The Motion Picture Herald in 1959 as the 'Number One Star of Tomorrow,' based on her promising pigtailed debut in the sterling weepie 'Until They Sail' as well as her performance in 'The Reluctant Debutante.' Less than a decade later, her career all but ended when she was dropped by Universal, after her divorce, at age 22, from the crooner Bobby Darin. 'Sometimes I feel like a has-been who never was,' Dee told The Newark Evening News in 1967. In truth, she never entirely disappeared from the collective imagination, and therein lies one of many painful paradoxes (she was, for instance, among the last actors to be dropped as a contract player before the studio system expired) in what turns out to be a story too full of them. Her moment as 'a junior Doris Day,' as she once put it, or 'a Tinkertoy,' as an underwhelmed journalist once put it - although she early on demonstrated a far greater range of acting talent than she would later be remembered for - may have been vastly abbreviated, but there's no forgetting that fluffy neon concoction of a name, or what it stood for. Even if you never caught her in her glory days as Gidget or Tammy, Dee's legacy as an eclipsed and parodied icon, a cinematic reference that signifies everything blond and unviolated about the 50's, was assured by her immortalization in a catchy song from 'Grease.' Its broadly winking lyrics are declaimed by Rizzo, the designated high-school Bad Girl, at a pajama party and are aimed at converting the goody-two-shoes newcomer Sandy to a life of carnal sin: 'Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee/lousy with virginity/Won't go to bed till I'm legally wed,/I can't, I'm Sandra Dee.' Precisely because of the mythic stature we endowed her with, it's hard to believe that the wisp of a girl who cavorted decorously on-screen with John Saxon and Troy Donahue, in a time before teenagers of either sex thought to have their tongues pierced, lacked the grace to fade out, had the temerity to live on - and so unfetchingly, her life marred by chronic anorexia, alcoholism and depression - after we were no longer paying her any mind. Dee's death last February at age 60 (her official age was obscured from early childhood, when her mother added two years to it; many obituaries listed her age at the time of her death as 62), of complications from kidney disease, impels us to retrieve her from her vacuum-packed, nostalgia-inducing state as an idealized adolescent prototype. This in turn raises a possibility almost too disturbing to contemplate: how to envision Sandra Dee as middle-aged, as anything other than a bubbling and bikinied beach babe, the candied yin to Annette Funicello's sultry yang, the sweet and genteelly chaperoned box-office ingénue whose popularity once rivaled Elizabeth Taylor's and whose elopement at 16 with the scrappy Bronx-bred Darin, after a one-month courtship on the set of a forgettable movie ('Come September'), spoke to a girlishly starry-eyed fantasy of romance. Then again, the 'darling, pink world,' as she herself characterized it, that Sandra Dee was thought to inhabit by her fans had always been a grotesque mockery, plagued not by an overripened case of virginity but by childhood incest. The girl with brimming brown eyes and a fizzy lilt to her voice was born Alexandria Zuck in Bayonne, N.J. Her parents divorced when she was 5; her father, a bus driver, disappeared from her life shortly thereafter, and her mother, Mary, married a much-older real-estate entrepreneur named Eugene Duvan within a few years. According to Dee's own account, as relayed by her son, Dodd Darin, in his touching and unglamorized memoir of his parents, 'Dream Lovers,' her lifelong battle with anorexia - which would lead to three hospitalizations in her midteens, cardiac distress and multiple miscarriages - began with Mary's bizarre approach to her daughter's meals: 'My mother fed me with a spoon until I was 6 years old. She would make me a bowl of oatmeal. She'd crack an egg into it, raw, and. . .cold and lumps and streaks, I had to eat it all.' Worse yet, Dee's devoted but manipulative mother turned a conveniently blind eye to the defiled sexual appetites of her new husband. Duvan, who liked to tease his wife that he married her 'just to get Sandy,' started having sex with his beautiful stepdaughter when she was 8 and continued doing so almost until his death when she was 12. After her divorce from Darin, Dee never remarried. The former teenage sweetheart who had once received more fan mail than Rock Hudson became an anxious recluse whose primary connections were with her mother and her son. A cover profile in People magazine in 1991 depicted her as a damaged and isolated survivor - Dee poignantly expressed a wish to do a TV series, 'because I want a family. I can have that if I'm part of a show' - and her son's portrait of her in his book only deepened the shadows. Dee had plans to write an autobiography and in 1996 did a brief stint as an infomercial spokeswoman for an anti-aging cream. Last year she was played by Kate Bosworth in Kevin Spacey's movie about Bobby Darin, 'Beyond the Sea.' Sandra Dee's dazzling wreck of a life - the implausibly meteoric ascent followed by the long fall - would, I suppose, make for a perfect Lifetime special. Or, better yet, a searing biopic all its own, underscoring the gap between the glossy image and the nightmarish reality. It would, that is, if the truth weren't so unbearably sad, revealing a tale of ravaged innocence under cover of familial enmeshment leading to a wasteland of self-destruction. The problem with a story like this one, at least from a filmmaker's point of view, is that it isn't even a cathartic tear-jerker. There is no fortifying moral to be drawn from it, no redemptive 'Oprah' ending hovering in the wings. Look at her, she's Sandra Dee, lousy with debility. Tickets, anyone?

Subject: Insider to Apostate From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 10:06:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24wilkerson.html December 24, 2005 Ex-Powell Aide Moves From Insider to Apostate By STEVEN R. WEISMAN WASHINGTON IT was in early 2004, the beginning of President Bush's re-election campaign, that Lawrence B. Wilkerson first printed out a letter saying he wanted to quit as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. 'In essence it said, 'Dear Mr. President, I find myself at variance with a majority of your foreign policies and even your domestic policies and therefore I respectfully submit my resignation,' ' Mr. Wilkerson recalled recently. But the letter remained in a desk drawer for the rest of Mr. Bush's first term. Nearly two years later, Mr. Wilkerson, a 60-year-old retired United States Army colonel, has finally completed his journey from insider to apostate. Alone among those who surrounded Mr. Powell in the first term, he is speaking out critically, assailing the president as amateurish, especially compared to the first President Bush, and describing the administration as secretive, inept and courting disaster at home and abroad. Nor has he spared his former boss, whom he says was overly preoccupied with 'damage control' for policies set by others. 'What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made,' Mr. Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation in October. 'And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either,' he added in the speech. Mr. Wilkerson has also attacked the Bush administration for allegedly condoning torture and setting lax policies on treatment of detainees that led, he charges, to the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the black eye they gave to the United States Army. SINCE starting to speak out a few months ago, Mr. Wilkerson has become something of a Washington celebrity. He has given interviews and speeches, appeared on television, written op-ed articles and taken telephone calls from journalists and senators. He has juggled book offers but says he has no plans to write anything that would seem to exploit his newfound fame. Soon he will begin teaching jobs at George Washington University and the College of William and Mary, where he may write a book on presidential decision-making since World War II. Though Mr. Powell has kept his silence about his former aide, he has let it be known through friends that he objects to the charges, especially the suggestion that he was overly loyal to President Bush. 'It's very painful for me,' Mr. Wilkerson says. 'I've lost a friend of 16 years. I won't say I've lost him, but the estrangement is palpable.' One e-mail message he says he got from Mr. Powell complained tersely, 'Don't characterize my loyalty.' On the other hand, Mr. Wilkerson says that Mr. Powell won crucial policy battles in making sure that the issue of Iraq was taken to the United Nations and in battling Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cheney for the cause of improving relations with Europe, encouraging negotiations with North Korea and Iraq, and avoiding confrontations with Russia and China. He says his decision to speak in the open about the policy wars of the first Bush term was slow in coming, but a major factor was the revelations about Abu Ghraib, which he said he realized, after studying the matter, had resulted from decisions on prisoner treatment and intelligence set shortly after Sept. 11, 2001. Army discipline is something Mr. Wilkerson says he has understood since Vietnam, where he flew helicopters starting in 1969. 'I've been there,' he said. 'I've stood on the hot parade ground as a pilot. I've cursed generals.' He added, 'I understood the bestiality that comes over men when they're asked to use force for the state.' He recalled that a battalion commander once declared an area a free-fire zone, 'which means that anything that moves, you shoot it.' One of his gunners killed a 13-year-old girl, Mr. Wilkerson says, adding, 'I will always live with that for the rest of my life.' After the Wilkerson attacks, administration spokesmen avoided any official response. But many administration officials have acknowledged their displeasure. A half-dozen former colleagues of Mr. Wilkerson's at the State Department, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name out of deference to Mr. Powell's silence, said they were not especially surprised that he had begun to speak out, but that they found his criticisms unseemly. A former colleague said it seemed Mr. Wilkerson was motivated by his concern about what had happened to the Army as a result of allegations of prisoner mistreatment and poor decisions on the Iraq war. 'Larry loves the Army, and he loves the people in the Army,' said a former State Department official. 'As somebody who thinks of himself as a leader of people, my sense is that he couldn't be silent anymore.' BORN in South Carolina, the son of a bombardier in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Mr. Wilkerson bounced around the country growing up while his father worked after the war as an insurance executive. Months before he was to graduate from Bucknell in 1966, he decided to enlist. But without a college degree, he found that only the Army would let him fly. After Vietnam, Mr. Wilkerson received advanced degrees in international relations and national security, and served on the faculty of the United States Naval War College at Newport, R.I., and as director of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va. In 1989 he was hired as a speechwriter and top aide by Mr. Powell, who had left the post of national security adviser under President Reagan and later became chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 'Larry has two qualities that Powell appreciated,' recalls another top aide to the former secretary. 'First, he could always find the big picture in whatever was going on. Second, he always tore things apart. He never takes things at face value, and what he's doing now is a kind of exaggeration of what he used to do internally.' Mr. Powell turned to Mr. Wilkerson to go with him to the C.I.A. to sort through the mounds of material prepared to buttress the case against Saddam Hussein on the eve of the Iraq war, for the lengthy presentation the secretary gave on Feb. 5, 2003, at the United Nations Security Council. 'He found that the draft didn't have the sourcing and backing that we wanted and he tore the whole thing apart and put it back together,' the former State Department official recalled. 'He was Powell's internal iconoclast.' Mr. Wilkerson recalls the preparation of the Feb. 5 presentation, which Mr. Powell has acknowledged will be remembered as a blot on his career because of its mistakes on intelligence, as an exercise in frustration. It was an embittering experience for everyone at the State Department, Mr. Wilkerson says, to be saddled with presenting what turned out to be false information at the United Nations, and also to have been sidelined in the running of postwar Iraq by the Pentagon. 'When I rationalize for myself not resigning, I did it by saying, 'This is the only sane member of this administration,' ' Mr. Wilkerson said of Mr. Powell.

Subject: Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:41:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/international/africa/25durban.html?ex=1293166800&en=6f928ad671f131fe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa Protest Sluggish Pace of Change By MICHAEL WINES JOHANNESBURG - Sending what some call an ominous signal to this nation's leaders, South Africa's sprawling shantytowns have begun to erupt, sometimes violently, in protest over the government's inability to deliver the better life that the end of apartheid seemed to herald a dozen years ago. At a hillside shantytown in Durban called Foreman Road, riot police officers fired rubber bullets in mid-November to disperse 2,000 residents marching to the municipal mayor's office downtown. Two protesters were injured; 45 were arrested. The rest burned an effigy of the city's mayor, Obed Mlaba. Their grievance was unadorned: since Foreman Road's 1,000 shacks sprang up nearly two decades ago, the only measurable improvements to the residents' lives amounted to a single water standpipe and four scrap-wood privies. Electricity and real toilets were a pipe dream. Promises of new homes, they said, were ephemeral. 'This is the worst area in the country,' said one resident, a middle-aged man who identified himself only as Senior. 'We don't so much need water or electricity. We need land and housing. They need to find us land and build us new homes.' In Pretoria that week, 500 shantytown residents looted and burned a city council member's home and car to protest limited access to government housing. Two weeks earlier, protesters burned municipal offices in Promosa after being evicted from their illegal shanties. In late September, Botleng Township residents rioted after a sewage-fouled water supply caused 600 cases of typhoid and perhaps 20 deaths. And just Thursday, Cape Town officials warned residents of a vast shantytown near the city airport that they faced arrest if they tried to squat in an unfinished housing project nearby. South Africa's safety and security minister said in October that 881 protests rocked slums in the preceding year; unofficial tallies say that at least 50 were violent. Statistics for previous years were not kept, but one analyst, David Hemson of the Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria, estimated that the minister's tally was at least five times the number of any comparable previous period. 'I think it's one of the most important developments in the postliberation period,' said Mr. Hemson, who leads a project on urban and rural development for the council. 'It shows that ordinary people are now feeling that they can only get ahead by coming out on the streets and mobilizing - and those are the poorest people in society. That's a sea change from the position in, say, 1994, when everyone was expecting great changes from above.' In fact, the government has made great changes. Since 1994, South Africa's government has built and largely given away 1.8 million basic houses, usually 16 feet by 20 feet, often to former shantytown dwellers. More than 10 million have gained access to clean water, and countless others have been connected to electrical lines or basic sanitation facilities. Yet at the same time, researchers say, rising poverty has caused 2 million to lose their homes and 10 million more to have their water or power cut off because of unpaid bills. And the number of shanty dwellers has grown by as much as 50 percent, to 12.5 million people - more than one in four South Africans, many living in a level of squalor that would render most observers from the developed world speechless. For South African blacks, the current plight is uncomfortably close to the one they endured under apartheid. Black shantytowns first rose under white rule, the result of policies intended to keep nonwhites impoverished and powerless. During apartheid, from the 1940's to the 1980's, officials uprooted and moved millions of blacks, consigning many to transit camps that became permanent shantytowns, sending others to black townships that quickly attracted masses of squatters. Privation led millions more blacks to migrate to the cities, setting up vast squatter camps on the outskirts of Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and other cities. From its first days, South Africa's black government pledged to address the misery of shanty life. That the problem has instead worsened, social scientists, urban planners and many politicians say, is partly the result of fiscal policies that have focused on nurturing the first-world economy which, under apartheid, made this Africa's wealthiest and most advanced nation. The government's low-deficit, low-inflation strategy was built on the premise that a stable economy would attract investment, and that the wealth would spread to the poor. But while the first-world economy has boomed, it has failed to lift the vast underclass out of its misery. Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent many analysts say; the government, which does not count those who have stopped looking for work, says joblessness is lower. Big industries like mining and textiles have laid off manual laborers, and expanding businesses like banking and retailing have failed to pick up the slack. Many of the jobless have moved to the slums. So far, the shantytown protests have focused exclusively on local officials who bear the brunt of slum dwellers' rage. But while almost all those officials belong to the governing African National Congress, and execute the party's social and economic policies, 'the poor haven't made the connection as yet,' said Adam Habib, another scholar at the Human Sciences Research Institute who recently completed a study of South Africa's social movements. On the contrary, national support for President Thabo Mbeki's governing coalition appears greater than ever before. Still, Mr. Mbeki has been visiting shantytowns and townships, promising to increase social spending and demanding that his ministers improve services to the poor. For now, nearly half the 284 municipal districts, charged with providing local services, cannot, the national ministry for local government says. Their problems vary from shrunken tax bases to inconsistent allotments of national money to AIDS, which has depleted the ranks of skilled local managers. Incompetence and greed are rife. In Ehlanzeni, a district of nearly a million people in Mpumalanga Province, 3 out of 4 residents have no trash collection, 6 out of 10 have no sanitation and 1 in 3 lack water - and the city manager makes more than Mr. Mbeki's $180,000 annual salary. The frustrations of slum dwellers began to boil over in mid-2004, when residents in a shantytown near Harrismith, about 160 miles southeast of Johannesburg, rioted and blocked a major freeway to protest their living conditions. The police fatally shot a 17-year-old protester. Since then, demonstrations have spread to virtually every corner of the nation. In Durban, the city is erecting some 16,000 starter houses a year, but the shanty population, now about 750,000, continues to grow by more than 10 percent annually. The city's 180,000 shanties, crammed into every conceivable open space, are a remarkable sight. Both free-standing and sharing common walls, they spill down hillsides between middle-class subdivisions, perch beside freeway exits and crowd next to foul landfills. They are built of scrap wood and metal and corrugated panels and plastic tarpaulin roofs weighed down with concrete chunks. Their insides are often coated with sheets of uncut milk and juice cartons, sold as wallpaper at curbside markets, to keep both the wind and prying eyes from exploiting the chinks in their shoddily built walls. The 1,000 or so hillside shanties at Foreman Road are typical. A standpipe at the top provides water, carried by bucket to each shack for bathing and dishwashing. At the bottom, perhaps 400 feet down a ravine, are four hand-dug, scrap-wood privies - each one, on this day, inexplicably padlocked shut. Residents say they seldom trek down to the privies, relieving themselves instead in plastic bags and buckets that can be periodically emptied or thrown away. The one-room shacks provide the rudest sort of shelter. A bed typically takes up half the space; a table holds cookware; clothes go in a small chest. There is no electricity, and so no television; entertainment comes from battery-powered radios. Residents use kerosene stoves and candles for cooking and heat, with predictable results. A year ago, a wind-whipped fire destroyed 288 shacks here. A fire at a Cape Town shantytown early this month left 4,000 people homeless. A few shacks are painted in riotous colors or decorated with placards hawking milk or tobacco, or shingled with signs ripped from light poles, once posted to warn that electricity thieves had left live power lines dangling in the street. The residents say Mayor Mlaba promised during his last election campaign to erect new homes on the slum site and on vacant land opposite their hillside. Instead, however, the city proposed to move the slum residents to rural land far off Durban's outskirts - and far from the gardening, housecleaning and other menial jobs they have found during Foreman Road's 16-odd years of existence. Lacking cars, taxi fare or even bicycles to commute to work, the residents marched in protest on Nov. 14, defying the city's refusal to issue a permit. The demonstration quickly turned violent. Afterward, in an interview that he cut short, a clearly nettled Mayor Mlaba argued that the protest had been the work of agitators bent on embarrassing him before local elections next year. 'Of course it's political,' he said. 'All of a sudden, they've got leaders. There weren't any leaders yesterday. Are they going to be there in 2006 or 2007, after the elections?' Also suspecting agitators, South Africa's government reacted initially to the shantytown protests by ordering its intelligence service to determine whether outsiders - a 'third force' in the parlance of this nation's liberation struggles - sought to undermine the government. Residents here scoff at that. 'The third force,' said the man called Senior, 'is the conditions we are living in.' In a shack roughly 7 feet by 8 feet, a third of the way down Foreman Road's ravine, Zamile Msane, 32, lives with her 58-year-old mother and three children, ages 12, 15 and 17. Ms. Msane has no job. A sister gives her family secondhand clothes, and neighbors donate cornmeal for food. In seven years, she has fled three wildfires, in 1998, 2000 and 2004, losing everything each time. Yet Ms. Msane, who came here from the Eastern Cape eight years ago, said she would not return to the farm where she once lived, because there was nothing to eat. Ms. Msane said she joined the Nov. 14 march for one reason. 'Better conditions,' she said. 'It's not good here, because these are not proper houses. There's mud outside. We're always living in fear of fires. Winter is too cold; summer is too warm. Life is so difficult.'

Subject: Re: Shantytown Dwellers in South Africa From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 23:54:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thanks for the article Emma and compliments of the season to you. The article is packed with many shocking statistics, most of which I agree with. There is however a few stats that apear to be slanted or skewed, also none of the 'good stats' are included. For example the article states, 'Unemployment, estimated at 26 percent in 1994, has soared to roughly 40 percent..' That statement is simply untrue. There are really only two organizations that monitor unemployment in South Africa, the national Human Resources Statistics (funded by the government) and the UNISA (University of South Africa). I worked with both organizations in definition of this exact stat. There is an issue over the 'informal sector' which is a large employer and is not reflected in the stats. Now I remember clearly that in 1994 the stats showed 40% unemployment - so to say it was 26% back then is simply a lie. To say it is 40% today is also a lie. It more like the other way around. 40% back in 1994 and 26% today. That is a significant drop in 10 years. Inflation in the Apartheid led South Africa was 12%, today it hovers below 4%. Back then the economy ran at an outrageous deficit, today it is in surplus. Back then growth was negative (net loss of companies) since 1994 we have seen South Africa's longest period of economic growth in their entire history. Also keep in mind that up until 1990, South Africa had a Mickey Mouse sized economy based primarily on the mining (which was an incredible employer of tens of thousands of people). Today we live in different world, changing prices of minerals has seen many mines close down (creating high unemployment) yet South Africa has succeeded to diversify their economy to become a highly and fully industrialised economy. For example, today South Africa is the world's second largest manufacture of new car parts. Next time you see a BMW 3 series, think to your self, that car was fully made with African hands. South Africa's old economic base consisted of 6 million tax payers (about 90% white population). Today the economic base is 10 million people showing that in 4 years, 4 million new tax payers have 'arrived' all of which are non white. In essence South Africa has succeeded in beating the 'Trickle Down Effect' and has succeeded in an amazing program of 'Economic Democratisation'. This has been done through their Affirmative Action Plan. With the additional 4 million tax payers/buyers, one can easily understand how South Africa has continued to fuel its own economic boom. Now the problem: Well South Africa has a population of 40 million (and growing). Only 10 million are lucky to enjoy the fruits of its economic boom. There's plenty of work to be done. There is also plenty anger by those who are not participating, especially when they see their various leaders be consistently caught in corruption scandals and their services are not happening. Here's the weird part, why does the majority of black South Africans continue to vote for the current government in growing numbers? The leading ANC party's leadership has over the last 10 years grown? Why? I really wish that these angry mobs would vote against the government and send a democratic message..... but hey...

Subject: Too Big? Too Small? Midsize From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:39:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25midcap.html?ex=1293166800&en=a5937284255de011&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Too Big? Too Small? Midsize Seems Just Right for Stocks By J. ALEX TARQUINIO SMALL-CAP stocks dished out supersized returns in recent years. But in 2005, shares of midsize companies have been serving up the best results - a trend that some market strategists predict will continue. Small-cap stocks, those of companies with market capitalization of less than $2 billion, tend to shine when stocks in general are emerging from a bear market. But by this stage in the economic recovery, strategists say that midcap stocks - those of companies with market caps of roughly $2 billion to $15 billion - have many advantages over smaller stocks. 'I'm concerned about small caps, which have begun to lag,' said Stuart Schweitzer, global markets strategist at J. P. Morgan Fleming, the asset management arm of J. P. Morgan Chase. Small caps can be very sensitive to changes in interest rates, he said, while midcaps are more insulated from such movements. Some analysts expect that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates at least through next spring. Midcaps certainly sprinted ahead of small caps this year. The Russell 2000 index - a common proxy for small-cap stocks - is up 5.35 percent, compared with a 13.9 percent gain in the Russell Midcap index. And many investors are betting that midcaps will keep outperforming the small fry next year. In the first three quarters of 2005, investors put more than $21 billion into midcap mutual funds, while putting less than $3 billion into small-cap funds, according to Lipper. Although midcaps are more liquid than small caps, Mr. Schweitzer said the stocks were still small enough that if money kept flowing into midcap funds at that pace, midcap stocks could be pushed sharply higher. Opinion is more divided over how large caps will fare in 2006. This year, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index, which includes many such stocks, is up 4.68 percent, and investors took more than $50 billion out of large-cap funds in the first three quarters. Mr. Schweitzer said he thought that large stocks in general - those in the S.& P. 500, but not necessarily the biggest - might outperform midcap stocks. But he predicted that the performance gap between large and midsize stocks would be modest when compared with that between large and small stocks. Some strategists say the heavyweights are undervalued. The 25 largest companies in the S.& P. 500 account for 43 percent of the earnings. At the end of 2003, they were also 43 percent of its market capitalization. But that figure has fallen steadily, to around 40 percent, said Henry McVey, chief United States investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. Although Mr. McVey said he thought that money would eventually move back into megacap companies - as the largest are often called - he said that many of these companies would need to restructure before they could lure investors back. Meanwhile, he is advising investors to lean toward midcaps. But Satya Pradhuman, the chief small-cap strategist at Merrill Lynch, who analyzes trends for companies valued below $8 billion, says he sees a fundamental shift away from domestic megacap stocks and toward a host of asset classes that include small-cap and midcap stocks, but also emerging-market debt and equities, high-yield bonds and private equity funds. 'This is a bigger trade,' he said. 'Investors are looking at these other asset classes because they aren't confident in earnings growth.' Mr. Pradhuman said he thought that Wall Street earnings estimates were pegged too high in general, and that there was very little room for positive surprises over the next two to three quarters. 'I don't see an ugly equity market,' he said. ' I just think the earnings hurdles are too high.' Within the midcap category, many strategists say, growth stocks could stand out next year. Although midcaps are often more stable than small caps, 'they aren't sprawling enterprises yet,' Mr. McVey said. So they can grow at a faster clip than many large-cap companies. Some managers of midcap funds predict that sector selection will be less important next year than it has been in 2005 - a year when energy and utilities stocks have trounced the broader stock market and when the managers have had to avoid some troubled industries, like automobiles, to keep from lagging behind their peer group. For instance, the opportunities could shift next year within the energy and technology sectors, said William D'Alonzo, who manages the Brandywine fund, which invests in companies of all sizes; the average market capitalization of its portfolio companies is around $9 billion. Mr. D'Alonzo said he thought that many technology companies had been chasing consumer dollars in recent years because corporations and governments had reined in their own spending. But he predicted that consumer spending would start to lag, while corporate and government spending on information technology would pick up. The Harris Corporation, a $6 billion company based in Melbourne, Fla., is among the fund's holdings that could benefit if Mr. D'Alonzo is correct about this trend. Harris sells communications equipment, primarily to government and the American space and military industries. The company's earnings grew 62 percent in the third quarter, the fifth consecutive quarter that they exceeded analysts' estimates, Mr. D'Alonzo said. Within energy, he has limited the fund's exposure to the big energy suppliers, like Exxon Mobil, while emphasizing smaller oil and gas services companies. He said he likes Weatherford, one of the fund's 10 largest holdings, because he thinks that its drilling business would be largely insulated from oil price swings. Although the mean estimate from analysts for Weatherford's 2006 earnings has risen to $3.99 a share, from $3.14 in May, Mr. D'Alonzo said he thought that the company's earnings could exceed even that higher estimate next year. Christopher McHugh, the lead manager of the Turner Midcap Growth fund, tries to match the sector weightings in the Russell Midcap Growth index, though he will emphasize certain industries. He is currently favoring semiconductor and networking companies, while limiting software stocks to just 2 percent of the portfolio. He also likes some specialty retailers. Urban Outfitters, a $5 billion company based in Philadelphia, is among the retail stocks in the portfolio. Mr. McHugh said he thought that the company could increase its earnings - regardless of the general direction of consumer spending - by opening new stores, because the chain is relatively small as compared with other specialty retailers like the Gap. He said he thought that Urban Outfitters could increase its stores' total square feet by 20 percent next year. Mr. McHugh likes smaller technology companies, where he also sees room for earnings growth. He points to one of the fund's holdings, F5 Networks, a $2 billion company based in Seattle that helps companies manage their Internet traffic. Mr. McHugh said he thought it could increase earnings in 2006 by 20 percent, which would beat Wall Street analysts' estimates. Although midcaps may be the flavor of the moment, Mr. Pradhuman, the Merrill Lynch strategist, warns risk-adverse investors to think twice before jumping in with both feet. He also advises all types of investors not to venture into midcaps if they will need the money back soon. While these stocks tend to be more stable than small caps, they are often more volatile than shares of larger companies. 'As much as we like this asset class, it's not for everyone,' he said.

Subject: Labor's Lost Story From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 09:06:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/28/AR2005112801227_pf.html November 29, 2005 Labor's Lost Story By E. J. Dionne Jr. Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Co. executive. Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: 'You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW.' To which Reuther snapped: 'And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either.' The historian William L. O'Neill tells this story in 'American High,' his fine and appropriately titled book about the 1950s, a time when 'autoworkers were the best-paid production line operatives in the world.' It helps explain why General Motors' layoffs of 30,000 workers, announced last week, have become a new litmus test in American politics. Almost everybody right of center sees the job losses as inevitable, the result of the American auto industry's failure to meet foreign competition and the 'excessively' generous wages, health benefits and, especially, retirement programs negotiated by Reuther's union. The believers in inevitability inevitably cite the economist Joseph Schumpeter to the effect that capitalism 'is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is, but never can be, stationary.' It is capitalism's gift for 'creative destruction,' Schumpeter argued, that guaranteed new consumer goods, new methods of production and new forms of organization. A different story is told left of center, though it will come as no shock that progressives can't quite agree on a single narrative. The left is united in talking about rising health care costs and the fact that most of our foreign competitors have government-run health insurance systems that take the burden of health care off employers. The iconic number: providing health care for workers and retirees accounts for $1,500 in the cost of each American-made car. Critics of globalization tell an additional story of how free trade is sending many of our best-paying blue-collar jobs offshore. There is also the decline of union membership, a chicken-and-egg tale, since private-sector unions historically were strongest in the older manufacturing industries such as steel and cars. The UAW's numbers tell the story: 1,619,000 members in 1970, 1,446,000 in 1980, 952,000 in 1990, 623,000 in 2004. Where have you gone, Walter Reuther? The contrast between these two accounts explains why economic conservatives currently hold the upper hand in America's political debate. The conservatives have a single, coherent story and stick to it: Economic change is good for everyone, especially for consumers, who get better stuff at lower prices. The fact that 'producer groups' (such as those unions) are losing their 'monopolies' and their capacity for 'rent seeking' is cheered as progress. The left's narrative is less compelling not only because there is no single story but also because few on the left attack the current system with the same gusto the right brings to defending it. Gone, for good reason, is the time when significant parts of the left called for 'government ownership of the means of production.' Much of the left accepts a certain amount of creative destruction because, in Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase, there is no alternative. But this muddle reflects a default on parts of the left and, especially, within the Democratic Party. Because so many Democrats fear that they might sound like -- God forbid! -- socialists, they are unwilling to challenge the right's core story. Capitalism, all by itself, would never have achieved the rising living standards that were the pride of the United States in O'Neill's 1950s and still are today. The rules enforced by the National Labor Relations Board made it possible for Reuther's union to organize by protecting workers' rights. Cheap 30-year mortgages, which became the norm because of Federal Housing Administration guarantees, created a nation of homeowners. As medical costs rise, more Americans will need government help. More employers will need to offload the costs of medical insurance to avoid bankruptcy. Yes, that's 'socialized medicine,' just like Medicare. But don't tell anyone. The phrase plays terribly in focus groups. For 60 years New Dealers and social democrats, liberals and progressives, turned Schumpeter on his head. They insisted that few would embrace capitalism's innovations if the system's tendency toward creative destruction was not balanced by public innovations to spread the bounty and protect millions from being injured by change. It's a compelling story. Walter Reuther knew it well. Too bad it isn't told very often anymore.

Subject: What Makes a Nation More Productive From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 06:26:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25view.html?ex=1293166800&en=73bad124c56d1572&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 What Makes a Nation More Productive? It's Not Just Technology By DANIEL GROSS IN 2001, the stock market meltdown and a brief recession threw cold water on the widely held belief that the United States economy, juiced by a technological revolution, had entered a new era of limitless, inflation-free growth. But today, as bubble-era books like 'Dow 36,000' collect dust on library shelves, evidence is mounting that there may be a new economy after all. In the late 1990's, growth in labor productivity - the amount of output per hour per worker - kicked into a higher gear. From 1996 through 1999, it grew at a blistering annual rate of 2.5 percent, compared with 1.4 percent from 1972 to 1995. Economists generally believed that the higher rate was a byproduct of the new economy. Much of the growth was spurred by the highly productive businesses that made information technology products - companies like Dell, Intel and Microsoft - and by their customers, who spent heavily to deploy productivity-enhancing PC's and software. 'About half of the growth resurgence from 1995 to 2000 was due to I.T.,' said Dale Jorgenson, university professor at Harvard and a co-author of the recently published 'Information Technology and the American Growth Resurgence.' As the technology investment boom of the 1990's gave way to bust in 2000, many analysts feared that the productivity gains would dissipate. Instead, productivity since 2000 has grown at a substantially higher pace than it did in the late 1990's. And productivity growth is still strong. This month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that productivity in the third quarter was up 3.1 percent from the same quarter last year. A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consulting firm McKinsey & Company, found that sectors other than technology have been driving the growth in the post-bust years. 'The I.T.-producing industry itself, with its extraordinarily rapid pace of change, certainly has contributed to overall productivity growth,' said Martin Baily, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, based in Washington. 'But now we're getting a bigger share from the rest of the economy.' Mr. Baily, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Clinton administration, was co-author of the McKinsey report with Diana Farrell, the director of McKinsey Global. In the late 1990's, McKinsey found that six of the economy's 59 sectors accounted for virtually all productivity growth. Among the biggest contributors were new-economy industries like telecommunications, computer manufacturing and semiconductors. But from 2000 to 2003, the top seven sectors accounted for only 75 percent of the productivity increase. And five of the top contributors were service industries, including retail trade, wholesale trade and financial services. That is surprising, since economists have generally believed that it is much harder for service industries to reap sharp productivity gains than it is for manufacturers. To be sure, service industries have become more productive in recent years by continuing to invest in information technology. Yet there are also other factors at work. 'I.T. is a particularly effective enabling tool,' Ms. Farrell said. 'But without the competitive intensity that drives people to adopt innovation, we wouldn't see these kinds of gains.' To compete with Wal-Mart, for example, retailers of all stripes have been working furiously to gain scale, to manage supply chains and logistics more effectively, and to negotiate better terms with suppliers and workers. A similar dynamic has played out in the finance sector, where there has also been a huge gain in productivity. It is likely that competition and structural changes are responsible for those gains - both in the late 1990's and in recent years. Commissions for stock trades have fallen sharply amid relentless competition; spreads in stock trading have narrowed, thanks to rules promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission; and trading volume has risen, thanks to the proliferation of investors. Add it up, and you have more volume at lower cost to the customer. And when the stock market cooled after the Internet bubble, companies in the once-hot financial sector began to focus on cutting costs and eliminating unprofitable operations. Those moves further bolstered productivity. One mystery of recent years has been the enduring gap in productivity growth between the United States and Europe. In this case, another structural force - regulation - may be at work. 'In economies with less regulation, companies can use information communications technology that link sectors to one another in ways that create joint productivity,' said Gail Fosler, executive vice president and chief economist at the Conference Board. Because domestic retailers don't face the same sorts of restrictions on working hours and road use that European retailers do, for example, the Americans have been better able to use technology to manage trucking fleets, deliveries and inventory. The encouraging news, some economists say, is that a major breakthrough in information technology is not required to fuel further productivity growth. 'It's not research and development that cause the big gains in productivity,' Professor Jorgenson said. 'The real drivers are things like competition, deregulation, the opening of markets and globalization.' AS the gospel of increased productivity spreads to a wider range of sectors, more companies keep trying to figure out how to do more with the same amount of labor - or with less. For macroeconomists, that is good news. But there is a downside. In the past few years, payroll job growth has been far less robust than usual for post-recessionary periods. And because high productivity means that the economy can grow smartly without the addition of new jobs, some job seekers might wish that companies were a tad less efficient. Mr. Baily says that there does not have to be a trade-off between productivity and job creation. 'Historically, in the U.S. and in other countries, periods of rapid productivity growth have been periods of strong employment growth,' he said. That was certainly the case in the late 1990's. Why has the experience been different in the last several years? 'The loss of manufacturing jobs after 2000 was just huge, and those jobs haven't come back,' Mr. Baily said. The Big Three automakers have shed tens of thousands of jobs since 2000 because of competitive pressures and a drop in demand for their products. And it is likely that General Motors and Ford would be retrenching even if productivity in the service sector was growing at a much slower rate. 'It's hard to blame productivity growth for a lot of manufacturing job losses,' Mr. Baily said.

Subject: Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 06:15:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/business/yourmoney/25japan.html?ex=1293166800&en=32ab31a39ab94fe6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt By MARTIN FACKLER KASHIWA, Japan FOURTEEN years ago, Yoshihisa Nakashima looked at this sleepy suburb an hour and 20 minutes from downtown Tokyo and saw all the trappings of middle-class Japanese bliss: cherry-tree-lined roads, a cozy community where neighbors greeted one another in the morning and schools within easy walking distance for his two daughters. So Mr. Nakashima, a Tokyo city government employee who was then 36, took out a loan for almost the entire $400,000 price of a cramped four-bedroom apartment. With property values rising at double-digit rates, he would easily earn back the loan and then some when he decided to sell. Or so he thought. Not long after he bought the apartment, Japan's property market collapsed. Today, the apartment is worth half what he paid. He said he would like to move closer to the city but cannot: the sale price would not cover the $300,000 he still owes the bank. With housing prices in the United States looking wobbly after years of spectacular gains, it may be helpful to look at the last major economy to have a real estate bubble pop: Japan. What Americans see may scare them, but they may also learn ways to ease the pain. To be sure, there are several major differences between Japan in the 1980's and the United States today. One is the fact that property prices rose much faster and more steeply in Japan, partly because speculators used paper profits from a booming stock market to invest in property, insupportably leveraging the prices of both higher and higher. Another difference is that the biggest speculators in Japan's frenzy were deep-pocketed corporations, and they pumped up the commercial property market at the same time that home prices were inflating. Still, for anyone wondering why even the possibility of a housing bubble in the United States preoccupies so many economists, it is worth looking at how the property crash in Japan helped to flatten that economy, which is second only to that of the United States, and to keep it on the canvas for more than a decade. And as American homeowners contemplate what might happen if their property values fell -particularly if they fell hard - there are lessons in the bitter experiences of their Japanese counterparts like Mr. Nakashima. JAPAN suffered one of the biggest property market collapses in modern history. At the market's peak in 1991, all the land in Japan, a country the size of California, was worth about $18 trillion, or almost four times the value of all property in the United States at the time. Then came the crashes in both stocks and property, after the Japanese central bank moved too aggressively to raise interest rates. Both markets spiraled downward as investors sold stocks to cover losses in the land market, and vice versa, plunging prices into a 14-year trough, from which they are only now starting to recover. Now the land in Japan is worth less than half its 1991 peak, while property in the United States has more than tripled in value, to about $17 trillion. Homeowners were among the biggest victims of the Japanese real estate bubble. In Japan's six largest cities, residential prices dropped 64 percent from 1991 to last year. By most estimates, millions of homebuyers took substantial losses on the largest purchase of their lives. Their experiences contain many warnings. One is to shun the sort of temptations that appear in red-hot real estate markets, particularly the use of risky or exotic loans to borrow beyond one's means. Another is to avoid property that may be hard to unload when the market cools. Economists say Japan also contains lessons for United States policy makers, like Ben S. Bernanke, who is expected to become chairman of the Federal Reserve at the end of January. At the top of the list is to learn from the failure of Japan's central bank to slow the rise of the country's real estate and stock bubbles, and then its failure to soften their collapse. Only recently did Japan finally find ways to revive the real estate market, by using deregulation to spur new development. Most of all, economists say, Japan's experience teaches the need to be skeptical of that fundamental myth behind all asset bubbles: that prices will keep rising forever. Like their United States counterparts today, too many Japanese homebuyers overextended their debt, buying property that cost more than they could rationally afford because they assumed that values would only rise. When prices dropped, many buyers were financially battered or even wiped out. 'The biggest lesson from Japan is not to fall into the same state of denial that existed here,' said Yukio Noguchi, a finance professor at Waseda University in Tokyo who is perhaps the leading authority on the Japanese bubble. 'During a bubble, people don't believe that prices will fall,' he said. 'This has been proven wrong so many times in the past. But there's something in human nature that makes us unable to learn from history.' In the 1980's, Professor Noguchi said, the frenzy in Japan reached such extremes that companies tried to outbid one another even for land of little or no use. At the peak, an empty three-square-meter parcel (about 32 square feet) in a corner of the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo sold for $600,000, even though it was too small to build on. Plots only slightly larger gave birth to bizarre structures known as pencil buildings: tall, thin structures that often had just one small room per floor. As a result, Japan's property market in the 1980's was much more fragile than America's today, Professor Noguchi said. And when the market fell, it fell hard. Because of all the corporate speculation, the collapse wiped out company balance sheets, crippled the nation's banks and gave the overall economy a blow to the chin. Since 1991, Japan has spent 11 years sliding in and out of recession. It is only now showing meaningful signs of recovering, with the World Bank forecasting that Japan's economy will grow by a solid 2.2 percent this year Despite the differences, Professor Noguchi said he also saw parallels between Japan then and America now. Last year, as a visiting professor at Stanford, he said he read real estate articles in local newspapers that sounded eerily familiar. Houses were routinely selling for $10 million or more, he said, with buyers saying they felt that they had no choice but to buy now, before prices rose even further. 'It was déjà vu,' Professor Noguchi said. 'People were in a rush to buy, and at extraordinary prices. I saw this same haste psychology in Japan' in the 1980's. 'The classic definition of a bubble,' he added, 'is people buying on false expectations about future prices, and buying with the hope of selling in the future.' Economists and real estate experts see other parallels as well. In the 1980's, the expectation of rising real estate prices made many Japanese homebuyers feel comfortable about taking on huge debt. And they did so by using exotic loans that required little money upfront and that promised low monthly payments, at least for a short time. A similar pattern is found today in the United States, where the methods include interest-only mortgages, which allow homebuyers to repay no principal for a few years. Japan had its own versions of these loans, including the so-called three-generation loan, a 90- or even 100-year mortgage that permitted buyers to spread payments out over their lifetimes and those of their children and grandchildren. But when property prices dropped in Japan, homeowners found themselves saddled with loans far larger than the value of their real estate. Many fell into bankruptcy, especially those who lost their jobs or took pay cuts as declining property prices helped to incite a broader recession. From 1994 to 2003, the number of personal bankruptcies rose sixfold, to a record high of 242,357, according to the Japanese Supreme Court, which tracks such data. Even many of those who avoided financial collapse found themselves marooned in homes that they never intended as lifelong residences. For many Japanese homebuyers in the 1980's, land prices had risen so high that the only places they could afford were far from central Tokyo. Many went deep into debt to buy tiny or shoddily built homes that were two hours away from their offices. Now, after years of tumbling land prices have made Tokyo more affordable again, few people are shopping for homes in the distant suburbs. That has led to severe declines in property values in these outlying areas, leaving many people with homes that are worth less than the balance on their mortgages from a decade or more ago. Mr. Nakashima, who bought the apartment here in Kashiwa, said it would take him at least another decade to whittle down his loan to the point that he could pay it off by selling his home. And this assumes that the apartment does not drop further in value - a real possibility, because lower prices in Tokyo have led to a recent boom in construction of newer apartments in neighborhoods closer to downtown. 'We can't sell and get something better because we'll take such a huge loss,' said Mr. Nakashima, a serious man who recounts his story with careful precision, sometimes pausing to check dates. 'The collapse of the bubble robbed us of our freedom to choose where we can live.' He rues the idea that homes came to be seen as just another investment. 'Homes should be different from stocks,' he said. 'They shouldn't be the object of speculative investing. If home prices move too much, they can ruin your life.' Mr. Nakashima says he is resigned to spending the rest of his days in Kashiwa. It is peaceful here, after all, he said. There is also a bit of history: he pointed to two tree-covered mounds in a corner of the apartment complex that are said to contain the severed heads of samurai killed in a battle here five centuries ago. Some economists say that there are probably millions of people like Mr. Nakashima, trying to make the best of life in homes that are distant from work and for which they grossly overpaid. 'There is a whole generation of homebuyers stuck out in far suburbs,' said Atsushi Nakajima, chief economist at the research arm of the Mizuho Financial Group in Tokyo. 'It's sad, but Japan has basically forgotten about them, and is moving on. They are just left out there.' Mr. Nakajima said he had barely missed being stuck out there himself. In 1991, he was looking at a 100-square-meter apartment (1,080 square feet) for about $600,000 about two hours outside Tokyo. He said his wife stopped him. Six years later, he spent the same amount to buy a more spacious house in a downtown neighborhood. 'Maybe my wife should be the economist,' he said. Now that Japan's real estate market is finally showing signs of recovering from the 1991 collapse, economists say it offers a lesson for Americans in how to end - and not to end - a long slide in property prices. For years after the real estate bubble burst, the Japanese government tried to resuscitate the market and other parts of the economy with expensive public works projects, but they were so poorly planned that they succeeded only in inflating the national debt. NOT until the late 1990's did the government try a new tack: deregulation. To kick-start the economy, Tokyo started loosening restrictions on the financial industry. While most of this effort was aimed at reviving the banking industry, it also allowed investors to create real estate investment trusts, essentially mutual funds that invest in commercial property. A few years later, the government also eased building codes, such as height limits, and cut approval times for building permits. Economists and real estate executives credit these changes with bringing new money into the market, and with making redevelopment easier. The results are visible in a boom that is dotting the Tokyo skyline with cranes and new high-rises. They are also visible in statistics. Residential home prices in Tokyo rose 0.5 percent in the 12 months through July, the first gain in 15 years, the government said in September. Nationwide, land prices are still down, but the pace of decline has slowed to a crawl, the government said. 'Deregulation revived the Tokyo land market,' said Toshio Nagashima, executive vice president at Mitsubishi Estate, one of Japan's largest real estate companies. He said the changes were one reason that his company committed to spend $4.5 billion by 2007 to build six skyscrapers in the central Marunouchi financial district. Japanese economists say the United States is not likely to suffer a decline that is as severe or long-lasting as Japan's, because they see a more skilled hand at the tiller of the American economy: the Federal Reserve. Japan's central bank, the Bank of Japan, failed to curb the stock and real estate bubbles until mid-1989, when it was too late and prices were sky-high, they said. When it did take action, it moved faster and more drastically than Japan's overinflated land and stock markets could handle, raising its benchmark interest rate to 6 percent from 2.5 percent over 15 months. Economists say that this pulled the rug out from under both markets at the same time. Akio Makabe, a finance professor at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, says the Fed has been more deft in handling the rise in America's property market, which he believes is definitely in a bubble. He praised the Fed for apparently learning from Japan's mistakes, tightening more gradually and taking the economy's pulse as it does so. 'Japan shows the importance of avoiding a hard landing,' Professor Makabe said. 'Avoid big shocks. That is the biggest lesson of Japan's bubble.'

Subject: Tidings of Pride, Prayer and Pluralism From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 05:58:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/books/review/25meacham.html?ex=1293166800&en=fc91792ba74cb6a1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Tidings of Pride, Prayer and Pluralism By JON MEACHAM On this morning of all mornings, the story of Christianity can seem smooth, straightforward, even sweet. With its angels and shepherds and luminous star in the sky, Christmas understandably tends to the cheerful; the faithful ponder the crèche, not the cross. Amid all this, it is unsettling to recall that Christianity is a confounding, often paradoxical faith. A father who sacrifices his son? A king who dies a criminal's death? A God whose weakness is his strength? Even St. Paul admitted that faith in Jesus required, if not what Samuel Taylor Coleridge later called a 'willing suspension of disbelief,' then at least an honest acknowledgment that much about the new religion surpassed understanding. There were often as many questions as answers. When the angel Gabriel tells Mary that she is to bear Jesus, her first, shaky words are: 'How can this be, since I know not a man?' On the morning of the Resurrection, terrified by the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene runs to Peter and John to say: 'They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.' We do not know. And so it was that the faith now confessed by two billion people was born in fear and confusion. Christianity is difficult, both in practice and in theory. Following in the Judaic tradition of valuing human reason, Christians treasure the mind as a gift of God, and the faithful are called to use his gifts to the fullest; to fail to do so is a sin. Every believer, says the author of the First Epistle of St. Peter, should 'be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you.' The admonition is a good one, for it encourages the faithful to ask questions, and in asking questions, one enters the debate about God and man that began with the ancient pagans. The suggestion that Christianity is a matter of both intellect and imagination, however, has fallen from popular favor. Many secularists see the whole business as fanciful, or, at best, as a comforting tale impossible to square with empirical truths. To literalist believers, imagination is beside the point: in their eyes, inerrant Scripture teaches humankind all it really needs to know. The current clash between secularism and religion in America is not new, but it is fierce. From Salem in the 17th century, to the Scopes trial in the 20th, to abortion rights, stem-cell research and 'intelligent design' in the 21st, it appears that such conflicts will, as Jesus said of the poor, be always with us. Now as in the past, it is fashionable for many on the left to caricature the faithful as superstitious and stiff-necked; on the right, conservatives attack the skeptical with anything but Christian charity. Yet whether one believes or disbelieves, many of us would like to see a calmer, more measured conversation about faith and reason than we have had in recent years. We might well begin with those on each extreme acknowledging that life is essentially mysterious: the world does not lend itself to simple explanation. 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!' Paul wrote. 'How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!' For the secular, there is Hamlet: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' In my view, allowing for the existence of a transcendent order seems sounder than flatly denying the possibility altogether. 'Reason itself is a matter of faith,' G. K. Chesterton wrote. 'It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.' Light can neither enter into nor emanate from a closed mind, and intellectual humility - acknowledging what we do not, and cannot, know - is often the beginning of wisdom. There is not much humility to be found in the pages of Rodney Stark's provocative new book, 'The Victory of Reason.' If one had been asked to choose in the ninth century A.D. which part of the world would dominate the others for much of the coming millennium, one would almost certainly have put money on the world of Islam - not on Western Europe. Why Europe and its New World colonies rose to pre-eminence after the close of the Middle Ages is arguably the single greatest puzzle of modern history. Stark, however, is not puzzled. His answers are crisp, certain and to the point. Four decades ago the historian William McNeill credited Europe's ascent to its taste for war, its navigational techniques and its resistance to disease; more recently - and more vividly - Jared Diamond argued that guns, germs and steel decided the fate of the world. Now comes Stark, a prolific sociologist of religion, with a different argument. 'Christianity,' he writes, 'created Western Civilization.' He believes that the Christian emphasis on reason was the motive force in the West's rise to global dominance: 'While the other world religions emphasized mystery and intuition, Christianity alone embraced reason and logic as the primary guide to religious truth.' Stark is right to argue that the idea that Christianity is incompatible with reason, a line of thought running from Celsus in the late second century to the philosophes of the Enlightenment, does not withstand historical scrutiny. In many ways, Christianity was a force for good in the West - though as the Inquisition, pogroms and centuries of intolerance show, it could also be a force for evil, a fact believers ought to confront, confess and guard against. Stark is apparently not one for such confrontation and confession, and therein lies a problem with his argument: he is offering an absolutist answer to one of history's most complex questions. Intent on demolishing the familiar secular thesis that religion impeded progress in economics, science and politics, Stark gets carried away. Crediting Christianity with the good things of life while neglecting the faith's shortcomings, he takes only the most fleeting account of the cultural, philosophical and religious tributaries that helped create the West's mighty river. 'Had the followers of Jesus remained an obscure Jewish sect, most of you would not have learned to read and the rest of you would be reading from hand-copied scrolls,' he writes. 'Without a theology committed to reason, progress and moral equality' - all of which could describe faiths other than Christianity - 'today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800: a world with many astrologers and alchemists but no scientists. A world of despots, lacking universities, banks, factories, eyeglasses, chimneys and pianos. . . . A world truly living in 'dark ages.' ' For Stark, Christianity was the only thing standing between us and such a gloomy fate, for, he writes, the Christian love of reason helped create the whole idea of progress in all fields of human endeavor. Christianity was unquestionably an enormous factor in the story of Western progress. But there were others. Geography (Islam coveted Byzantium, not Europe), economics (Europe was less dependent on the vagaries of agriculture than other parts of the world) and tradition (in the form of the contributions of other cultures) were essential, too. China created gunpowder and paper and the compass; before the monks could preserve the manuscripts of the classics, Islam rescued the works of Aristotle and other ancient philosophers, laid strong foundations in science and medicine and helped create a global market linking Europe with the East through the Islamic world. History did not begin with Augustine or Aquinas. To return to Chesterton, a view like Stark's overlooks the role of tradition - the handing on of the work of previous generations. Tradition, Chesterton wrote during the Edwardian Age, 'means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. . . . We will have the dead at our councils.' Stark declines to acknowledge the debt Christians owe their Islamic, Jewish, Greek, Roman, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucian and Taoist fathers. He fails to count all the ballots of the dead and does not really care to: in his eyes, the future not only belonged to Christianity -Christianity basically created the future. In the early years of the faith, he writes, 'the church fathers taught that reason was the supreme gift from God and the means to progressively increase their understanding of Scripture and revelation. Consequently, Christianity was oriented to the future, while the other major religions asserted the superiority of the past.' Yet Christianity has never had a monopoly on rational theology or on a concern for the future. Greece and Rome came first, and without the classical principle of 'noncontradiction' - the idea that a faith could assert, for example, that 'Jesus is Lord' and no one else is - it would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, for Christianity to express its faith in doctrine. Judaism and Islam, meanwhile, have long histories of approaching scripture allegorically and critically. Stark quotes the Koran as evidence of Islam's supposed innate emphasis on fundamentalism: the text, the verse says, is 'the Scripture whereof there is no doubt.' Many Christians, though, have taken the words of II Timothy - 'all Scripture is inspired by God' - to mean that the Bible is inerrant. The fact that Jesus himself spoke so often in parables signals the nature and richness of the Jewish approach to theology and philosophy. Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew, was a seminal interpreter of Scripture and tradition. His application of classical thought, logical rigor and literary criticism to Jewish texts foreshadowed and shaped the rationality Stark attributes to Christian thinkers. (Philo is not mentioned in the book.) Talmudic and Rabbinic Judaism are built on argument and reflection. Maimonides, who flourished under Islamic rulers, argued that the discoveries of science and philosophy could not be incompatible with the truths ordained by God (Maimonides is not mentioned either). In Islam, every verse of the Koran, meanwhile, is an 'ayah,' or a 'sign,' to ponder in order to recognize and understand the divine. One of the four basic 'roots' in Islamic jurisprudence is reasoning. 'The Victory of Reason' is more polemic than history, which is too bad, for Stark is on to something important. The author of many books, including the brilliant 'Rise of Christianity,' he is a consistently interesting writer, and provocation is not necessarily a bad thing. Big debates sometimes need to be shaken up, and intellectual life would be much the poorer without writers advancing bracing, if incomplete, arguments. In this case, Stark is most likely being deliberately contrarian in the hope that his argument will penetrate minds long fortified by Mencken-like snobbery about the Christian intellectual tradition. To me, however, the most relevant lesson of the book is not how much Christianity has done for the world through reason, but how much reason has done, and still must do, for Christianity. From Paul to Origen of Alexandria and beyond, the faith has fueled much intellectual good. In 1925, Alfred North Whitehead, whom Stark cites, argued that Christianity helped make Western science possible. It was the Christian idea of God, 'conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher,' Whitehead wrote, that rewarded reasoned thinking and exploration. Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism and Taoism, it is true, are not monotheistic - there is, to use Whitehead's imagery, no single philosophical Jehovah. Yet each culture has made its share of contributions to the rising tide of civilization, from developments in mathematics, the sciences and rational philosophy in India to philosophical thought and early inventions in China to the flowering of thought, high culture, economic systems and scientific achievement in medieval Islamic societies. Christianity has also had its share of dark intellectual hours. Stark mentions Galileo only twice, both times in passing, which is unfortunate, for there were voices in the Galileo affair arguing for a more reasoned reaction to the new science than condemnation and house arrest. It was Galileo who understood, better than his persecutors, how to reconcile apparent contradictions between faith and science. If reason leads humankind to discover a truth that seems to be incompatible with the Bible, Galileo argued, then the interpretation of Scripture, not the rational conclusion, should give way. In this he was echoing Augustine, who wrote: 'If it happens that the authority of sacred Scripture is set in opposition to clear and certain reasoning, this must mean that the person who interprets Scripture does not understand it correctly.' Such is the intellectual footwork of a believer who is unprepared to allow the possibility that the Bible might be fallible, but Augustine's work enables Christians to take advantage of scientific and social advances without surrendering the ultimate authority of revelation. Guided by these lights, despite its sins and shortcomings, the church has ultimately removed the biblical support for the ideas that the earth, not the sun, is the physical center of the universe, that slavery is divinely ordained or that women are property. In the West, a combination of curiosity and courage, one with roots in both classical and monotheistic thinking, enabled Europeans to set out, learn from other cultures and put that borrowed knowledge to work, often on a grand scale. As Bernard Lewis and others have pointed out, Europe had more reason to be interested in Islam than Islam did in Europe. Christianity's holiest places were under Muslim control after earlier, short-lived crusader kingdoms in Jerusalem. Islam was also a military threat to Europe; on two occasions, one in the 16th century, the other in the 17th, the Turks nearly conquered Vienna. The Western hunger for information and invention was not intrinsically Christian. It was, rather, intrinsically human. That the questing Europeans were Christian was not insignificant, but their faith in Jesus was hardly their sole motive. Stark is to be commended for celebrating the rational element of Christian religion and culture - a part that deserves celebration and needs to be recovered. To paraphrase John Donne, though, Christian Europe was not an island. To act as if it were amounts to a sin of pride - and, as the Book of Proverbs says, 'Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.' Pride is fueling an unhappy trend toward Christian self-satisfaction in the United States. Though roughly 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians, conservative evangelicals have long felt themselves under siege, particularly since the 1962 Supreme Court decision banning government-written prayer in public schools. In reaction they have spent the ensuing four decades becoming a major political force. Instead of reading Stark as an amicus brief for the faith, though, believers might be best off taking his case for an intellectually curious Christianity to heart. Such a faith might profitably begin with a consideration of Augustine, who argued for the significance not only of reason but of free will - the idea that people have it within their power to choose to accept God and follow his commandments in the hope of attaining everlasting life. We are also free to choose another course, one leading, in religious terms, away from God. This is not esoteric theology, for free will is linked to a question central to American life: religious liberty. If the prevailing culture can coerce the reluctant to say prayers they do not wish to say, then faith is no longer a matter of free will. To render religion compulsory cheapens it and turns the entire enterprise into a sinful one, for the majority is making an idol of itself by compelling obedience - something God himself refuses to do. An important new book, 'Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously,' edited by Barbara A. McGraw and Jo Renee Formicola, lays out the history of tolerance in the United States while urgently reminding us what is at stake when we speak, as we so often do, of 'church and state' or 'moral values' or 'the culture wars.' A series of essays by various contributors, the volume discusses religion in America's public square from the perspective of different traditions and recovers early American thought on the connection between God and politics. Exploring John Locke's influence on the founders, McGraw writes that, contrary to prevailing academic sentiment, Locke was not a 'secular' philosopher. 'Locke did not reject religion,' she writes. 'Instead, he shifted to a different religious idea based on a very simple theology: there is God, and God communicates with the people.' Hence the centrality of religious liberty. 'This is why freedom of conscience must be preserved: so that the people can listen for and hear the voice of God and participate in society according to that call,' McGraw says. By 'God,' the founders meant many things. They referred to a supernatural presence by the following terms: 'Supreme Governor of the Universe,' 'Governor of the Universe,' 'the Universal Sovereign,' 'Nature's God,' 'Creator,' 'Supreme Judge of the World' and 'Divine Providence.' McGraw coined the term 'America's Sacred Ground' a few years ago, a social science construct with subsidiary parts called the 'Civic Public Forum' and the 'Conscientious Public Forum,' about which the contributors speak as though these were geographical places (for example, such and such issue should be debated on 'America's Sacred Ground' in the same way one would say something should be debated in, say, Boston or Atlanta). The technical terms are distracting, but distraction is a small price to pay for the book's valuable insights and welcome spirit of moderation. The politics of what is called, depending on where you stand, the 'religious right' or 'the faith-based community' are put in devastating historical context. In the volume's best essay, Derek H. Davis examines what he calls 'The Baptist Tradition of Religious Liberty,' invoking the denomination's history of insisting that the church follow Jesus' lead in rendering to God those things which are God's, and to Caesar those things which are Caesar's. 'According to traditional Baptist belief, a government that gives preferential treatment to certain religious beliefs breaches the eternal and inalienable rights of each individual,' Davis writes, 'and disobeys the will of God' - a message that will probably surprise some in the pews and pulpits of politically active congregations. John Leland, an 18th-century Baptist evangelist who worked with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to secure religious freedom in Virginia, wrote: 'Let every man speak freely without fear, maintain the principles that he believes, worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in doing so.' Leland's image of the free man going about his business, answerable only to himself and his conscience so long as he does no harm to others, turns our attention away from theology and politics to what religion actually is for most people: the prayers they say, the emotions they feel, the questions they ask. In a lovely, interesting new book, 'Prayer: A History,' Philip and Carol Zaleski explore this most personal of religious practices in an ecumenical spirit. Defining prayer as an 'action that communicates between human and divine realms,' the authors trace its long and rich history, from evidence of Neanderthal prayers for the dead to Franny's 'Jesus Prayer' in J. D. Salinger's 'Franny and Zooey.' Thomas Merton called the exercise 'a raid on the unspeakable'; Solomon beseeched the Lord to grant 'whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by any man or by all thy people Israel'; Ramakrishna sought 'God-Consciousness' through spiritual rapture. The beginning of tragedy, it has been said, came when a suffering mortal first raised his hands to the heavens and cried, 'Why?' This, too, is a prayer, a manifestation of the longing to make sense of the insensible. For many, the answer has led them to become one of the children of Abraham. For many others, the answer lies with the Buddha's Dharma (or Teaching), or with Brahman, or with the Tao, or with Confucius. For many others, the answer comes from the sciences or from secular philosophy. The common thread is the search for comfort and order in a world that inevitably falls short of our expectations. The common hope is that perhaps one day, as St. John the Divine said in an echo of Isaiah, 'there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away.' On Christmas morning 1825, John Henry Newman, a young man of ferocious intellect and intense faith who had just been ordained an Anglican priest (he would die a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church), preached a sermon while a curate of St. Clement's Church, Oxford. 'It is a day of joy: it is good to be joyful - it is wrong to be otherwise,' Newman said. 'Let us seek the grace of a cheerful heart, an even temper, sweetness, gentleness and brightness of mind, as walking in His light and by His grace.' Such was the view of a questing and committed Christian, a view not so different from that of Robert Ingersoll, the 19th-century American agnostic. 'Christmas is a good day to forgive and forget - a good day to throw away prejudices and hatreds - a good day to fill your heart and your house, and the hearts and houses of others, with sunshine.' Newman thought the brightness came from the Christ child; Ingersoll from simple human kindness. The important thing is that both detected light and each cherished it according to the dictates of his own mind and his own heart - an encouraging sign that there is more than one way to overcome the darkness.

Subject: Cold Slap of Rejection From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 05:57:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/sports/ncaafootball/25haverford.html?ex=1293166800&en=9a7ec47fc3208da3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 Admissions and the Cold Slap of Rejection By BILL PENNINGTON Kevin Friedenberg was certain he had played by all the rules of the college recruiting game. A top high school lacrosse goalie from Needham, Mass., he had e-mailed coaches to promote himself and had attended showcase camps and tournaments. An A student who said he had College Board scores equivalent to 1,380 on the two-part SAT, Friedenberg narrowed his choices to three Division III institutions, including Haverford, a small, selective liberal arts college. Friedenberg twice visited the Haverford campus outside Philadelphia, with astute questions for the lacrosse coach, Mike Murphy: Could he study a year abroad? How many advanced placement high school courses did he need to take? Did Haverford need a goalie? Would the coach support him in admissions? Assured he was in the top half of the list of athletes Murphy would forward to admissions, Friedenberg completed Haverford's binding early-decision application in November. He spurned overtures from Swarthmore College and Connecticut College. 'I thought I had all my bases covered,' Friedenberg said. 'But what I got in the mail was a thin letter.' A thin letter, as opposed to an envelope thick with acceptance forms, is code for a rejection. 'I was completely shocked,' said Friedenberg, whose application was not among the few deferred to Haverford's regular decision process in the spring. 'I didn't know what to do. I have to get back in touch with all those coaches again, but they've probably already recruited their goalies and moved on without me. 'It's going to be difficult to get into these great schools now without the support of a coach. My fear is I'll be left with no place to go, and maybe, not play lacrosse in college at all.' A month ago, Friedenberg talked about how the recruiting process had been good to him. 'This definitely puts a different spin on it,' he said last week. 'It seemed like a good idea at the time. I have seen the other side of it.' Haverford accepted 101 of 237 early-decision applicants this month, and 37 of those were athletes who had been endorsed by a coach at the college. Haverford officials granted The New York Times access to most of the decision-making involving the recruited athletes, and to the interaction between the athletic and admissions departments, on the condition that applicants' identities be revealed only with their permission. In Houston last week, John-Paul Cashiola, another lacrosse goalie, received a thick envelope from the Haverford admissions office. Cashiola had also marketed himself to coaches, spending almost $5,000 to fly to three recruiting events in the Northeast this year. Cashiola, who attends a private school, said he had a 3.1 grade-point average and scored 1,200 on the SAT. Neither of his parents attended college, a plus in the admissions process, and his mother is Nicaraguan; Cashiola said that made him a minority candidate. 'I'll be the first to tell you that lacrosse had a huge role in my admission to Haverford,' Cashiola said in a telephone interview. 'Lacrosse had to be a tool to get into a better school.' Being recruited was a job to Cashiola, who found work cutting lawns and doing housecleaning to raise money for his flights to showcases. 'My mom would say, 'More money for another trip?' ' Cashiola, 18, said. 'But I would tell her, 'This trip could be the deciding factor.' It paid off. Every penny was worth it.' The decisions on Friedenberg and Cashiola were typical if opposite outcomes to a subjective, unpredictable and imprecise process, one ultimately decided by a committee of seven Haverford admissions officers. Athletic prowess gave some candidates a clear edge toward admission - in 10 cases in particular. But of the 71 recruited athletes in the early-decision pool, 31 were rejected. Three athletes endorsed by coaches were deferred to the regular admissions pool. One athlete was rejected for having received two C's in the first semester this year. Another was rejected in part because two of the five required SAT scores were below 600, although the 650 average was in the acceptable range. Another athlete had a 3.9 G.P.A. But the admissions officers discovered that the applicant's high school grading scale extended to 5, not 4, which meant rejection. Another athlete had good credentials (A-minus average and 1,310 SAT) but few activities or apparent interests besides sports. That troubled the committee and led to a rejection. Yet another athlete never went to Haverford for an interview and did not show interest in the college until this past fall, making the committee uneasy. Another rejection. But there were several cases in which athletics seemed to have tipped the decision in a borderline applicant's favor, other cases in which a recruited athlete might have been accepted without a coach's assist and others in which athletics played a major factor. Ben Regan-Sachs is a right-handed pitcher from Bethesda, Md., who attended his first recruiting showcase when he was in eighth grade. He was recruited by Division III baseball coaches from Virginia to Massachusetts. An A student at the respected Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School with a mid-1,300 SAT, Regan-Sachs is also a competitive chess player who had a lengthy list of extracurricular activities. Regan-Sachs was endorsed by Haverford's baseball coach, Dave Beccaria, and had made a number of visits to the campus. His early-decision application was accepted. 'I think my grades and G.P.A. put me in the ballpark,' Regan-Sachs said. 'Athletics may have helped me get noticed at Haverford. By the time I applied, it was not the first time they had heard of me.' Monica Stegman of Sparta, N.J., was on the list submitted by Wendy Smith, Haverford's women's soccer coach. Stegman ranked in the top 5 percent of her class and had a 1,380 SAT, including a perfect 800 on the math portion. She was accepted. 'I always thought I was a strong candidate for Haverford,' she said. 'I knew being recruited wouldn't hurt, but I wasn't going to rely on it.' Another top athlete was first in her class and had taken demanding courses at an urban high school that rarely sends students to Haverford. That intrigued Jess Lord, the dean of admissions, because the college is trying to diversify. 'But her test scores were way off profile for us,' Lord said. 'They were 100 to 150 points below our median - on each test.' The median SAT for Haverford's current freshman class was 1,380. The median for those accepted, including students who eventually chose to go elsewhere, was 1,420. Despite the applicant's lower test scores, she was high on a coach's list. Lord left his office to consult with Greg Kannerstein, the athletic director, and the coach. Lord wanted to know whether the athlete could be an impact player. With a strong recommendation from athletics, Lord pushed for the candidate's admission. 'We're looking for multiple ways a student can contribute to the campus,' Lord said. 'This student is deserving of being here for many reasons. The athletic component just made it certain.' Another athlete was typical for a Haverford applicant: class rank in the top 10 percent with a 1,370 SAT. Recommendations from teachers and the evaluation from the admissions department interview were good but not great. 'That kid, at first glance, probably gets lost in the shuffle,' Brian Walter, an associate dean for admissions, said. 'There's nothing negative in the file, but we're dealing with pretty rarefied air here, so something has to make that student stand out.' In this case, the applicant was ranked No. 1 on a coach's list. That was enough to grant extra consideration and, eventually, acceptance. But being No. 1 on a coach's list and lobbying by the athletic department did not guarantee acceptance. Five of 13 athletes at the top of coaches' lists were not accepted, although three of those five were deferred. The admissions officers, however, kept a tally of how recruited athletes in each sport fared. If a coach had a list of five athletes and the first four had been rejected, when the fifth came up, Walter informed the committee. It did not mean that any of the five candidates would be admitted, but the committee considered whether it had been too harsh in the previous four cases. It was rare for a team to be shut out. Lord, the dean of admissions, conceded that the process was fickle. 'If the same seven people met in our committee room next week and did the whole thing again, it's likely we would not admit the same 101 applicants,' he said. 'There is a human element you can never remove from the process.' Not everyone at Haverford found the unpredictable nature of the admissions process easy to accept. When Mike Murphy, attending a lacrosse coaches convention in Baltimore, heard that Friedenberg and some of his other top prospects had been rejected or deferred, he slammed a telephone on the desk in his hotel so hard that it cracked. 'I feel horrible for kids like Kevin,' Murphy said. 'I never went too far in what I said to him, but I encouraged him and he trusted me. For me, I can go home, hug my kids and sleep well tonight, but that doesn't help Kevin Friedenberg right now.' Murphy contacted three other college coaches the next day to recommend Friedenberg, and Beccaria, the baseball coach, referred a rejected prospect to a rival. 'Just because it doesn't work out here,' Beccaria said, 'you can't take it out on the kid.' Given a few days to digest the results, most of the Haverford coaches were pleased. More recruited athletes than usual were admitted through the early-decision window, part of a nationwide trend. More athletes choose to apply early to maximize their chances of admission. Of the 20 athletes Murphy had listed, 10 were accepted, as were six from Beccaria's list of nine. 'I've got 10 elated, happy kids I will turn to now,' Murphy said. Jen Ward, the softball coach, had two of five athletes on her list admitted. Although she was disappointed, Ward, a recent Haverford graduate, said, 'I know a ton of great kids didn't get in who aren't athletes.' The 19 remaining athletes who were accepted early compete in eight other sports. Some teams had no early-decision applicants. The coaches of those teams, and others, will try to fill their rosters through regular admissions, when hundreds of athletes will be on coaches' lists. Haverford's teams will probably end up with about 20 to 25 more recruited athletes. Teams that added several athletes during early decision will get less attention. In the past week, Haverford's coaches were compiling their recruiting wish lists for athletes applying by the Jan. 15 regular admission deadline. The process was starting anew. Among the first tasks for the coaches: fielding e-mail messages and phone calls from athletes who were denied early-decision admission. Friedenberg was among those scurrying to get back in the game. He had also begun counseling his younger teammates. 'I've told them to look at me and learn,' he said. 'Make sure you have your backup choices figured out in advance and know immediately what you'll do if you don't get in. It's a hard process. I'm just trying to pass along that wisdom.'

Subject: Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 26, 2005 at 05:30:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 26, 2005 Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman continues his series on health care. In this column, he looks at why health care costs are increasing so rapidly and how the rapid increase can be reduced through changes in policy: Medicine: Who Decides?, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Health care seems to be heading back to the top of the political agenda, and not a moment too soon. Employer-based health insurance is unraveling ... and vast Medicare costs loom on the horizon. Something must be done. But to get health reform right, we'll have to overcome wrongheaded ideas as well as powerful special interests. For decades we've been lectured on the evils of big government and the glories of the private sector. Yet health reform is a job for the public sector, which already pays most of the bills directly or indirectly and sooner or later will have to make key decisions about medical treatment. ... Consider what happens when a new drug or other therapy becomes available. Let's assume that the new therapy is more effective ... than existing therapies ... but that the advantage isn't overwhelming. On the other hand, it's a lot more expensive than current treatments. Who decides whether patients receive the new therapy? We've traditionally relied on doctors to make such decisions. But the rise of medical technology ... makes ... medicine ... in which doctors call for every procedure that might be of medical benefit, increasingly expensive. Moreover, the high-technology nature of modern medical spending has given rise to a powerful medical-industrial complex that seeks to influence doctors' decisions. ...[D]rug companies in particular spend more marketing their products to doctors than they do developing those products ... They wouldn't do that if doctors were immune to persuasion. So if costs are to be controlled, someone has to act as a referee on doctors' medical decisions. During the 1990's it seemed, briefly, as if private H.M.O.'s could play that role. But then there was a public backlash. It turns out that even in America, with its faith in the free market, people don't trust for-profit corporations to make decisions about their health. Despite the failure ... to control costs with H.M.O.'s, conservatives continue to believe that the magic of the private sector will provide the answer. ... Their latest big idea is health savings accounts, which ... induce 'cost sharing' - that is, individuals will ... pay a larger share of their medical costs out of pocket and make their own decisions about care. ...[I]s giving individuals responsibility for their own health spending really the answer to rising costs? No. For one thing, insurance will always cover the really big expenses. We're not going to have a system in which people pay for heart surgery out of their health savings accounts and save money by choosing cheaper procedures. And that's not an unfair example. The Brookings study puts it this way: 'Most health costs are incurred by a small proportion of the population whose expenses greatly exceed plausible limits on out-of-pocket spending.' Moreover, it's neither fair nor realistic to expect ordinary citizens to have enough medical expertise to make life-or-death decisions about their own treatment. A well-known experiment ... carried out by the RAND Corporation... found that when individuals pay a higher share of medical costs out of pocket, they cut back on necessary as well as unnecessary health spending. So cost-sharing, like H.M.O.'s, is a detour from real health care reform. Eventually, we'll have to accept the fact that there's no magic in the private sector, and that health care - including the decision about what treatment is provided - is a public responsibility.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs From: andrew wormser To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 15:51:40 (EST) Email Address: awormser@ctmedgroup.com Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 26, 2005 Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman continues his series on health care. In this column, he looks at why health care costs are increasing so rapidly and how the rapid increase can be reduced through changes in policy: Medicine: Who Decides?, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Health care seems to be heading back to the top of the political agenda, and not a moment too soon. Employer-based health insurance is unraveling ... and vast Medicare costs loom on the horizon. Something must be done. But to get health reform right, we'll have to overcome wrongheaded ideas as well as powerful special interests. For decades we've been lectured on the evils of big government and the glories of the private sector. Yet health reform is a job for the public sector, which already pays most of the bills directly or indirectly and sooner or later will have to make key decisions about medical treatment. ... Consider what happens when a new drug or other therapy becomes available. Let's assume that the new therapy is more effective ... than existing therapies ... but that the advantage isn't overwhelming. On the other hand, it's a lot more expensive than current treatments. Who decides whether patients receive the new therapy? We've traditionally relied on doctors to make such decisions. But the rise of medical technology ... makes ... medicine ... in which doctors call for every procedure that might be of medical benefit, increasingly expensive. Moreover, the high-technology nature of modern medical spending has given rise to a powerful medical-industrial complex that seeks to influence doctors' decisions. ...[D]rug companies in particular spend more marketing their products to doctors than they do developing those products ... They wouldn't do that if doctors were immune to persuasion. So if costs are to be controlled, someone has to act as a referee on doctors' medical decisions. During the 1990's it seemed, briefly, as if private H.M.O.'s could play that role. But then there was a public backlash. It turns out that even in America, with its faith in the free market, people don't trust for-profit corporations to make decisions about their health. Despite the failure ... to control costs with H.M.O.'s, conservatives continue to believe that the magic of the private sector will provide the answer. ... Their latest big idea is health savings accounts, which ... induce 'cost sharing' - that is, individuals will ... pay a larger share of their medical costs out of pocket and make their own decisions about care. ...[I]s giving individuals responsibility for their own health spending really the answer to rising costs? No. For one thing, insurance will always cover the really big expenses. We're not going to have a system in which people pay for heart surgery out of their health savings accounts and save money by choosing cheaper procedures. And that's not an unfair example. The Brookings study puts it this way: 'Most health costs are incurred by a small proportion of the population whose expenses greatly exceed plausible limits on out-of-pocket spending.' Moreover, it's neither fair nor realistic to expect ordinary citizens to have enough medical expertise to make life-or-death decisions about their own treatment. A well-known experiment ... carried out by the RAND Corporation... found that when individuals pay a higher share of medical costs out of pocket, they cut back on necessary as well as unnecessary health spending. So cost-sharing, like H.M.O.'s, is a detour from real health care reform. Eventually, we'll have to accept the fact that there's no magic in the private sector, and that health care - including the decision about what treatment is provided - is a public responsibility. --- I agree that ultimately we must make choices about what health care we can afford given finite resources. Most developed countries with universal healthcare systems rely heavily on a well developed primary care system that helps determine how resources are utilized. Primary care personnel are better equipped than most patients to determine what expenditures are worthwhile and can even help lower specialty costs through intimate knowledge of who in a given community provides the most cost effective care. In the United States we have chosen to go in a different direction and have discouraged capable primary care. We have done so to our detriment and it will be a long road to restore quality to this vital area of the healthcare sector.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: Health Care Costs From: Emma To: andrew wormser Date Posted: Tues, Dec 27, 2005 at 16:53:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Agreed completely; an important comment: 'I agree that ultimately we must make choices about what health care we can afford given finite resources. Most developed countries with universal healthcare systems rely heavily on a well developed primary care system that helps determine how resources are utilized. Primary care personnel are better equipped than most patients to determine what expenditures are worthwhile and can even help lower specialty costs through intimate knowledge of who in a given community provides the most cost effective care. In the United States we have chosen to go in a different direction and have discouraged capable primary care. We have done so to our detriment and it will be a long road to restore quality to this vital area of the healthcare sector.' A Wormser

Subject: All Quiet On the Western Front From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 10:35:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (MOVIE)&reviewer=Mordaunt Hall&v_id=1579&pdate= April 30, 1930 All Quiet On the Western Front By Mordaunt Hall From the pages of Erich Maria Remarque's widely read book of young Germany in the World War, All Quiet on the Western Front, Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures Corporation has produced a trenchant and imaginative audible picture, in which the producers adhere with remarkable fidelity to the spirit and events of the original stirring novel. It was presented last night at the Central Theatre before an audience that most of the time was held to silence by its realistic scenes. It is a notable achievement, sincere and earnest, with glimpses that are vivid and graphic. Like the original, it does not mince matters concerning the horrors of battle. It is a vocalized screen offering that is pulsating and harrowing, one in which the fighting flashes are photographed in an amazingly effective fashion. Lewis Milestone, who has several good films to his credit, was entrusted with the direction of this production. And Mr. Laemmle had the foresight to employ those well-known playwrights, George Abbott and Maxwell Anderson, to make the adaptation and write the dialogue. Some of the scenes are not a little too long, and one might also say that a few members of the cast are not Teutonic in appearance; but this means but little when one considers the picture as a whole, for wherever possible, Mr. Milestone has used his fecund imagination, still clinging loyally to the incidents of the book. In fact, one is just as gripped by witnessing the picture as one was by reading the printed pages, and in most instances it seems as though the very impressions written in ink by Herr Remarque had become animated on the screen. In nearly all the sequences, fulsomeness is avoided. Truth comes to the fore, when the young soldiers are elated at the idea of joining up, when they are disillusioned, when they are hungry, when they are killing rats in a dugout, when they are shaken with fear, and when they, or one of them, becomes fed up with the conception of war held by the elderly man back home. Often the scenes are of such excellence that if they were not audible one might believe that they were actual motion pictures of activities behind the lines, in the trenches, and in No Man's Land. It is an expansive production with views that never appear to be cramped. In looking at a dugout one readily imagines a long line of such earthy abodes. When shells demolish these underground quarters, the shrieks of fear, coupled with the rat-tat-tat of machine guns, the bang-ziz of the trench mortars, and the whining of shells, it tells the story of the terrors of fighting better than anything so far has done in animated photography coupled with the microphone. There are heartrending glimpses in a hospital, where one youngster has had his leg amputated and still believes that he has a pain in his toes. Just as he complains of this, he remembers another soldier who had complained of the same pain in the identical words. He then realizes what has happened to him, and he shrieks and cries out that he does not want to go through life a cripple. There is the death room from which nobody is said to come out, and Paul, admirably acted by Lewis Ayres, is taken to this chamber shouting, as he is wheeled away, that he will come back. And he does. The agony in this hospital reflects that of the details given by Herr Remarque. In an early sequence there is the introduction of the tyrant corporal, Himmelstoss, who has no end of ideas to keep young soldiers on the alert, sometimes amusing himself by making them crawl under tables and then, during the day, ordering them to fall on their faces in the mud. Just as by reading the book, one learns, while looking at this animated work, to hate Himmelstoss. And one occasion when the audience broke their rapt stillness last night was with an outburst of laughter. This happened when Paul and his comrades lay in wait for the detested noncommissioned officer, and, after thrashing him, left him in a stagnant pool with a sack tied over his head. Soldiers are perceived being taken like cattle to the firing line and then having to wait for food. There is the cook, who finds that he has enough rations for twice the number of the men left in the company, and when he hears that many have been killed and others wounded he still insists that these soldiers will only receive their ordinary rations. Here that amiable war veteran, Katczinsky, splendidly acted by Louis Wolheim, grabs the culinary expert by the throat and finally a sergeant intervenes and instructs the cook to give the company the full rations intended for the survivors and those who have either died or been wounded. Now and again songs are heard, genuine melody that comes from the soldiers, and as time goes on Paul and his comrades begin to look upon the warfare with the same philosophic demeanor that Katczinsky reveals. But when the big guns begin to boom there are further terrors for the soldiers and in one of these Paul has his encounter with a Frenchman in a shell hole. Paul stabs the Frenchman to death and as he observes life ebbing from the man with whom he had struggled, he fetches water from the bottom of the shell hole and moistens the Frenchman's lips. It is to Paul a frightening and nerve-racking experience, especially when he eventually pulls from a pocket a photograph of the wife and child of the man he had slain. Raymond Griffith, the erstwhile comedian who, years before acting in film comedies, lost his voice through shrieking in a stage melodrama, gives a marvelous performance as the dying Frenchman. It may be a little too long for one's peace of mind, but this does not detract from Mr. Griffith's sterling portrayal. Another comedian, none other than George (Slim) Summerville, also distinguishes himself in a light but very telling role, that of Tjaden. It is he who talks about the Kaiser and himself both having no reason to go to war—the only difference, according to the soldier in the trenches, being that the Kaiser is at home. It is Tjaden who is left behind when the youngsters swim over to the farmhouse and visit the French girls. Much has been made of the pair of boots and the soldier who wanted them and declared, when he got them from the man who passed on, that they would make fighting almost agreeable for anybody. Mr. Milestone has done wonders with this passage, showing the boots on the man and soon depicting that while they may have been comfortable and watertight, boots don't matter much when a shell with a man's name written on it comes his way. The episodes are unfolded with excellent continuity and one of the outstanding ones is where Paul goes home and finds everything changed, including himself. He is asked by the same professor who had taught him, to talk to the new batch of pupils about the war. He remembers his enthusiasm for it when he enlisted in 1914 and he now knows how different are his impressions since he has been stringing barbed wire under the dangerous glare of Very lights in No Man's Land. He knows what a uniform means, and believes that there is no glory at the front; all he has to say to the boys is hard and terse. He tires of the gray heads who think that they know something about war and prefers to cut his leave short and go back to the fighting area rather than listen to the arguments of those who have not been disillusioned by shells, mud, rats, and vermin. During the intermission a curtain is lowered with 'poppies, row on row,' a glimpse of Flanders field. After that comes more grim battle episodes and more suffering of the men in the gray-green tunics. All the players do capital work, but Beryl Mercer does not seem to be a good choice for the role of Paul's mother. This may be due, however, to having seen her relatively recently in the picturization of Sir James M. Barrie's playlet, The Old Lady Shows Her Medals. Messrs. Milestone, Abbott, and Anderson in this film have contributed a memorable piece of work to the screen.

Subject: The Truce of Christmas, 1914 From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 10:04:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25word.ready.html?ex=1293166800&en=68d3974074e8743a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 25, 2005 The Truce of Christmas, 1914 By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA When Europe marched to war in the summer of 1914, both sides thought the fighting would be over in a few weeks. Instead, by the close of December, World War I had already claimed close to a million lives, and it was clear the fighting would go on for a long time. Yet on Dec. 24, much of the Western Front fell silent as ordinary soldiers made temporary peace with the enemy. This was the remarkable Christmas Truce of 1914. It's estimated that about 100,000 men, mainly British and Germans, took part. In fact, the sheer magnitude of the event led many to doubt that it ever happened. As late as 1983, one veteran called the truce a 'latrine rumor.' Today, however, it is often seen as one of the few bright moments amid the slaughter of the Great War, in which 14 million people were killed. The last survivor of the truce, Sgt. Alfred Anderson of Scotland's Fifth Battalion Black Watch, died last month at the age of 109. Here are excerpts from letters, journals and memoirs of some of the other participants. THOMAS VINCIGUERRA The truce broke out spontaneously in many places. Pvt. Albert Moren of the Second Queens Regiment recalled the scene on Christmas Eve near the French village of La Chapelle d'Armentières: It was a beautiful moonlit night, frost on the ground, white almost everywhere; and about 7 or 8 in the evening there was a lot of commotion in the German trenches and there were these lights -I don't know what they were. And then they sang 'Silent Night' - 'Stille Nacht.' I shall never forget it, it was one of the highlights of my life. I thought, what a beautiful tune. Rifleman Graham Williams of the Fifth London Rifle Brigade recalled how the mood spread: Then suddenly lights began to appear along the German parapet, which were evidently make-shift Christmas trees, adorned with lighted candles, which burnt steadily in the still, frosty air! … First the Germans would sing one of their carols and then we would sing one of ours, until when we started up 'O Come, All Ye Faithful' the Germans immediately joined in singing the same hymn to the Latin words Adeste Fideles. And I thought, well, this is really a most extraordinary thing - two nations both singing the same carol in the middle of a war. The shared carols inspired Capt. Josef Sewald of Germany's 17th Bavarian Regiment to make a bold gesture: I shouted to our enemies that we didn't wish to shoot and that we make a Christmas truce. I said I would come from my side and we could speak with each other. First there was silence, then I shouted once more, invited them, and the British shouted 'No shooting!' Then a man came out of the trenches and I on my side did the same and so we came together and we shook hands - a bit cautiously! The enemies quickly became friends, as Cpl. John Ferguson of the Second Seaforth Highlanders recalled: We shook hands, wished each other a Merry Xmas, and were soon conversing as if we had known each other for years. We were in front of their wire entanglements and surrounded by Germans - Fritz and I in the center talking, and Fritz occasionally translating to his friends what I was saying. We stood inside the circle like street corner orators. … What a sight - little groups of Germans and British extending almost the length of our front! Out of the darkness we could hear laughter and see lighted matches, a German lighting a Scotchman's cigarette and vice versa, exchanging cigarettes and souvenirs. On Christmas Day, some Germans and British held a joint service to bury their dead. Second Lt. Arthur Pelham Burn of the Sixth Gordon Highlanders was there: Our Padre … arranged the prayers and psalms, etc., and an interpreter wrote them out in German. They were read first in English by our Padre and then in German by a boy who was studying for the ministry. It was an extraordinary and most wonderful sight. The Germans formed up on one side, the English on the other, the officers standing in front, every head bared. According to several accounts, soccer games were played in no man's land with makeshift balls that Christmas. Lt. Kurt Zehmisch of Germany's 134th Saxons Infantry Regiment witnessed a match: Eventually the English brought a soccer ball from their trenches, and pretty soon a lively game ensued. How marvelously wonderful, yet how strange it was. The English officers felt the same way about it. Thus Christmas, the celebration of Love, managed to bring mortal enemies together as our friends for a time. Second Lt. Bruce Bairnsfather of the First Warwickshires saw an even more unusual fraternization: The last I saw of this little affair was a vision of one of my machine gunners, who was a bit of an amateur hairdresser in civilian life, cutting the unnaturally long hair of a docile Boche, who was patiently kneeling on the ground while the automatic clippers crept up the back of his neck. Not everyone was so charitable. Cpl. Adolf Hitler of the 16th Bavarians lambasted his comrades for their unmilitary conduct: Such things should not happen in wartime. Have you Germans no sense of honor left at all? When Gen. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien, commander of the British II Corps, learned of the consorting, he was irate: I have issued the strictest orders that on no account is intercourse to be allowed between the opposing troops. To finish this war quickly, we must keep up the fighting spirit and do all we can to discourage friendly intercourse. Inevitably, both sides were soon ordered back to their trenches. Capt. Charles 'Buffalo Bill' Stockwell of the Second Royal Welch Fusiliers recalled how the peace ended early on Dec. 26: At 8:30, I fired three shots into the air and put up a flag with 'Merry Christmas' on it on the parapet. He [a German] put up a sheet with 'Thank You' on it, and the German captain appeared on the parapet. We both bowed and saluted and got down into our respective trenches, and he fired two shots into the air, and the war was on again.

Subject: The Road Back From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 04:43:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views05/0104-29.htm January 4, 2005 The Road Back By James Carroll - Boston Globe 'There was once a man in the land of Uz called Job: a sound and honest man who feared God and shunned evil. Seven sons and three daughters were born to him.' So begins the famous meditation on the mystery of suffering. Has it ever seemed so current? A messenger comes to Job and tells him, 'Your sons and daughters were at their meal and drinking wine at their elder brother's home when suddenly from the wilderness a gale sprang up, and it battered all four corners of the house which fell in on the young people. They are dead. I alone escaped to tell you.' In South Asia, reports indicate that up to one-third of the deaths are of children. Job loses everything -- his possessions, abode, reputation, health, and easy faith. But the evil that befalls him is embodied most crucially in the destruction of his pretty ones. Children are the future, the very pillar of time, the measure of meaning in a rootless cosmos. With his children gone, the assault comes fully to Job. 'Terrors attack him in broad daylight and at night a whirlwind sweeps him off. An east wind picks him up and drags him away, snatching him up from his homeland. . . . A flood of water overwhelms him.' Job is unforgotten not because of what he suffered but because of his refusal to respond with curses and quitting. He rejects the possibility that the human condition amounts to mere bedlam, nothing more. He condemns the injustice of every further twist of his fate, and therefore justice itself becomes his defining affirmation. His nobility lies in the simple act of insisting, in the face of unearned suffering, that things were not meant to be like this. A moral order emerges from his stand against otherwise victorious disorder, and what sets Job apart is the discovery, then, that moral order is what counts. Across South Asia today, Job lives in the survivors of the tsunami. They protest against the supreme indifference of nature by caring more than ever. They care for the living, and they care for the dead. Grief becomes a way, literally, of life. Legions of the empathetic, meanwhile, attempt to rescue, heal, console, and rebuild. No curses. No quitting. Just clean water, sanitation, burying the remains, naming the disappeared. Dispersed members of the human family, on hearing of this disaster, experience it as happening to them. A vast sense of interruption has fallen upon the globe. Normalcies of time and place are violated by the instantaneous character of the destruction and its geographic scale. An ancient dread of the catastrophic springs alive in every heart. If the earth itself is the enemy of humanity, where is the friend? And other questions impose themselves. Why does the universal outpouring of concern for the victims of the tsunami stand in such contrast to the equally universal resignation to such mass victimhood when it comes from war? The dead in Iraq, to take only America's example, may also be counted by now in six figures. Why is Operation Iraqi Freedom not recognized in Washington as the tsunami it is for those who even today are being blown away? Job was defined by his demand for an answer. How is unearned suffering to be explained? 'But tell me, where does wisdom come from? Where is understanding to be found?' Uninterrupted, humans can accommodate themselves to the sorrows of mortality, but such complacency can be swept away in a tide that refuses to break, forcing the questions: How? Why? But alas, as Job learns, 'the road to wisdom is still unknown to man, not to be found in the land of the living. `It is not in me,' says the Abyss. `Nor here,' replies the Sea.' Where is the meaning in the deaths of all those children? How can such worlds of work, love, creativity, and invention -- all those coastal villages, all those tidy houses -- be simply crushed like so many matchsticks? If every human life is of ultimate worth, how can so many once beautiful bodies end up in pits? In the Book of Job, the answer comes 'from the heart of the tempest.' And the answer is that there is no answer. The tsunami wrack line is as much of mystery as of misery. But, as the world's response nevertheless makes clear, we needn't understand to care, nor find meaning in this suffering to denounce its injustice. Having the hurt ones in mind and finding ways to help them are what matter now.

Subject: South Asia and the U.S. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 04:34:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/business/15sbiz.html?ex=1292302800&en=f0330ecfae016ab2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 15, 2005 Mutual-Aid Network Links South Asia and the U.S. By JAMES FLANIGAN As recent investments by Microsoft, Intel and Cisco Systems attest, corporate America has come to view India not just as a source of low-cost talent but also as an emerging economic power to be reckoned with. Beyond the headlines about corporate acquisitions and the outsourcing of jobs, though, a little-known organization founded in California 13 years ago is having a significant impact in fostering business ties between the United States and India. That organization, Indus Entrepreneurs, was started by people like Suhas S. Patil, founder of Cirrus Logic in Austin, Tex., a chip maker, and Safi Qureshey, co-founder of AST Research, which made computer parts, as a mutual-aid network for Indian and Pakistani immigrants. Today, it has grown into an affiliation of 10,000 members in 10 countries that, by its own account, has helped create $250 billion in wealth by encouraging business start-ups. In the process, it has evolved into a behind-the-scenes incubator of companies in business services and technology operating in both South Asia and the United States. That cultural cross-pollination, by integrating the strengths and resources of both regions, has helped solidify the business relationship between them. Consider Secova eServices Inc., a two-year-old company that processes pension and health-benefit accounts for American companies from offices in Brick, N.J., and Chennai, India. Venkat Tadanki, Secova's founder and chief executive, says it has thrived - it is now approaching $10 million in annual revenue and growing - by exploiting the advantages of both locations. With labor costs in India a fraction of those in the United States, Secova saves millions of dollars a year by assigning most of the data-processing and simple accounting to the 50 employees in Chennai, Mr. Tadanki says. He says that Secova's 50 employees in New Jersey do what the ones in India cannot, keeping up with and explaining the intricacies of health insurance plans, sending out benefit checks and dealing directly with corporate customers. 'Not everyone with a few computers and a building in India can do human resource processing,' said Mr. Tadanki, a member of Indus Entrepreneurs, who has made a commitment to train newcomers from the Indian subcontinent on how to start and run a company in the United States. Underscoring the geographic fluidity of his operations, he runs his company from an office in Huntington Beach, Calif., and has attracted $1.5 million from Citicorp's India office in a financing that is part loan, part investment. Secova is the second company that Mr. Tadanki, a 43-year-old graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, has founded in the United States since 2000. The first was Daksh Inc., a San Francisco-based firm that operated customer-service centers in India for large corporations in the United States. He and his partners sold Daksh to International Business Machines in 2004. Another company that has tied together complementary strands of the Indian and American economies is the Equinox Corporation, a company in Irvine, Calif., that processes mortgage documents in India for American lenders. Even though mortgage financing is a highly efficient activity in the United States, Equinox finds a way to cut some costs out of the routine, says Don Ganguly, a member of Indus Entrepreneurs who founded Equinox in 2002 and recently sold it to i-flex Solutions, a large financial services firm in India. Ownership by the bigger firm allowed Equinox to open a processing center near New Delhi and take on more accounts. I-flex Solutions, in turn, has sold 40 percent of its shares to the Oracle Corporation, the American software giant that is interested in supplying fast-growing financial services businesses in emerging economies. Mr. Ganguly, an India-trained engineer who came to the United States 25 years ago to get an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says the interchange of business activity benefits the economies of both countries. 'Because we take out costs over there, U.S. companies can do more here - provide more services with higher productivity,' he said. At the same time, the additional work lifts living standards in India, where the $700 billion economy, though growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent, is just half that of the state of California. Some Americans might deplore the loss of jobs to India and other low-cost countries. But Indian companies are also creating jobs in the United States. One example is Arcot Systems Inc., a company in Sunnyvale, Calif., that makes software for secure authentication of credit card and banking transactions on the Internet. Rammohan Varadarajan, an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology who came to the United States in 1982 to get master's degrees in chemical engineering and computer science from Louisiana State University, started Arcot in 1997 thanks to business associates and venture capital gained through Indus Entrepreneurs contacts. As Mr. Varadarajan worked on Arcot's special software, he attracted support and investment from Adobe Systems, the software developer based in San Jose, Calif., through contacts made at Indus Entrepreneurs conferences. Also he got programming help from Infosys Technologies, a consulting firm based in Bangalore, India. And he has attracted customers for Arcot's security software among banks and credit card companies around the world. With 90 employees at present - half in Bangalore, half in Sunnyvale - Arcot has $15 million in annual sales but $100 million in financing from investors that include Goldman Sachs, Onset Ventures, Visa International, Wachovia Bank and SEB, a division of Sweden's largest bank. 'Many of the investments would not have been made if we were not in India,' Mr. Varadarajan said. And, clearly, if Arcot's success continues, benefits will flow to companies in the United States, Sweden and India. It is in this widening world that Indus Entrepreneurs see opportunities. Shivbir Grewal, a lawyer and the Indus Entrepreneurs trustee for Southern California, for example, is an adviser to Chisk Inc., which is exploring ways to outsource routine legal-discovery work to India. Mr. Qureshey, a founder of Indus Entrepreneurs, is backing Quartics Inc., a company of young entrepreneurs based in Taiwan and Irvine, Calif., that is developing microprocessors for wireless streaming video. And Sangam Pant, a director of Evercore Partners, manages a venture fund that channels American institutional investments to Indian entrepreneurs in the United States and in India. Investors like Mr. Pant are introducing financial innovations to the Indian economy, which has been deregulating a heavily state-run system since 1991. 'We recently completed the first leveraged buyout' of an Indian firm by managers, he said. Increasing innovation will be the rule, predicts Apurv Bagri, the London-based chairman of Indus Entrepreneurs, who plans new chapters for his organization in Munich, Geneva, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. 'India is making a transition from being only a back office,' he said. 'In the pharmaceutical industry and others, you will see India's companies playing a bigger role in the world.'

Subject: Strike Reflects Nationwide Pension Woes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:42:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/nyregion/nyregionspecial3/24pensions.html?ex=1293080400&en=6ea96465eae9c999&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Transit Strike Reflects Nationwide Pension Woes By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Fast-rising pension costs for government employees - the issue that helped set off this week's transit strike in New York City - are a problem confronting cities, counties and states nationwide, causing many budgetary experts to predict a wave of painful fights over efforts to scale back government retirement programs. Many officials and fiscal experts assert that across the nation government pension plans face a shortfall of hundreds of billions of dollars. From New Jersey to California, government officials say that attempts - either through contract fights, legislation or public referendums - to limit the amount of money that states and cities contribute to pensions are inevitable and overdue. Labor unions, for their part, say that the worries are overblown. 'Every level of government in New York City, New York State and in states across the country face large and growing pension obligations,' said E. J. McMahon, a budget expert at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group. 'If nothing is done to bring pensions under control, all the other headaches that state governments will be facing in the next 20 years on needs like education and health will be enormously worse.' The contract battle for New York's transit workers, which has yet to be fully resolved, underscores the anger and risks that await governments as they seek to win concessions to cut their pension costs. The strike, which lasted 60 hours and shut down the country's largest mass transit system, began when the union representing 33,700 bus and subway workers rejected efforts by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a state agency, to increase either the retirement age for future employees or the amount they contribute to finance their pensions. But it is now possible - even after the strike ended - that the transit union may succeed in getting the authority to take all or some of its pension demands off the table as the two sides seek to put the final touches on an overall settlement. With New Jersey facing a $25 billion shortfall in its pension obligations, a state advisory commission recently urged that the retirement age for government employees, other than police, firefighters and judges, be raised to 60 from 55. And in California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced a storm of criticism after he proposed replacing the traditional pension plan for government employees with a far less generous plan resembling 401(k)s. He ultimately backed down even as budget watchdogs complained that many police officers retired with pensions equaling 90 percent of their annual earnings. Many government employees and their unions assert that the campaign to trim pensions threatens America's social contract for the middle class: a respectable pension. Saying that in recent contracts they had sacrificed wage increases or better health benefits for solid pensions, many public employees and their unions assert that governments are betraying their commitments by seeking to now cut pensions. Further, they argue that much of the shortfall in pension financing could be erased by a strong stock market in the next several years. 'A lot of people are exaggerating the size of the problem,' said Gerald McEntee of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents 1.4 million government workers. 'Right-wing think tanks and conservative Republicans want to do away with traditional pension plans and replace them with much-cheaper 401(k)'s at the same time they want to give all these tax cuts to the rich.' The fight over public-sector pensions follows a movement to cut private sector pensions. In recent years, corporation after corporation has complained about what they assert are the onerous costs of pensions. Bethlehem Steel, United Airlines and other companies, saying they could no longer afford it, have stopped paying into their pension plans, forcing the government to step in and absorb billions of dollars in costs. And now Delphi, the giant auto parts company that filed for bankruptcy in October, is threatening to do the same thing. Meanwhile, some companies, Hewlett Packard among them, have replaced their traditional pension plans with 401(k) plans. Many courts have ruled that cutting the pensions of current public employees - as opposed to future ones - violates the Constitution, which prohibits governments from breaching contracts. As a result, taxpayers must pay for full pensions promised to government employees. When private companies go bankrupt and leave badly underfinanced plans, a federal agency, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, steps in to insure the workers' pensions, although many workers end up getting smaller pensions than their companies had promised. The agency is running a $23 billion deficit this year and many policy makers fear that its liabilities could mushroom if many more large corporations file for bankruptcy and dump their pension obligations on the government. In New York's transit dispute, the transportation authority, which runs the city's subways and buses, was alarmed that the pension costs for the transit workers had tripled since 2002, to $453 million this year. To control soaring pensions costs, the authority at first demanded raising the retirement age for future employees to 62. Workers can now retire at age 55, after 25 years on the job, and receive pensions equal to half their earnings. They average $55,000 a year, including overtime. After the union, Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, resisted that demand, the authority made a new proposal, that future transit workers pay 6 percent of their wages toward their pensions, compared with 2 percent for current workers. The transportation authority is working closely with Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who say it is vital to trim fast-rising pension outlays for state and city workers because they threaten the government's ability to provide education, policing and other basic services. New York City's annual pension outlays are expected to jump to nearly $5 billion in 2008, more than double the level in 2004. Mayor Bloomberg repeatedly called the strikers greedy. 'The public says, 'I don't want to pay more taxes and I don't get these kind of benefits,' ' he said yesterday. 'You have no idea how many e-mails I got, 'I don't make that kind of money. I don't have those kinds of pension benefits. Why are people striking?' ' But Roger Toussaint, the president of the transit workers' union, said the walkout was aimed at stopping an employer offensive nationwide to cut pensions and other benefits. He said the transportation authority was mimicking corporate America. 'What you have here is a scandalous attempt on the part of the M.T.A. to jump on the bandwagon,' he said. Nationwide, 90 percent of public-sector workers have traditional benefit plans - known as defined-benefit plans because retirees receive a defined amount each month- while just 20 percent of private-sector workers do. In 1960, 40 percent of private-sector workers were in traditional pension plans. One reason for the disparity: 36.4 percent of government employees belong to unions while just 7.9 percent of private-sector workers do. 'The transit strike will undoubtedly draw attention to the issue,' said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. 'The message is, 'Look, we have to worry about the long-run cost of pensions in the public sector as well as the private sector.' '

Subject: A Different Latin America From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:39:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/opinion/24sat2.html?ex=1293080400&en=eeec121655a531e4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 A Different Latin America Bolivia's recent presidential election was almost as history making as Iraq's parliamentary vote. The winner, Evo Morales, will be the first member of the indigenous majority to run Bolivia since the conquistadors arrived nearly five centuries ago. His victory was one of the most decisive since the return of democracy more than two decades ago, ending an era of weak, unstable and ineffective governments. But do not expect any toasts from the Bush administration. During the campaign, Mr. Morales advertised himself as Washington's 'nightmare.' He opposes almost everything the Bush team stands for in Latin America, from combating coca leaf production to privatizing natural resources and liberalizing trade. His favorite Latin leaders are Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba. And the political popularity of these anti-Washington positions is part of a growing regional trend. The political balance in Latin America has clearly been shifting to the left. Nearly 300 million of South America's 365 million people live under left-wing governments. While many of these governments, like Brazil's and Chile's, have worked hard to cooperate with the United States, others, like Venezuela's, have gone out of their way to bait Washington. Mr. Morales gives every indication of following the Chávez approach. And there could be similar lurches to the demagogic left in the numerous Latin American elections soon coming up in places like Peru, Mexico and Nicaragua. One explanation is that nearly two decades of Washington-recommended economic and trade policies have not done much for millions of urban and rural poor. Another is that the Bush administration has not shown much interest in addressing Latin American social problems. And Mr. Bush has done a terrible job of cultivating personal relationships with Latin American leaders. Few countries adopted Washington's economic prescriptions more eagerly than Bolivia did in the 1980's and 90's. Yet despite considerable mineral and energy resources, it remains South America's poorest country, with 60 percent of its people living in poverty. The left-behind and angry poor voted for Mr. Morales in large numbers, as they have voted repeatedly for Mr. Chávez in Venezuela. When denunciations of Yanqui imperialism in Latin America start coming from the presidential palaces as well as the streets and opposition benches, Washington needs to change its ways. The friendship of neighbors is a terrible thing to lose.

Subject: Diabetes Study Verifies Lifesaving From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:34:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/health/22diabetes.html?ex=1292907600&en=d96824256b8ee38e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 22, 2005 Diabetes Study Verifies Lifesaving Tactic By GINA KOLATA A 17-year federal study has finally answered one of the most pressing questions about diabetes: Can tight control of blood sugar prevent heart attacks and strokes? The answer, reported today in The New England Journal of Medicine, is yes. Intense control can reduce the risk by nearly half. And, the study found, the effect occurred even though the patients had only had a relatively brief period of intense blood sugar control when they were young adults. Nonetheless, more than a decade later, when they reached middle age, when heart disease and strokes normally start to appear, they were protected. The study involved those with Type 1 diabetes, which usually arises in early in life and involves the death of insulin-secreting cells. 'This is truly an important study,' said Dr. Robert Rizza, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic and the president of the American Diabetes Association. 'And I usually don't say that,' he added. The findings are likely to affect clinical practice, encouraging doctors to put more effort into helping patients control their blood sugar, said Dr. John B. Buse, the director of the diabetes care center at the University of North Carolina. The study is 'the most rigorously conducted to date,' Dr. Buse said, and its authors are 'exceptionally well known in the diabetes and medical world.' The question of whether rigid blood sugar control protects against heart disease and strokes has plagued the field for decades, diabetes researchers said. 'It's really a major question that has been around for a long time,' said Dr. Judith Fradkin, who directs diabetes research at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. Researchers knew that diabetes was linked to heart disease - at least two-thirds of diabetics die of heart disease. But although studies showed that controlling blood sugar protected against damage to the eyes, kidneys and nerves, there was no conclusive evidence that it would have the same effect on heart disease and stroke. 'In that sense, this is a landmark study,' said Dr. William Cefalu, a diabetes researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., who wrote an editorial accompanying the paper. The study began with 1,441 people aged 13 to 39. Half were randomly assigned to intensive therapy, intended to keep their blood sugar levels low all the time. That meant injecting themselves with insulin three or more times a day or using an insulin pump to infuse the hormone. The others were assigned to conventional therapy, which meant one or two insulin injections a day, a regimen that was easier for patients but resulted in higher sugar levels. Blood sugar was assessed by measuring the amount of hemoglobin A1c in the participants' blood, a test that looks for hemoglobin with sugar attached to it. The goal for the intensive-therapy group was to keep those levels to 6 percent or less. They achieved an average level of 7 percent. Those assigned to conventional treatment had an average level of 9 percent. Normal levels for people without diabetes are 4 percent to 6 percent. After six and one-half years, both groups were told that intensive therapy had prevented injury to the eyes, kidneys and nerves but that it had not found an effect on heart attacks and strokes. Those who had had the conventional treatment were taught the intensive treatment regimen. Then, for the next 11 years, all the patients were followed but left to their own doctors' care. Soon the two groups had about the same hemoglobin A1c levels, about 8 percent. As the years went by and the patients started developing signs of heart disease, the researchers noticed a pronounced difference between the two groups in their rates of heart attack and stroke. Thirty-one of the patients who had had intensive treatment when they were young had a total of 46 cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, stroke and heart disease severe enough to require bypass surgery. Fifty-two of the conventionally treated patients had a total of 98 such events. 'It was amazing,' said Dr. David Nathan, a diabetes researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital who was co-chairman of the study. 'Therapy for six and one-half years seems to have driven a dramatic effect.' But the result also gives rise to questions: Does the same effect occur in people with Type 2 diabetes, which usually occurs later in life and involves an inability to respond to insulin? And why would tight control of blood sugar for one brief period have such a pronounced effect later? Dr. Fradkin said she expected that the results would hold for Type 2 diabetes. Another large federal study is addressing that question, she noted, but it is already known that tight control of blood sugar in Type 2 diabetes protects against nerve, kidney and eye damage, just as it does with Type 1 diabetes. In addition, a study in Britain hinted, though it did not demonstrate, that Type 2 diabetics who kept their blood sugar low had less heart disease and fewer strokes. But why controlling blood sugar for a brief period would have such a pronounced effect is a mystery, researchers say. 'To me, the observation is fascinating,' Dr. Buse said. The immediate problem, Dr. Fradkin said, is that fewer than 40 percent of diabetics are keeping their hemoglobin A1c levels at 7 percent or below. Such levels are not easy to obtain, Dr. Cefalu said. 'There are side effects - hypoglycemia, weight gain.' Hypoglycemia can be frightening, Dr. Fradkin said. Patients get sweaty, they have palpitations and they can even lapse into unconsciousness and have seizures. In addition, the weight gain that often accompanies improved blood sugar control can be disheartening, diabetes specialists said. 'It is difficult to get people to comply with four injections a day,' Dr. Cefalu said. 'Unfortunately, most of our patients are not willing to do this.' But, Dr. Fradkin said, she hopes the emerging evidence and improving therapies will make a difference. 'We want patients to say to their doctor, 'What is my A1c level? What should it be? And what can I do to get it there?' ' Dr. Fradkin said.

Subject: Changing the Face of Texas Football From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:28:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/sports/ncaafootball/23texas.html December 23, 2005 Changing the Face of Texas Football By JOE DRAPE AUSTIN, Tex. - It was Dec. 6, 1969, and Julius Whittier was stretched before a television in the lobby of the jocks' dorm, Jester Hall, when the euphoria of a heart-stopping victory lifted him, and most University of Texas students, outside onto Guadalupe Street. Texas had just beaten Arkansas, 15-14, in Fayetteville in what had been billed as the Game of the Century. President Richard M. Nixon appeared in the locker room to declare the undefeated Longhorns as national champions. Whittier was a member of the Texas football team, but as a freshman he was not eligible to play varsity at the time. He was also the only black football player at Texas. As Whittier pinballed amid the revelers on the main drag here, he had an epiphany, one about the unifying elements within football that he would lean on for years. 'I had never experienced the exhilaration and joy of celebration where I was participating with what looked like millions of other kids my age,' Whittier recalled recently at his law office in Dallas. 'It did not matter that they were almost all white.' Neither Whittier nor anyone else knew that the time-capsule moment they were celebrating would become an inglorious milestone: the 1969 Longhorns were the last all-white team to win a national college football championship. When Texas was co-national champion with Nebraska the next year, Whittier was a backup offensive lineman and the Longhorns' first black letterman. He acknowledged that he had endured indignities, but said his life experiences were expanded as much as those of his white teammates. By playing at Texas, Whittier received advice from former President Lyndon B. Johnson over lunch at his ranch, and learned to love the music of Willie Nelson. 'I was a jock, plain and simple,' he said. 'I didn't care about civil rights or making a mark. I just wanted to play big-time football.' Whittier, however, is intensely interested in the Jan. 4 Rose Bowl, the national title matchup between defending champion Southern California and Texas. He is proud that about half of the players on the Longhorns' roster are black, including the star quarterback Vince Young. 'It completes the circle from a team that had no blacks to a truly diverse one, one with a black athlete in the ultimate leadership position - quarterback - of the university's most prized institution,' Whittier said. William Henry Lewis was the first black player in major college football at Amherst from 1889 to 1891, then at Harvard from 1892 to 1893, when he was a law student. At the time, both teams played schedules of national prominence, according to the College Football Hall of Fame in South Bend, Ind. Bill Willis, a tackle for the 1942 Ohio State Buckeyes, was the first black player on a national championship team. In the South, however, all-white teams were the norm into the late 1960's as the region was slow to embrace civil rights, especially in something as cherished as college football. Jerry LeVias might have integrated the Southwest Conference in 1966 at Southern Methodist University, but on that December day in 1969 with Nixon in the stands, the top-ranked Longhorns were facing another all-white team in No. 2 Arkansas, a Southwest Conference rival. 'How's that song go?' said Darrell Royal, the Longhorns coach who won three national titles from 1957 to 1976. ' 'Things they are a-changing. But they weren't changing that quickly around here at the time.' When Royal arrived here, he was 32 and fresh from head-coaching stints at the University of Washington and with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League. He had coached black players at both stops. The University of Texas admitted black students in 1956, but did not lift its ban on their playing varsity sports until 1963. Even then, Royal acknowledged, there was tacit pressure from university regents for him not to rush to integrate the football team. In 1967, Royal and his staff recruited a local star named Don Baylor, who was also a gifted baseball and basketball player. He grew up in west Austin, knowing that downtown there were separate water fountains for blacks and whites, had integrated his junior high school, and dreamed of breaking the color barrier at Texas. Baylor wanted to play all three sports, something universities like Stanford, Oklahoma and Texas Western would allow. Royal wanted him to play only football. Baylor would not say that Royal and Texas made a halfhearted attempt to lure him, but he said they were relieved when the Baltimore Orioles drafted him. 'The Southwest Conference and U.T. was not ready to break the color barrier,' said Baylor, who had a distinguished 19-year major league career and later managed the Colorado Rockies and the Chicago Cubs. 'The Orioles took the pressure off Texas.' In the fall of 1968, Royal believed he had found the right young man to integrate his team in Julius Whittier. The previous season, a black student named E. A. Curry walked on and made the freshman team, but he struggled academically and quit. Royal's first black scholarship player in 1968, Leon O'Neal, stayed for only one year. Royal believed Whittier had the will and the preparation to remain for four years. Whittier had been a star at an integrated high school in San Antonio. His father, Oncy, was a doctor. His mother, Loraine, was a schoolteacher and community activist who had led protests against a local grocery chain that prohibited black women from becoming cashiers. Whittier said his uncle Edward Sprott was head of the N.A.A.C.P. in Beaumont, Tex., and had not been intimidated when his house was bombed. His older brother, also named Oncy, had his head cracked open by police officers for his involvement in a guerrilla theater troupe that performed pointed skits about prejudice in the streets of San Antonio, Whittier said. Royal described Whittier as 'smart and tough and a heck of a football player.' He added, 'I knew he could play for us and handle any difficulties off the field.' Whittier said he turned two personal flaws into powerful tools of perseverance. He was not only confident to the point of cockiness, but also had a gift for oratory that continues to serve him well as a trial lawyer. 'I had a mouth that I ran a lot and coherently,' he said. 'It sounded like I knew what I was saying, and that protected me.' Whittier also struggled with attention deficit disorder. 'It kept me so wrapped up in the events of each moment, class, workout, dinner, study hall, practice, game, new friend I made, new football play I learned, and each paper I had to turn in,' he said. 'I had no real time or hard-drive space in my brain to step back and worry over how potentially ominous it was to become a black member of the University of Texas football team and all of the horrifying things that, from a historical perspective, could happen to black people who dare to accept a role in opening up historically white institutions.' Whittier recognized slights by teammates. He was never invited out drinking or to parties with his teammates. And though racial slurs were never directed at him, Whittier heard them when his fellow Longhorns forgot he was in the room. Before Whittier's sophomore season, Royal had trouble finding him a roommate. He called in some of his seniors, explained the situation. One of them, running back Billy Dale, volunteered. The year before, Dale scored the game-winning touchdown against Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl to keep alive Texas' winning streak, which eventually reached 30 games. He was also among the most popular players on the team - until then. 'I lost all my friends,' said Dale, now a manufacturer's representative in Austin. 'I chose to live with Julius because I believed it would add that much more dimension to me as a person.' One night as the two readied for bed, Whittier engaged Dale in an argument about mortality. 'Billy, I'm never going to die,' Whittier told Dale, 'and you are.' The longer the exchange went the more Dale became frustrated. 'I crossed the room and put a finger in Julius's eye and said, 'It's people like you who give your race a bad name,' ' Dale recalled. 'You think, I'm serious, Billy?' Whittier responded with a smile. 'I'm just trying to make you think.' They never exchanged cross words again. It was Whittier's engaging personality that made him one of Royal's favorites and got him on Johnson's guest list. Johnson was crazy about Texas football and occasionally asked Royal to take players to his ranch. It was Johnson who suggested that Whittier continue his studies at the university's new school of public affairs. He earned a master's degree there, before he became a lawyer. Whittier's success on and off the field - he was a three-year letterman and a starter his junior and senior year - paid immediate dividends for Texas. Roosevelt Leaks came here in 1971 and Earl Campbell in 1974, and they became all-American running backs. Soon, one of the set pieces for prospective players was Johnson's landing by helicopter on the lawn of his presidential library on campus to tell them why they should play for Texas. Thirty-six years after Whittier watched his white teammates defeat Arkansas, much has changed in the Texas football program. Jester Hall remains, though it is no longer strictly an athletic dorm. Royal, now 81, remains a campus fixture, though one who concedes he could have been more aggressive in integrating his team earlier. And Dale remains active in the Longhorns letterman association. 'All those people I had lost as friends by rooming with Julius are friends again,' he said. 'We've all grown.' Whittier, too, remains in touch with Royal. He now has a far easier relationship with his former teammates than he had when he was a college student. 'When I see guys from my era, I feel a sense of comradeship,' Whittier said. 'I never was going to hold on to any of the bad stuff, and neither have they.' He will watch Vince Young and the No. 2 Longhorns try to upend the No. 1 Trojans from his couch at home in Dallas with the same anticipation and joy that he had as a pioneering Texas freshman. Whittier will root for another championship, another time-capsule moment, but one that will not be marred by a footnote about race. He is hoping his role in Texas football history is further diminished. 'You know that football is a religion in Texas,' he said. 'God and the university had the right people in the right places to handle my situation. It turned out to be a small event in the long and luminous life of a great and valuable institution.'

Subject: Bonus Fever on London's Wall Street From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:25:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/business/worldbusiness/23bonus.html?ex=1292994000&en=326a020216325ce8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Bonus Fever on London's Wall Street By HEATHER TIMMONS LONDON - Ebenezer Scrooge would not be happy this Christmas. At pubs, restaurants and office parties in the City, London's Wall Street, all the talk has been on the bonuses that are being lavished on bankers and traders. London is at the center of an expansion in European deals, helped by inflows of cash from private equity shops, the Middle East and Russia, and a rush of foreign listings on the London exchange. As a result, many bankers here are hoping that this is the year when their year-end bonuses, which have traditionally lagged those of their counterparts across the Atlantic, rise to a comparable level. 'London and New York have been coming closer and closer together over the last few years,' said Carl Sjostrom, a partner in KPMG's executive compensation practice. 'New York is a bigger market, but there have been some fantastically lucrative areas in Europe as of late.' At Goldman Sachs, for example, fees from European mergers alone are up 102.4 percent from a year earlier, to $656.7 million, versus an 18 percent increase in merger fees in the United States, to $994.6 million, according to data compiled by Thomson Financial. At Merrill Lynch, they are up 151.7 percent in Europe, to $377.3 million, versus a 53.7 percent increase in the United States, to $510.8 million. (Banks based in New York almost always have smaller investment banking staffs in Europe - in some cases as little as half the size.) The numbers do not take into account Russian or Middle Eastern deals, which are often done by London bankers, debt sales or new equity offerings on the London Stock Exchange. Disparity in pay between New York banks and their foreign outposts has been a longstanding source of friction. In London, banking and trading markets were once notorious for clubby relationships and liquid lunches, but they are being transformed into springboards for growth markets like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. 'I think there is still a perception that people work harder in New York, which is probably justified, but the gap is narrowing,' said Mounzer Nasr, the head of European corporate investment for the private equity firm Arcapita, and a former deal maker for Bankers Trust in New York and Merrill Lynch in London. 'Depending on who you're talking about, the top M.& A. bankers in London work just as hard as their New York counterparts.' Investment bank managers in London say they are often looking for skills that are generally found outside New York. In particular demand are bankers with experience in the Middle East or China. 'There is a premium for people who are bi- and tricultural,' said John J. Studzinski, the chief executive of HSBC's corporate and investment banking division. Klaus Diederichs, head of European investment banking at J. P. Morgan Chase, is also looking for specialized skills. 'Our bankers are flying as much to Kazakhstan and Istanbul as they are to Frankfurt,' he said. 'Deals in countries such as South Africa and Kazakhstan have grown in size considerably.' 'The European markets now require bankers to be complete athletes,' he said, 'as competent in mergers and acquisitions as they are in structured financing, capital raising and derivative transactions.' In London, expectations were high this bonus season. Nearly 60 percent of City employees expected their bonuses to be larger than last year, and one in five expected it to be at least twice as large, according to Morgan McKinley, a financial recruiting firm. In the United States, 44 percent of bankers expected their bonuses to be larger than last year's, according to a similar survey by Vault, an employment research firm. As in New York, estimating how many millions bankers and traders will receive holds a particular fascination. The London afternoon newspaper The Evening Standard started the bonus speculation early this year, with a headline on its front page in September: '3,000 New City Millionaires: Biggest Bonuses for Five Years as Good Times Return.' The paper attached numbers to the names of various bankers, estimating, for example, that a head of British banking at Goldman Sachs would be awarded £5 million (about $8.7 million). While no banker or trader would comment on the record about bonuses, year-end pay is all the chatter. And there are signs that bankers, traders and others in the City have been out celebrating more often this year. Anthony Fuller, the chairman of the pub chain Fuller Smith & Turner, last month cited a 6.6 increase in sales in the financial district for the six months ended Oct. 1. 'It was particularly pleasing to see continued buoyant trading in the City which, up to a year ago, had been suffering the effects of a sluggish economy,' he said. Sales did not necessarily increase because City pub visitors are drinking more expensive beer or wine, Tony Johnson, a spokesman for Fuller, noted. Some of the increase has come from 'more people coming to the pub,' he said. 'When things are good, people are more comfortable being seen out having a good time than when they are bad.'

Subject: Indicting Honest Journalism in China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:23:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/opinion/24sat3.html?ex=1293080400&en=5c6df96aba607668&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Indicting Honest Journalism in China After holding Zhao Yan, a journalist, for 15 months without a hearing, Chinese authorities have finally drummed up an indictment. Yesterday, on the last working day for prosecutors to decide whether to go forward with the case under Chinese law, Mr. Zhao, a researcher in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times, was formally charged with revealing state secrets to the newspaper and the lesser charge of fraud. If convicted, he faces a possible minimum of 10 years' imprisonment. The Chinese authorities had been holding Mr. Zhao in purgatory since yanking him from a restaurant in September 2004. His arrest followed the pattern for Chinese who dare to practice journalism. The accusation of providing state secrets to foreigners is the vague catchall that party leaders invoke after reports surface of some business they want to keep quiet. In this case, a Times article forecast the retirement of China's leader, Jiang Zemin, from his last official post. Clearly, we feel the case of Mr. Zhao's detention acutely. China has produced no evidence that he is guilty of anything but honest journalism. Two weeks ago, Mr. Zhao was named journalist of the year by Reporters Without Borders, the international press-freedom group. The bizarre fraud charge was added several months after Mr. Zhao's arrest and is connected to allegations from 2001, before his employment with The Times. Chinese investigators claim Mr. Zhao took money for offering to write a story for a Chinese newspaper, an allegation denied by Mr. Zhao's lawyer and disputed by a witness. China cannot consider itself a global powerhouse if it does not provide its citizens with basic human rights.

Subject: Japan's Population Fell This Year From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:22:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/international/asia/24population.html December 24, 2005 Japan's Population Fell This Year, Sooner Than Expected By NORIMITSU ONISHI TOKYO - Japan's population declined this year for the first time since the country began keeping demographic records in 1899, according to preliminary figures released by the government this week. The decrease, which specialists say signals the start of an era of shrinking population, occurred two years earlier than had been expected. It poses serious challenges to the long-term economic vitality of Japan and its ability to care for one of the world's fastest-aging societies. The number of deaths outnumbered births by 10,000 this year, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare. Excluding wartime figures, the number of births, at 1.067 million, was the lowest since records have been kept; births dropped 44,000 from the previous year. The number of deaths, 1.077 million, was higher than had been expected because of a flu epidemic early this year, the ministry said. 'Our country is now standing at a major turning point in terms of population,' Jiro Kawasaki, the minister of health, labor and welfare, said at a news conference on Thursday. With government policies appearing to be ineffective in raising the birthrate, many young Japanese have stopped contributing to the national pension system because of doubts over its long-term health. Anxieties over the future are likely to deepen now that the long-dreaded demographic turning point, which specialists predicted would occur in 2007, has already been reached. 'The trend toward fewer children is becoming more and more significant,' Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters. 'I once again feel we have to come up with policies to stop this trend.' Japan's current population of 128 million is expected to fall to 100 million by 2050 and to 64 million by 2100 if current trends continue. There is no movement in Japan to open the door to widespread immigration. The Japanese workplace, more than those in other advanced countries, remains closed to women, in keeping with the belief among the country's male political and business leaders that married women belong at home. Japan has not only one of the world's lowest birthrates, currently 1.29 lifetime births per woman, but also the highest life expectancy. Those trends are particularly evident in rural areas, where graying Japanese dominate and schools are being shuttered. By 2025, nearly 30 percent of the population is expected to be older than 65. A pervasive pessimism about the future is believed to have led young Japanese to postpone marriage and children. In the past decade, Japanese companies have relied increasingly on contract workers instead of hiring costly staff employees. Many young Japanese have simply given up on finding work or getting further education. The government classifies these Japanese as NEET - an acronym for not in education, employment or training - and says they number 600,000. Those who marry have been doing so later, with the average marrying age for men at nearly 30 and for women at nearly 28. Many women who want to continue working are said to delay marriage or to have only one child because of the scarcity of child care, high education costs and discrimination in the workplace against married and older women. A government panel on increasing the birthrate is expected to make recommendations in June. 'We will need to continue reform of our social security system to enhance stability and to come up with measures to support coming generations,' Mr. Kawasaki said.

Subject: Hong Kong, Shopping Is an Art Experience From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 25, 2005 at 03:18:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/12/24/arts/24hong.html December 24, 2005 In Hong Kong, Shopping Is an Art Experience By ALEXANDRA A. SENO - International Herald Tribune HONG KONG - More than a decade ago, the French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel spent a month working in relative obscurity at the Hong Kong Art Museum, making fanciful glass creations for a group show called 'Too French.' This month, he became very, if not too, Hong Kong. Amid much fanfare and press attention, Mr. Othoniel was once again in the city to unveil his latest piece: a 105-foot string of milky-white giant handblown glass beads. Commissioned by the luxury brand Chanel, it is meant to look like a pearl necklace and is installed as permanent art in a multilevel picture window of Chanel's recently refurbished boutique in the Prince's Building, in the central business and retail area. Mr. Othoniel, whose work is in the collections of the Georges Pompidou Center and the Museum of Modern Art, is one of five artists enlisted by the architect Peter Marino for the new store. 'In Hong Kong, people are more concerned about shopping,' Mr. Othoniel said. 'If the people don't come to the museum, you must go to the public.' The Hong Kong art critic and curator Oscar Ho said: 'The museum is not a common space in Hong Kong. On Sundays, you go have dim sum and then go shopping. The shopping mall is the common plaza, like the plaza in Italy. Art is reaching out; hiding out in the sacred halls of the museum is no longer workable.' Major museums, all run by the government, are often nearly empty even on weekends, suffering from what some critics say is under-marketing and 'safe' programming deficient in imagination. As debate continues to simmer over the government's multibillion-dollar development project on reclaimed land in the West Kowloon district, the initiative - intended to infuse the territory with art - is stirring questions about Hong Kong and culture. 'West Kowloon has made us ask, 'Where are we with art?' said Karen Chang, an organizer of a wildly successful Picasso exhibit at the International Finance Center mall last year. 'It opened up that whole conversation.' In many ways, the finance center started the trend by sponsoring the exhibition of 'Parade,' a 341/2-foot-high, 53-foot-wide stage curtain painted in 1917 by Picasso. 'The French were just astonished,' said Ms. Chang, a principal at the marketing consultancy CZAR Partners hired by the financial center, when the proposal was made to show the French treasure in a mall. Somewhat reluctantly at first, the Georges Pompidou Center agreed, and the free exhibition was estimated to have attracted some two million visitors in the city of seven million residents. The same mall has since had much-talked-about shows by the mainland-born Wu Shanzhuang and the hip local artist Carrie Chau, as well as fashion exhibitions. In June and July this year, Cityplaza, a mall in Taikooshing, staged a successful show featuring dinosaur fossils. It was the first time that such an event had been held in Hong Kong, and hundreds of thousands came to view the exhibition. The items, including an 85-foot-long skeleton, were on loan from the Beijing Museum of Natural History and the Sichuan Zigong Dinosaur Museum. Also this summer, another complex, Langham Place in the Mongkok district, sponsored 'Box,' an innovative program featuring 31 top Hong Kong artists who were asked to express their experience of the city. Such locally revered names as the product designer Alan Chan, the multimedia artist Simon Birch and the photographer Wing Shya created works that were displayed throughout the 15-story mall, in what became the largest public art installation ever in the territory. Paul Katz, a principal at the international architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox, said: 'Urbanism in Hong Kong is built around density and public transportation. Given that there are no world-class institutions in Hong Kong that will attract local and regional visitors, it is better to have the art as a part of the urban experience, which can be the mall, even if it is linked to commercialism and fashion. 'Fashion, culture and politics are intertwined with art anyway. Experiencing art in a public realm is as authentic as a free-standing museum.' The Hong Kong model has caught the attention of property developers in China, which is building thousands of new malls. Mr. Katz has built several projects in Hong Kong and is not surprised that clients in China look to the former British territory in the south. The mainlanders have recently been asking him to include spaces purposely built for art. When Ms. Chang, the Picasso show organizer, was asked by Langham Place to come up with something for the 2005 holiday season, she persuaded the developers to sign up the men of the 'Urban Dream Capsule' - acclaimed artists from Australia. Since Dec. 13, they have been living full time in a 500-square-foot glass pod, on view 24 hours, for an interactive performance art experience. (Their stay concludes Jan. 3.) It all brings to mind a speech from last July, when the luxury department store Lane Crawford was the site of a book promotion for and exhibition of the work of the Chinese artist Wu Shanzhuan. To open the event, Claire Hsu, the director of the Asia Art Archive, said: 'If it's true that shopping is the favorite pastime of people in Hong Kong, and art is practically off the radar, then let the department store become the museum. Or in Wu's equation, if shopping equals the museum and the museum equals shopping, then shopping must be creation! So, after all, we are all artists!'

Subject: Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!!! From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 23:45:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message:

Subject: Mute Swan Taking Flight From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 17:50:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4634&u=17|196|... Mute Swan Taking Flight Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

Subject: Intellectual Bankruptcy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 14:54:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/12/the_intellectua.html December 24, 2005 The Intellectual Bankruptcy of the Republican Leadership By Brad DeLong Another good Paul Krugman column: The Tax-Cut Zombies - New York Times : Since the 1970's, conservatives have used two theories to justify cutting taxes. One theory, supply-side economics, has always been hokum for the yokels. Conservative insiders adopted the supply-siders as mascots because they were useful to the cause, but never took them seriously. The insiders' theory - what we might call the true tax-cut theory - was memorably described by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, as 'starving the beast.' Proponents of this theory argue that conservatives should seek tax cuts not because they won't create budget deficits, but because they will. Starve-the-beasters believe that budget deficits will lead to spending cuts that will eventually achieve their true aim: shrinking the government's role back to what it was under Calvin Coolidge. True to form, the insiders aren't buying the supply-siders' claim that a partial recovery in federal tax receipts from their plunge between 2000 and 2003 shows that all's well on the fiscal front. (Revenue remains lower, and the federal budget deeper in deficit, than anyone expected a few years ago.) Instead, conservative heavyweights are using the budget deficit to call for cuts in key government programs. For example, in 2001 Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes to avoid running an excessively large budget surplus. Now he issues dire warnings about 'fiscal instability.' But rather than urging Congress to reverse the tax cuts he helped sell, he talks of the need to cut future Social Security and Medicare benefits. Yet at this point starve-the-beast theory looks as silly as supply-side economics. Although a disciplined conservative movement has controlled Congress and the White House for five years - and presided over record deficits - public opposition has prevented any significant cuts in the big social-insurance programs that dominate domestic spending. In fact, two years ago the Bush administration actually pushed through a major expansion in Medicare. True, the prescription drug bill clearly wasn't written by liberals. To a significant extent it's a giveaway to drug companies rather than a benefit for retirees. But all that corporate welfare makes the program more expensive, not less. Conservative intellectuals had high hopes that this year President Bush would make up for this betrayal of their doctrine by dealing a death blow to Social Security as we know it. Indeed, he tried. His proposed 'reform' would, over time, have essentially phased out the program. And he seemed to have everything going for him: momentum from an election victory, control of Congress and a highly sympathetic punditocracy. Yet the drive for privatization quickly degenerated from a juggernaut into a farce. Medicaid, whose recipients are less likely to vote than the average person getting Social Security or Medicare, is the softest target among major federal social-insurance programs. But even members of Congress, it seems, have consciences. (Well, some of them.) It took intense arm-twisting from the Republican leadership, and that tie-breaking vote by Mr. Cheney, to ram through even modest cuts in aid to the neediest. In other words, the starve-the-beast theory - like missile defense - has been tested under the most favorable possible circumstances, and failed. So there is no longer any coherent justification for further tax cuts. Yet... even as Congressional leaders struggled to pass a tiny package of mean-spirited spending cuts, they pushed forward with a much larger package of tax cuts. The benefits of those cuts, as always, will go disproportionately to the wealthy. Here's how I see it: Republicans have turned into tax-cut zombies. They can't remember why they originally wanted to cut taxes, they can't explain how they plan to make up for the lost revenue, and they don't care. Instead, they just keep shambling forward, always hungry for more.

Subject: Agency Mined Vast Data Trove From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 09:59:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400&en=016edb46b79bde83&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN WASHINGTON - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said. As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said. The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic 'switches,' according to officials familiar with the matter. 'There was a lot of discussion about the switches' in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. 'You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that.' Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda. What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation. The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified. Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality. Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said. This so-called 'pattern analysis' on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom. The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties. But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home. A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists. 'All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area,' said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets. Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said. 'If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis,' he said. 'Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny.' Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined. The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches. One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches. The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance. Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials. Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. 'If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data,' he said.

Subject: Wal-Mart Must Pay $172 Million From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 09:16:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/business/23nwalmart.html?ex=1292994000&en=947f81786732a427&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Jury Rules Wal-Mart Must Pay $172 Million Over Meal Breaks By LISA ALCALAY KLUG BERKELEY, Calif. - A California jury on Thursday ordered Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, to pay $172 million in damages for failing to provide meal breaks to nearly 116,000 hourly workers as required under state law. The verdict came after a trial that lasted more than three months in a class-action suit filed at Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. The suit, filed on behalf of employees of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in California, argued that the chain violated state law more than eight million times from Jan. 1, 2001, to May 6, 2005, said the plaintiffs' lawyer, Jessica Grant of the Furth Firm of San Francisco. California law requires that employers provide a meal break of 30 minutes for every five hours on the clock, Ms. Grant said. If the break is shorter than that, provided late or not at all, the employer must pay an hour's pay, she said. 'What happened here is that Wal-Mart didn't make a single payment for 2001 and 2002 and only started paying in 2003 after we asked for permission to go forward as a class action,' Ms. Grant said. Responding to the verdict, Wal-Mart issued a statement saying that it planned to appeal, that the decision was unique to California and that it had no bearing on any other state. Wal-Mart is facing similar cases in about 40 other states, Ms. Grant said. The jury ordered the company to pay $57 million in general damages and $115 million in punitive damages. 'It sends a very strong message to Wal-Mart that it is not acceptable to work employees 7, 8, 9, 10 hours a day without meal breaks,' Ms. Grant said. A work law expert, Gillian Lester, a visiting professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley, said: 'This in an important verdict. I agree with the plaintiff's attorneys that this is going to be an influential decision.' In its statement, Wal-Mart said it had 'acknowledged it had compliance issues when the statute became effective in 2001.' 'Wal-Mart has since taken steps to ensure all associates receive their meal periods, including adopting new technology that sends alerts to cashiers when it is time for their meal breaks,' the statement read. 'The system will automatically shut down registers if the cashier does not respond.'

Subject: Re: Dumbed down Jury hits Walmarts From: Sid Bachrach To: Emma Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 12:07:43 (EST) Email Address: sidby24@juno.com Message: The proper headline for the AP article about the Walmarts verdict in California should have been: 'Dumbed down Jury orders Walmarts to pay huge Damages award.'. This jury award had nothing to do with the law or any facts introduced in Court but was based on the fact the lawyers for the plaintiffs removed anyone intelligent from the jury pool and skillfully selected a group of angry, uneducated boobs for the jury. Anyone with a brain knows that state labor departments, in particular The Wages and Hours Division of each state labor department, exclusively examines and issues awards for violations of state wage laws. But the Judge, who wanted to be a hero and to be invited to speak at law schools, simply refused to apply the law. And the judge allowed the case to be an emotional attack on employers in general and Walmarts in particular. The trial was more like a revival meeeting of the 1960s crowd in which emotion trumps facts. The real news is that on appeal, this absurd verdict is certain to be set aside. The verdict, thankfully, is not worth the paper it is written on.

Subject: Investing From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 08:08:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Corporate savings here have been at or near record levels from 2002, but domestic corporate investment appears to be relatively low. Why should this be? Savings for energy companies have been astounding, but despite the persisting increase in the prices for oil and gas there has been remarkably little investment here and abroad in exploration and delivery. Why? Again, energy companies were just given an $18 billion investment subsidy. Though company executives are pleased, why should this be necessary?

Subject: Alaska Gasline Port Authority From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 07:53:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'An Alaska state authority charged that BP PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest publicly traded oil companies, are conspiring to withhold natural gas from U.S. markets and reinforce their market power over North Slope supplies. In an antitrust suit filed late yesterday in federal court in Fairbanks, the Alaska Gasline Port Authority alleged that a series of illegal agreements and acquisitions by the companies has choked the flow of the state's vast gas reserves. It seeks to stop the companies' alleged collusion through a court injunction and unspecified damages.... The dispute comes at a time when U.S. natural-gas prices are soaring.... The Alaska Gasline Port Authority said that BP's refusal to agree to ship its natural gas and Exxon Mobil's failure to develop its huge fields amounts to 'warehousing' a desperately needed resource in an effort to drive up prices. 'Gas prices are at record highs, and big oil companies still won't move the gas to market,' authority Chairman Jim Whitaker said in a statement.' - Wall Street Journal, 12/20/05

Subject: Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 07:33:47 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/opinion/24sat1.html?ex=1293080400&en=0cd129fa5e3fe439&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 24, 2005 Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power With the Bush administration claiming sweeping and often legally baseless authority to detain and spy on people, judges play a crucial role in underscoring the limits of presidential power. When the Senate begins hearings next month on Judge Samuel Alito, President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, it should explore whether he understands where the Constitution sets those limits. New documents released yesterday provide more evidence that Judge Alito has a skewed view of the allocation of power among the three branches - skewed in favor of presidential power. One troubling memo concerns domestic wiretaps - a timely topic. In the memo, which he wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, Judge Alito argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he illegally wiretaps Americans. Judge Alito argued for taking a step-by-step approach to establishing this principle, much as he argued for an incremental approach to reversing Roe v. Wade in another memo. The Supreme Court flatly rejected Judge Alito's view of the law. In a 1985 ruling, the court rightly concluded that if the attorney general had the sort of immunity Judge Alito favored, it would be an invitation to deny people their constitutional rights. In a second memo released yesterday, Judge Alito made another bald proposal for grabbing power for the president. He said that when the president signed bills into law, he should make a 'signing statement' about what the law means. By doing so, Judge Alito hoped the president could shift courts' focus away from 'legislative intent' - a well-established part of interpreting the meaning of a statute - toward what he called 'the President's intent.' In the memo, Judge Alito noted that one problem was the effect these signing statements would have on Congressional relations. They would 'not be warmly welcomed by Congress,' he predicted, because of the 'novelty of the procedure' and 'the potential increase of presidential power.' These memos are part of a broader pattern of elevating the presidency above the other branches of government. In his judicial opinions, Judge Alito has shown a lack of respect for Congressional power - notably when he voted to strike down Congress's ban on machine guns as exceeding its constitutional authority. He has taken a cramped view of the Fourth Amendment and other constitutional provisions that limit executive power. The Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have had to repeatedly pull the Bush administration back when it exceeded its constitutional powers. They have made clear that Americans cannot be held indefinitely without trial just because they are labeled 'enemy combatants.' They have vindicated the right of Guantánamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinement. And they will no doubt have to correct the Bush administration's latest assertions of power to spy domestically. The Senate should determine that Judge Alito is on the side of the Constitution in these battles, not on the side of the presidency - which the latest documents strongly question - before voting to confirm him.

Subject: Stocks and Bonds From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 06:56:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Internationally, this has been an especially fine and interesting investing year. The Europe index is up 25.3% in domestic currencies, Pacific index is up 37.3%. Emerging markets index is up 32.0%. Developed markets are all positive with domestic currency returns beginning above 9% and ranging to the 40s. The only negative emerging market is Venezuela. All developed markets have adjusted to the strong dollar in a breadth and depth I have not found before. Rising oil and gas prices have had relatively little effect on economic growth and no noticeable general stock market approach. Real estate markets are generally holding or slowing moderately, again with relatively slight broad effect. Inflation is everywhere muted in developed countries. Long term bonds have held well. A remarkable year for investors.

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 06:11:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/23/05 Australia 15.9 Canada 28.7 Denmark 25.3 France 12.2 Germany 11.4 Hong Kong 9.7 Japan 26.7 Netherlands 16.2 Norway 24.6 Sweden 10.8 Switzerland 16.3 UK 7.9

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 05:59:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/23/05 Australia 24.7 Canada 25.3 Denmark 43.9 France 28.4 Germany 27.6 Hong Kong 9.4 Japan 43.8 Netherlands 33.1 Norway 39.5 Sweden 32.8 Switzerland 34.3 UK 19.6

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 05:58:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/23/05 S&P Index is 6,5 Large Cap Growth Index is 7.0 Large Cap Value Index is 8.5 Mid Cap Index is 15.3 Small Cap Index is 9.1 Small Cap Value Index is 7.7 Europe Index is 9.9 Pacific Index is 23.1 Energy is 45.9 Health Care is 17.1 Precious Metals 42.9 REIT Index is 13.2 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 2.5 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 4.9

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 24, 2005 at 05:57:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/23/05 Energy 40.4 Financials 6.9 Health Care 9.3 Info Tech 5.0 Materials 2.9 REITs 13.3 Telecoms 0.5 Utilities 15.2

Subject: Great Egret Dipping a Wing From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 17:35:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5332&u=17|4|... Great Egret Dipping a Wing in the Water New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Subject: Snowy Egret Landing at Dawn From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 17:34:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5582&u=185|6|... Snowy Egret Landing at Dawn Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

Subject: The Knight in the Mirror From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 16:59:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1105510,00.html December 13, 2003 The Knight in the Mirror By Harold Bloom - Guardian What is the true object of Don Quixote's quest? I find that unanswerable. What are Hamlet's authentic motives? We are not permitted to know. Since Cervantes's magnificent knight's quest has cosmological scope and reverberation, no object seems beyond reach. Hamlet's frustration is that he is allowed only Elsinore and revenge tragedy. Shakespeare composed a poem unlimited, in which only the protagonist is beyond all limits. Cervantes and Shakespeare, who died almost simultaneously, are the central western authors, at least since Dante, and no writer since has matched them, not Tolstoy or Goethe, Dickens, Proust, Joyce. Context cannot hold Cervantes and Shakespeare: the Spanish golden age and the Elizabethan-Jacobean era are secondary when we attempt a full appreciation of what we are given. WH Auden found in Don Quixote a portrait of the Christian saint, as opposed to Hamlet, who 'lacks faith in God and in himself'. Though Auden sounds perversely ironic, he was quite serious and, I think, wrong-headed. Herman Melville blended Don Quixote and Hamlet into Captain Ahab (with a touch of Milton's Satan added for seasoning). Ahab desires to avenge himself upon the white whale, while Satan would destroy God, if only he could. Hamlet is death's ambassador to us, according to G Wilson Knight. Don Quixote says his quest is to destroy injustice. The final injustice is death, the ultimate bondage. To set captives free is the knight's pragmatic way of battling against death. Though there have been many valuable English translations of Don Quixote, I would commend Edith Grossman's new version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose. The spiritual atmosphere of a Spain already in steep decline can be felt throughout, thanks to the heightened quality of her diction. Grossman might be called the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note. Reading her amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes's darkening vision is an entrance into a further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake. Like Shakespeare, Cervantes is inescapable for all writers who have come after him. Dickens and Flaubert, Joyce and Proust reflect the narrative procedures of Cervantes, and their glories of characterisation mingle strains of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Cervantes inhabits his great book so pervasively that we need to see that it has three unique personalities: the knight, Sancho and Cervantes himself. Yet how sly and subtle is the presence of Cervantes! At its most hilarious, Don Quixote is immensely sombre. Shakespeare again is the illuminating analogue: Hamlet at his most melancholic will not cease his punning or his gallows humour, and Falstaff's boundless wit is tormented by intimations of rejection. Just as Shakespeare wrote in no genre, Don Quixote is tragedy as well as comedy. Though it stands for ever as the birth of the novel out of the prose romance, and is still the best of all novels, I find its sadness augments each time I reread it, and does make it 'the Spanish Bible', as Miguel de Unamuno termed this greatest of all narratives. Don Quixote may not be scripture, but it so contains us that, as with Shakespeare, we cannot get out of it to achieve perspectivism. We are inside the vast book, privileged to hear the superb conversations between the knight and his squire, Sancho Panza. Sometimes we are fused with Cervantes, but more often we are invisible wanderers who accompany the sublime pair in their adventures and debacles. King Lear's first performance took place as part I of Don Quixote was published. Contra Auden, Cervantes, like Shakespeare, gives us a secular transcendence. Don Quixote does regard himself as God's knight, but he continuously follows his own capricious will, which is gloriously idiosyncratic. King Lear appeals to the skyey heavens for aid, but on the personal grounds that they and he are old. Battered by realities that are even more violent than he is, Don Quixote resists yielding to the authority of church and state. When he ceases to assert his autonomy, there is nothing left except to be Alonso Quixano the Good again, and no action remaining except to die. I return to my initial question: the Sorrowful Knight's object. He is at war with Freud's reality principle, which accepts the necessity of dying. But he is neither a fool nor a madman, and his vision always is at least double: he sees what we see, yet he sees something else also, a possible glory that he desires to appropriate or at least share. De Unamuno names this transcendence as literary fame, the immortality of Cervantes and Shakespeare. We need to hold in mind as we read Don Quixote that we cannot condescend to the knight and Sancho, since together they know more than we do, just as we never can catch up to the amazing speed of Hamlet's cognitions. Do we know exactly who we are? The more urgently we quest for our authentic selves, the more they tend to recede. The knight and Sancho, as the great work closes, know exactly who they are, not so much by their adventures as through their marvellous conversations, be they quarrels or exchanges of insights. Poetry, particularly Shakespeare's, teaches us how to talk to ourselves, but not to others. Shakespeare's great figures are gorgeous solipsists: Shylock, Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, Lear, Cleopatra, with Rosalind the brilliant exception. Don Quixote and Sancho really listen to each other and change through this receptivity. Neither of them overhears himself, which is the Shakespearean mode. Cervantes or Shakespeare: they are rival teachers of how we change and why. Friendship in Shakespeare is ironic at best, treacherous more commonly. The friendship between Sancho Panza and his knight surpasses any other in literary representation. We do not have Cardenio, the play Shakespeare wrote with John Fletcher, after reading Thomas Shelton's contemporaneous translation of Don Quixote. Therefore we cannot know what Shakespeare thought of Cervantes, though we can surmise his delight. Cervantes, an unsuccessful dramatist, presumably had never heard of Shakespeare, but I doubt he would have valued Falstaff and Hamlet, both of whom chose the self's freedom over obligations of any kind. Sancho, as Kafka remarked, is a free man, but Don Quixote is metaphysically and psychologically bound by his dedication to knight errantry. We can celebrate the knight's endless valour, but not his literalisation of the romance of chivalry. But does Don Quixote altogether believe in the reality of his own vision? Evidently he does not, particularly when he (and Sancho) is surrendered by Cervantes to the sadomasochistic practical jokes - indeed, the vicious and humiliating cruelties - that afflict the knight and squire in part II. Nabokov is very illuminating on this in his Lectures on Don Quixote, published posthumously in 1983: both parts of Don Quixote form a veritable encyclopedia of cruelty. From that viewpoint it is one of the most bitter and barbarous books ever penned. And its cruelty is artistic. To find a Shakespearean equivalent to this aspect of Don Quixote, you would have to fuse Titus Andronicus and The Merry Wives of Windsor into one work, a grim prospect because they are, to me, Shakespeare's weakest plays. Falstaff's dreadful humiliation by the merry wives is unacceptable enough (even if it formed the basis for Verdi's sublime Falstaff). Why does Cervantes subject Don Quixote to the physical abuse of part I and the psychic tortures of part II? Nabokov's answer is aesthetic: the cruelty is vitalised by Cervantes's characteristic artistry. That seems to me something of an evasion. Twelfth Night is comedy unsurpassable, and on the stage we are consumed by hilarity at Malvolio's terrible humiliations. When we reread the play, we become uneasy, because Malvolio's socio-erotic fantasies echo in virtually all of us. Why are we not made at least a little dubious by the torments, bodily and socially, suffered by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Cervantes himself, as a constant if disguised presence in the text, is the answer. He was the most battered of eminent writers. At the great naval battle of Lepanto, he was wounded and so at 24 permanently lost the use of his left hand. In 1575, he was captured by Barbary pirates and spent five years as a slave in Algiers. Ransomed in 1580, he served Spain as a spy in Portugal and Oran and then returned to Madrid, where he attempted a career as a dramatist, almost invariably failing after writing at least 20 plays. Somewhat desperately, he became a tax collector, only to be indicted and imprisoned for supposed malfeasance in 1597. A fresh imprisonment came in 1605; there is a tradition that he began to compose Don Quixote in jail. Part I, written at incredible speed, was published in 1605. Part II was published in 1615. Fleeced of all royalties of part I by the publisher, Cervantes would have died in poverty except for the belated patronage of a discerning nobleman in the last three years of his life. Though Shakespeare died at just 52, he was an immensely successful dramatist and became quite prosperous by holding a share in the actors' company that played at the Globe Theatre. Circumspect, and only too aware of the government-inspired murder of Christopher Marlowe, and their torture of Thomas Kyd, and branding of Ben Jonson, Shakespeare kept himself nearly anonymous, despite being the reigning dramatist of London. Violence, slavery and imprisonment were the staples of Cervantes's life. Shakespeare, wary to the end, had an existence almost without a memorable incident, as far as we can tell. The physical and mental torments suffered by Don Quixote and Sancho Panza had been central to Cervantes's endless struggle to stay alive and free. Yet Nabokov's observations are accurate: cruelty is extreme throughout Don Quixote. The aesthetic wonder is that this enormity fades when we stand back from the huge book and ponder its shape and endless range of meaning. No critic's account of Cervantes's masterpiece agrees with, or even resembles, any other critic's impressions. Don Quixote is a mirror held up not to nature, but to the reader. How can this bashed and mocked knight errant be, as he is, a universal paradigm? Don Quixote and Sancho are victims, but both are extraordinarily resilient, until the knight's final defeat and dying into the identity of Quixano the Good, whom Sancho vainly implores to take to the road again. The fascination of Don Quixote's endurance and of Sancho's loyal wisdom always remains. Cervantes plays upon the human need to withstand suffering, which is one reason the knight awes us. However good a Catholic he may (or may not) have been, Cervantes is interested in heroism and not in sainthood. The heroism of Don Quixote is by no means constant: he is perfectly capable of flight, abandoning poor Sancho to be beaten up by an entire village. Cervantes, a hero at Lepanto, wants Don Quixote to be a new kind of hero, neither ironic nor mindless, but one who wills to be himself, as Jos� Ortega y Gasset accurately phrased it. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza both exalt the will, though the knight transcendentalises it, and Sancho, the first post-pragmatic, wants to keep it within limits. It is the transcendent element in Don Quixote that ultimately persuades us of his greatness, partly because it is set against the deliberately coarse, frequently sordid context of the panoramic book. And again it is important to note that this transcendence is secular and literary, and not Catholic. The Quixotic quest is erotic, yet even the eros is literary. Crazed by reading (as so many of us still are), the knight is in quest of a new self, one that can overgo the erotic madness of Orlando (Roland) in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso or of the mythic Amad�s of Gaul. Unlike Orlando's or Amad�s's, Don Quixote's madness is deliberate, self-inflicted, a traditional poetic strategy. Still, there is a clear sublimation of the sexual drive in the knight's desperate courage. Lucidity keeps breaking in, re-minding him that Dulcinea is his own supreme fiction, transcending an honest lust for the peasant girl Aldonza Lorenzo. A fiction, believed in even though you know it is a fiction, can be validated only by sheer will. I cannot think of any other work where the relations between words and deeds are as ambiguous as in Don Quixote, except (once again) for Hamlet. Cervantes's formula is also Shakespeare's, though in Cervantes we feel the burden of the experiential, whereas Shakespeare is uncanny, since nearly all his experience was theatrical. So subtle is Cervantes that he needs to be read at as many levels as Dante. Perhaps the Quixotic can be accurately defined as the literary mode of an absolute reality, not as impossible dream but rather as a persuasive awakening into mortality. The aesthetic truth of Don Quixote is that, again like Dante and Shakespeare, it makes us confront greatness directly. If we have difficulty fully understanding Don Quixote's quest, its motives and desired ends, that is because we confront a reflecting mirror that awes us even while we yield to delight. Cervantes is always out ahead of us, and we can never quite catch up. Fielding and Sterne, Goethe and Thomas Mann, Flaubert and Stendhal, Melville and Mark Twain, Dostoevsky: these are among Cervantes's admirers and pupils. Don Quixote is the only book that Dr Johnson desired to be even longer than it already was. Yet Cervantes, although a universal pleasure, is in some respects even more difficult than are Dante and Shakespeare upon their heights. Are we to believe everything Don Quixote says to us? Does he believe it? He (or Cervantes) is the inventor of a mode now common enough, in which figures, within a novel, read prior fictions concerning their own earlier adventures and have to sustain a consequent loss in the sense of reality. This is one of the beautiful enigmas of Don Quixote: it is simultaneously a work whose authentic subject is literature and a chronicle of a hard, sordid actuality, the declining Spain of 1605-15. The knight is Cervantes's subtle critique of a realm that had given him only harsh measures in return for his own patriotic heroism at Lepanto. Don Quixote cannot be said to have a double consciousness; his is rather the multiple consciousness of Cervantes himself, a writer who knows the cost of confirmation. I do not believe the knight can be said to tell lies, except in the Nietzschean sense of lying against time and time's grim 'It was'. To ask what it is that Don Quixote himself believes is to enter the visionary centre of his story. This curious blend of the sublime and the bathetic does not come again until Kafka, another pupil of Cervantes, would compose stories like 'The Hunter Gracchus' and 'A Country Doctor'. To Kafka, Don Quixote was Sancho Panza's demon or genius, projected by the shrewd Sancho into a book of adventure unto death. In Kafka's marvellous interpretation, the authentic object of the knight's quest is Sancho Panza himself, who as an auditor refuses to believe Don Quixote's account of the cave. So I circle back to my question: Does the knight believe his own story? It makes little sense to answer either 'yes' or 'no', so the question must be wrong. We cannot know what Don Quixote and Hamlet believe, since they do not share in our limitations. Thomas Mann loved Don Quixote for its ironies, but then Mann could have said, at any time: 'Irony of ironies, all is irony.' We behold in Cervantes's vast scripture what we already are. Johnson, who could not abide Jonathan Swift's ironies, easily accepted those of Cervantes; Swift's satire corrodes, while Cervantes's allows us some hope. Johnson felt we required some illusions, lest we go mad. Is that part of Cervantes's design? Mark van Doren, in a very useful study, Don Quixote's Profession, is haunted by the analogues between the knight and Hamlet, which to me seem inevitable. Here are the two characters, beyond all others, who seem always to know what they are doing, though they baffle us whenever we try to share their knowledge. It is a knowledge unlike that of Falstaff and Sancho Panza, who are so delighted at being themselves that they bid knowledge to go aside and pass them by. I would rather be Falstaff or Sancho than a version of Hamlet or Don Quixote, because growing old and ill teaches me that being matters more than knowing. The knight and Hamlet are reckless beyond belief; Falstaff and Sancho have some awareness of discretion in matters of valour. We cannot know the object of Don Quixote's quest unless we ourselves are Quixotic (note the capital Q). Did Cervantes, looking back upon his own arduous life, think of it as somehow Quixotic? The Sorrowful Face stares out at us in his portrait, a countenance wholly unlike Shakespeare's subtle blandness. They match each other in genius, because more even than Chaucer before them, and the host of novelists who have blended their influences since, they gave us personalities more alive than ourselves. Cervantes, I suspect, would not have wanted us to compare him to Shakespeare or to anyone else. Don Quixote says that all comparisons are odious. Perhaps they are, but this may be the exception. We need, with Cervantes and Shakespeare, all the help we can get in regard to ultimates, yet we need no help at all to enjoy them. Each is as difficult and yet available as the other. To confront them fully, where are we to turn except to their mutual power of illumination?

Subject: Cervantes, Multicultural Dreamer From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 15:06:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/13/arts/13conn.html?ex=1276315200&en=39ab05ae1b5ea112&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss June 13, 2005 Regarding Cervantes, Multicultural Dreamer By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Why was 'Don Quixote' originally written in Arabic? Or rather, why does Cervantes, who wrote the book in Spanish, claim that it was translated from the Arabic? Much is being said this year about 'Don Quixote,' in celebration of the 400th anniversary of its publication. And indeed, much has always been said about this extraordinary epic, narrating the misadventures of a half-mad hidalgo who seeks to re-establish the traditions of knight errantry. Faulkner reread it annually; Lionel Trilling said all prose fiction was a variation on its themes. But aside from its literary achievements, 'Don Quixote' sheds oblique light on an era when Spain's Islamic culture forcibly came to an end. Just consider Cervantes's playful account of the book's origins. One day in the Toledo marketplace, he writes, a young boy was trying to sell old notebooks and worn scraps of paper covered with Arabic script. Cervantes recounts how he acquired a book and then looked around for a Moor to translate it. 'It was not very difficult' to find such a Moor, he writes. In fact, he says, he could have even found a translator of Hebrew. The Arabic manuscript, the Moor tells him, is the 'History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, an Arab historian.' Cervantes brings the Moor to the cloister of a church and commissions a translation. We know this is all a jest, as is the very name of the historian: 'Cide' is an honorific, 'Hamete' is a version of the Arab name Hamid, and 'Benengeli' means eggplant. But this eggplantish historian is no more a jest than anything else in the novel, whether it is Don Quixote tilting at windmills or Sancho Panza governing an island not surrounded by water. Benengeli is, apparently, just as earnest as Don Quixote, just as peculiar and just as important to understanding what this novel is about. At the time when Cervantes was writing this novel, nothing about this jest was possible. Neither an Arabic-speaking Moor nor a Hebrew-speaking Jew would have been readily found in the Toledo marketplace. And no Moor would have translated Arabic in the cloister of a church. The Jews had been expelled from Spain in 1492; only converts remained. Books in Arabic had been burned with all the ferocity that the priest applies to Don Quixote's library of chivalric narratives. And while the Muslims hadn't yet been expelled from Spain (that would happen in the years just after the first part of 'Don Quixote' was published), they too had to convert. So Spain was full of New Christians: converts from Islam (called moriscos) and Judaism (called conversos), some continuing to secretly practice their religion (like the Jewish marranos). One reason that pork became such a popular Spanish dish was that eating it was a way to publicly prove one was not following the dietary rules of Islam or Judaism. Eggplant, however, was associated with Muslim and Jewish tastes back when Toledo was home to a flourishing Jewish community. So Cervantes is up to a bit of mischief with these allusions. And they could not have been missed. L. P. Harvey's important new book, 'Muslims in Spain: 1500 to 1614' (University of Chicago Press), soberly recounts the ways in which Muslim culture and religion, which had been part of Spanish life for eight centuries, was forcibly suppressed, until Muslims were completely expelled from Spain, between 1609 and 1614. There was much trauma and bloodshed, much secrecy and much dissimulation. Don Quixote could hardly have wandered around La Mancha without coming upon traces of this trauma; Moors and moriscos were part of the landscape. 'A Moor she is in costume and in body,' is how one character is described, 'but in her soul she is thoroughly Christian.' And the Moors of Spain are almost catalogued: 'Tagarinos is the name given in Barbary to the Moors of Aragón, while those of Granada are called Mudéjares; but in the kingdom of Fez the Mudéjares are termed Elches.' In the novel's second part (published in 1615, after the Muslim expulsion), Sancho sees a Moorish shopkeeper from his hometown, in disguise. 'Who the devil would ever have known you, Ricote, in that clown suit you are wearing?' Sancho asks. 'Tell me, who has made a Frenchman out of you?' Ricote mentions Spain's forced exile of Muslims and its unavoidable sorrows: 'Wherever we may be it is for Spain that we weep; for, when all is said, we were born here and it is our native land.' Cervantes also had firsthand experience with such confrontations. In 1571, he fought at Lepanto, an epochal battle against the Turks and a major victory for the Christian West against Islam; he lost the use of his left arm. A few years later, returning to Spain, he was captured by Barbary pirates - Muslims who were themselves engaged in a kind of guerilla war against the Christian West - and was imprisoned for five years, surviving four escape attempts until finally, his freedom was ransomed. When Cervantes wrote 'Don Quixote' a quarter century later, this experience led to an extensive story about Moors and Christians involving kidnapping, conversion and betrayal. He wrote, though, not as warrior but as a philosopher. His empathy for the Moors is cautious but unmistakable. Recent scholarship suggests that Cervantes himself might have from a family of conversos; that could help explain why he was regularly denied the official appointments he sought. Other scholars have suggested that the novel itself is full of coded allusions to Judaism. There is no need, though, to accept that hypothesis to sense how, by the end, Spain's triumph turns ambiguous. All pieties inspire melancholy. Even Sancho is not to be fully trusted. He, too, easily dons the mantle of an Old Christian, at one point declaring that since he believes firmly in 'all that the holy Roman Catholic Church holds and believes,' and since he 'a mortal enemy of the Jews,' historians should treat him well. But Quixote rejects the notions of caste and of blood purity that characterized 16th-century Spain. Benengeli's manuscript is partly a ghost story about a lost world. Quixote is born of ideas latent in extinct, condemned texts, whether Arabic or chivalric. He has unswerving principles, but even they are inadequate to a world of disguise, enchantment, illusion and delusion. In her book 'The Ornament of the World,' the scholar María Rosa Menocal compares Quixote's mental universe with the world of the Toledo marketplace, with its conversos, marranos and moriscos: 'Who in this world ever says that he is what he seems to be? And who seems to be what he no doubt really is?' So Don Quixote's Spain, instead of displaying triumphant absolutism, is a world of shifting appearances. 'Don Quixote' is a resigned acknowledgment of a new kind of terrain that defined modernity: in it, very little is certain and much is lost. The book's power, though, also comes from Quixote's stubborn quest: he won't entirely let us accept that something else isn't possible.

Subject: 'The Lost Painting' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 14:07:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13handy.html?ex=1289538000&en=dcf98d922e8fb76a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 13, 2005 'The Lost Painting': The Caravaggio Trail By BRUCE HANDY Historians take windows where they can find them, and in certain circles this entry from a 17th-century ledger bears particularly vivid witness: On Jan. 2, 1603, a Roman nobleman named Ciriaco Mattei paid 125 scudi - the liras of the day - for what his bookkeeper described as 'a painting with its frame of Christ taken in the garden.' The artist in question, Michelangelo Merisi, known to most of us as Caravaggio (after his hometown outside Milan), was then among the most famous, innovative and copied painters in Rome - the Picasso of his day, more or less. But tastes change, and the realism that was bracing and revelatory to his contemporaries left a bad odor in the 18th and 19th centuries. By the turn of the last one Caravaggio had become but a footnote in art history. And so, another window: on April 16, 1921, according to the notation on a catalog from a now defunct auction house, 'The Taking of Christ,' misattributed at the time to a minor Dutch painter, was sold at auction in Edinburgh, for a mere eight guineas, a silk purse pawned off as a pig's ear. And then, of course, the wheel turned again: today, the dirty feet of Caravaggio's models don't distract us from his formal beauty - gosh, we're inured to Nan Goldin - and we live in an age when anyone with a Metropolitan Museum of Art wall calendar will instantly recognize Caravaggio's mature style, gorgeous and stark with its dramatic angled lighting, deeply shadowed backgrounds - did Caravaggio invent film noir? - and muscular, often contorted figures. Fold in the fact that (a) he lived a short and violent life (he was known to the police, as they say, eventually fleeing Rome after killing a man in a fight over a gambling debt), and (b) it's hard to miss the homoeroticism of so much of his work, and you have all the ingredients for a 21st-century museum superstar. Indeed, the painter's current renown is such that Jonathan Harr has gone to the trouble of writing what will probably be a best seller on the subjects of what has happened to 'The Taking of Christ' since 1603 and who has cared enough to find that out. To Caravaggio scholars, whose discipline became academically viable when the artist's reputation rebounded in the 1950's, 'The Taking of Christ' was a famously vanished work, known only through copies made by the artist's followers. Harr's rich and wonderful book, 'The Lost Painting,' is an account of how, in 1990, the original was found. I'm tempted to quick-key a cliché and say the book reads like a thriller, because it's as gripping as a good one and even kicks off with the ritual opening: a brief prologue suggesting the high stakes of the game afoot, followed by the introduction of an unlikely and unprepossessing but, in the end, surprisingly resourceful heroine. She is Francesca Cappelletti, a 24-year-old graduate student in art history at the University of Rome who is about to stumble upon Something Really Really Big. In truth, the book reads better than a thriller because, unlike a lot of best-selling non-fiction authors who write in a more or less novelistic vein (Harr's previous book, 'A Civil Action,' was made into a John Travolta movie), Harr doesn't plump up his tale. He almost never foreshadows, doesn't implausibly reconstruct entire conversations and rarely throws in litanies of clearly conjectured or imagined details just for color's sake, though he does betray one small weakness in this regard: whenever his subjects are out and about, the sun always seems to be slanting low across the rooftops of Rome or bathing the church domes of the city in a golden light while the swallows of spring circle and pirouette overhead. On the other hand, if you're a sucker for Rome, and for dusk, you'll forgive these rote if poetic contrivances and enjoy Harr's more clearly reported details about life in the city, as when - one of my favorite moments in the whole book - Francesca and another young colleague try to calm their nerves before a crucial meeting with a forbidding professor by eating gelato. And who wouldn't in Italy? The pleasures of travelogue here are incidental but not inconsiderable. The foreground pleasures are those of a police procedural. In order to gain access to the archives of a noble Roman family, Francesca chats up a dotty old marchesa using all the cunning of a Columbo snuffling around for an inadvertent clue. It is in that archive, while researching the provenance of another Caravaggio painting (a young, nude and flirty John the Baptist with his arm around an interested ram), that she and her colleague, Laura Testa, discover the 1603 ledger entry, which becomes the first important signpost leading to the identification of 'The Taking of Christ.' As the players in this drama multiply - and given the career stakes, everyone involved seems remarkably decent; the book could have used a good villain - we are treated to an art historian's version of 'C.S.I.' Canvases are X-rayed and scanned with infrared light, paint surfaces are examined for telltale traces of the painter's M.O. - the way Caravaggio, who didn't work from preparatory sketches, scored the ground of his paintings with the nonbusiness end of his brush to work out his compositions. Terms such as craquelure - an old painting's characteristic 'web of fine capillary-like cracks' - are tossed around. As with any version of 'C.S.I.,' there is even a decent yuck moment here during a sequence in which the book's second main character, an art restorer named Sergio Benedetti, mixes up a pot of glue with eye-of-newt ingredients: 'a quantity of pellets of colla forte made with rabbit-skin glue, an equal quantity of water, a tablespoon of white vinegar, a pungent drop of purified ox bile.' Harr notes that Benedetti prefers this recipe to another calling for an entire ox skull. The author has a wonderful ability to bring this sort of tradecraft to life. For instance, there is this description of another restorer, Andrew O'Connor, cleaning the surface of a filthy painting: 'He used cotton swabs and began with distilled water, barely dampening the swab, to remove the superficial dirt. Occasionally he wet a swab in his mouth. Saliva contains enzymes and is often effective at removing dirt and some oils. In Italy he'd seen restorers clean paintings with small pellets of fresh bread. The process of cleaning old paintings has a long history, not all of it illustrious. In previous eras, paintings had been variously scrubbed with soap and water, caustic soda, wood ash and lye; many had been damaged irreparably. An older restorer once described paintings to O'Connor as breathing, half-organic entities. 'It's a good thing they can't cry,' this restorer said, 'otherwise you would go to museums and have to put your fingers in your ears.' ' It is this empathy for the passions of these scholars and artisans, Harr's respect for their dedication and his keen understanding of their workaday worlds - he clearly spent a lot of time with his subjects - that elevates 'The Lost Painting' into something more provocative than just your average missing-Caravaggio narrative. A good thing, too, since the timing and circumstances of the discovery of 'The Taking of Christ' deflate much of the book's suspense; halfway through, it's all over but the backfilling. Fortunately, the hunt for the canvas is a bit of a MacGuffin; the deeper mystery is the nature of capital-A art itself. In that vein, early in the book, Harr offers a sketch of Sir Denis Mahon, the greatest living expert on Caravaggio: 'Sir Denis believed that a painting was like a window back into time, that with meticulous study he could peer into a work by Caravaggio and observe that moment, 400 years ago, when the artist was in his studio, studying the model before him, mixing colors on his palette, putting brush to canvas. Sir Denis believed that by studying the work of an artist he could penetrate the depths of that man's mind. In the case of Caravaggio, it was the mind of a genius. A murderer and a madman, perhaps, but certainly a genius.' Windows on history, windows on men. Ledger entries and masterpieces, both with their 'tells.' So what does 'The Taking of Christ' reveal about Caravaggio? It is one of the artist's most intimate religious paintings - a tight medium shot in Hollywood terms, the action filling the frame with a choreographed immediacy Michael Bey must admire if he's ever seen it. Jesus, off center, calmly accepts his fate, hands clasped, gaze downcast. Judas has just kissed him, the apostle's face inches from his master's, his left hand still gripping Jesus' shoulder, the two locked in a complicated embrace of love and betrayal while a pair of Roman soldiers move in - the decisive moment, in Cartier-Bresson's term. And on the far right Caravaggio has painted himself, raising a lantern: the artist symbolically illuminating the scene. But left hanging, as many critics have pointed out, is the question of Caravaggio's literal role in the scene: mere bystander or member of the arresting party? Is he faithfully illustrating God's design or implicating himself in Judas's treachery? Caravaggio frequently painted himself into his works, often behind a patina of self-loathing, at least to post-Freudian eyes. (In perhaps the most dramatic example, a painting of the victorious young David, he used himself as the model for Goliath's severed head, a look of nauseated despair on his face as his blood drains from his severed neck.) It is this conflicted quality that roils so many of his paintings of martyrdoms and miracles; he may have intended his high-beam lighting to dramatize God's divine love and judgment, but coupled with the dark backgrounds and deep shadows, the effect, as in 'The Taking of Christ,' can also be isolating, each figure swaddled in its own gloom. These are literally dark nights of the soul - Christianity, before the advent of feel-good megachurches, was full of them - and that's one reason the artist speaks so powerfully to modern audiences: three centuries before Munch, Caravaggio had found a visual language for dread. So, yes, certainly a genius, and an attractively tortured one at that, though Harr records Benedetti's observation that Judas's left arm is too short, a clumsy error of perspective on Caravaggio's part: 'It looks like he painted the shoulder and then didn't have enough room for the arm.' Of course: nobody's perfect. Maybe Caravaggio was hurried. Maybe he was lazy. Maybe he didn't notice. But it is that teasing interplay between craft and inspiration, between a painting's physicality and its import, between what is knowable about art and what, ultimately, is not, that resonates throughout 'The Lost Painting' and underscores a satisfyingly ironic coda: In 1997, seven years after it had been painstakingly restored, its provenance documented, and its place rightly restored among Caravaggio's canon, 'The Taking of Christ' was discovered to be infested with biscuit beetles, a common household pest, which were feeding on all that rabbit-skin ox-bile glue that had been used to repair it. Despite the heroic efforts recounted here, ashes-to-ashes can hold true, it seems, for paintings as well as their painters. There's beauty in that, too.

Subject: Inspiration in Cloth From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 13:55:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/24/arts/design/24smit.html?pagewanted=all June 24, 2005 How a Renowned Painter Found Inspiration in Cloth By ROBERTA SMITH 'Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams - His Art and His Textiles,' the languidly titled, often patchy, yet vision-altering exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, has some great moments, and not all are due to the art of Henri Matisse. Quite a few of the show's visual fireworks are ignited by the splendid assortment of textiles and garments from around the world that Matisse collected and kept close by throughout his long, prolific life. In a phrase evoking gratitude and heavy use, he called his collection 'my working library.' This show, which originated at the Royal Academy in London last winter, displays parts of Matisse's library for the first time, along with examples of Matisse's art. Textiles had been visible in photographs of Matisse's casbahlike apartments and studios, and in the backgrounds of his paintings, especially those made in Nice in the 1920's and 30's. But until the British writer Hilary Spurling started researching her monumental Matisse biography in the early 1990's, few people knew that any survived. As she interviewed Matisse's descendants, they came to light, sometimes out of trunks unopened since the artist's death in Nice in 1954. Ms. Spurling convinced Ann Dumas, an independent art historian associated with the Royal Academy, that the textiles merited an exhibition. The Met collaborated, along with the Matisse Museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, the small village in northern France where the artist was born in 1869 in a two-room weaver's cottage belonging to his grandmother. The rest, as they say, is history, but one that is only beginning to be written. The chance to examine the raw data before it is digested may reshape your notions of Matisse's art and its sources. It forces the backgrounds of his paintings to the foreground and exposes what has been hiding in plain sight. It argues persuasively that textiles were fundamental to Matisse's formidably decorative art, with its saturated colors, positive-negative ambiguities, pulsating patterns, distillations from nature and the sense of folded structure and ironed-out space that was his answer to Cubism. And some of the most interesting fruits of Ms. Spurling's research, condensed into one of the catalog's accessible, to-the-point essays, reveal the crucial role of textiles in Matisse's early years. In nine galleries, 80 of the artist's paintings, prints, drawings and painted paper cutouts, plus one monumental white felt robe designed for a Diaghilev ballet, skim the years from 1890 to 1952. Juxtaposed with these works are about 25 textiles and garments that Matisse once owned: European cottons; Javanese, Moroccan and Japanese silks; African Kuba cloths, with geometric designs and pile surfaces, which Matisse called 'my velvets'; and several North African pierced cotton window coverings that are in effect reverse cutouts. The displays also include a kind of glorious high altar of 16 silks and printed cottons, layered and reaching to the ceiling. More space and more extensive labels for these textiles would have been nice, but the concentration of colors and patterns provides visceral evidence of Matisse's debt. He achieved this kind of unadulterated visual power only during his most radical phases: in the big, flat paintings of 1911-17, none of which are represented here, and in the colored-paper cutouts that along with the 'velvets' dominate the show's final gallery. The show is missing several important works, and to compensate, the Met has nearly doubled its size with additions of paintings and so many prints and drawings that they feel like filler. It takes only a few notebook sketches of models in Romanian blouses, along with three examples of the actual garments, to get the idea. But nearby are two relatively unknown paintings of Romanian blouse-wearers. One, titled 'The Dream,' shows a curled-up, slumbering figure and may be a response to Picasso's painting of the same name. But dreams had little to do with it. Matisse's interest in textiles didn't begin during his 1906 trip to Morocco as a typical European attraction to the exotic. It was hard-wired into him as a descendent of generations of weavers, who was raised among weavers in Bohain-en-Vermandois, which in the 1880's and 90's was a center of production of fancy silks for the Parisian fashion houses. His hard-working parents ran a thriving hardware store, with his mother in charge of the house-paints counter. Bohain was a competitive environment. The weavers were self-employed craftsmen. Innovations of pattern, design and color were matters of pride and survival. In many ways their aesthetic ideas were more advanced than those of the academy in nearby St. Quentin, where Matisse first studied art. Proof positive of this comes in the show's fifth gallery in an 1890's sample book of Bohain silk. An elegant, Mondrianesque design of wide vertical stripes and thin horizontal bands executed in six different color combinations, known to weavers as 'color ways,' emits a searing radiance. Matisse may have referred to Cézanne as 'a god,' but he first encountered some of the salient characteristics of his own art in textile form. He was rendering, interpolating or transforming things he saw, and to see these things for ourselves is like watching his mind work. In the first gallery, we watch him learn from an indigo resist-dyed English cotton that he bought in 1903 and, judging from photographs, rarely let out of his sight. The fabric and its blue-on-white motif of repeating flower baskets and garlanded arabesques permutate through four still life paintings from 1903 to 1916. The textile appears as a roughly sketched background detail in the 1903 'Guitarist,' and as part of a diaphanous Impressionist-Fauvist reverie in the unfinished 'Still Life With Blue Tablecloth' of 1905-6, where it seems to have been more powdered than painted across a darker ground. But an identically titled work from 1909 gets to the point: the cloth dominates the picture plane and overwhelms the shrinking still life with its wavelike turbulence. The denouement here should be Matisse's breakthrough 'Harmony in Red' of 1908, in which the flower baskets and arabesques hang like a hallucinated veil in front of a red dining room. The Hermitage declined to lend this painting, but it is well worth looking up. Yet the resist-dyed fabric itself exerts a force that the paintings lack, especially in the flurry of light blue brush strokes (created by applying resist midway in the dyeing process) on top of the original darker blue, more realistic motifs. Once more the fabric seems to hold the key to the most radical parts of Matisse's future. It is almost possible to think that Matisse spent much of his career trying to make something as casually great as this talisman, and only rarely succeeded. In this context, the mustier, more realistic odalisques of the 1920's suggest that Matisse was simply zeroing in on his fabrics to get a closer look. If so, the scrutiny worked. As reproductions in the catalog reveal, the Egyptian cotton-appliquéd curtain, which depicts a rosette with framing leaves in tones of red and brown on a pale ground, is quoted almost verbatim in Matisse's 1948 painting 'Window With Egyptian Curtain,' owned by the Phillips Collection in Washington. Unfortunately, it is not in the show, but the curtain triggers a larger thought about works that are: the late cutouts are appliqués made of paper. This is not a definitive show, but maybe it doesn't have to be. Part of its achievement may be to remind us that exhaustiveness is not as important as a bold new idea. And ultimately, the show is less about art than about the artistic process, the way artists scour their environments and hoard motifs and inspiration even before they are artists. Matisse's textiles were basic to his development of painting as a unified, all-over, forward-pressing surface. They functioned as a kind of multipurpose emblem of the artificial nature of painting - a pliant, portable picture plane that could be used to close off real space while intimating abstraction. They were almost always ahead of him. At the end of his career, he said, 'Even if I could have done, when I was young, what I am doing now - and it is what I dreamed of then - I wouldn't have dared.' We can only take him at his word.

Subject: School Barrier for African Girls From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 09:17:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/international/africa/23ethiopia.html?ex=1292994000&en=daaac49e2c1bc70a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Another School Barrier for African Girls: No Toilet By SHARON LaFRANIERE BALIZENDA, Ethiopia - Fatimah Bamun dropped out of Balizenda Primary School in first grade, more than three years ago, when her father refused to buy her pencils and paper. Only after teachers convinced him that his daughter showed unusual promise did he relent. Today Fatimah, 14, tall and slender, studies math and Amharic, Ethiopia's official language, in a dirt-floored fourth-grade classroom. Whether she will reach fifth grade is another matter. Fatimah is facing the onset of puberty, and with it the realities of menstruation in a school with no latrine, no water, no hope of privacy other than the shadow of a bush, and no girlfriends with whom to commiserate. Fatimah is the only girl of the 23 students in her class. In fact, in a school of 178 students, she is one of only three girls who has made it past third grade. Even the women among the school's teachers say they have no choice but to use the thorny scrub, in plain sight of classrooms, as a toilet. 'It is really too difficult,' said Azeb Beyene, who arrived here in September to teach fifth grade. Here and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, schoolgirls can only empathize. In a region where poverty, tradition and ignorance deprive an estimated 24 million girls even of an elementary school education, the lack of school toilets and water is one of many obstacles to girls' attendance, and until recently was considered unfit for discussion. In some rural communities in the region, menstruation itself is so taboo that girls are prohibited from cooking or even banished to the countryside during their periods. But that impact is substantial. Researchers throughout sub-Saharan Africa have documented that lack of sanitary pads, a clean, girls-only latrine and water for washing hands drives a significant number of girls from school. The United Nations Children's Fund, for example, estimates that one in 10 school-age African girls either skips school during menstruation or drops out entirely because of lack of sanitation. The average schoolgirl's struggle for privacy is emblematic of the uphill battle for public education in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly among girls. With slightly more than 6 in 10 eligible children enrolled in primary school, the region's enrollment rates are the lowest in the world. Beyond that, enrollment among primary school-aged girls is 8 percent lower than among boys, according to the United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef. And of those girls who enroll, 9 percent more drop out before the end of sixth grade than boys. African girls in poor, rural areas like Balizenda are even more likely to lose out. The World Bank estimated in 1999 that only one in four of them was enrolled in primary school. The issue, advocates for children say, is not merely fairness. The World Bank contends that if women in sub-Saharan Africa had equal access to education, land, credit and other assets like fertilizer, the region's gross national product could increase by almost one additional percentage point annually. Mark Blackden, one of the bank's lead analysts, said Africa's progress was inextricably linked to the fate of girls. 'There is a connection between growth in Africa and gender equality,' he said. 'It is of great importance but still ignored by so many.' The pressure on girls to drop out peaks with the advent of puberty and the problems that accompany maturity, like sexual harassment by male teachers, ever growing responsibilities at home and parental pressure to marry. Female teachers who could act as role models are also in short supply in sub-Saharan Africa: they make up a quarter or less of the primary school teachers in 12 nations, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Florence Kanyike, the Uganda coordinator for the Forum of Women Educationalists, a Nairobi-based organization that lobbies for education for girls, said the harsh inconvenience of menstruation in schools without sanitation was just one more reason for girls to stay home. 'They miss three or four days of school,' she said. 'They find themselves lagging behind, and because they don't perform well, their interest fails. They start to think, 'What are we doing here?' The biggest number of them drop out in year five or six.' Increasingly, international organizations, African education ministries and the continent's fledgling women's rights movements are rallying behind the notion of a 'girl friendly' school, one that is more secure and closer to home, with a healthy share of female teachers and a clean toilet with a door and water for washing hands. In Guinea, enrollment rates for girls from 1997 to 2002 jumped 17 percent after improvements in school sanitation, according to a recent Unicef report. The dropout rate among girls fell by an even bigger percentage. Schools in northeastern Nigeria showed substantial gains after Unicef and donors built thousands of latrines, trained thousands of teachers and established school health clubs, the agency contends. Ethiopia has also made strides. More than 6 in 10 girls of primary-school age are enrolled in school this year, compared with fewer than 4 in 10 girls in 1999. Still, boys are far ahead, with nearly 8 in 10 of them enrolled in primary school. Unicef is building latrines and bringing clean water to 300 Ethiopian schools. But more than half of the nation's 13,181 primary schools lack water, more than half lack latrines and some lack both. Moreover, those with latrines may have just one for 300 students, Therese Dooley, Unicef's sanitation project officer, said. In theory, at least, outfitting Ethiopia's schools with basic facilities can be cheap and simple, she said. Toilets need be little more than pits and concrete slabs with walls and a door; rain can be trapped on a school's roof and strained through sand. Still, she said, toilets for boys and girls must be clearly separate and students who may have never seen a latrine must be taught the importance of using one. And the toilets must be kept clean, a task that frequently falls to the very schoolgirls who were supposed to benefit most. In Benishangul Gumuz Province in western Ethiopia, where low mountains rise over brilliant yellow fields of oilseeds, such amenities are rare indeed. Guma, a town of 13,000 about an hour's drive from Balizenda over a viciously rutted road, has water only sporadically. The town's main street is dotted with shops, but not one sells sanitary pads. Few residents could afford them anyway. Women make do with folded rags. Balizenda primary school, with 178 students, is a long, litter-strewn building in a dirt clearing surrounded by brush. Two lopsided reed-walled huts pass for fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms. On the playground soccer field, three tree limbs lashed together form the goal. With the exception of the first grade, where girls are more than a third of the pupils, Balizenda could be mistaken for an all-boys' school. Only 13 girls are enrolled in grades two through six, and even that is an improvement over three months ago. 'When I came here in September, there was not a single female student' in the entire school, said Tisge Tsegaw, 22, the first-grade teacher. 'We went to the homes and motivated the parents, and then they came.' But in many cases, not for long. 'The parents prioritize. They figure if the girls stay home, they can do the grinding, help with the harvesting, fetch the water and collect the firewood,' Ms. Tsegaw said. 'They agree to enroll them. Then after two months, they take them back.' The school's latrine, a hovel of thatch and reeds, fell down last year. Yehwala Mesfin, the school's director, said neither the villagers nor the Education Ministry would help build a new one. Parents viewed their annual rebuilding of the reed-walled fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms as a sufficient contribution, he said. Ms. Beyene, the fifth-grade teacher who arrived here in September, said she agreed to stay at Balizenda only after Mr. Mesfin promised that she could use a toilet at a health center nearby. But since then, the health center has been closed for lack of staff. 'The majority of time I use the open field,' she said. 'There is no privacy. Everybody comes, even the students. So we try to restrict ourselves to urinate before school and at nighttime. I already have a kidney infection because of this. My situation is getting worse.' The school's only sixth-grade girls, Mesert Mesfin, 17, and Worknesh Anteneh, 15, said that when they could not resist nature's call, they stood guard for each other in the field. When her period began one recent Thursday morning, Mesert said, she had no choice but to run home. Worknesh said she sometimes avoided school during her period. 'It is really a shame,' she said. 'I am really bothered by this.' Fatimah Bamun, who started school so late that at 14 she is only in fourth grade, said she did not want to miss a single class because she wanted to be a teacher. But, she added, she does not have a lot of backing from her friends. 'I have no friend in the class,' she said. 'Most of my friends have dropped out to get married. So during the break, I just sit in the classroom and read.' Her father, however, now says he is fully behind her. 'The people from the government are all the time telling us to send our daughters to school, and I am listening to these people,' he said. Neither Fatimah's older sister nor mother went to school. And Fatimah is all too familiar with the alternatives for illiterate girls. When she returns home after school each day, she is greeted by another girl, named Eko, who lives in her hut. Thin and poorly dressed, 12 years old at most, Eko is literally a wedding present, given to the Bamuns when Fatimah's sister married Eko's brother. Before the wedding, Eko was an avid second grader. 'I liked school very much; it would have been better to stay in school,' she said quietly, picking at her callused hands. Now she is the Bamun family servant, up at sunrise to pound sorghum with a stone for the breakfast porridge. Her education is vicarious. 'She always asks me, 'When are you going to school?' ' Fatimah said. ' 'What do you do there? What subjects do you study?' '

Subject: Impact of Evolution Ruling From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 06:15:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/science/sciencespecial2/22evolution.html?ex=1292907600&en=dfcfe917ec09989c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 22, 2005 Schools Nationwide Study Impact of Evolution Ruling By LAURIE GOODSTEIN When the school board in Muscatine, Iowa, sits down next year for its twice-a-decade evaluation of the district's science curriculum, the matter of whether to teach intelligent design as a challenge to evolution is expected to come up for discussion. Board members disagree about whether they will be swayed by a sweeping court decision on intelligent design released on Tuesday in Pennsylvania. A federal judge there ruled intelligent design 'a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory' that must not be taught in a public school science class. 'I don't think that a judge in one state is going to be able to tell everybody in all other states what to do,' said Paul Brooks, a school board member and retired principal in Muscatine who favors teaching intelligent design. 'So I don't get too excited about what he said.' The board's vice president, Ann Hart, demurred. 'This determination in Pennsylvania will help the cause,' Ms. Hart said, 'for those of us who think intelligent design should not be taught in public school science classes because of separation of church and state.' Educators and legislators in Muscatine and other communities that are considering intelligent design said they were learning about the results of the trial involving the school board in Dover, Pa., and had not read the decision. The Dover board voted in October 2004 to have students listen to a statement at the start of biology class that said that evolution was a flawed theory and that intelligent design was an alternative they could study further. It was a limited step, but opened the door to a lawsuit from local parents that became the nation's first test case of the legal merits of teaching intelligent design. The federal district judge in the Pennsylvania case, John E. Jones III, ruled after a six-week trial that intelligent design was 'an interesting theological argument, but it is not science.' He concluded that it was 'unconstitutional to teach I.D. as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.' Intelligent design is the proposition that biological life is so complex that it could not have randomly evolved, but must have been designed by an intelligent force. Lawyers for the parents who sued the Dover board hailed the decision as a cautionary one for any state or school board flirting with intelligent design because Judge Jones ruled broadly on the very legitimacy of intelligent design as science. The judge's 139-page decision dealt not only with the specific missteps of the Dover school board, but also traced the growth of the intelligent design movement from the remnants of creationism and creation science - which the Supreme Court declared in 1987 to be unconstitutional to teach in public school science class. Intelligent design proponents gained support in Dover and across the country with the rallying cry to 'teach the controversy' over evolution and open students' minds to competing theories. The National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif., has tracked efforts in at least two dozen states to introduce challenges to evolution in the curriculum. Some efforts hew more closely to the approach in Kansas, where the State Board of Education changed its standards to teach about flaws in evolutionary theory. In South Carolina, State Senator Mike Fair has introduced a bill to encourage teaching criticism of evolution. Mr. Fair is also on a state education committee that is evaluating biology standards. He said although he had not read the Pennsylvania ruling, it offended him because it impugned board members' motives because they were Christians. 'This case hasn't settled anything,' Mr. Fair said. Kristi L. Bowman, a law professor at Drake University in Des Moines, said that technically the judge's ruling was legally binding only in part of Pennsylvania and that no other courts in the country must follow it. 'That aside,' Professor Bowman said, 'this is such a thorough, well-researched opinion that covers all possible bases in terms of the legal arguments that intelligent design advocates present, that I think any school board or state board of education thinking about adopting an intelligent design policy should think twice.' Professor Bowman attended part of the Dover trial and expects her article on intelligent design to be in The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. The legal fees incurred may be 'an even stronger cautionary signal to school districts around the country than the actual decision,' Professor Bowman said. The Dover school district is now liable for the legal fees incurred by the plaintiffs - which plaintiffs lawyers say could exceed $1 million. The plaintiffs were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, as wells as lawyers with Pepper Hamilton, a private firm. Eric J. Rothschild, a Pepper Hamilton lawyer, said in a news conference after the ruling that holding the Dover board to a financial penalty would convey to other school districts that 'board members can't act like they did with impunity.' But Mr. Rothschild said the fees were still being totaled, and he left open the possibility that the lawyers might go after individual board members who voted for the intelligent design policy to pay the legal costs. In Muscatine, the superintendent, Tom Williams, said he expected that the possibility of a legal battle would deter his board from adopting intelligent design. 'We do expose ourselves to some kind of risk if we go out on a limb,' Mr. Williams said. He added that he was not in favor of it because he saw intelligent design as creationism with 'just a little different twist of terminology.' 'We need to stick with what our teachers are trained to do, and they're not trained to teach religious philosophies,' Mr. Williams said.

Subject: Evolution Trial From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 06:12:47 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/national/18judge.html?ex=1292562000&en=ac4cab39c59c89f4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 18, 2005 Evolution Trial in Hands of Willing Judge By LAURIE GOODSTEIN Driving home one day last December from the courthouse in Harrisburg, Pa., Judge John E. Jones III tuned in to a radio news report about 11 parents in the nearby town of Dover who had filed a lawsuit challenging their school board's decision to include intelligent design in the high school biology curriculum. 'It piqued my curiosity,' the judge said. Not only was the suit likely to be the nation's first full hearing on the legal merits of teaching intelligent design, but it also had been filed in the federal court in Pennsylvania where he was serving. The next morning Judge Jones turned on the computer in his chambers and found that the case had been randomly assigned to him. 'Any judge will tell you that they welcome the opportunity to have important cases on their dockets,' he said in an interview. 'That's why they take these jobs.' Judge Jones presided over the six-week trial with discipline, decorum and a quick wit that produced eruptions of laughter. Next week he is expected to issue his decision, which will almost certainly be regarded as a bellwether by other school districts in which religious conservatives have proposed teaching intelligent design as a challenge to the theory of evolution. Legal experts said the big question was whether Judge Jones would rule narrowly or more broadly on the merits of teaching intelligent design as science. Proponents of the theory argue that living organisms are so complex that the best explanation is that a higher intelligence designed them. One of his clerks hinted last week that the decision was long. In American courts, the battle between science and religion over the origins of life dates back 80 years to the trial of the Tennessee teacher John Scopes. Now this political hot potato has fallen into the lap of a judge who is highly attuned to politics. He is a lifelong Republican appointed to the federal bench in 2002 by President Bush. He ran for Congress 10 years earlier (he lost by one percentage point) and later considered running for governor. His supporters include Senators Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, and his mentor is Tom Ridge, the former governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary. But Judge Jones is praised by people on both sides of the aisle as a man of integrity and intellect who takes seriously his charge to be above partisanship. He appears to define himself less by his party affiliation than by his connection to the Pennsylvania coal town where he still lives, and to a family that grabbed education as a rope to climb out of the anthracite mines, and never let go. Clifford A. Rieders, a lawyer in Williamsport who is past president of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association, said he had found Judge Jones to be 'moderate, thoughtful' and 'universally well regarded.' 'I think that his connections are not so politicized, nor is he so ambitious that he would be influenced in any way by those kinds of considerations,' said Mr. Rieders, a Democrat. Mr. Ridge called him a 'renaissance man' and 'the right kind of person to be presiding over a trial of such emotional and historic importance.' He added, 'I don't think he goes in with a point of view based on anything prior. I really don't. I think he loves the challenge.' In an interview in his chambers in Williamsport during a break in the final weeks of the trial, Judge Jones said he had been rereading Supreme Court decisions on religion. He said he was aware that Mr. Bush and Mr. Santorum had endorsed the teaching of challenges to evolutionary theory, but he said, 'It doesn't have any bearing on me.' Judge Jones said he learned speed-reading in prep school and consumes five newspapers a day before work. He said he considered opening the Dover trial to television cameras because of 'a bias in favor of disclosure.' But after consulting with colleagues he decided against it. The judge said he had expected the Dover case would attract attention, but was stunned by the amount. One weekend, he said, he did a double take at a supermarket magazine rack. 'I'm on the cover of the Rolling Stone!' he said to his wife. 'Not my picture, but the trial.' He bought a copy. Judge Jones lives in Pottsville, a long commute from Harrisburg and Williamsport, where he hears cases. On his wall hangs a picture of his grandfather, a Welsh orphan who worked as a boy in the Pennsylvania coal mines, took correspondence courses, became a civil engineer and built a chain of golf courses. His father, a Yale graduate, went into the family business. The oldest of four brothers, Judge Jones, who is 50, attended a private school, Mercersburg Academy, and later Dickinson College and the Dickinson School of Law. Asked if he was religious, he said he attended a Lutheran church favored by his wife, but not every Sunday. He had his own law firm when he ran for Congress in 1992 and lost to Tim Holden, a Democrat who had been a friend. He helped Mr. Ridge's campaign for governor in 1994 and was later named to the board that runs the state's liquor stores. 'One of these days,' Mr. Ridge said in an interview, 'a bunch of Republicans are going to recruit him to run for governor, but I think it's going to take a while. He loves being judge.' Of running for governor, Judge Jones said, 'I wouldn't envision it, but I'm 50 years old, and it's probably imprudent to say never.' Among his cases, he has ruled that employees who refuse to authorize a background check on themselves can be fired and that a college's speech code prohibiting 'acts of intolerance' violated the right to free speech. He was reversed once on appeal in a case involving a disability claim. In the recent trial, a lawyer grilled an intelligent design proponent on why a textbook the witness helped to write substituted 'intelligent design' for 'creationism' in a later edition and with 'sudden emergence theory' in a draft of a future edition. 'We won't be back in a couple of years for the sudden emergence trial, will we?' the lawyer asked. To which Judge Jones interjected, 'Not on my docket.'

Subject: Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 06:03:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/23/opinion/23fri1.html?ex=1292994000&en=58967fb57f7405d5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 23, 2005 Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency George W. Bush has quipped several times during his political career that it would be so much easier to govern in a dictatorship. Apparently he never told his vice president that this was a joke. Virtually from the time he chose himself to be Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000, Dick Cheney has spearheaded an extraordinary expansion of the powers of the presidency - from writing energy policy behind closed doors with oil executives to abrogating longstanding treaties and using the 9/11 attacks as a pretext to invade Iraq, scrap the Geneva Conventions and spy on American citizens. It was a chance Mr. Cheney seems to have been dreaming about for decades. Most Americans looked at wrenching events like the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and the Iran-contra debacle and worried that the presidency had become too powerful, secretive and dismissive. Mr. Cheney looked at the same events and fretted that the presidency was not powerful enough, and too vulnerable to inspection and calls for accountability. The president 'needs to have his constitutional powers unimpaired, if you will, in terms of the conduct of national security policy,' Mr. Cheney said this week as he tried to stifle the outcry over a domestic spying program that Mr. Bush authorized after the 9/11 attacks. Before 9/11, Mr. Cheney was trying to undermine the institutional and legal structure of multilateral foreign policy: he championed the abrogation of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow in order to build an antimissile shield that doesn't work but makes military contactors rich. Early in his tenure, Mr. Cheney, who quit as chief executive of Halliburton to run with Mr. Bush in 2000, gathered his energy industry cronies at secret meetings in Washington to rewrite energy policy to their specifications. Mr. Cheney offered the usual excuses about the need to get candid advice on important matters, and the courts, sadly, bought it. But the task force was not an exercise in diverse views. Mr. Cheney gathered people who agreed with him, and allowed them to write national policy for an industry in which he had recently amassed a fortune. The effort to expand presidential power accelerated after 9/11, taking advantage of a national consensus that the president should have additional powers to use judiciously against terrorists. Mr. Cheney started agitating for an attack on Iraq immediately, pushing the intelligence community to come up with evidence about a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that never existed. His team was central to writing the legal briefs justifying the abuse and torture of prisoners, the idea that the president can designate people to be 'unlawful enemy combatants' and detain them indefinitely, and a secret program allowing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on American citizens without warrants. And when Senator John McCain introduced a measure to reinstate the rule of law at American military prisons, Mr. Cheney not only led the effort to stop the amendment, but also tried to revise it to actually legalize torture at C.I.A. prisons. There are finally signs that the democratic system is trying to rein in the imperial presidency. Republicans in the Senate and House forced Mr. Bush to back the McCain amendment, and Mr. Cheney's plan to legalize torture by intelligence agents was rebuffed. Congress also agreed to extend the Patriot Act for five weeks rather than doing the administration's bidding and rushing to make it permanent. On Wednesday, a federal appeals court refused to allow the administration to transfer Jose Padilla, an American citizen who has been held by the military for more than three years on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks, from military to civilian custody. After winning the same court's approval in September to hold Mr. Padilla as an unlawful combatant, the administration abruptly reversed course in November and charged him with civil crimes unrelated to his arrest. That decision was an obvious attempt to avoid having the Supreme Court review the legality of the detention powers that Mr. Bush gave himself, and the appeals judges refused to go along. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have insisted that the secret eavesdropping program is legal, but The Washington Post reported yesterday that the court created to supervise this sort of activity is not so sure. It said the presiding judge was arranging a classified briefing for her fellow judges and that several judges on the court wanted to know why the administration believed eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants was legal when the law specifically requires such warrants. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are tenacious. They still control both houses of Congress and are determined to pack the judiciary with like-minded ideologues. Still, the recent developments are encouraging, especially since the court ruling on Mr. Padilla was written by a staunch conservative considered by President Bush for the Supreme Court.

Subject: Paul Krugman: The Tax-Cut Zombies From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 05:52:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 23, 2005 Paul Krugman: The Tax-Cut Zombies By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman explains why Republicans continue to push for tax cuts even though there is no longer any justification for further cuts: The Tax-Cut Zombies, by Paul Krugman, NY Times Commentary: If you want someone to play Scrooge just before Christmas, Dick Cheney is your man. On Wednesday Mr. Cheney ... cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of legislation that increases the fees charged to Medicaid recipients, lets states cut Medicaid benefits, reduces enforcement funds for child support, and more. For all its cruelty, however, the legislation will make only a tiny dent in the budget deficit: the cuts total about $8 billion a year, or one-third of 1 percent of total federal spending. ... Since the 1970's, conservatives have used two theories to justify cutting taxes. One theory, supply-side economics, has always been hokum for the yokels. Conservative insiders adopted the supply-siders as mascots because they were useful to the cause, but never took them seriously. The insiders' theory - what we might call the true tax-cut theory - was memorably described by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director, as 'starving the beast.' Proponents of this theory argue that conservatives should seek tax cuts ... because ... budget deficits will lead to spending cuts that will eventually achieve their true aim: shrinking the government's role back to what it was under Calvin Coolidge. True to form, ... conservative heavyweights are using the budget deficit to call for cuts in key government programs. For example, in 2001 Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes to avoid running an excessively large budget surplus. Now he issues dire warnings about 'fiscal instability.' But rather than urging Congress to reverse the tax cuts he helped sell, he talks of the need to cut future Social Security and Medicare benefits. Yet at this point starve-the-beast theory looks as silly as supply-side economics. Although a disciplined conservative movement has controlled Congress and the White House for five years - and presided over record deficits - public opposition has prevented any significant cuts in the big social-insurance programs that dominate domestic spending. ... Medicaid, whose recipients are less likely to vote than the average person getting Social Security or Medicare, is the softest target among major federal social-insurance programs. But even members of Congress, it seems, have consciences. (Well, some of them.) It took intense arm-twisting from the Republican leadership, and that tie-breaking vote by Mr. Cheney, to ram through even modest cuts in aid to the neediest. In other words, the starve-the-beast theory - like missile defense - has been tested under the most favorable possible circumstances, and failed. So there is no longer any coherent justification for further tax cuts. Yet the cuts go on. In fact, even as Congressional leaders struggled to pass a tiny package of mean-spirited spending cuts, they pushed forward with a much larger package of tax cuts. The benefits of those cuts, as always, will go disproportionately to the wealthy. Here's how I see it: Republicans have turned into tax-cut zombies. They can't remember why they originally wanted to cut taxes, they can't explain how they plan to make up for the lost revenue, and they don't care. Instead, they just keep shambling forward, always hungry for more.

Subject: Reflections in the Evening Land From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 19:34:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,1669276,00.html December 17, 2005 Reflections in the Evening Land By Harold Bloom - Guardian Huey Long, known as 'the Kingfish,' dominated the state of Louisiana from 1928 until his assassination in 1935, at the age of 42. Simultaneously governor and a United States senator, the canny Kingfish uttered a prophecy that haunts me in this late summer of 2005, 70 years after his violent end: 'Of course we will have fascism in America but we will call it democracy!' I reflected on Huey Long (always mediated for me by his portrait as Willie Stark in Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the King's Men) recently, when I listened to President George W Bush addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was thus benefited by Rupert Murdoch's Fox TV channel, which is the voice of Bushian crusading democracy, very much of the Kingfish's variety. Even as Bush extolled his Iraq adventure, his regime daily fuses more tightly together elements of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy. At the age of 75, I wonder if the Democratic party ever again will hold the presidency or control the Congress in my lifetime. I am not sanguine, because our rulers have demonstrated their prowess in Florida (twice) and in Ohio at shaping voting procedures, and they control the Supreme Court. The economist-journalist Paul Krugman recently observed that the Republicans dare not allow themselves to lose either Congress or the White House, because subsequent investigations could disclose dark matters indeed. Krugman did not specify, but among the profiteers of our Iraq crusade are big oil (House of Bush/House of Saud), Halliburton (the vice-president), Bechtel (a nest of mighty Republicans) and so forth. All of this is extraordinarily blatant, yet the American people seem benumbed, unable to read, think, or remember, and thus fit subjects for a president who shares their limitations. A grumpy old Democrat, I observe to my friends that our emperor is himself the best argument for intelligent design, the current theocratic substitute for what used to be called creationism. Sigmund Freud might be chagrined to discover that he is forgotten, while the satan of America is now Charles Darwin. President Bush, who says that Jesus is his 'favourite philosopher', recently decreed in regard to intelligent design and evolution: 'Both sides ought to be properly taught.' I am a teacher by profession, about to begin my 51st year at Yale, where frequently my subject is American writers. Without any particular competence in politics, I assert no special insight in regard to the American malaise. But I am a student of what I have learned to call the American Religion, which has little in common with European Christianity. There is now a parody of the American Jesus, a kind of Republican CEO who disapproves of taxes, and who has widened the needle's eye so that camels and the wealthy pass readily into the Kingdom of Heaven. We have also an American holy spirit, the comforter of our burgeoning poor, who don't bother to vote. The American trinity pragmatically is completed by an imperial warrior God, trampling with shock and awe. These days I reread the writers who best define America: Emerson, Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, Mark Twain, Faulkner, among others. Searching them, I seek to find what could suffice to explain what seems our national self-destructiveness. DH Lawrence, in his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), wrote what seems to me still the most illuminating criticism of Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. Of the two, Melville provoked no ambivalence in Lawrence. But Whitman transformed Lawrence's poetry, and Lawrence himself, from at least 1917 on. Replacing Thomas Hardy as prime precursor, Whitman spoke directly to Lawrence's vitalism, immediacy, and barely evaded homoeroticism. On a much smaller scale, Whitman earlier had a similar impact on Gerard Manley Hopkins. Lawrence, frequently furious at Whitman, as one might be with an overwhelming father, a King Lear of poetry, accurately insisted that the Americans were not worthy of their Whitman. More than ever, they are not, since the Jacksonian democracy that both Whitman and Melville celebrated is dying in our Evening Land. What defines America? 'Democracy' is a ruined word, because of its misuse in the American political rhetoric of our moment. If Hamlet and Don Quixote, between them, define the European self, then Captain Ahab and 'Walt Whitman' (the persona, not the man) suggest a very different self from the European. Ahab is Shakespearean, Miltonic, even Byronic-Shelleyan, but his monomaniacal quest is his own, and reacts against the Emersonian self, just as Melville's beloved Hawthorne recoiled also. Whitman, a more positive Emersonian, affirms what the Sage of Concord called self-reliance, the authentic American religion rather than its Bushian parodies. Though he possesses a Yale BA and honorary doctorate, our president is semi-literate at best. He once boasted of never having read a book through, even at Yale. Henry James was affronted when he met President Theodore Roosevelt; what could he have made of George W Bush? Having just reread James's The American Scene (1907), I amuse myself, rather grimly, by imagining the master of the American novel touring the United States in 2005, exactly a century after his return visit to his homeland. Like TS Eliot in the next generation, James was far more at home in London than in America, yet both retained an idiom scarcely English. They each eventually became British subjects, graced by the Order of Merit, but Whitman went on haunting them, more covertly in Eliot's case. The Waste Land initially was an elegy for Jean Verdenal, who had been to Eliot what Rupert Brooke was to Henry James. Whitman's 'Lilacs' elegy for Lincoln became James's favourite poem, and it deeply contaminates The Waste Land. I am not suggesting that the American aesthetic self is necessarily homoerotic: Emerson, Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Faulkner, Robert Frost after all are as representative as are Melville, Whitman and Henry James. Nor does any American fictive self challenge Hamlet as an ultimate abyss of inwardness. Yet Emerson bet the American house (as it were) on self-reliance, which is a doctrine of solitude. Whitman, as person and as poetic mask, like his lilacs, bloomed into a singularity that cared intensely both about the self and others, but Emersonian consciousness all too frequently can flower, Hamlet-like, into an individuality indifferent both to the self and to others. The United States since Emerson has been divided between what he called the 'party of hope' and the 'party of memory'. Our intellectuals of the left and of the right both claim Emerson as ancestor. In 2005, what is self-reliance? I can recognise three prime stigmata of the American religion: spiritual freedom is solitude, while the soul's encounter with the divine (Jesus, the Paraclete, the Father) is direct and personal, and, most crucially, what is best and oldest in the American religionist goes back to a time-before-time, and so is part or particle of God. Every second year, the Gallup pollsters survey religion in the United States, and report that 93% of us believe in God, while 89% are certain that God loves him or her on a personal basis. And 45% of us insist that Earth was created precisely as described in Genesis and is only about 9,000 or fewer years old. The actual figure is 4.5 billion years, and some dinosaur fossils are dated as 190 million years back. Perhaps the intelligent designers, led by George W Bush, will yet give us a dinosaur Gospel, though I doubt it, as they, and he, dwell within a bubble that education cannot invade. Contemporary America is too dangerous to be laughed away, and I turn to its most powerful writers in order to see if we remain coherent enough for imaginative comprehension. Lawrence was right; Whitman at his very best can sustain momentary comparison with Dante and Shakespeare. Most of what follows will be founded on Whitman, the most American of writers, but first I turn again to Moby-Dick, the national epic of self-destructiveness that almost rivals Leaves of Grass, which is too large and subtle to be judged in terms of self-preservation or apocalyptic destructiveness. Some of my friends and students suggest that Iraq is President Bush's white whale, but our leader is absurdly far from Captain Ahab's aesthetic dignity. The valid analogue is the Pequod; as Lawrence says: 'America! Then such a crew. Renegades, castaways, cannibals, Ishmael, Quakers,' and South Sea Islanders, Native Americans, Africans, Parsees, Manxmen, what you will. One thinks of our tens of thousands of mercenaries in Iraq, called 'security employees' or 'contractors'. They mix former American Special Forces, Gurkhas, Boers, Croatians, whoever is qualified and available. What they lack is Captain Ahab, who could give them a metaphysical dimension. Ahab carries himself and all his crew (except Ishmael) to triumphant catastrophe, while Moby-Dick swims away, being as indestructible as the Book of Job's Leviathan. The obsessed captain's motive ostensibly is revenge, since earlier he was maimed by the white whale, but his truer desire is to strike through the universe's mask, in order to prove that while the visible world might seem to have been formed in love, the invisible spheres were made in fright. God's rhetorical question to Job: 'Can'st thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?' is answered by Ahab's: 'I'd strike the sun if it insulted me!' The driving force of the Bushian-Blairians is greed, but the undersong of their Iraq adventure is something closer to Iago's pyromania. Our leader, and yours, are firebugs. One rightly expects Whitman to explain our Evening Land to us, because his imagination is America's. A Free-Soiler, he opposed the Mexican war, as Emerson did. Do not our two Iraq invasions increasingly resemble the Mexican and Spanish-American conflicts? Donald Rumsfeld speaks of permanent American bases in Iraq, presumably to protect oil wells. President Bush's approval rating was recently down to 38%, but I fear that this popular reaction has more to do with the high price of petrol than with any outrage at our Iraq crusade. What has happened to the American imagination if we have become a parody of the Roman empire? I recall going to bed early on election night in November 2004, though friends kept phoning with the hopeful news that there appeared to be some three million additional voters. Turning the phone off, I gloomily prophesied that these were three million Evangelicals, which indeed was the case. Our politics began to be contaminated by theocratic zealots with the Reagan revelation, when southern Baptists, Mormons, Pentecostals, and Adventists surged into the Republican party. The alliance between Wall Street and the Christian right is an old one, but has become explicit only in the past quarter century. What was called the counter-culture of the late 1960s and 70s provoked the reaction of the 80s, which is ongoing. This is all obvious enough, but becomes subtler in the context of the religiosity of the country, which truly divides us into two nations. Sometimes I find myself wondering if the south belatedly has won the civil war, more than a century after its supposed defeat. The leaders of the Republican party are southern; even the Bushes, despite their Yale and Connecticut tradition, were careful to become Texans and Floridians. Politics, in the United States, perhaps never again can be separated from religion. When so many vote against their own palpable economic interests, and choose 'values' instead, then an American malaise has replaced the American dream. Whitman, still undervalued as a poet, in relation to his astonishing aesthetic power, remains the permanent prophet of our party of hope. That seems ironic in many ways, since the crucial event of Whitman's life was our civil war, in which a total of 625,000 men were slain, counting both sides. In Britain, the 'great war' is the first world war, because nearly an entire generation of young men died. The United States remains haunted by the civil war, the central event in the life of the nation since the Declaration of Independence. David S Reynolds, the most informed of Whitman's biographers, usefully demonstrates that Whitman's poetry, from 1855-60, was designed to help hold the Union together. After the sunset glory of 'When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', the 1865 elegy overtly for Abraham Lincoln, and inwardly for Whitman's poetic self-identity, something burned out in the bard of Leaves of Grass. Day after day, for several years, he had exhausted himself, in the military hospitals of Washington DC, dressing wounds, reading to, and writing letters for, the ill and maimed, comforting the dying. The extraordinary vitalism and immediacy departed from his poetry. It is as though he had sacrificed his own imagination on the altar of those martyred, like Lincoln, in the fused cause of union and emancipation. Whitman died in 1892, a time of American politics as corrupt as this, if a touch less blatant than the era of Bushian theocracy. But there was a curious split in the poet of Leaves of Grass, between what he called the soul, and his 'real me' or 'me myself', an entity distinct from his persona, 'Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, an American': 'I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.' The rough Walt is the 'I' here, and has been created to mediate between his character or soul, and his real me or personality. I fear that this is permanently American, the abyss between character and personality. Doubtless, this can be a universal phenomenon: one thinks of Nietzsche and of WB Yeats. And yet mutual abasement between soul and self destroys any individual's coherence. My fellow citizens who vote for 'values', against their own needs, manifest something of the same dilemma. As the persona 'Walt Whitman' melted away in the furnace of national affliction in the civil war, it was replaced by a less capable persona, 'the Good Grey Poet'. No moral rebirth kindled postwar America; instead Whitman witnessed the extraordinary corruption of President US Grant's administration, which is the paradigm emulated by so many Republican presidencies, including what we suffer at this moment. Whitman himself became less than coherent in his long decline, from 1866 to 1892. He did not ice over, like the later Wordsworth, but his prophetic stance ebbed away. Lost, he ceased to be an Emersonian, and rather weirdly attempted to become a Hegelian! In 'The Evening Land', an extraordinary poem of early 1922, DH Lawrence anticipated his long-delayed sojourn in America, which began only in September of that year, when he reached Taos, New Mexico. He had hoped to visit the United States in February 1917, but England denied him a passport. Lawrence's poem is a kind of Whitmanian love-hymn to America, but is even more ambivalent than the chapter on Whitman in Studies in Classic American Literature. 'Are you the grave of our day?' Lawrence asks, and begs America to cajole his soul, even as he admits how much he fears the Evening Land: 'Your more-than-European idealism, Like a be-aureoled bleached skeleton hovering Its cage-ribs in the social heaven, beneficent.' This rather ghastly vision is not inappropriate to our moment, nor is Lawrence's bitter conclusion: ''These States!' as Whitman said, Whatever he meant.' What Whitman meant (as Lawrence knew) was that the United States itself was to be the greatest of poems. But with that grand assertion, I find myself so overwhelmed by an uncomfortable sense of irony, that I cease these reflections. Shelley wore a ring, on which was inscribed the motto: 'The good time will come.' In September, the US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying at Zion Church in Whistler, Alabama: 'The Lord Jesus Christ is going to come on time if we just wait.'

Subject: Krugman - any writing not requiring NYT payment From: hank To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 18:48:19 (EST) Email Address: me@privacy.net Message: I just came across this: ' The economist-journalist Paul Krugman recently observed that the Republicans dare not allow themselves to lose either Congress or the White House, because subsequent investigations could disclose dark matters indeed. Krugman did not specify ....' Where the heck did he write this? I have the feeling he was getting too close to the bone and the NYT firewalled him so only those who pay can read him. Is he allowed to write anything else for public readers, if so where is he posting? Or is he contractually required only to write for people who pay the NYT, nowadays? Quote is from Harold Bloom, found here www.commondreams.org/views05/1218-24.htm

Subject: Re: Krugman - From: Dorian To: hank Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 04:14:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Why does Paul Krugman continue to write for the NY Times? He is too important a voice to be locked up by one newspaper. Why doesn't he syndicate his column and get it in hundreds of papers nationwide instead of the increasingly disreputable NY Times? How could he be bound by contract if they change the terms of the contract as they have done? Or did he foolishly sign a new contract? Perhaps he did. Highly regretable if so.

Subject: Re: Krugman - From: Terri To: Dorian Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 06:39:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The New York Times is the finest of all newspapers, and I am delighted to subscribe. Please look for library and library computer access to the complete Times. Almost every library will subscribe to the Times, and happily we can find the paper everywhere.

Subject: Paul Krugman From: Emma To: hank Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 19:31:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Harold Bloom's article was just printed but was evidently written in August. So, I hope to find the Paul Krugman text on our website. But, thank you for telling of the passage. We are now only able to post summaries of the new columns and then discuss them.

Subject: Some Squid Mothers in a Brighter Light From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 11:22:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20squi.html December 20, 2005 Scientists' Discovery in the Deep Casts Some Squid Mothers in a Brighter Light By WILLIAM J. BROAD With their slimy tentacles and big, unblinking eyes, squids have, over the centuries, acquired a bad reputation. Jules Verne's squid attacked a submarine. Peter Benchley's dined on children. The squid has fared little better in the world of science, with researchers concluding that, unlike octopuses and some fish, squids are inattentive parents, depositing eggs on the seabed and letting them grow or die on their own. But a team of ocean scientists exploring the inky depths of the Monterey Canyon off California has discovered that at least one squid species cares for its young with loving attention, the mother cradling the eggs in her arms for months, waving her tentacles to bathe the eggs in fresh seawater. The scientists suspect that other species are doting parents, too, and that misperceptions about squid behavior have arisen because the deep is so poorly explored. 'Our finding is unexpected because this behavior differs from the reproductive habits of all other known squid species,' the scientists wrote in the Dec. 15 issue of Nature, the weekly science journal. 'We expect it to be found in other squids.' Brad A. Seibel, a biologist at the University of Rhode Island and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who led the research, said in an interview that the insight began in 1995. Then a graduate student, he pulled up a trawl bucket from the dark midwaters of the Monterey Canyon, which is as deep as two miles, and found a mass of squid eggs. Nearby in the bucket lay a female of the species Gonatus onyx, which grows to a length of about 10 inches. The next year, the same thing happened again, except this time the young were hatchlings, just emerging from their eggs. Recalling his previous catch, Dr. Seibel theorized that he had stumbled upon something that amounted to heresy. It seemed that the females had been brooding their eggs. In 2000, he proposed the idea in print, prompting skeptical rejoinders. The breakthrough came in 2001, when Dr. Seibel and his colleagues at Monterey sent a car-size robot into the depths of the canyon. There, more than a mile down, the robot's lights and camera spied the heresy in action - a female brooding her eggs. 'I was delighted,' Dr. Seibel recalled, and 'surprised that we found them.' Since then, he and teammates exploring the canyon's deep waters have discovered five female squids holding their eggs, gently protecting and nourishing them. The attentive females extend their arms every 30 to 40 seconds, moving water through the masses of 2,000 to 3,000 eggs. This action, the scientists wrote in Nature, probably serves to aerate the eggs in the canyon's oxygen-poor waters. The scientists estimate that the squid, in the class of animals known as cephalopods, which also includes the octopus and the cuttlefish, broods its eggs for as long as nine months. The other researchers are Bruce H. Robison and Steven H. D. Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, in Moss Landing, Calif. The attention and nurturing, Dr. Seibel said, surely promotes survival. 'It's very successful,' he noted, Gonatus onyx being one of the most abundant cephalopods in the Pacific Ocean.

Subject: Qatar Finds a Currency of Its Own From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 09:44:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/business/worldbusiness/22qatar.html?ex=1292907600&en=2bee6666a3d4278f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 22, 2005 Qatar Finds a Currency of Its Own: Natural Gas By SIMON ROMERO DOHA, Qatar - 'This was a sleepy little town when I moved here eight years ago,' said Mohamad Moabi, from an office overlooking the turquoise waters alongside this city's crescent-shaped corniche, where dozens of half-built skyscrapers are going up. 'Now it's on the frontier of the global economy.' Drawing on a cigarette as he gestured northward, Mr. Moabi, 44, the Lebanese-born chief economist at Qatar's largest bank, pointed to why this tiny emirate, no bigger than Connecticut, is elbowing aside other energy-rich countries to become the leader in the emerging international market for natural gas. 'It helps,' he said, 'when you have a natural gas field up there that can be extracted for about a century.' In a shift that has drawn historical comparisons to the ascent of Saudi Arabia's oil industry several decades ago, Qatar has moved swiftly in recent years to develop its huge offshore natural gas reserves - once dismissed as practically worthless because of the difficulty of transporting gas to distant markets - while cementing strong military and economic ties with the United States. Driven by an ambitious, reform-minded ruling elite, these moves have allowed Qatar to leap ahead of Russia and Iran, the only nations with larger reserves of natural gas, seizing new opportunities to export the fuel to markets in North America, southern Europe and the Far East. Tankers laden with gas supercooled to liquid form already depart each day for Japan and South Korea from the northern port of Ras Laffan, not far from Al Udeid Air Base in the Qatari desert, the American military's main air operations center in the Arabian Peninsula. Soon the ships will start delivering their cargoes to ports in Texas and Louisiana in the most ambitious project to date to bring natural gas from the Middle East to American consumers. These plans, which would help transform the United States into the largest importer of liquefied natural gas, have created some unease at a time when American reliance on oil from the Middle East is still unabated. Even as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries tries to strengthen its grip on world oil markets, Qatar has moved to exert greater influence over the trade in natural gas through the creation of the Gas Exporting Countries Forum. With a liaison office in Doha, the group's 12 members, including Algeria, Indonesia and Venezuela, control more than 70 percent of the world's gas reserves and more than 40 percent of production. Though in its infancy, the organization has been likened to OPEC in its early efforts to control oil prices, an aspiration that officials here contend is not under consideration. 'Natural gas is not as flexible a commodity as oil and is sold in longer-term contracts,' Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiyeh, Qatar's energy minister, said in an interview. 'The purpose of the forum is to exchange information. We don't believe in confrontation with our consumers.' Indeed, Qatar's ability to emerge as the world's leading producer and exporter of liquefied natural gas, with plans to produce 77 million tons of the fuel by the start of the next decade, depends on cooperation. It is working with Western energy companies and Asian shipping concerns in the construction of an immense industrial complex in Ras Laffan near the maritime border with Iran, about an hour's drive through the scorching desert north of Doha. 'We're building what might be the largest plant facility anywhere in the world,' Wayne A. Harms, the president of operations in Qatar for Exxon Mobil, the largest foreign investor in the country, said in an interview. 'It's happening in a very fast, almost unprecedented period of time,' Mr. Harms said, describing the frenzied activity of more than 50,000 workers, largely from India and Pakistan, toiling to build the complexes needed to condense natural gas so it can be shipped across the sea. It has been just a decade since the emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, overthrew his father in a bloodless coup, strengthening ties with the United States and betting on an offshore natural gas reserve of 900 trillion cubic feet - the world's largest purely natural gas reserve, called the North Field - that it shares with Iran. That shift gave Qatar, long a marginal oil producer, a commodity to help it escape the Saudi orbit and the wealth to plot its own path to prosperity. The North Field, discovered by Royal Dutch Shell in 1971 and considered useless at the time because it had no oil and its natural gas was difficult to transport, is now described by some geologists as the second-largest petroleum deposit in the world after the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia. And in an interview at an ornate receiving room at the headquarters of Qatar Petroleum, Mr. Attiyeh, the energy minister, said he expected to see some $100 billion invested in the country through the end of the decade. That cash injection is fueling economic growth estimated at 25 percent in 2004 and 29 percent this year, before adjusting for inflation, according to Qatar National Bank. As a result, after languishing for much of the last century as a sleepy British protectorate, Qatar is surging in population, up almost 50 percent since 1997, to an estimated 750,000 in 2004, a number that is expected to grow by an estimated 100,000 this year. (Fewer than 200,000 people in the country are believed to be Qatari citizens.) The surge, led by an influx of poor Asian laborers and large numbers of Americans and European professionals lured by tax-free salaries, has left a shortage of housing and office space. Rents in parts of Doha, its streets clogged with new sport utility vehicles and the occasional Rolls-Royce or Maserati, have climbed almost 50 percent this year. 'I sometimes feel like I'll live with my family forever,' said Abdalla Eisa Rasheed, 24, a Qatari technician at a water desalination plant operated by the AES Corporation of Arlington, Va. Mr. Rasheed, one of six siblings, said two older brothers, both married with children, also lived under the same roof. 'There's the positive and the negative of the economy,' he said. Not surprisingly, the remaking of Doha is creating a bonanza for international infrastructure companies. Bechtel of San Francisco won a $2.5 billion contract to build an airport designed specifically for the Airbus A380-800, the world's largest passenger aircraft. Near neighborhoods where goat herders can still be glimpsed tending their flocks, projects include an Islamic Museum designed by the Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei and a photography museum by Santiago Calatrava of Spain. The Japanese architect Arata Isozaki was commissioned to design a national library, after the construction of his futuristic medical school, operated by the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in Qatar's newly named Education City, a collection of colleges run by administrators and faculty from Texas A&M, Georgetown University and Virginia Commonwealth University. Far more numerous are brazen projects without marquee architects, like The Pearl, a planned complex for 30,000 residents, with neighborhoods meant to evoke parts of Monaco, Marrakesh and Venice. In one area, intended to emulate New York, pedestrians can stroll on an avenue called Broadway away from the din of Doha's streets. 'We want to attract the Ivy Leaguer type, the more select customer,' said Khalil al-Sholy, managing director of UDC, the Qatari company building The Pearl. Not far away sits a dusty work site where workers are feverishly building what is expected to be Doha's tallest skyscraper, an 80-floor complex called the Dubai Towers. With about 30 skyscrapers in various stages of completion, the description of Doha as the 'next Dubai,' a nod to its flashier neighbor on the Arabian Peninsula, is inevitable here. Still, there is a fundamental difference between the two emirates. Dubai has turned to dream-world architecture and tourism to prepare for the not-so-distant day when its oil runs out; Qatar, its coffers swelling from natural gas sales, shows little sign of contemplating an economy not reliant on energy exports. Andrew Brown, Shell's country manager in Qatar, said that greater natural gas and oil production should result in overall daily energy production equivalent to about 5 million barrels of oil a day by early in the next decade, nearly half the daily oil output of Saudi Arabia. 'Over the next five years,' Mr. Brown said, 'Qatar is going to see an energy boom as significant as any other in the past.' Few in Qatar worry that the natural gas frenzy will fizzle anytime soon, despite predictions from some analysts that natural gas prices in countries like the United States and Britain could fall sharply by 2007 or so as large amounts of liquefied natural gas reach the market. Still, the torrid expansion at Ras Laffan, as well as Qatar's increasingly interdependent relations with the United States and other gas-importing nations, has created some unease within the prosperity bubble. In an attempt to clamp down on rising infrastructure costs, the government earlier this year unexpectedly imposed a moratorium on new gas export projects. Perhaps most troubling to the relatively cosmopolitan society taking shape in Doha, an Egyptian employee of Qatar Petroleum exploded a bomb last March during a performance of Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night' at a theater in a district where many Western expatriates live. The blast killed a British man and wounded 12 others. Authorities and executives from foreign energy companies described the incident as an isolated act, by an individual extremist. And yet the offices at Shell can be reached only after passing through thick steel protective doors. Exxon Mobil's executive suite in Doha does not even have a sign on the door, camouflaged by the name of an obscure Qatari company with which Exxon shares an old building. For all the caution, little seems to be standing in the way of Qatar becoming even richer. One of the country's leading newspapers, The Peninsula, noted recently that Qatar was already the third-wealthiest country, with per capita income of $38,241 in 2004, trailing only Switzerland and Luxembourg. 'I hope some of the money reaches down to me,' said Mohammad Omer Mohammad, 25, who despite being born and raised in Qatar, remains by law a citizen of the homeland of his parents, Pakistan. Mr. Mohammad, who works at a modest job at an immigration office in Ras Laffan, still cannot own land in Qatar but aspires one day to be rich. 'The economy's good, I guess,' Mr. Mohammad said. 'But it could be better.'

Subject: Tax Cuts for the Wealthy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 07:11:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/business/22scene.html?ex=1292907600&en=5333458289ebde68&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 22, 2005 Tax Cuts for the Wealthy: Waste More, Want More By ROBERT H. FRANK WITH President Bush's proposed tax cuts for top earners struggling to get political traction in early 2001, Representative Tom Osborne, Republican of Nebraska, rose to the White House's defense on the House floor. 'The bottom line is that it's your money,' he said, 'and you know how to spend it much better than anyone in Washington, D.C.' In the years since, variations of this statement by the president and other government officials have kept opponents of high-end tax cuts consistently on the defensive. This talk has been effective in part because it appeals to voters' common sense. After all, people have an obvious incentive to exercise care when spending their own hard-earned dollars. Why would a faceless bureaucrat in Washington, who is spending someone else's money, be nearly as careful? The 'it's your money' line is also buttressed by widely reported examples in which government paid far more than necessary to get the job done. Famously, the Pentagon once spent $640 for a single toilet seat and on another occasion paid $435 for an ordinary claw hammer. But paying more than the market rate is just one form of wasteful spending. Another, often far more important, form is to pay a fair price for something that serves little purpose. This second form of waste is considerably more common in private spending than in public spending - and made even worse as the chief beneficiaries of the tax cuts race to outdo one another. A case in point is a decision on many minds at this time of year, that of how much to spend on a wristwatch. Scores of full-page ads in recent issues of The New York Times have displayed handsome watches costing several thousand dollars apiece and more. The most coveted among them are elaborate mechanical marvels with multiple 'complications,' special features that enhance their accuracy. The tourbillion movement, for example, is essentially a small gyroscope that rotates the main mechanism about once a minute, reducing errors caused by the Earth's gravitational field. The Grande Complication, by Jean Dunand, sells for more than $700,000, but lesser entries by Patek Philippe, Rolex and other manufacturers can be had for $5,000 to $100,000. Unlike toilet seats and claw hammers, these watches are costly to produce, so buyers who pay high prices for them are not being ripped off. In another sense, however, their dollars go largely for naught. For despite their mechanical wizardry, none of these watches are as accurate as a battery-powered $30 Timex, whose quartz crystal mechanism is unaffected by gravity. Then why do people buy the expensive mechanical watches? Edward Faber of the Aaron Faber Gallery in Manhattan recently described buyers of these watches as men from 30 to 50 who want 'this 'power tool,' this instrument on their wrist that distinguishes them from the pack.' The problem is that if a watch is to distinguish its owner, it must sell for more than the watches worn by members of the pack. So when the pack spends more, the price of distinguishing oneself also rises. And in the end, no one gains any more distinction than if all had spent less. Other forms of high-end private spending are driven by similar forces. To celebrate their daughter's 13th birthday, for example, Amber Ridinger's parents bought her a $27,000 Dolce & Gabbana gown and hired JaRule, Ashanti and other popular entertainers to provide live music at her party in Miami last month. David H. Brooks, the chief executive of a company that supplies body armor to the American military in Iraq, invited 150 of his daughter's friends to the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center in Manhattan, where they were serenaded by 50 Cent, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks and other luminaries during a birthday party reported to have cost $10 million. Although these events have prompted much finger wagging by social critics, the parents involved are not behaving abnormally. They are merely spending their own money in an effort to provide a special occasion for their daughters. For a party to be special, however, it must somehow stand out from other parties that define the norm. Here, too, the problem is that expensive birthday parties have become a growth industry. Kevin and Danya Mondell, founders of Oogles-n-Googles, a company described as an over-the-top event planner for children's parties, recently announced their intention to license Oogles-n-Googles franchises. Yet no matter how much parents spend, the number of parties that achieve special status will be no greater than when everyone spent much less. On balance, then, there is little reason to expect large tax cuts for wealthy families to have resulted in a more efficient allocation of our nation's scarce resources. For one thing, not all of the dollars used to finance these tax cuts would have been spent wastefully by government. Most of the money recently cut from the food stamp program, for example, would have been spent by poor families to buy food at fair market prices. And even though government does buy some items at inflated prices - body armor whose price includes a profit margin large enough to finance a $10 million birthday party? - many of these items serve vital purposes. In contrast, most of the tax cuts financed by recent budget cuts will go to families that already have everything they might reasonably need. This money will be deployed in the quest for 'something special.' Yet because special is an elastic concept, the number of families that succeed in this quest will be little different from before. Robert H. Frank, an economist at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University, is the co-author, with Ben S. Bernanke, of 'Principles of Economics.'

Subject: U.S. Spy Program From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:53:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/politics/21cnd-spy.html?ex=1292821200&en=25e763d01f7a18d4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 Judge Quits, Reportedly Over U.S. Spy Program By BRIAN KNOWLTON - International Herald Tribune WASHINGTON - A federal judge has resigned from the court that oversees government surveillance in intelligence cases, reportedly over concerns about the secret program authorized by President Bush that bypasses the court and allows spying on people believed to be communicating with terror suspects abroad. United States District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, notified the chief justice of the United States, John Roberts, of his resignation on Monday, according to The Washington Post. It said Judge Robertson gave no reason. Anger about the secret surveillance program helped fuel a Democratic-led effort currently blocking renewal of the USA Patriot Act. Democrats say some provisions infringe on civil liberties - by allowing access to library and business records, for example - and should be dropped. They seek a three-month extension of the act while those provisions are reworked. But Mr. Bush, speaking from the White House South Lawn today, lashed out at the blocking effort, saying, 'This obstruction is inexcusable.' Later, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that if the act lapses at year's end, 'We will not be as safe.' Judge Robertson has not commented on his resignation. But The Post quoted unnamed colleagues as saying he was concerned that information gained under the secret program could then be used to press the so-called FISA court to obtain warrants for further monitoring, subverting the congressionally defined process. It quoted one colleague, speaking anonymously, as saying some judges feared that the FISA body had become a 'Potemkin court.' Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, declined to comment on the matter. 'Judge Robertson did not comment on the matter and I don't see any reason why we need to,' he said. When Mr. Gonzales was asked about the resignation, he replied: 'I don't know the reason. I'm not going to speculate why a judge would step down from the FISA court.' FISA judges are limited to a single term, and Judge Robertson's would have expired in May. He was first named to the federal bench here by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Chief Justice William Rehnquist later appointed him as one of the 11 judges on the FISA court, which conducts its work in secrecy. Judge Robertson has not resigned from his district judgeship, an aide said. The emerging details of the secret surveillance program - first reported Friday by The New York Times - have angered many in Congress, who question the president's authority to order such warrantless spying on people in the United States and who deny that they were adequately informed or consulted. The administration said it has held a dozen classified briefings with congressional leaders on the matter, but at least two Democrats who took part - Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, and former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota - have said they received little information and raised serious concerns at the time. A bipartisan group of senators - Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine, both Republicans, and Dianne Feinstein of California, Carl Levin of Michigan and Ron Wyden of Oregon, all Democrats - called this week for the Senate judiciary and intelligence panels to open a joint investigation of the matter. Several critics of the classified program have asked why, if the FISA court had proved too cumbersome in an age of sharply heightened terror threat, the administration had not asked Congress to streamline the process. Mr. Gonzales said today that the administration had studied and rejected that option. 'We were advised it would be virtually impossible to obtain legislation of this kind without compromising the program,' he said. President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have vigorously defended the surveillance program as vitally important in preventing potentially calamitous terrorist attacks like those of Sept. 11, 2001. 'I would argue that the actions that we've taken there are totally appropriate and consistent with the constitutional authority of the president,' Mr. Cheney told reporters Tuesday aboard Air Force Two en route from Pakistan to Oman. 'You know, it's not an accident that we haven't been hit in four years.' The administration has said that even small delays under the FISA process could be critical. The FISA court, created in 1978, can legally authorize secret surveillance but only after the government shows probable cause that it is aimed at foreign governments or their agents, not what the law defines as 'U.S. persons,' a term that includes aliens legally in the country. The new program allows for surveillance, without FISA warrant, of people in the United States when they are believed to be communicating with terror suspects abroad. But the program has at times captured purely domestic communications, The New York Times reported today. Quoting unnamed officials, it said that a small number of internal communications were captured, apparently accidentally. The widespread use of cellphones reportedly makes it harder at times to determine whether a call crosses borders. Mr. Bush had said in a news conference Monday that internal communications were not part of the secret program. 'I want to stress, and that is, is that these calls are not intercepted within the country,' he said. 'If you're calling from Houston to L.A., that - that call is not monitored.'

Subject: Debate 'That Will Not Go Away' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:47:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: tp://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/12/science/12prof.html?pagewanted=all&position= April 12, 2005 Theorist Drawn Into Debate 'That Will Not Go Away' By CORNELIA DEAN CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Dr. Evelyn Fox Keller is a physicist, a mathematical biologist and a professor of the history and philosophy of science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This semester, as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard, she is continuing her work on neurological and psychological development. She wishes people would keep some of that in mind. They're losing sight of it, though, because Dr. Keller has also been a theorist of gender and science - and nowadays, especially at Harvard, that is a hot topic. When she gave a talk Thursday titled 'Innate Confusion: Nature, Nurture and All That,' organizers who originally expected a merely respectable turnout found themselves with hundreds of listeners filling every seat and much of the aisle space in a large auditorium. 'Two claims are made about the debate,' Dr. Keller told her audience. 'One, it is over. Two, it does not go away.' Neither she nor her questioners spoke about Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, at least not at a microphone, but he might as well have been in the room. Dr. Summers, the president of Harvard, made news in January when, at a conference on women in science, he suggested the possibility that the relative dearth of women at the upper reaches of science might result from deficiencies in mathematics talent. His remarks ignited a fire that has yet to burn out. For Dr. Keller, the idea of women's lack of ability was old news. She encountered it personally as a physics graduate student at Harvard in the late 50's and early 60's, an experience she recalled in an essay as a time of 'almost unmitigated provocation, insult and denial.' The essay, at once an anguished cry from the heart and a withering indictment of sexism and bad manners, appears in the 1977 collection 'Working It Out.' Its shock waves still reverberate in her old department, she said. In 1985 - after marriage, divorce, the struggle of raising two children as a single mother and the professional isolation she experienced as a result - she addressed the issue of women in science in a much larger framework, in 'Reflections on Gender and Science.' Today, though, Dr. Keller said in interviews, it frustrates her to be drawn back into the debate over the place of women in science. First, her professional focus as a researcher has changed in the last 20 years. Second, in drawing her into the argument, people often miss a distinction she was and is careful to make between garden variety discrimination and what she sees as the larger underlying issue: the way society constructs ideas of masculinity, femininity and science, and how these ideas overlap - or don't. 'Let me make clear from the outset,' she wrote in 'Reflections,' 'that the issue that requires discussion is not, or at least not simply, the relative absence of women in science.' Women are relatively absent in almost all important intellectual and creative endeavors, she said. But few of these endeavors, she went on, 'bear so unmistakably the connotation of masculine in the very nature of the activity.' 'To both scientists and their public, scientific thought is male thought,' she continued. 'Hard' objectivity itself is identified with masculinity, she wrote, and 'soft' subjectivity is identified with femininity. 'What would it mean for science if it were otherwise?' One answer might be that women in graduate school might feel more welcome in physics. But many readers thought Dr. Keller provided another answer in her highly acclaimed biography of the geneticist Barbara McClintock, published in 1983, shortly before Dr. McClintock won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her elucidation of the genetics of corn. As the book recounted, Dr. McClintock did not simply study her plants bit by microscopic bit, in the prevailing reductionist mode. Instead, she came to know her maize plants, embracing them almost as collaborators to the point that she acknowledged them when she received the prize. She had developed 'A Feeling for the Organism,' the title Dr. Keller chose for the book. Many people read it as a description of a kind of 'feminist' science, a view that obviously annoys Dr. Keller. 'My argument was that feeling and reason are both human traits,' she said. 'Why parse them according to the genders? Why exclude feelings from science and reason from women's domain? My whole effort was to erase those dichotomies.' Dr. Keller, whose honors and fellowships include a MacArthur award in 1992 (she used the money to buy a house on Cape Cod), was born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1936, the daughter of Russian immigrants. She grew up in Woodside, graduated with a degree in physics from Brandeis and went on to Harvard. Over the years, she taught at New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere before winning her appointment at M.I.T. in 1992. Her most recent work, including her book 'Making Sense of Life' in 2002, argues that what science regards as 'known' depends largely 'on the kinds of data we are able to acquire, on the way in which those data are gathered, and on the forms in which they are represented.' Not everyone accepts these ideas. 'When I saw her book, I was negatively impressed by it,' said Dr. Mark Ptashne, a microbiologist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. 'It sort of gave the impression that you don't really understand anything, that you don't know what a gene is.' But when he saw how Dr. Keller responded to attacks on her ideas, 'that made me realize what she was saying was quite reasonable,' he said. One way she responds is to point out that the concept of the gene as commonly understood can cause intellectual confusion. In her talk at Harvard last week she said it was wrong to view genes as acting on their own to produce certain characteristics because their expression in the body depends on the actions of other genes, chemicals in the cell and other factors. Although no geneticist suggests that genes act independent of their context, the relative importance of different influences is always in dispute. And many people have found it necessary recently to repeat the truism that genes do not act alone to counter the idea that women may be genetically doomed as scientific also-rans. So it is not surprising that Dr. Keller was drawn into the fray. At her talk Thursday, for example, several questioners asked, in various ways, whether science might one day 'tease out' the influences of nature and nurture so people would know which characteristics were theirs because they were born male or female, say, and which were products of upbringing and environment. In response, Dr. Keller said she wondered 'why there should be so much enthusiasm' for the idea that people are born, not made. For one thing, she said, there is 'nothing special' about birth as a line of demarcation in development, since even in the womb environment affects how genes are expressed. 'When we talk about innate and acquired it is rarely clear where to draw the line,' she said, 'and where to draw the line is rarely stable. What a mess! What a mess all our efforts to sort nature from nurture get us into.' Still, she said, that is not to suggest that delving into the problem is a waste of time. 'I remain an unreconstructed modernist,' she said. 'I retain the hope and even the belief that at least some forms of confusion can actually be cleared up.'

Subject: A Sicilian Christmas From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:35:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/dining/21sicily.html?ex=1292821200&en=5b203a3b497d5b3c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 A Sicilian Christmas With a Nod to the North By MARIAN BURROS ACI CASTELLO, Italy WE never had the Sicilian tradition for Christmas because we are such a mixed-up family,' Ornella Laneri said as she poured another glass of Almerita brut from the legendary Tasca d'Almerita cellars. 'Mixed-up' means her mother was born in Padua, in the north; her father is Sicilian. Ms. Laneri was explaining her family's Christmas Eve traditions to four strangers she had just welcomed to the temporary home outside Catania that she was sharing with her partner, Saverio Piazza, and her two children, Carolina and Michele. They were having a villa built across from the sea but it was not yet ready. We had met over the phone, and when I expressed an interest in experiencing a real Sicilian Christmas, she graciously asked us to join her for Christmas Eve 2004. When we arrived Ms. Laneri greeted us as if we were old friends. She and her brother, Nicola Laneri, who was also visiting with his American-born wife, Karen Abend, proceeded to explain why we would not be eating a feast of seven fishes, the traditional Christmas Eve dinner in Italy. 'Our celebration merges two different ethnic identities,' Mr. Laneri said. 'To defend her identity, my grandmother kept doing seafood for Christmas Eve. In her family, it was almost illegal to have a non-seafood plate, but in Sicily, it is not as strict a rule.' Instead of a penitential dinner of seven fish dishes, the Laneri-Piazza dinner included fish, beef, pork and chicken - 11 dishes in all, and accompanying sauces. Having a professional chef do the cooking also made the meal different from what most families might serve. Mr. Piazza is the food and beverage manager and executive chef at the Sheraton Catania, where Ms. Laneri is the director of the hotel and her father is the owner. Mr. Piazza, like all talented chefs, feels compelled to modify and improve on traditional dishes. Sparkling wine in hand, I visited him in the kitchen, as he was putting the finishing touches on the meal. But it was the American movie posters on the kitchen walls - Marilyn Monroe, 'Casablanca' - that first attracted my attention. 'I have the States in my heart,' said Ms. Laneri, a devotee of American pop culture. 'We have waffles and maple syrup for Sunday breakfast. I could die for cheesecake. I used to have plastic flowers, but I am a mother now so I'm serious.' She laughed. 'The first party in my new house, we will have lights in the ice cubes.' In honor of the visiting Americans, Mr. Piazza had pulled out all the stops. Instead of one scacciata - which Giuliano Bugialli's 'Foods of Sicily and Sardinia' (Rizzoli, 1996) describes as a stuffed pizza - there were two. Scacciata (ska-CHOT-tah), which is central to Christmas Eve in Eastern Sicily, is actually a two-crust pie of raised bread dough: one of Mr. Piazza's was filled with cauliflower, tuma (a cheese), black olives, green onions and anchovies; the other with tuna, anchovies and cheese. His version of bacalao pairs the dried cod with pears, potatoes, pine nuts, capers and olives. The pears and pine nuts add a delightfully unexpected touch of sweetness to the dish. Sicilians long ago adapted the risotto style of cooking rice from the north and on this Christmas Eve, Mr. Piazza served a magnificent black-ink risotto with cuttlefish, the mixture topped with sheep's milk ricotta, a Sicilian addition, baked briefly in the oven. The chef David Pasternack of Esca, who helped adapt the recipe, said he liked it so much that he plans to serve it at the restaurant. Pasta al forno, or pasta baked in the oven, is a must on many Sicilian Christmas Eve tables. Mr. Piazza's tortiglioni, rigatoni on steroids, was a spectacular rendition, the tortiglioni stuffed with a ragù of pork and beef that was also poured over the pasta. When the final dish is unmolded, it looks like so many soldiers in a close-order drill. The platter was decorated with speck, uncooked ham. The galantine of chicken was French but also a tradition on the eastern part of the island. It had been boned and stuffed with veal and pistachios, and served with spiced oranges, a condiment Mr. Piazza created that was redolent of coriander and cinnamon. The galantine made its way to Sicily in the 19th century, when wealthy Europeans across the Continent embraced French cooking. Among landed Sicilians, it was customary to employ a cook called a monzu - perhaps a variation of 'monsieur' - who cooked French food for the family. What Ms. Laneri does not serve on Christmas Eve is the traditional eel, or capitone. 'It's typically southern, and my paternal grandmother always cooked it,' said her brother, Mr. Laneri. 'It's very fatty and doesn't taste very good and smells very fishy, so when you are a child you don't like it. We all still hate it.' From the maternal side of the family came the pannetone, a distinctly northern sweet bread now popular all over Sicily. And there were figs stuffed with almonds and cocoa, dates stuffed with pistachios, and a bowl of grapes and various members of the orange family, all local because Sicily grows some of the finest fruits in the world. The cheeses were local, too: tuma persa, a mild sheep's milk cheese; cacciocavallo, a cow cheese from Ragusa; vastedda del belice, another cow cheese; and some pecorino from the town of Enna turned bright yellow by the saffron with which it is made. There were several Sicilian wines and one additional touch of France to end the meal: Cristal Champagne. In keeping with northern Italian influences, there was also a Christmas tree. When Ms. Laneri's grandmother came to Catania in 1945, her granddaughter says, her neighbors thought she was crazy to cut down a tree, take it in the house and trim it. Today, there are decorated trees all over Sicily. After dinner, Mr. Piazza swept 4-year-old Carolina into his arms and took her to look out into the starry night for Father Christmas. Her search was unsuccessful, but it gave her mother a chance to bring her presents out of hiding. And what would a mother, in love with American pop culture, give her little daughter? A pink Disney Princess TV, of course. Is there a Barbie in Carolina's future?

Subject: Gravity of a Disease From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:27:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/09/books/09masl.html?ex=1273291200&en=c85d6fb71af1d7ac&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss May 9, 2005 That 'Prozac' Man Defends the Gravity of a Disease By JANET MASLIN In his new book, Peter D. Kramer tells a story about traveling to promote the best-known of his earlier books, 'Listening to Prozac,' and regularly encountering the same kind of wiseguy in lecture audiences. Wherever he went, somebody would ask him whether the world would be shorter on Impressionist masterpieces if Prozac had been prescribed for Vincent van Gogh. Sunflowers and starry nights aside, this anecdote is revealing. It conveys both the facts that 'Listening to Prozac' made a mental health celebrity out of Dr. Kramer (who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University) and that the book's success left him uneasy. He became a target, not only of New Yorker cartoons (one of which featured a Prozac-enhanced Edgar Allan Poe being nice to a raven) but of condescension from his professional peers. He found out that there was no intellectual advantage to be gained from pointing the way to sunnier moods. 'Against Depression' is a defensive maneuver against such vulnerability. With both a title and an argument that summon Susan Sontag (in 'Against Interpretation' and 'Illness as Metaphor'), the author argues against the idea that depression connotes romance or creativity. While fully acknowledging depression's seductiveness (Marlene Dietrich is one of his prototypes of glamorous apathy), and grasping how readily the connection between gloom and spiritual depth has been made, Dr. Kramer argues for a change in priorities. He maintains that depression's physiology and pathology matter more than its cachet. Dr. Kramer makes this same point over and over in 'Against Depression.' It may be self-evident, but it's not an idea that easily sinks in. As this book points out, the tacit glorification of depression inspires entire art forms: 'romantic poetry, religious memoir, inspirational tracts, the novel of youthful self-development, grand opera, the blues.' There isn't much comparable magnetism in the realms of resilience, happiness and hope. What's more, he says, our cultural embrace of despair has a respected pedigree. Depression is the new tuberculosis: 'an illness that signifies refinement,' as opposed to one that signifies unpleasantness and pain. In a book that mixes medical theory, case histories and the occasional flash of autobiography, Dr. Kramer speaks of having been immersed in depression - 'not my own' - when inundated with memoirs about the depressed and their pharmacological adventures. He finds there is a lot more confessional writing of this sort than there is about suffering from, say, kidney disease. But depression, in his view, is as dangerous and deserving of treatment as any other long-term affliction. When regarded in purely medical terms, evaluated as a quantifiable form of degeneration, depression loses its stylishness in a hurry. Here, matters grow touchy: the author is careful to avoid any remedial thoughts that might appear to promote the interests of drug companies. So there are no miracle cures here; there is just the hope that an embrace of strength and regeneration can supplant the temptation to equate despair with depth. 'Against Depression' returns repeatedly to this central, overriding premise. Perhaps Dr. Kramer's talk-show-ready scare tactics are essential to his objectives. 'The time to interrupt the illness is yesterday,' he writes, building the case for why even seemingly brief interludes of depression can signal a relentless pattern of deterioration in a patient's future. For anyone who has spent even two straight weeks feeling, for instance, sad, lethargic, guilty, alienated and obsessed with trifles, 'Against Depression' has unhappy news. The author does not stop short of declaring that 'depression is the most devastating disease known to humankind.' But this claim, like much of the medical data discussed here, is open to interpretation and heavily dependent on the ways in which individual factors are defined. How far do the incapacitating properties of depression extend? Do they lead only to sadness and paralysis, or also to self-destructive behavior, addictions, failures, job losses and patterns passed down to subsequent generations? Whatever the case, Dr. Kramer is clearly well armed for the debate he will incite. While its medical information, particularly about depression-related damage to the brain, is comparatively clear-cut, it is in the realm of culture that 'Against Depression' makes its strongest case. In these matters, Dr. Kramer is angry and defensive: he finds it outrageous that William Styron's 'Darkness Visible' endows depression with such vague witchcraft ('a toxic and unnamable tide,' 'this curious alteration of consciousness') or that Cynthia Ozick can complain that John Updike's 'fictive world is poor in the sorrows of history.' He himself finds Updike's world rich in life-affirming attributes that tend to be underrated. He wonders how much of the uniformly acknowledged greatness of Picasso's blue period has to do with its connection with the suicide of one of Picasso's friends. By the same token, he is amazed by a museum curator's emphasis on the bleakest work of Bonnard, though this painter strikes Dr. Kramer as 'a man for whom fruit is always ripe.' Similar material, with the potential to illustrate the high status of low moods, is endless. There is a whole chapter on Sylvia Plath that the author didn't even bother to write. There is more breadth of evidence than innovative thinking in 'Against Depression.' Nonetheless, this book successfully advances the cartography of a (quite literally) gray area between physical and mental illness. And in the process it settles a few scores for the author, whose last book was a novel about a radical blowing up trophy houses on Cape Cod. Here is his chance to assert that he wrote his senior thesis on death in Dickens's writing; he listened to a lot of Mozart and Schubert in college; that he, too, has succumbed to the erotic power of bored, affectless, emotionally unavailable women in candlelit rooms. But he wrote this book in a state of reasonable contentment. He finds life well worth living. He's tired - in ways that have potent ramifications for all of us - of being treated as a lightweight for that.

Subject: Practice, Practice. Go to College? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:20:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/arts/dance/21danc.html?ex=1292821200&en=44ee8e8436010598&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 Practice, Practice, Practice. Go to College? Maybe. By ERIKA KINETZ Mark Morris possesses five honorary doctorates. But he did not spend a day in college, rather training for a life in dance at what he likes to call 'L'École of Hard Knocks.' This, for him, consisted of heading to Europe after high school to practice folk dancing in Macedonia and Spanish dancing in Madrid. He also spent a fair amount of time cooking chickens and hanging out at weddings. No surprise, then, that he dismisses what has become almost de rigueur for modern dancers: a college-level education. 'Most of it in my opinion is just a big bag of wind,' said Mr. Morris, whose Mark Morris Dance Group turned 25 this year. 'Most college-level dance education should be pedagogy and criticism and history and theory and whatever and not be about performing dance.' Conservatory training fares little better in Mr. Morris's view. 'I mostly think it ruins people,' he said, though he did concede that Juilliard may be doing something right, given the fact that five of his dancers are graduates. 'The .001 percent of people who graduate and become dance professionals, hurray for them,' he said. 'They are very lucky. I think most often it's in spite of school.' College-level dance programs are proliferating. Dance magazine's College Guide lists more than 500 such programs, up from 131 in 1966. But stable, paying jobs in the field are hard to find. And the utility of a college degree in dancing is a matter of endless debate. Much of the training of modern dancers still takes place in independent dance studios, not colleges, universities or conservatories. Indeed, conservatories like the Juilliard School and the dance program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts admit students only by audition, which means most people have some kind of training before they even apply. And if a number of dancers who did go to college say they were first exposed to modern dance in college, they add that they really learned to dance in childhood, from their first ballet, jazz or tap teachers. So while college-age dancers, like college football players, face long odds of landing a spot in the pros, the picture is far murkier for the dancer than the running back: the football player at least knows that he has to go to college to have a shot at the N.F.L. 'I thought you had to put all your eggs in that basket to make it happen,' said Lauren Grant, who went to the Tisch School and joined the Morris company in 1998. 'I know now that's not true.' She credits N.Y.U. with helping her get her job with Mr. Morris, but she also says she wishes she had received a deeper academic education. Not going to college at all gives young dancers a head start on what in many cases is a short career, and it remains the norm for professional ballet dancers. Modern dance is physically more permissive, but still mainly a young person's pursuit; those who rise through the ranks outside academia may be at a disadvantage when it comes to finding teaching jobs after they retire from the stage. 'In this climate, if you want to teach, you have to have a master's,' said Maile Okamura, who joined the Morris company in 2001, after a career in ballet, and is one of just two of Mr. Morris's 17 dancers who lack a college degree. 'I don't even have a bachelor's. I'm outside that system. I'm not sure how it's going to pan out.' Rima Faber, the program director of the nonprofit National Dance Education Organization, which promotes dance training, said the dance boom in colleges was partly due to the passage of the anti-sex-discrimination law Title IX in 1972 and the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974. 'Physical education went co-ed,' she said. 'And physical education for women started focusing on dance.' In the 1980's and 90's, most of these programs migrated out of the gym and into fine-arts departments. Even so, most are not designed to train professional performers. A star or two may emerge every few years, but many more alumni become teachers or scholars, or leave the field entirely. Some administrators say their programs have flourished simply because people love to dance. The dance department at Juilliard, which has the luxury of admitting only the best of the best, estimates that in the last few years some 60 to 70 percent of students have found work as dancers after graduating. 'We are sending a steady stream of young dance artists into the field, where they are being very well received,' said Lawrence Rhodes, the director of Juilliard's dance division. Tisch does not maintain employment statistics for its graduates, but Linda Tarnay, the chairwoman of the dance department, does acknowledge the awkwardness of preprofessional training for a profession with few paid jobs. 'We have grant-writing workshops,' Ms. Tarnay said. 'We have tax people come and talk to them about how to keep their taxes. But how to get a paying job? I can't say we do very well at that. I don't know what we could do.' There are no national statistics available, but the national service organization Dance/USA's surveys of two major metropolitan areas - Washington in 2003 and Chicago in 2002 - found that only 21 of the 286 companies in those two cities offered salaried positions. About half did not pay dancers at all. Nonetheless, Ms. Tarnay said that applications to the Tisch dance program have been increasing; last year 450 people auditioned for 30 slots. 'I think it's a miracle that anybody comes,' she said. 'I'm amazed every year that people still want to do this.' An added difficulty for educators trying to cram life skills into their curriculums is that dancers today must be more physically versatile than ever. Modern techniques have proliferated, and many choreographers now work on a project basis, so most dancers perform with different choreographers over the course of their careers. 'There aren't enough hours in the day to do all the kinds of disciplines and techniques and forms of dance,' Mr. Rhodes of Juilliard said. 'The variety of what is expected of students has expanded hugely.' Bradon McDonald, a 1997 Juilliard graduate now in the Morris company, said he was happy that his training focused on dance, rather than, say, grant writing or public relations. 'I don't think training dancers in business is going to make the dance world blossom,' he said. 'I think training dancers in dancing is the only option.' Dance departments at liberal arts colleges take a different approach. Brown University, for example, has no dance major and does not even offer ballet classes; dance classes are offered through its well-regarded theater, speech and dance department. 'Nobody is training anybody to be a professional in anything at Brown,' said Julie Strandberg, the director of the university's dance program. 'We're training people to be educated, well-rounded people.' Two of Mr. Morris's dancers attended Brown, but Ms. Strandberg said that few of the students who dance seriously there stay in the field. Some become performers or scholars; others become doctors or lawyers who later serve on the boards of dance companies. Joe Bowie, who graduated from Brown with honors in English and American literature and joined the Morris company in 1994, is an exceptional case: he started dancing in college, on a dare, and soon dropped his pre-med ambitions. 'I was smitten,' he said. While a late start like Mr. Bowie's is difficult for a man, it is near-impossible for a woman. Marjorie Folkman and June Omura, both members of the Morris company, graduated with honors from the dance program at Barnard College, which has an extensive roster of technique classes and is the only school at an Ivy League university with a dance major. Having danced since childhood, Ms. Folkman decided to go to Barnard in part, she said, because she thought attending a conservatory would have been an intellectual sacrifice. But she spent her college years second-guessing herself. 'I wanted to transfer out,' she said. 'I kept thinking: I should be in a conservatory, because I'm not getting the training.' Today, she says, she is grateful she stayed in college. 'We graduated knowing that if you can't find work, make up your own work,' Ms. Folkman said, adding that she feels equipped to tackle a postdance career, whatever it may be. 'I am capable of doing other things. I had to take physics. I had to read and discuss and debate and be in the world.' All that reading and discussion may even be good for dancing. 'The more widely exposed to all ideas you are, the more interesting person and therefore dancer you are,' Ms. Omura said, adding that she had given up on a dance career until she rediscovered modern dance at Barnard. 'That sounds fanciful, but I really believe it's true.' Barnard does not have detailed employment information about its dance alumni. Mary Cochran, the chairwoman of the college's department of dance, said that recent dance majors had gone on to medical school, independent choreography and teaching. One is a Fulbright scholar; one dances for Neta Pulvermacher; and one just joined Philadanco, whose founder, Joan Myers Brown, was the subject of the graduate's senior thesis. Ultimately, Mr. Morris says he does not care what kind of degrees, if any, his dancers have; he cares only that they can dance. His advice to aspiring dancers? 'Dance,' he said. 'Read. Learn music. Look around. Participate in the world.' Which, to some, may sound very much like the ideals of a college education. Presented with this conundrum, Mr. Morris paused. 'You need fabulous parents,' he said. 'I don't know what the answer is.'

Subject: Toyota Closes In on G.M. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 06:16:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21auto.html?ex=1292821200&en=60938fa1b8bbc285&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 Toyota Closes In on G.M. By MICHELINE MAYNARD and JAMES BROOKE DETROIT - After reigning atop the global auto industry since the depths of the Depression in the 1930's, General Motors may finally cede its spot next year to Toyota. The Japanese company's ascendancy underscores the enormous obstacles faced by G.M. on many fronts. On Tuesday, Toyota announced from its offices in Nagoya, Japan, that it planned to produce 9.06 million cars worldwide in 2006. That would be a 10 percent increase for the company, which has plants on every major continent. The expected output level - arriving four years ahead of previous projections - means that Toyota and G.M. will be in a tight battle for the crown as the world's biggest carmaker in 2006, a race that will pit the industry's strongest company against its struggling giant. But even if G.M. retains the title next year, the industry already views Toyota as the premier automaker, flush with cash and posting a steady increase in sales in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia during the past decade. Toyota passed Ford to become the world's second-largest carmaker in 2003. 'G.M. is not the company it used to be, and it's not going to be what it was ever again,' said Jeffrey K. Liker, a professor of engineering at the University of Michigan and the author of 'The Toyota Way,' the best-selling book that examined the Japanese company's management principles. Reflecting that view, G.M. shares on Tuesday fell to their lowest level since the stock market crash in 1987. They closed at $19.85, down $1.20, on the Toyota estimate and the news that the billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian had sold 12 million shares of his G.M. stock. This year, G.M. shares have lost 50 percent of their value, the more recent pullbacks coming amid speculation that it may have to seek bankruptcy protection to overhaul its sagging North American operations. Toyota has long been coy about its ambitions to become No. 1, preferring to stay out of the spotlight as it grows. In 2002, it unveiled a goal of expanding its world market share to 15 percent in 2010, from 10 percent. When analysts realized that the goal would make Toyota the world's largest carmaker, the company stressed that its mission was only an expanded market share. At the news conference in Nagoya, held to announce the company's plans for 2006, Toyota's president, Katsuaki Watanabe, repeatedly played down talk of a race to the top. 'Whether Toyota is going to become No. 1 in the world or not is not something that I know,' Mr. Watanabe said. 'I am not conscious if Toyota is going to become No. 1 in the world or not.' That sentiment was echoed by one of Toyota's top manufacturing executives in the United States, the auto company's largest market. 'We don't have signs out there that say we want to beat G.M., we want to be No. 1,' Dennis Cuneo, senior vice president at Toyota Motor North America, said in an interview Tuesday. 'That's not the way we operate.' G.M. declined to comment Tuesday on Toyota's projections. It has not released a global production forecast for 2006, but analysts estimate that it will build about 9.08 million cars in 2005. Last month, G.M. said it would close three plants in North America next year, part of a plan to close all or parts of 12 plants through 2008 and eliminate 30,000 jobs. The difference between Toyota's production goal for 2006 and where G.M. is expected to end up this year is essentially the output of one assembly plant. And Toyota is expanding well beyond that in North America alone. Next year, the company plans to open a truck factory in San Antonio able to make 200,000 pickups a year. The next year, a Subaru plant in Indiana will start making 100,000 Toyotas a year. And in 2008, Toyota is to open an assembly plant in Ontario, its second there, with a capacity to build 100,000 vehicles annually. The expansion drive, coupled with growth elsewhere, has stretched Toyota's management resources. At a recent board meeting, company directors warned executives not to become complacent or overconfident as the company accelerates, according to a person who participated in the discussions but spoke on the condition he not be identified because the information was closely held. Toyota's growth plan, however, speaks louder than its caution, said James P. Womack, an author and expert on manufacturing efficiency. 'I think they think they're at an unavoidable point,' Mr. Womack said Tuesday. With G.M. traveling in reverse, 'it's less awkward to get over in the left lane and just pass,' he added. But some analysts said G.M. could stay ahead of Toyota given the American company's expansion outside the United States, where G.M. now makes more vehicles than at home. G.M. is aggressively expanding in Asia, where it has sold one million vehicles this year, and it wants to make China its second-biggest market behind the United States. 'I am not sure that it is such a layup for Toyota,' Kurt Sanger, Japan automotive analyst for Macquarie Securities Japan, said in Tokyo on Tuesday. 'If G.M. is going to grow 15-20 percent in China, they are not going to roll over.' But it is far easier for Toyota to finance its plans, given its strong financial position. During the third quarter, for example, Toyota earned a net profit of $2.6 billion. G.M., weighed down by heavy pension and health care costs, lost $1.63 billion, and some analysts expect it to lose as much as $5 billion on its North American operations this year. This year, Toyota's American sales are up 9.9 percent, and it is likely to sell nearly 2.3 million vehicles in the United States in 2005. By contrast, at G.M., despite deep discounting in the summer, American sales have fallen 3.7 percent this year. G.M. is expected to sell about 4.2 million cars this year in the United States, its biggest market. Mr. Womack said the drop to second place might be good for G.M., if it focused the company on its comeback effort. Analysts have often criticized G.M.'s obsession with shoring up its dwindling market share, which has forced it to push mediocre vehicles through showrooms with hefty incentives, rather than develop cars that can sell without rebates. Still, G.M.'s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, is vowing not to become the industry's silver medalist. This year, Mr. Wagoner said the fight for industry dominance was broader than just a one-on-one battle between his company and Toyota; G.M. has car-building and other development ventures with Toyota. 'I'm not conceding anything to anybody, ' Mr. Wagoner said. But with Toyota opening plants in Texas and Ontario, even Michigan's governor, Jennifer M. Granholm, is courting Toyota. The governor, a Democrat, has been relentless in her efforts to win a small-engine plant, which Toyota may open to supply engines to support vehicles built at the Subaru plant in Indiana. Toyota's likely rise to the top spot is 'one of the reasons we would like to have them in Michigan,' Ms. Granholm said in an interview Monday. Toyota already has a technical center in Ann Arbor, Mich., and has announced plans to add a design center in the state. Regardless, Mr. Womack said that Toyota itself would benefit from real competition posed by G.M. and Ford. 'It's never good for the leader to go unchallenged,' he said. 'The world would be a better place if G.M. and Ford were playing a better game.'

Subject: Intelligent Design Derailed From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 05:57:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/opinion/22thur1.html?ex=1292907600&en=af56b21719a9dd8f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 22, 2005 Intelligent Design Derailed By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution. Not only were they voted off the school board by an exasperated public last November, but this week a federal district judge declared their handiwork unconstitutional and told the school district to abandon a policy of such 'breathtaking inanity.' A new and wiser school board is planning to do just that by removing intelligent design from the science curriculum and perhaps placing it in an elective course on comparative religion. That would be a more appropriate venue to learn about what the judge deemed 'a religious view, a mere relabeling of creationism and not a scientific theory.' The intelligent design movement holds that life forms are too complex to have been formed by natural processes and must have been fashioned by a higher intelligence, which is never officially identified but which most adherents believe to be God. By injecting intelligent design into the science curriculum, the judge ruled, the board was unconstitutionally endorsing a religious viewpoint that advances 'a particular version of Christianity.' The decision will have come at an opportune time if it is able to deflect other misguided efforts by religious conservatives to undermine the teaching of evolution, a central organizing principle of modern biology. In Georgia, a federal appeals court shows signs of wanting to reverse a lower court that said it was unconstitutional to require textbooks to carry a sticker disparaging evolution as 'a theory, not a fact.' That's the line of argument used by the anti-evolution crowd. We can only hope that the judges in Atlanta find the reasoning of the Pennsylvania judge, who dealt with comparable issues, persuasive. Meanwhile in Kansas, the State Board of Education has urged schools to criticize evolution. It has also changed the definition of science so it is not limited to natural explanations, opening the way for including intelligent design or other forms of creationism that cannot meet traditional definitions of science. All Kansans interested in a sound science curriculum should heed what happened in Dover and vote out the inane board members. The judge in the Pennsylvania case, John Jones III, can hardly be accused of being a liberal activist out to overturn community values - even by those inclined to see conspiracies. He is a lifelong Republican, appointed to the bench by President Bush, and has been praised for his integrity and intellect. Indeed, as the judge pointed out, the real activists in this case were ill-informed school board members, aided by a public interest law firm that promotes Christian values, who combined to drive the board to adopt an imprudent and unconstitutional policy. Judge Jones's decision was a striking repudiation of intelligent design, given that Dover's policy was minimally intrusive on classroom teaching. Administrators merely read a brief disclaimer at the beginning of a class asserting that evolution was a theory, not a fact; that there were gaps in the evidence for evolution; and that intelligent design provided an alternative explanation and could be further explored by consulting a book in the school library. Yet even that minimal statement amounted to an endorsement of religion, the judge concluded, because it caused students to doubt the theory of evolution without scientific justification and presented them with a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory. The case was most notable for its searching inquiry into whether intelligent design could be considered science. The answer, after a six-week trial that included hours of expert testimony, was a resounding no. The judge found that intelligent design violated the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking supernatural causation and by making assertions that cannot be tested or proved wrong. Moreover, intelligent design has not gained acceptance in the scientific community, has not been supported by peer-reviewed research, and has not generated a research and testing program of its own. The core argument for intelligent design - the supposedly irreducible complexity of key biological systems - has clear theological overtones. As long ago as the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that because nature is complex, it must have a designer. The religious thrust behind Dover's policy was unmistakable. The board members who pushed the policy through had repeatedly expressed religious reasons for opposing evolution, though they tried to dissemble during the trial. Judge Jones charged that the two ringleaders lied in depositions to hide the fact that they had raised money at a church to buy copies of an intelligent design textbook for the school library. He also found that board members were strikingly ignorant about intelligent design and that several individuals had lied time and again to hide their religious motivations for backing the concept. Their contention that they had a secular purpose - to improve science education and encourage critical thinking - was declared a sham. No one believes that this thoroughgoing repudiation of intelligent design will end the incessant warfare over evolution. But any community that is worried about the ability of its students to compete in a global economy would be wise to keep supernatural explanations out of its science classes.

Subject: Zimbabwe Salons get a Haircut - 2100% inflation From: Johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 05:01:15 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4545792.stm Profits cut for Zimbabwe hairdressers By Steve Vickers BBC, Harare Christmas is usually the busiest time of the year for salons A joke doing the rounds in Zimbabwe is that Christmas has been cancelled this year due to economic constraints. That may not be the case exactly, but most people are feeling the pinch, and many women are having to cut back on their hairdressing budget and opt for long-lasting hairstyles. So while it used to be fancy sets like spirals and bobs, it's now fishtail, carrot, and other types of plaiting. Weaves are also in, as are dreadlocks, wigs and short hair. 'When you get to the festive season, this is normally the busiest time, when there are parties and everyone is bubbly and excited,' says Jackie Granger, one of Harare's leading hairstylists. You have to adjust to your pocket - I'd like to change my hairstyle once a month, but I just can't do that Salon customer 'But this year there's been a downward trend. People don't seem to be spending as much as they used to spend, particularly when it comes to hair, people would rather look for food or keep money for school fees rather than having their hair done. Shorter and shorter So the majority of fashion-conscious Zimbabwean women have had to compromise with their hair, though they're not finding it easy. Shaving your head is easier to manage and cheaper, says Vimbai 'My hairstyle is very very short and I have a tint - it's called copper,' explains one salon customer. 'I used to have long hair with weaves.' Another says: 'It's difficult but you have to adjust to your pocket. It's just beyond my means to have the trendy hairstyles. I'd like to change my hairstyle once a month, but I just can't do that.' You could even go for the ultimate in low maintenance hair - the completely bald look. It's becoming increasingly popular,' said one shaven-headed lady called Vimbai. 'I find myself more of a natural woman when I carry this hairstyle - It's very easy to manage.' 'And the other advantage of being bald is it's very versatile. I can change it to suit the occasion - if I get invited to a dinner I can just put on my wig and go.' Costs soar Zimbabwe's year-on-year inflation is now running at 502%. But official figures for prices at hair salons show a rise of 2100%, the highest rate of all categories monitored. In other words, on average, a hairstyle costs 20 times more than it did a year ago. 'With hairdressing they say it's a luxury business so when they bring in the products, there's a 60 or 65% duty on that,' Jackie Granger says. 'When you look at it sometimes you wonder if it's worth being in business because we are being out-priced.'

Subject: Anatomy of Severe Melancholy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 16:00:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/22ANGIERL.html?ex=1274500800&en=9f883a1d69fe9129&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss May 22, 2005 Anatomy of Severe Melancholy By Natalie Angier AGAINST DEPRESSION By Peter D. Kramer. PETER D. KRAMER, author of the phenomenally successful ''Listening to Prozac,'' may be thought of as America's Dr. Depression, and he may have done more than anybody else to illuminate the clawing, scabrous, catastrophic monotony that is depressive illness. But he has never suffered from the mental disorder himself. Not that he's a chipper bon vivant. ''I am easily upset,'' he writes in ''Against Depression.'' ''I brood over failures. I require solitude. . . . In medieval or Renaissance terms, I am melancholic as regards my preponderant humor.'' Still, he has never qualified for a diagnosis of even low-level depression. My first reaction to that biographical detail was to question Kramer's authority on the subject. How can you really understand what pain is, I wondered, if you've never felt the Cuisinart inside? I quickly dropped my objections, however, when I realized I was doing for depression precisely what Kramer warns against in this eloquent, absorbing and largely persuasive book. I was lifting it to the status of the metaphysical, or at least the meta-medical. I was granting to its specific pain the presumed reimbursement of revelation, the power to ennoble, instruct and certify the sufferer. By contrast, I'd never insist that my endocrinologist suffer my autoimmune disorder before treating me or talking publicly about autoimmunity; or that my endodontist, before extracting my infected dental pulp, first be ''enlightened'' with a few root canals of his own. That Kramer has not been depressed may in fact allow him to resist doing what depressives, and those who love them, too readily do, which is romanticize and totemize and finally trivialize the illness. Instead, Kramer, who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University, sees depression for what it is. ''It is fragility, brittleness, lack of resilience, a failure to heal,'' he writes. It is sadness, hopelessness, chronic exhaustion allied with corrosive anxiety, a loss of any emotion but guilt, of any desire but to stop, please stop, and to stay stopped, forever. ''Depression is a disease of extraordinary magnitude,'' he says, and ''the major scourge of humankind.'' Found by the World Health Organization to be the single most disabling disease, depression afflicts people of every age, class, race, creed and calling: as many as 25 percent of us will be caught in its vise at least once in our lives. The disease blights careers, shatters families and costs billions of dollars in lost workdays a year. Kramer cites studies putting the annual workplace cost in this country alone at $40 billion -- the equivalent of 3 percent of the gross national product. Depression also kills, through suicide, heart disease, pneumonia, accidents. Forget the persistent myth of depression as a source of artistry, soulfulness and rebellion. Depression doesn't fan creative flames. It is photophobic and anhedonic and would rather just drool in the dark. Kramer wrote ''Against Depression'' to dispel what he sees as the lingering charisma of the disease. And yes, people talk about it now as a biological disease rather than a moral or spiritual failing. The stigma of mental illness has mainly faded, and antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed of all medications. Nevertheless, in the dozen years since the publication of ''Listening to Prozac,'' Kramer has seen plenty of resistance to the idea that depression, like cancer, AIDS or malaria, is a disease without redeeming value, best annihilated entirely. He has read stacks of depression memoirs, and though most have parroted the party line that depression is a disease like any other, ''hints of pride almost invariably showed through, as if affliction with depression might after all be more enriching than, say . . . kidney failure.'' The writers couldn't help conveying the message: ''Depression gave me my soul.'' Moreover, whenever Kramer gives a talk, sooner or later an audience member invariably asks The Question. So, Dr. Kramer, what would have happened if van Gogh had taken Prozac? Or Kierkegaard? Or Virginia Woolf? The implication of the question is obvious. Throw out the depression bath water and, whoops, there go ''Starry Night'' and ''Mrs. Dalloway'' with it. Kramer presents a sustained case that depression, far from enhancing cognitive or emotional powers, essentially pokes holes in the brain, killing neurons and causing key regions of the prefrontal cortex -- the advanced part of the brain, located just behind the forehead -- to shrink measurably in size. He lucidly explains a wealth of recent research on the disease, citing work in genetics, biochemistry, brain imaging, the biology of stress, studies of identical twins. He compares the brain damage from depression with that caused by strokes. As a result of diminished blood flow to the brain, he says, many elderly stroke patients suffer crippling depressions. Is stroke-induced depression a form of ''heroic melancholy''? If not, then why pin merit badges on any expression of the disease? Rallying his extensive familiarity with art and literature, Kramer argues that history's depressive luminaries were creative not because of but despite their struggles with mental illness -- as a result of their underlying resilience, a quality he admires. Kramer envisions a utopian future in which neuro-resilience and neuro-regeneration may be easily induced with drugs or gene therapy. How much more intellectually and emotionally courageous might we be, he asks, how much more readily might we venture out on limbs and high wires, if we knew a private trampoline would always break our fall? KRAMER'S narrative is not seamless. He argues that depression has long been very much among us, and he rightly discounts pat evolutionary hypotheses about the disease's ''adaptive value,'' but he doesn't offer much of an explanation himself for how a condition so devastating has come to be so common. Kramer can also sound defensive and willfully dour. To counter possible charges of superficiality or a fondness for smiley-face fixes, he presents his ''bona fides as a person who can appreciate alienation, both the social and existential varieties,'' among them being a New York-born German Jew who lost many relatives in the Holocaust. He rejects our habitual conflation of tragedy with depth and joy with shallowness, yet when A. L. Kennedy, author of the memoir ''On Bullfighting,'' struggles to find some lightness by recalling how her suicidal fantasies clashed with her fear of public embarrassment, Kramer dismisses her attempts as an author's version of ''meeting cute.'' Ah, but self-mockery can be a small source of joy, even redemption, which is why, whenever I lapse into hand-wringing, I recall Ezra Pound's ode to misery, a parody of A. E. Housman: ''O woe, woe, / People are born and die, / We also shall be dead pretty soon / Therefore let us act as if we were dead already.'' Now that's what I call cute.

Subject: There's Nothing Deep About Depression From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 15:57:20 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/magazine/17DEPRESSION.html?ex=1271390400&en=9080bfd565933f8c&ei=5088 April 17, 2005 There's Nothing Deep About Depression By PETER D. KRAMER Shortly after the publication of my book ''Listening to Prozac,'' 12 years ago, I became immersed in depression. Not my own. I was contented enough in the slog through midlife. But mood disorder surrounded me, in my contacts with patients and readers. To my mind, my book was never really about depression. Taking the new antidepressants, some of my patients said they found themselves more confident and decisive. I used these claims as a jumping-off point for speculation: what if future medications had the potential to modify personality traits in people who had never experienced mood disorder? If doctors were given access to such drugs, how should they prescribe them? The inquiry moved from medical ethics to social criticism: what does our culture demand of us, in the way of assertiveness? It was the medications' extra effects -- on personality, not on the symptoms of depression -- that provoked this line of thought. For centuries, doctors have treated depressed patients, using medication and psychological strategies. Those efforts seemed uncontroversial. But authors do not determine the fate of their work. ''Listening to Prozac'' became a ''best-selling book about depression.'' I found myself speaking -- sometimes about ethics, more often about mood disorders -- with many audiences, in bookstores, at gatherings of the mentally ill and their families and at professional meetings. Invariably, as soon as I had finished my remarks, a hand would shoot up. A hearty, jovial man would rise and ask -- always the same question -- ''What if Prozac had been available in van Gogh's time?'' I understood what was intended, a joke about a pill that makes people blandly chipper. The New Yorker had run cartoons along these lines -- Edgar Allan Poe, on Prozac, making nice to a raven. Below the surface humor were issues I had raised in my own writing. Might a widened use of medication deprive us of insight about our condition? But with repetition, the van Gogh question came to sound strange. Facing a man in great pain, headed for self-mutilation and death, who would withhold a potentially helpful treatment? It may be that my response was grounded less in the intent of the question than in my own experience. For 20 years, I'd spent my afternoons working with psychiatric outpatients in Providence, R.I. As I wrote more, I let my clinical hours dwindle. One result was that more of my time was filled with especially challenging cases, with patients who were not yet better. The popularity of ''Listening to Prozac'' meant that the most insistent new inquiries were from families with depressed members who had done poorly elsewhere. In my life as a doctor, unremitting depression became an intimate. It is poor company. Depression destroys families. It ruins careers. It ages patients prematurely. Recent research has made the fight against depression especially compelling. Depression is associated with brain disorganization and nerve-cell atrophy. Depression appears to be progressive -- the longer the episode, the greater the anatomical disorder. To work with depression is to combat a disease that harms patients' nerve pathways day by day. Nor is the damage merely to mind and brain. Depression has been linked with harm to the heart, to endocrine glands, to bones. Depressives die young -- not only of suicide, but also of heart attacks and strokes. Depression is a multisystem disease, one we would consider dangerous to health even if we lacked the concept ''mental illness.'' As a clinician, I found the what if challenge ever less amusing. And so I began to ask audience members what they had in mind. Most understood van Gogh to have suffered severe depression. His illness, they thought, conferred special vision. In a short story, Poe likens ''an utter depression of soul'' to ''the hideous dropping off of the veil.'' The questioners maintained this 19th-century belief, that depression reveals essence to those brave enough to face it. By this account, depression is more than a disease -- it has a sacred aspect. Other questioners set aside that van Gogh was actually ill. They took mood disorder to be a heavy dose of the artistic temperament, so that any application of antidepressants is finally cosmetic, remolding personality into a more socially acceptable form. For them, depression was less than a disease. These attributions stood in contrast to my own belief, that depression is neither more nor less than a disease, but disease simply and altogether. udiences seemed to be aware of the medical perspective, even to endorse it -- but not to have adopted it as a habit of mind. To underscore this inconsistency, I began to pose a test question: We say that depression is a disease. Does that mean that we want to eradicate it as we have eradicated smallpox, so that no human being need ever suffer depression again? I made it clear that mere sadness was not at issue. Take major depression, however you define it. Are you content to be rid of that condition? Always, the response was hedged: aren't we meant to be depressed? Are we talking about changing human nature? I took those protective worries as expressions of what depression is to us. Asked whether we are content to eradicate arthritis, no one says, ''Well, the end-stage deformation, yes, but let's hang on to tennis elbow, housemaid's knee and the early stages of rheumatoid disease.'' Multiple sclerosis, acne, schizophrenia, psoriasis, bulimia, malaria -- there is no other disease we consider preserving. But eradicating depression calls out the caveats. To this way of thinking, to oppose depression too completely is to be coarse and reductionist -- to miss the inherent tragedy of the human condition. To be depressed, even gravely, is to be in touch with what matters most in life, its finitude and brevity, its absurdity and arbitrariness. To be depressed is to occupy the role of rebel and social critic. Depression, in our culture, is what tuberculosis was 100 years ago: illness that signifies refinement. Having raised the thought experiment, I should emphasize that in reality, the possibility of eradicating depression is not at hand. If clinicians are better at ameliorating depression than we were 10 years ago -- and I think we may be -- that is because we are more persistent in our efforts, combining treatments and (when they succeed) sticking with them until they have a marked effect. But in terms of the tools available, progress in the campaign against depression has been plodding. Still, it is possible to envisage general medical progress that lowers the rate of depression substantially -- and then to think of a society that enjoys that result. What is lost, what gained? Which is also to ask: What stands in the way of our embracing the notion that depression is disease, nothing more? This question has any number of answers. We idealize depression, associating it with perceptiveness, interpersonal sensitivity and other virtues. Like tuberculosis in its day, depression is a form of vulnerability that even contains a measure of erotic appeal. But the aspect of the romanticization of depression that seems to me to call for special attention is the notion that depression spawns creativity. Objective evidence for that effect is weak. Older inquiries, the first attempts to examine the overlap of madness and genius, made positive claims for schizophrenia. Recent research has looked at mood disorders. These studies suggest that bipolar disorder may be overrepresented in the arts. (Bipolarity, or manic-depression, is another diagnosis proposed for van Gogh.) But then mania and its lesser cousin hypomania may drive productivity in many fields. One classic study hints at a link between alcoholism and literary work. But the benefits of major depression, taken as a single disease, have been hard to demonstrate. If anything, traits eroded by depression -- like energy and mental flexibility -- show up in contemporary studies of creativity. How, then, did this link between creativity and depression arise? The belief that mental illness is a form of inspiration extends back beyond written history. Hippocrates was answering some such claim, when, around 400 B.C., he tried to define melancholy -- an excess of ''black bile'' -- as a disease. To Hippocrates, melancholy was a disorder of the humors that caused epileptic seizures when it affected the body and caused dejection when it affected the mind. Melancholy was blamed for hemorrhoids, ulcers, dysentery, skin rashes and diseases of the lungs. The most influential expression of the contrasting position -- that melancholy confers special virtues -- appears in the ''Problemata Physica,'' or ''Problems,'' a discussion, in question-and-answer form, of scientific conundrums. It was long attributed to Aristotle, but the surviving version, from the second century B.C., is now believed to have been written by his followers. In the 30th book of the ''Problems,'' the author asks why it is that outstanding men -- philosophers, statesmen, poets, artists, educators and heroes -- are so often melancholic. Among the ancients, the strongmen Herakles and Ajax were melancholic; more contemporaneous examples cited in the ''Problems'' include Socrates, Plato and the Spartan general Lysander. The answer given is that too much black bile leads to insanity, while a moderate amount creates men ''superior to the rest of the world in many ways. '' The Greeks, and the cultures that succeeded them, faced depression poorly armed. Treatment has always been difficult. Depression is common and spans the life cycle. When you add in (as the Greeks did) mania, schizophrenia and epilepsy, not to mention hemorrhoids, you encompass a good deal of what humankind suffers altogether. Such an impasse calls for the elaboration of myth. Over time, ''melancholy '' became a universal metaphor, standing in for sin and innocent suffering, self-indulgence and sacrifice, inferiority and perspicacity. The great flowering of melancholy occurred during the Renaissance, as humanists rediscovered the ''Problems.'' In the late 15th century, a cult of melancholy flourished in Florence and then was taken back to England by foppish aristocratic travelers who styled themselves artists and scholars and affected the melancholic attitude and dress. Most fashionable of all were ''melancholic malcontents,'' irritable depressives given to political intrigue. One historian, Lawrence Babb, describes them as ''black-suited and disheveled . . . morosely meditative, taciturn yet prone to occasional railing.'' In dozens of stage dramas from the period, the principal character is a discontented melancholic. ''Hamlet'' is the great example. As soon as Hamlet takes the stage, an Elizabethan audience would understand that it is watching a tragedy whose hero's characteristic flaw will be a melancholic trait, in this case, paralysis of action. By the same token, the audience would quickly accept Hamlet's spiritual superiority, his suicidal impulses, his hostility to the established order, his protracted grief, solitary wanderings, erudition, impaired reason, murderousness, role-playing, passivity, rashness, antic disposition, ''dejected haviour of the visage'' and truck with graveyards and visions. ''Hamlet'' is arguably the seminal text of our culture, one that cements our admiration for doubt, paralysis and alienation. But seeing ''Hamlet'' in its social setting, in an era rife with melancholy as an affected posture, might make us wonder how much of the historical association between melancholy and its attractive attributes is artistic conceit. In literature, the cultural effects of depression may be particularly marked. Writing, more than most callings, can coexist with a relapsing and recurring illness. Composition does not require fixed hours; poems or essays can be set aside and returned to on better days. And depression is an attractive subject. Superficially, mental pain resembles passion, strong emotion that stands in opposition to the corrupt world. Depression can have a picaresque quality -- think of the journey through the Slough of Despond in John Bunyan's ''Pilgrim's Progress.'' Over the centuries, narrative structures were built around the descent into depression and the recovery from it. Lyric poetry, religious memoir, the novel of youthful self-development -- depression is an affliction that inspires not just art but art forms. And art colors values. Where the unacknowledged legislators of mankind are depressives, dark views of the human condition will be accorded special worth. Through the ''anxiety of influence,'' heroic melancholy cast its shadow far forward, onto romanticism and existentialism. At a certain point, the transformation begun in the Renaissance reaches completion. It is no longer that melancholy leads to heroism. Melancholy is heroism. The challenge is not battle but inner strife. The rumination of the depressive, however solipsistic, is deemed admirable. Repeatedly, melancholy returns to fashion. As I spoke with audiences about mood disorders, I came to believe that part of what stood between depression and its full status as disease was the tradition of heroic melancholy. Surely, I would be asked when I spoke with college students, surely I saw the value in alienation. One medical philosopher asked what it would mean to prescribe Prozac to Sisyphus, condemned to roll his boulder up the hill. That variant of the what if question sent me to Albert Camus's essay on Sisyphus, where I confirmed what I thought I had remembered -- that in Camus's reading, Sisyphus, the existential hero, remains upbeat despite the futility of his task. The gods intend for Sisyphus to suffer. His rebellion, his fidelity to self, rests on the refusal to be worn down. Sisyphus exemplifies resilience, in the face of full knowledge of his predicament. Camus says that joy opens our eyes to the absurd -- and to our freedom. It is not only in the downhill steps that Sisyphus triumphs over his punishment: ''The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.'' I came to suspect that it was the automatic pairing of depth and depression that made the medical philosopher propose Sisyphus as a candidate for mood enhancement. We forget that alienation can be paired with elation, that optimism is a form of awareness. I wanted to reclaim Sisyphus, to set his image on the poster for the campaign against depression. Once we take seriously the notion that depression is a disease like any other, we will want to begin our discussion of alienation by asking diagnostic questions. Perhaps this sense of dislocation signals an apt response to circumstance, but that one points to an episode of an illness. Aware of the extent and effects of mood disorder, we may still value alienation -- and ambivalence and anomie and the other uncomfortable traits that sometimes express perspective and sometimes attach to mental illness. But we are likely to assess them warily, concerned that they may be precursors or residual symptoms of major depression. How far does our jaundiced view reach? Surely the label ''disease'' does not apply to the melancholic or depressive temperament? And of course, it does not. People can be pessimistic and lethargic, brooding and cautious, without ever falling ill in any way. But still, it seemed to me in my years of immersion that depression casts a long shadow. Though I had never viewed it as pathology, even Woody Allen-style neurosis had now been stripped of some of its charm -- of any implicit claim, say, of superiority. The cachet attaching to tuberculosis diminished as science clarified the cause of the illness, and as treatment became first possible and then routine. Depression may follow the same path. As it does, we may find that heroic melancholy is no more. In time, I came to think of the van Gogh question in a different light, merging it with the eradication question. What sort of art would be meaningful or moving in a society free of depression? Boldness and humor -- broad or sly -- might gain in status. Or not. A society that could guarantee the resilience of mind and brain might favor operatic art and literature. Freedom from depression would make the world safe for high neurotics, virtuosi of empathy, emotional bungee-jumpers. It would make the world safe for van Gogh. Depression is not a perspective. It is a disease. Resisting that claim, we may ask: Seeing cruelty, suffering and death -- shouldn't a person be depressed? There are circumstances, like the Holocaust, in which depression might seem justified for every victim or observer. Awareness of the ubiquity of horror is the modern condition, our condition. But then, depression is not universal, even in terrible times. Though prone to mood disorder, the great Italian writer Primo Levi was not depressed in his months at Auschwitz. I have treated a handful of patients who survived horrors arising from war or political repression. They came to depression years after enduring extreme privation. Typically, such a person will say: ''I don't understand it. I went through -- '' and here he will name one of the shameful events of our time. ''I lived through that, and in all those months, I never felt this.'' This refers to the relentless bleakness of depression, the self as hollow shell. To see the worst things a person can see is one experience; to suffer mood disorder is another. It is depression -- and not resistance to it or recovery from it -- that diminishes the self. Beset by great evil, a person can be wise, observant and disillusioned and yet not depressed. Resilience confers its own measure of insight. We should have no trouble admiring what we do admire -- depth, complexity, aesthetic brilliance -- and standing foursquare against depression. Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University and the author of ''Listening to Prozac.''

Subject: Problems in Developing Cancer Cures From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 11:45:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/health/21cancer.html?ex=1292821200&en=83fef0f52d81ec96&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 New Drug Points Up Problems in Developing Cancer Cures By GARDINER HARRIS WASHINGTON - Despite promising discoveries and multibillion-dollar investments, cancer research is quietly undergoing a crisis. Federal drug regulators will soon announce several initiatives that they hope will help salvage the field. Few drugs are being marketed, and most of those that have been introduced are enormously expensive and provide few of the benefits that patients expect. Officials of the Food and Drug Administration suggest that the failures may result from an obsolete testing system. There is growing evidence that X-rays, long the standard, may not accurately assess a patient's disease. The drug agency is creating collaborations to develop imaging, blood and other tests that better signal the progression of cancer. 'We need to develop cancer drugs differently,' the chief operating officer of the agency, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said in an interview. 'The tools we have to develop these treatments are not what we need in cancer.' On Tuesday, the agency approved Nexavar, a drug that officials described as 'a major advance' in treating kidney cancer. That action demonstrates the global confusion surrounding cancer. The manufacturer of Nexavar, Bayer, used X-rays to determine that the drug doubled the time, to 167 days from 84, before tumors grew substantially in number or size, a finding called 'progression-free survival.' Officials of the drug agency found the findings so compelling that they urged Bayer to stop the trial early and give Nexavar to subjects who had been taking placebos. European regulators, on the other hand, wanted the trial to continue because they wanted Bayer to prove that Nexavar actually extended lives, a finding that would have taken many more months to establish, a deputy commissioner of the drug agency, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said Tuesday in an interview. 'Nexavar is a good example of how we have developed better science around the development process itself that not only enables these drugs to come to market but to come to market more quickly,' Dr. Gottlieb said. Much work remains to be done, he said, adding: 'The crux of the crisis in oncology is that for years we have developed tremendous scientific advances in looking at how cancer develops, and that's not being translated into practical solutions that are benefiting patients at the pace you would expect. Look at what the government and all the drug companies are spending, and yet drugs are not reaching the market.' Groups of cancer patients say they, too, want better ways to measure success against cancer. 'That doesn't mean we want drugs pushed through faster,' the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, Frances M. Visco, said. 'It means we want better science, meaningful endpoints and drugs that have less toxicity and actually prolong survival.' There have been successes in oncology besides Nexavar, of course. Platinum-based drugs have mostly ended deaths from testicular cancer. Tamoxifen and Herceptin have saved thousands of women from breast cancer. And early screening has helped push down death rates. Researchers are not alone in their failures. Drug makers are in the midst of a dry spell that threatens the foundations of the industry. After peaking in 1996 at 53, the number of new drug approvals has steadily declined. This year, it is unlikely to exceed 17. Although every field has suffered, cancer has had the greatest chasm between hope and reality. One in 20 prospective cancer cures used in human tests reaches the market, the worst record of any medical category. Among those that gained approval in the last 20 years, fewer than one in five have been shown to extend lives, life extensions usually measured in weeks or months, not years. True cancer cures are still exceptionally rare. Medicines have been approved for colorectal cancer. Patients who take every one of the high-tech drugs has to spend, on average, $250,000, suffer serious side effects and gain, on average, months of life, according to studies. Drug companies have been promising for years that gene-hunting techniques would yield targeted nontoxic therapies that melt cancer, but few cancer medicines fit that profile. 'There are all these myths having to do with cancer drugs,' Dr. Steven Hirschfeld, an F.D.A. medical officer with expertise in cancer, said. 'That they're very targeted, when in fact all these drugs have multiple targets. That they're nontoxic, when in fact the latest ones have their own set of side effects. And that they're cures, when they are not.' Nexavar, for instance, seems to affect a variety of crucial molecules involved in powering cancer cells, but its real effects are uncertain. It can cause rashes, diarrhea and increases in blood pressure, although drug agency officials said it was far less toxic than previous therapies. The disappointing track record in cancer has mostly resulted, of course, because it is not one disease, but hundreds, whose progression is governed by a dizzying array of genetic and environmental factors that are just beginning to be understood. Drug agency officials are increasingly concerned that failures with cancer may result because the science of human testing, called drug development, has not advanced as rapidly as the understanding of the biology of cancer. 'My concern is that these novel drugs being discovered will bump up against an aging development process that can't adapt as quickly,' Dr. Gottlieb said. The agency will soon release a report that lists more than 12 research areas that it will address to try to improve clinical trials. Among the efforts is a search for new ways to measure cancer progression. For decades, X-rays have been the principal means for researchers to judge whether a cancer drug works. If tumors appear to shrink or stop growing after therapy, the drug is thought to be working. There is growing evidence that tumor size may not matter much. Small tumors can sometimes be as deadly as large tumors. That discovery has unmoored drug development. Researchers could track which patients live or die. But trials that measure life expectancy often take years and tens of millions of dollars to complete. Researchers and companies would dearly love an interim measure akin to cholesterol or blood pressure readings. The anxiety over measuring success in trials has led drug regulators around the world to try to provide guidance to companies. By coincidence, the Food and Drug Administration and drug regulators in Europe and Japan all released papers over the summer on cancer drug measurements. 'But I think it's more instructive what these documents didn't say,' Dr. Hirschfeld said. None endorsed any one measurement, he noted. For Nexavar, the drug agency accepted X-ray measures because the changes were so dramatic, said Dr. Richard Pazdur, director of the oncology office. The agency also encourages tests of new imaging equipment. Officials are hopeful about research into positron emission tomography, or PET scans. The scans show not only a tumor's size, but also its vigor. The drug agency is also setting up collaborations with the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services, and other groups to pursue other technologies, blood tests and genetic screens. In the end, though, the search for new ways to measure cancer may not be successful, said Dr. Susan S. Ellenberg, the associate dean for clinical research at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who spent much of her career at the drug agency and the cancer institute. Dr. Woodcock said success was vital. 'The science is at a point where we shouldn't let this opportunity escape us,' she said. 'There are ways to figure this out, and it's not like I'm some wild-eyed idealist. I'm the F.D.A., for heaven's sake. This is going to happen.'

Subject: Some Books Are Also Worth Keeping From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 10:39:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/books/21jeff.html?ex=1292821200&en=d499d4e130108f69&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 Some Books Are Worth Giving; Some Books Are Also Worth Keeping By MARGO JEFFERSON There's no escaping the glut of holiday books. They're handsome, they're expensive, they're all too easy to sell at a secondhand bookstore or repackage as a birthday present a few months from now. But here are a two suggestions for books that you will want to keep (or buy with that nice gift certificate). They are books that sharpen the mind and stir the heart. The first is 'The Solitude of Self: Thinking About Elizabeth Cady Stanton,' by Vivian Gornick, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Stanton belonged to that astonishing band of 19th-century American radicals who changed the way we live - among them Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B. Anthony and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Abolitionism taught the women to fight for justice; feminism challenged the men to expand their vision of what justice means. I love writers who treat thinking as a dynamic process. Ms. Gornick does - here, and in all her books. Imagine a photographer of the psyche. She studies her subject from all angles. Whether in close-up or on a landscape crowded with political and religious movements, she explores the public and private selves. Stanton was brilliant - driven by, in Ms. Gornick's words, 'a passion for thought' and for language. In her early years she cared for seven children during the day, then sat down in the kitchen at midnight 'to write a two-hour speech that demanded to know what it meant to be a human being.' In later years she toured the country to deliver those two-hour speeches in person and went before Congress to petition for suffrage. In 1848 Stanton and a small band of radical women had officially opened the war for women's rights at a convention in Seneca Falls, N.Y., issuing a 'Declaration of Sentiments' based on the Declaration of Independence and written by Stanton. (Among their demands were the right to vote, attend college and own property if married.) How stirring it is to read: 'He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice.' 'He has endeavored in every way that he could to destroy her confidence in her own powers, to lessen her self-respect, and to make her willing to lead a dependent and abject life.' But Ms. Gornick's book opens at a women's rights convention in 1892. Stanton is a 76-year-old veteran of a 44-year struggle. She will die in 10 years and she has learned, Ms. Gornick writes, that 'beyond the need for political equality lay an equally great need to create the conditions in which the inner life could flourish.' Women may desire to be coddled and sheltered, she told her audience; men may encourage that desire. But in the end, despite family, friends, lovers and allies, each of us is 'a solitary voyager. ... Our most bitter disappointments, our brightest hopes and ambitions are known only to ourselves. Alike amid the greatest triumphs and darkest tragedies of life, we walk alone.' This is the reality of human nature, Ms. Gornick writes, in words that bind Stanton's past to our present: 'We are compelled to create a society that will help us fight the worst in ourselves. To deny anyone the tools of survival - that is, the power to act - is criminal.' Stanton did not equivocate or retreat. She chastised the state first, and then the church. Her Women's Bible subjects every passage written about women to stern scholarly analysis. She criticized the social and religious bigotry of women. So does Ms. Gornick. Stanton was born into a distinguished Anglo-Saxon family. She too could be a snob and a bigot when pushed to the wall, heaping scorn on 'ignorant and degraded men' - native-born like 'Sambo' or immigrants like 'the Irishman.' How dare they have the vote when cultivated white women like herself did not? What, Ms. Gornick asks, is this 'strangely persistent' human need to see others as alien and unreal, even when we have suffered exclusion ourselves? Suffering can humanize people, she answers, but it also damages them. One of the first signs of damage is the need to turn our rage and shame onto someone else; to play, however briefly, the superior 'Us' to a lesser 'Them.' What a potent book this is! What a boon to be reminded that politics, like art, demands bold thought and unceasing imagination. Another book worth making a place for on your shelf is 'No Applause - Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,' by Trav S. D. (Faber & Faber). This delicious cultural history tracks America's sturdiest entertainment form back to Roman clowns and medieval Feasts of Fools, then forward to snake-oil salesmen and blackface minstrels; magicians and ventriloquists; trained mules and seals; stars like Mae West, Bert Williams, the Marx Brothers, Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, Fred Astaire and the Nicholas Brothers; the comics who ruled 1950's television and those who rule each new season of 'Saturday Night Live'; the avant-garde of Becket and Ionesco and 'new vaudevillians' like Penn and Teller, Bill Irwin and the Bindlestiff Family Circus. The author was formerly known as D. Travis Stewart; Trav S. D. is his vaudevillesque pen name. With its aesthetic of surprise and constant stimulus, he writes, the variety show is perfect for our 'post-MTV, post-postmodern, attention-deficit-ridden age of electronic-induced schizophrenia.' A typical show encompassed everything 'from the puritanical to the licentious, from the patriotic to the anarchistic; from idolaters of wealth to egalitarians; and on and on.' The writing is as snappy as these troupers and headliners deserve. And the scholarship is high-class. Nothing reveals a people more clearly than what entertains them and how they define it. Mr. Stewart links the history of the form to the social, economic and sexual history of the nation. Vaudeville matured as the United States became a manufacturing power. 'Like pop bottles or Colt pistols, variety performers now passed by continuously on an 'assembly line' ' of acts that played from 10:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. In the late 19th century, vaudeville's managers decided to divorce it from bawdy saloons and low-life clubs patronized only by men. They stressed the pure and the wholesome to attract women and children. (Is it a surprise that at the same time, feminists were being roundly attacked as unwomanly and immoral?) Now that movies are at the center of the culture, we get plenty of good books about film. But theater was there first. After all, isn't America a kind of ethnic, social and political variety show? Books as fine as these never fail to save us from what Stanton called 'the solitude of ignorance.'

Subject: That Blur? It's China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 06:18:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/business/worldbusiness/21yuan.html?ex=1292821200&en=80b39aec127570b7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 That Blur? It's China, Moving Up in the Pack By DAVID BARBOZA and DANIEL ALTMAN SHANGHAI - Many economists have long suspected that official government statistics here provided only a shadow of reality. With China's announcement on Tuesday that its economy was considerably bigger than previously estimated, economists and financial prognosticators are scrambling to rethink their assessment of China's rise and its role on the world stage. China's new figures suggest that it probably has passed France, Italy and Britain to become the world's fourth-largest economy. Some economists are even accelerating their timetables for when China may eclipse the United States as the world's biggest economy. With the new figures offering a more expansive view of economic activity, some said China could overtake the United States as early as 2035, at least five years earlier than previous projections. 'We now have a new snapshot of the Chinese economy,' said Hong Liang, an economist at Goldman Sachs. 'This is not slightly bigger - it's a significantly bigger economy.' China said it revised its economic data after a yearlong nationwide economic census uncovered about $280 billion in hidden economic output last year. The new output was the equivalent of an economy the size of Turkey's or Indonesia's - or 40 percent the size of India's economy. As a result, China's gross domestic product for last year is now estimated at nearly $2 trillion, not the previously reported $1.65 trillion. That translates into an adjusted increase of 17 percent, making China the sixth-largest economy in the world in 2004. With China expected to report another year of sizzling economic growth in 2005, its economy may already be ranked No. 4, trailing only the United States, Japan and Germany. Moreover, even after two decades of very strong growth, China is still the world's fastest-growing major economy, expanding more than 9 percent over the last few years. The United States economy is still far in front, with a value of about $11.7 trillion last year. And for all China's fast growth and its rapid ascension to the major leagues among national economies, it remains a relatively poor country. Even with the expected revision, China's output per person will climb to a little more than $1,700 this year. It ranked 134th in income per person in 2003, according to the World Bank. Though its statisticians are highly trained, China is still quite secretive about its methods and means for gathering economic data. This has long generated debate among economists, much as the Soviet Union's economic figures did: some economists think China's figures disguise weakness, while others think they hide strength. The figures for China's national accounts - the numbers that measure gross domestic product, including spending and trade - are supplied by its National Bureau of Statistics. The bureau publishes several sets of statistics - some as often as monthly - based either on its own estimates or upon numbers supplied by China's local governments. But those figures can vary widely. Totting up regional gross domestic product in 2003, for example, gives a figure of $1.6 trillion, 12 percent to 15 percent higher than the bureau's own estimates. The discrepancy also underscores a difference in incentives. Provincial and municipal authorities want to impress Beijing and limit any embarrassments, as the delays in reporting bird flu cases and the chemical spill in Jilin Province have shown. Beijing worries more about its reputation in the rest of the world, where accuracy is paramount. There are other reasons that huge swathes of the Chinese economy are unreported, said Frank Gong, the chief China economist for J. P. Morgan Chase. 'The way they collect the G.D.P. is really from supply-side, production-based statistics,' he said. Mr. Gong suggested that collecting data from the demand side - what consumers actually spend - would be more telling. In a system left over from when China was almost entirely a planned economy, however, all the factories and supermarkets report their own sales and spending. 'That's problematic,' he said. 'The service part - the cash component of the economy - can be omitted easily. That's why the statistics tend to understate the actual level of activity.' Economists say the new figures provide good news for China, suggesting that the economy is healthier, more diversified and more sustainable than previously believed. The revised figures, for instance, show that a much stronger services sector has emerged in the Chinese economy, taking some weight off manufacturing. Dong Tao, an economist at Credit Suisse First Boston, said Tuesday in a statement that China might still be underestimating the size of its services sector by about $200 billion. The new figures also relieve some worries that the economy was too heavily dependent on investment and could overheat. And they show that there are more small and medium-size companies in the country. Stephen Green, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank, said the new figures calm some fears about imbalances in the economy. 'It's all good,' Mr. Green said. 'A bigger economy means all the dangerous ratios, such as investment as a percentage of G.D.P., all fall. And they are usually cited as showing the Chinese economy is in danger or headed for a fall.' The new figures are also expected to affect government planners and policy makers, altering things like monetary policy and inflation forecasts, or how government officials allocate money in the economy. On a more technical note, Jiemin Guo, a senior economist at the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis, pointed out a fundamental problem with China's numbers. Most wealthy nations use a changing base for their gross domestic product series, to allow for differences over time in the basket of goods and services that consumers demand: experts don't want to use the price of a 1985 home computer, for example, in calculating today's gross domestic product. But China uses a fixed base for several years at a time, Mr. Guo said, which results in a growing bias. Like the underreporting of the service sector, this issue is especially serious, because it could affect the accuracy not just of the gross domestic product but also of its growth rate over time. The statistics bureau has acknowledged several of these problems and, unlike the old Soviet scorekeepers, it is eager to improve the quality of its statistics. The bureau is working with the World Bank to develop a plan for its statistical apparatus, which would include reconciling the national and local figures. Ms. Hong at Goldman Sachs offered an analogy to explain why the new figures were important. 'Does China have some structural illness or cancer, or is there an error with the X-ray?' she asked rhetorically. 'The last few years, so many famous economists cited the very high investment-to-G.D.P. ratio as a serious problem. Now it looks like the X-ray machine had a problem, not the patient.'

Subject: The Biggest Little Poems From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 06:14:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/books/review/18kirby.html?ex=1292562000&en=eeaa0ccc2fdd7cc9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 18, 2005 The Biggest Little Poems By DAVID KIRBY There is a brash, exuberant poetry being written in America these days, a long-lined, many-paged, pyrotechnic verse that would have its daddy, Walt Whitman, slapping his slouch hat against his leg and chortling with unbridled glee. This isn't it. A Kay Ryan poem is maybe an inch wide, rarely wanders onto a second page, and works in one or two muted colors at most. Rather than raise a righteous old hullabaloo, a Ryan poem sticks the reader with a little jab of smarts and then pulls back as fast as a doctor's hypodermic. Here is 'On the Difficulty of Drawing Oneself Up' in its entirety: One does not stack. It would be like a mouse on the back of a mouse on a mouse's back. Courses of mice, layers of shivers and whiskers, a wobbling tower mouse-wide, with nothing more than a mouse inside. Now here is a poem that would prompt perhaps the arching of a single eyebrow in approval on the part of modern American poetry's mom, Emily Dickinson, hands-down champ at writing poems that are as compressed as Whitman's are sprawling. But of course there is no real competition between the Whitman who boasted 'I am large, I contain multitudes' and the Dickinson whose niece Martha reported that her aunt once pretended to lock the door to her bedroom and pocket an imaginary key, saying, 'Mattie, here's freedom.' In other words, Ryan's are the biggest little poems going. Rather than hunting down the world and making it cry uncle, Ryan likes to create an elastic space the world can enter and fill. So a poem like 'Backward Miracle' calls for just that: not a gaudy transformation of what exists but a return to it, to just the vessel with the wine in it - . . . the single loaf and the single fish thereby. This is a back-to-basics maneuver that, as the poems says, strips language and makes it hold. Yet Ryan does not write the dime-store Buddhist how-holy-is-my-saltcellar poem one has seen too many of lately. Instead, she produces Bible verses for the worldly: instead of 'Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God' or 'When I was a child, I spake as a child,' Ryan writes As though the river were a floor, we position our table and chairs upon it and We are always really carrying a ladder, but it's invisible. She likes to work with clichés - chickens coming home to roost, the other shoe dropping - but, like Bugs Bunny bending Elmer Fudd's shotgun barrels so that they aim back toward him, she does it in a way that warns us not to point our clichés at other people. Often her images are deliberately unlovely: silences are embedded in a noisy city like shark's teeth, a tired person's blood is cruddy with tiny metal office furniture. In a poem about crows, she notes how we admire bullies (and coins the phrase 'quid pro crow,' surely the best poetic pun of 2005, unless something better comes along in the next week or two). In another, about - electromagnetism? - she observes that weakness doesn't always amount to defeat. A contrarian, Ryan doesn't mind clucking her tongue at us readers, but she cautions us against our strengths rather than our frailties. Don't be playing the blame game, she seems to say, because we make or at least find our own problems: Tar babies are not the children of tar people. So Kay Ryan's tiny poems turn out to be full of color and argument, after all. In fact, she makes good writing look so easy that I despair of her influence, just as English schoolmasters once worried that schoolboys liked Keats too much and would ape his sensuousness (if only). Yet Ryan's special talent is for illuminating the known and showing how the unknown defines it, as when she writes of a frozen lake that has its own seasons under the ice or says that Houdini's greatest trick was to emerge from the chains and padlocks as himself. In 'Hide and Seek,' she notes how hard it is not to jump out instead of waiting to be found, and, like Dickinson's, many of Ryan's poems read as if there were a kid in the middle, legs coiled, beside itself with glee and terror. There's a real tension in these poems, that of someone who has been sitting for a long time. David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton distinguished professor of English at Florida State University.

Subject: Scientists' Discovery in the Deep From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 06:00:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20squi.html December 20, 2005 Scientists' Discovery in the Deep Casts Some Squid Mothers in a Brighter Light By WILLIAM J. BROAD With their slimy tentacles and big, unblinking eyes, squids have, over the centuries, acquired a bad reputation. Jules Verne's squid attacked a submarine. Peter Benchley's dined on children. The squid has fared little better in the world of science, with researchers concluding that, unlike octopuses and some fish, squids are inattentive parents, depositing eggs on the seabed and letting them grow or die on their own. But a team of ocean scientists exploring the inky depths of the Monterey Canyon off California has discovered that at least one squid species cares for its young with loving attention, the mother cradling the eggs in her arms for months, waving her tentacles to bathe the eggs in fresh seawater. The scientists suspect that other species are doting parents, too, and that misperceptions about squid behavior have arisen because the deep is so poorly explored. 'Our finding is unexpected because this behavior differs from the reproductive habits of all other known squid species,' the scientists wrote in the Dec. 15 issue of Nature, the weekly science journal. 'We expect it to be found in other squids.' Brad A. Seibel, a biologist at the University of Rhode Island and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, who led the research, said in an interview that the insight began in 1995. Then a graduate student, he pulled up a trawl bucket from the dark midwaters of the Monterey Canyon, which is as deep as two miles, and found a mass of squid eggs. Nearby in the bucket lay a female of the species Gonatus onyx, which grows to a length of about 10 inches. The next year, the same thing happened again, except this time the young were hatchlings, just emerging from their eggs. Recalling his previous catch, Dr. Seibel theorized that he had stumbled upon something that amounted to heresy. It seemed that the females had been brooding their eggs. In 2000, he proposed the idea in print, prompting skeptical rejoinders. The breakthrough came in 2001, when Dr. Seibel and his colleagues at Monterey sent a car-size robot into the depths of the canyon. There, more than a mile down, the robot's lights and camera spied the heresy in action - a female brooding her eggs. 'I was delighted,' Dr. Seibel recalled, and 'surprised that we found them.' Since then, he and teammates exploring the canyon's deep waters have discovered five female squids holding their eggs, gently protecting and nourishing them. The attentive females extend their arms every 30 to 40 seconds, moving water through the masses of 2,000 to 3,000 eggs. This action, the scientists wrote in Nature, probably serves to aerate the eggs in the canyon's oxygen-poor waters. The scientists estimate that the squid, in the class of animals known as cephalopods, which also includes the octopus and the cuttlefish, broods its eggs for as long as nine months. The other researchers are Bruce H. Robison and Steven H. D. Haddock of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, in Moss Landing, Calif. The attention and nurturing, Dr. Seibel said, surely promotes survival. 'It's very successful,' he noted, Gonatus onyx being one of the most abundant cephalopods in the Pacific Ocean.

Subject: The Poor Need Not Apply From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:56:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/opinion/21wed2.html?ex=1292821200&en=534b12a35a6b1edc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 21, 2005 The Poor Need Not Apply On Sept. 15, speaking from New Orleans's Jackson Square, President Bush was eloquent: 'As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well,' he said. 'We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action. So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.' Did the president really mean anything by those fine words? As Leslie Eaton and Ron Nixon reported in The Times last week, federal loans to rebuild homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina have been flowing to wealthy neighborhoods in New Orleans but not to poor ones. The Small Business Administration, which runs the federal government's main disaster recovery program for both businesses and homeowners, has processed only a third of the 276,000 home loan applications it has received. And it has rejected a whopping 82 percent of those, a higher percentage than in previous disasters, on the grounds that applicants didn't have high enough incomes or good enough credit ratings. That is exactly the kind of barrier to upward mobility that Mr. Bush talked about battering down. Poor people live from paycheck to paycheck, unable to accumulate assets. They let their water bill go unpaid one month so that they can pay their light bill. Their credit ratings tend to reflect that. Those are basic truths that the Bush administration obviously understands. Yet it encouraged poor people to apply for low-interest loans to rebuild their homes while keeping rules that would make it clearly impossible for most of them to qualify. Despite the widespread poverty in the most damaged regions, according to the Times article, the Small Business Administration has not adjusted its creditworthiness standards, which are roughly comparable to a bank's. As a result, well-off neighborhoods have received 47 percent of the loan approvals, while poverty-stricken ones have gotten 7 percent. No one expects the government to squander tax dollars on bad loans. But there are ways around that, through grants, for instance, and looser standards for the many who straddle the shoulders of good credit and bad credit. Otherwise, the administration has engaged in the worst kind of cruelty - one that encourages the poor to think help is on the way, then swats down anyone who actually requests the promised assistance.

Subject: Bolivia's Newly Elected Leader From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:54:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/international/americas/20bolivia.html?ex=1292734800&en=317105a1a7bb9924&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 20, 2005 Bolivia's Newly Elected Leader Maps His Socialist Agenda By JUAN FORERO LA PAZ, Bolivia - After his decisive win in the election for president on Sunday, the Socialist indigenous leader, Evo Morales, vowed Monday to respect private property but repeated his pledge to increase state control over the energy industry and reverse an American-backed crusade against coca, the plant used to make cocaine. Wearing his trademark black jeans and tennis shoes, Mr. Morales arrived in La Paz to begin laying the groundwork for an economic and political transformation that he says will give voice to the poor, indigenous majority that fueled his campaign. 'The voice of the people is the voice of God,' he said late Sunday. Mr. Morales, 46, a former small-town trumpeter and soccer player who turned a movement of coca farmers into the country's most potent political force, stunned his countrymen on Sunday by burying seven challengers in the most important election since Bolivia's transition from dictatorship to democracy a generation ago. Unofficial results showed that Mr. Morales won up to 52 percent of the vote to become the first Indian president in Bolivia's 180-year history, a victory that solidifies a continent-wide shift of governments to the left. 'For the first time a candidate wins with 50 percent plus 1, and it's the biggest margin between the first two finishers,' said Gonzalo Chávez, an economist and political analyst at Catholic University in La Paz. 'This is a democratic revolution. The voting was tremendously strong, and signifies a tremendous demand for change in Bolivia.' President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Néstor Kirchner of Argentina, two of the continent's leading left-leaning leaders, quickly offered their congratulations, as did Chile, Spain and the European Union. The United States tried to discredit Mr. Morales in the past by alleging ties to drug trafficking, and ended up increasing his popularity. The administration offered cautious congratulations to Mr. Morales and to the Bolivian people 'for carrying out a successful election.' But American officials acknowledged that they viewed his presidency with serious concern, while insisting that they would wait to see how he actually governed. A State Department official noted that Bolivia had experienced several years of chaos in government, 'and now they have chosen a leader and still have a constitutional process.' adding, 'We have to respect that, whatever else Morales has said.' He declined to be identified, citing department policy. Mr. Morales's party, the Movement Toward Socialism, won nearly half the 27 seats in the Senate and up to half the 130 seats in the lower house. Unofficial figures showed the MAS, as the party is known, also won at least two of nine governorships. Podemos, the party of Jorge Quiroga, a former president, finished a distant second. Three other traditional parties practically disappeared from the national scene. The MAS is now poised to push through legislation tightening the terms on British Gas, Repsol YPF of Spain, Petrobras of Brazil and other foreign energy companies operating here. Mr. Morales has promised to 'nationalize' the lucrative natural gas industry, not by expropriating it, but rather by expanding state control over operations, policy and the commercialization of gas. 'The government will exercise its right to state ownership of Bolivia's hydrocarbons,' he said Monday. Foreign oil companies have in the past said that financially onerous terms could prompt them to cut back on investments, which have fallen from $608 million in 1998 to $200 million last year. But on Monday, Ronald Fessy, spokesman for the Bolivian Hydrocarbon Chamber, said it was too soon to predict. 'Governments have to be seen in action, not in times of campaigning,' he said. 'We hope that this government will work to achieve scenarios that would lead to policies that are good for investments that this industry and Bolivia urgently need.' Mr. Morales has also pledged to reverse Bolivia's longstanding alliance with the United States in the generation-long fight against drugs, which has greatly curtailed the coca planting but has set off politically volatile uprisings by coca farmers. Mr. Morales and his followers say much of Bolivia's coca goes for traditional uses, to be chewed or used in tea, while Washington says most of it becomes cocaine. 'The fight against drug trafficking is a false pretext for the United States to install military bases,' Mr. Morales told reporters on Monday. Even with the mandate from voters, Mr. Morales is not expected to have an easy time in a country rocked by years of social protests fueled by inequality and poverty. He will be under pressure to ensure that the country's budding exports of textiles and furniture continue, while answering to indigenous leaders who seek radical change. Some social movements have vowed to apply pressure. The Bolivian Workers Central, the country's largest labor confederation, said the government would have to expropriate private energy installations from private companies, or face the kind of protests that forced out two presidents since 2003. 'He has to make changes or he falls,' Jaime Solares, the head of the confederation, said in an interview. In the main square of La Paz, where one president was lynched on a lamppost in 1946, most people seemed tired of protests and wanted to give Mr. Morales a chance . 'We have to give him some time,' said Martín Bautista, 35, a truck driver. 'I feel happy because here a lot of things are about to change.'

Subject: Google Offers a Bird's-Eye View From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:52:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/technology/20image.html?ex=1292734800&en=fc8a8529ca004e0c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 20, 2005 Google Offers a Bird's-Eye View, and Some Governments Tremble By KATIE HAFNER and SARITHA RAI When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids. But since its debut last summer, Google Earth has received attention of an unexpected sort. Officials of several nations have expressed alarm over its detailed display of government buildings, military installations and other important sites within their borders. India, whose laws sharply restrict satellite and aerial photography, has been particularly outspoken. 'It could severely compromise a country's security,' V. S. Ramamurthy, secretary in India's federal Department of Science and Technology, said of Google Earth. And India's surveyor general, Maj. Gen. M. Gopal Rao, said, 'They ought to have asked us.' Similar sentiments have surfaced in news reports from other countries. South Korean officials have said they fear that Google Earth lays bare details of military installations. Thai security officials said they intended to ask Google to block images of vulnerable government buildings. And Lt. Gen. Leonid Sazhin, an analyst for the Federal Security Service, the Russian security agency that succeeded the K.G.B., was quoted by Itar-Tass as saying: 'Terrorists don't need to reconnoiter their target. Now an American company is working for them.' But there is little they can do, it seems, but protest. Google Earth is the most conspicuous recent instance of increased openness in a digitally networked world, where information that was once carefully guarded is now widely available on personal computers. Many security experts agree that such increased transparency - and the discomfort that it produces - is an inevitable byproduct of the Internet's power and reach. American experts in and outside government generally agree that the focus on Google Earth as a security threat appears misplaced, as the same images that Google acquires from a variety of sources are available directly from the imaging companies, as well as from other sources. Google Earth licenses most of the satellite images, for instance, from DigitalGlobe, an imaging company in Longmont, Colo. 'Google Earth is not acquiring new imagery,' said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, which has an online repository of satellite imagery. 'They are simply repurposing imagery that somebody else had already acquired. So if there was any harm that was going to be done by the imagery, it would already be done.' Google Earth was developed as a $79-a-year product by a small company called Keyhole that Google bought last year; it was reintroduced as a free downloadable desktop program in June. It consists of software that can be downloaded onto a personal computer and used to 'fly over' city streets, landmarks, buildings, mountains, redwood forests and Gulf Stream waters. Type in any street address in the United States, Canada or Britain, or the longitude and latitude for any place - or even terms like 'pyramids' or 'Taj Mahal' - and the location quickly zooms into focus from outer space. It was in the 1990's that the federal government started allowing commercial satellite companies to make and sell high-resolution images, to allow American companies to compete in a growing market. But a number of security restrictions apply to those companies. For instance, United States law requires that images of Israel shot by American-licensed commercial satellites be made available only at a relatively low resolution. Also, the companies' operating licenses allow the United States government to put any area off limits in the interests of national security. A 24-hour delay is mandated for images of especially high resolution. Vipin Gupta, a security analyst at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, said the time delays were crucial, saying that in the national security sphere much can change between the time an image is taken and when it is used by the public. 'You can get imagery to determine whether there is a military base or airfield, but if you want to count aircraft, or determine whether there are troops there at a particular time, it is very difficult to do,' Mr. Gupta said. 'It's not video.' Andrew McLaughlin, a senior policy counsel at Google, said the company had entered discussions with several countries over the last few months, including Thailand, South Korea and, most recently, India. India may be particularly sensitive to security issues because of its long-running border disputes with Pakistan, its rival nuclear power, and recurring episodes of terrorism. Since 1967, it has forbidden aerial photographs of bridges, ports, refineries and military establishments, and outside companies and agencies are required to have those images evaluated by the government. High-resolution satellite photos face similar restrictions in India, which has its own sophisticated satellite imaging program. Mr. Ramamurthy, the Indian science official, acknowledged that 'there is very little we can do to a company based overseas and offering its service over the Internet.' But General Rao, the Indian surveyor general, said the Indian government had sent a letter asking Google 'to show sensitive sites, which we will list - areas such as the presidential residence and defense installations - in very low-resolution images.' Mr. McLaughlin said he had not yet seen such a letter; he said talks with India had centered specifically on images of the Kashmir border, long disputed by India and Pakistan. Meetings with Indian officials or those from other nations have yet to result in a request that Google remove or downgrade any information, Mr. McLaughlin said. Nor, he said, has the United States government ever asked Google to remove information. The same cannot be said for Mr. Pike, whose Web site has images of nuclear test sites and military bases in much sharper focus than can be found on Google Earth. Last year, Mr. Pike said, he was asked by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, an arm of the Defense Department, to remove from his site some of the maps of cities in Iraq that the Coalition Provisional Authority had created for planning cellphone service. Mr. Pike said he had complied, but added that the incident was a classic example of the futility of trying to control information. 'To think that the same information couldn't be found elsewhere was not a very safe assumption,' he said. Dave Burpee, a spokesman for the agency, said that the incident was relatively isolated, and that Mr. Pike had been asked to remove the maps because they were marked 'limited distribution.' A service like Google Earth, on the other hand, contains nothing classified or restricted. An outcry over security was the last thing John Hanke was thinking five years ago when he joined in founding Keyhole with the aim of using satellite and aerial photography to create a three-dimensional world map. The idea, said Mr. Hanke, an entrepreneur who founded two video game companies before starting Keyhole, was to make video games more interesting. Now Mr. Hanke, as a general manager at Google in charge of Google Earth, finds himself in the thick of frequent discussions at Google and with outsiders about transparency. He speaks enthusiastically of the benefits of openness. 'A lot of good things come out of making information available,' he said, and proceeded to list a few: 'disaster relief, land conservation and forest management for fighting wildfires.' The images, which Google Earth expects to update roughly every 18 months, are a patchwork of aerial and satellite photographs, and their relative sharpness varies. Blurriness is more often than not an indication of the best quality available for a location. Chuck Herring, a spokesman for DigitalGlobe, said that to the best of his knowledge, the federal government had never asked his company to obscure or blur images. Similarly, Mr. Hanke said no specific areas on Google Earth lacked high-resolution data because of federal restrictions. For a brief period, photos of the White House and adjacent buildings that the United States Geological Survey provided to Google Earth showed up with certain details obscured, because the government had decided that showing details like rooftop helicopter landing pads was a security risk. Google has since replaced those images with unaltered photographs of the area taken by Sanborn, a mapping and imagery company, further illustrating the difficulty of trying to control such information. As for security issues raised by other countries, Mr. Hanke said, 'When we reach out and engage with knowledgeable people, the concern tends to subside.' Still, imagery is growing harder than ever to control, especially as it makes its way around the Internet. Several countries, notably Nigeria, China and Brazil, have recently launched satellites, making it harder for any one government to impose restrictions. 'When you have multiple eyes in the sky, what you're doing is creating a transparent globe where anyone can get basic information about anyone else,' said Mr. Gupta, the Sandia analyst. His recommendation to the Indian government, he said, would be to accept the new reality: 'Times are changing, and the best thing to do is adapt to the advances in technology.'

Subject: Last-Minute Budget Madness From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:51:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/opinion/20tue3.html?ex=1292734800&en=7c180cfb3acf0800&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 20, 2005 Last-Minute Budget Madness As 11th-hour ploys go in Congress, the Republican leadership lowered the bar into the permafrost by ignoring rules and slapping Alaskan oil drilling onto a must-pass bill to pay for the Iraq war. The House, which earlier voted against drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge, retreated and went along with the gimmickry orchestrated by Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the diehard champion of opening his state's pristine resources to the oil industry. This 'victory' for the Bush administration, which may yet be filibustered in the Senate, was the prelude to an even more cynical move - $40 billion in spending cuts that unfairly burden the poorest Americans with reductions in health care, child support and welfare. 'The Republican revolution is back,' proclaimed Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, a leader of the conservative Republican 'budget hawks' now trying to palm off political rope-a-dope as revolution. Their ballyhooed savings, less than one-half of 1 percent of Congress's $14.3 trillion projected spending plan across the next five years, would be more than canceled by the next wad of tax cuts for the affluent - up to $100 billion - that G.O.P. leaders are vowing to enact next year. These same lawmakers have repeatedly fed the record deficit and debt by rubber-stamping tax cuts. In the final deal-making, the Republican Congress spared the pharmaceutical and managed care industries from cutbacks but increased the workfare burdens on low-paid former welfare recipients. They granted flu vaccine makers windfall protection from lawsuits, but enacted a startling $12.7 billion cut in student aid. Including hurricane reconstruction aid and anti-torture strictures hardly disinfects the budget morass being left behind.

Subject: Judge Bars 'Intelligent Design' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 05:50:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/education/20cnd-evolution.html?ex=1292734800&en=e6583fbaf45911b7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 20, 2005 Judge Bars 'Intelligent Design' From Pa. Classes By LAURIE GOODSTEIN HARRISBURG, PA. - A federal judge ruled today that it is unconstitutional for a Pennsylvania school district to present intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology courses because intelligent design is a religious viewpoint that advances 'a particular version of Christianity.' In the nation's first case to test the legal merits of intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones III issued a broad, stinging rebuke to its advocates and a boost to scientists who have fought to bar intelligent design from the science curriculum. The judge also excoriated members of the school board in Dover, Pa., who he said lied to cover up their religious motives, made a decision of 'breathtaking inanity' and 'dragged' their community into 'this legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.' Eleven parents in Dover, Pa., a growing suburb about 20 miles south of Harrisburg, sued their school board a year ago after the board voted to read students a brief statement introducing intelligent design in ninth grade biology class. The statement said that there are 'gaps in the theory' of evolution and that intelligent design is another explanation they should examine. Judge Jones concluded that intelligent design is not science, and that in order to claim that it is, its proponents admitted that they must change the very definition of science to include supernatural explanations. He said that teaching intelligent design as science in public school violates the First Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits public officials from using their positions to impose or establish a particular religion. 'To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect,' Judge Jones wrote. 'However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.' The six-week trial in Federal District Court in Harrisburg gave intelligent design the most thorough academic and legal airing it has had since the movement's inception about 15 years ago, and was often likened to the momentous Scopes case that put evolution on trial 80 years before. Intelligent design posits that biological life is so complex that it must have been designed by an intelligent source. Its adherents say that they refrain from identifying the identity of the designer, and that it could even be aliens or a time traveler. But the judge said the evidence in the trial proved that intelligent design is 'creationism relabeled.' The Supreme Court has already ruled that creationism, which relies on the Biblical account of the creation of life, cannot be taught as science in a public school. The decision by the judge, a longtime Republican nominated for the federal bench by President Bush during his first term, is legally binding only for school districts in the middle district of Pennsylvania. It is unlikely to be appealed, because the school board members who supported intelligent design were unseated in elections in November, and replaced with a slate that opposes the intelligent design policy and said it would abide by the judge's decision. But lawyers for the plaintiffs said at a news conference in Harrisburg that the decision should serve as a deterrent to other school boards and teachers who are considering teaching intelligent design. 'It's a carefully reasoned, highly detailed opinion,' said Richard Katskee, assistant legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 'that goes through all of the issues that would be raised in any other school district.' Richard Thompson, the lead defense lawyer for the school board, derided the judge for having issued such a sweeping judgment in a case that he said merely involved a 'one-minute statement' being read to students. He acknowledged that his side, too, had asked the judge to rule on the scientific merits of intelligent design, but only because they had to respond to the plaintiffs' arguments. 'A thousand opinions by a court that a particular scientific theory is invalid will not make that scientific theory invalid,' said Mr. Thompson, the president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest firm in Ann Arbor, Mich., that says it promotes Christian values. 'It is going to be up to the scientists who are going to continue to do research in their labs that will ultimately determine that.' Before the start of a celebratory news conference in Harrisburg, Tammy Kitzmiller, a parent of two daughters in the Dover district and the named plaintiff in the case, Kitzmiller et al v. Dover, joked with other plaintiffs that she had an idea for a new bumper sticker: 'Judge Jones for President.' Christy Rehm, another plaintiff, said to the others, 'We've done something amazing here, not only with this decision, but with the election' of a new school board - a surprising outcome in which Dover voters ousted eight board members who had backed the intelligent design policy. The winners ran on a Democratic ticket, while Dover usually votes majority Republican. The judge's ruling said that two of the most outspoken proponents of intelligent design on the Dover school board, William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell, lied in their depositions about how they raised money in a church to buy copies of an intelligent design textbook, 'Of Pandas And People,' to put in the school library. Both men, according to testimony, had repeatedly said at school board meetings that they objected to evolution for religious reasons, and wanted to see creationism taught on equal par. Judge Jones wrote, 'It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.' Neither Mr. Bonsell or Mr. Buckingham responded to telephone messages today seeking their comments. In his opinion, the judge traced the history of the intelligent design movement back to what he said were its roots in Christian fundamentalism. He seemed especially persuaded by the testimony of Barbara Forrest, a historian of science, that the authors of the 'Pandas' textbook had removed the word 'creationism' from an earlier edition and substituted it with 'intelligent design' after the Supreme Court's ruling in 1987. 'We conclude that the religious nature of intelligent design would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child,' he said. 'The writings of leading ID proponents reveal that the designer postulated by their argument is the God of Christianity.' Opponents of intelligent design said it would not put an end to the intelligent design movement, and predicted it would take on various guises. The Kansas Board of Education voted in November to adopt standards that call into question the theory of evolution, but never explicitly mention intelligent design. Eugenie Scott, executive director, National Center for Science Education, an advocacy group in Oakland, Ca., that promotes teaching evolution, said in an interview, 'I predict that another school board down the line will try to bring intelligent design into the curriculum like the Dover group did, and they'll be a lot smarter about concealing their religious intent.' Even after courts ruled against teaching creationism and creation science, she said, 'For several years afterward, school districts were still contemplating teaching creation science.'

Subject: Stocks and Bonds From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 21:00:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The S&P has not gained for 6 years now, while there has been one of the greatest bull markets in long term bonds. The difference between the gain in the Vanguard long term bond index and the S&P since January 2000 seems to be the largest since the Depression. The Vanguard long term investment-grade bond fund is up 8.7% a year for the last 5 years, while the S&P index is up 0.52%. The price earning ratio for the S&P index is 17.3, return on equity is 18.5%, earnings growth rate over the last 3 years is 12.9%. The price earning ratio for the Vanguard S&P went from about 8 in 1979 to 15 in 1989 to 30 in 1999. The historical level was about 15, so it was reasonable to assume the 1990s would be less robust in stock returns than the 1980s. This did not turn out to be so. This decade however the return for the S&P has been about zero. The lesson that might have been drawn during the dramatic climb in the price earning ratio of the S&P during the 1990s, was value value value.

Subject: Re: Stocks and Bonds From: Small Cap To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 17:40:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma, why not mention small cap stocks, over the past 5 years an investment in the russell 2000 would have yielded 10.12% per year through 11/30/05.

Subject: Re: Stocks and Bonds From: Emma To: Small Cap Date Posted: Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 19:04:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Agreed, but use the Vanguard indexes for measures since they have advantages. I prefer the Vanguard large cap index to the S&P. Less turnover, less volatility. The 5 year return for the middle cap index was 10.7%, and for the small cap was 10.9%.

Subject: Re: Stocks and Bonds From: Small Cap To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 22, 2005 at 15:55:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: vanguard doesn't have any indices, they copy MSCI. From what I have researched, S&P/Citigroup Indices appear to be better at creating more representative growth and value benchmarks, as their seven factor methodology seems more practical.

Subject: Re: Stocks and Bonds From: Terri To: Small Cap Date Posted: Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 11:55:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thanks, but I could not be happier than with Vanguard for general investment or even banking. For special investing, I have another fine source but Vanguard is wonderful :)

Subject: Stock Values and Growth From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 15:40:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Suppose we use the Vanguard price earning ratio of 17.3. Given a return on equity of 18.5% and an earnings growth rates of 12.3%, and a tax favored status for capital gains and dividends, why should we be surprised? Long term interest rates are low, and interest income is tax disadvantaged, so bonds now are really not competitive with stocks. We are also going through a time when even with 18 months of short term interest rate increases by the Federal Reserve, and significantly rising oil and gas prices, economic growth has been sustained. Indeed economic growth has been sustained in every developed economy, even when housing markets have slowed. Economic flexibility appears to be far greater than in 1980 or even 1990.

Subject: Assessing 'Irrational Exuberance' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 12:30:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/12/musings_on_asse.html December 20, 2005 Musings on Assessing 'Irrational Exuberance' By Brad DeLong Back in 1996 Yale economist Robert Shiller wrote: Price Earnings Ratios as Forecasters of Returns: The theory that the stock market is approximately a random walk does not look right at all: Figure 1... show[s]... the ratio of the real Standard and Poor Index ten years later to the real index today (on the y axis) versus... the ratio of the real Standard and Poor Composite Index for the first year of the ten year interval, divided by a lagged thirty year moving average of real earnings.... If real stock prices were a random walk, they should be unforecastable, and there should really be no relation here between y and x. There certainly appears to be a distinct negative relation here. The January 1996 value for the ratio shown on the horizontal axis is 29.72, shown on the figure with a vertical line. Looking at the diagram, it is hard to come away without a feeling that the market is quite likely to decline substantially in value over the succeeding ten years; it appears that long run investors should stay out of the market for the next decade... In 1996 Yale economist Robert Shiller looked around, considered the historical record on the performance of the stock market, and concluded that the American stock market was overvalued. Prices on the broad index of the S&P 500 stood at 29 times the average of the past three decades' earnings. In the past, whenever price-earnings ratios had been high future long-run stock returns had turned out to be low. On the basis of econometric regression studies carried out by him and by Harvard's John Campbell, Shiller predicted in 1996 that the S&P 500 would be a bad investment over the next decade. In the decade up to January 2006, he predicted, the real value of the S&P 500 would fall, and even including dividends his estimate of the likely real inflation-adjusted returns to be earned by investors holding the S&P 500 was zero--a far cry below the 6% per year or so real return that we have come to think typical of the American stock market. Robert Shiller's arguments were convincing. They convinced Alan Greenspan enough so that in December of 1996 he gave his 'irrational exuberance' speech to the American Enterprise Institute. They certainly convinced me. But Robert Shiller's arguments were wrong--at least, wrong ex post. Unless the American stock market collapses before the end of January, the past decade has seen the stock market offer returns a little bit higher than the historical averages--much, much greater than zero. Those who invested and reinvested their money in America's stock market over the past decade have nearly doubled it, even after taking account of inflation. Why was Shiller wrong? In an arithmetic sense, we can point to three factors, each of which can take roughly one-third the credit for real American stock returns of 6% per year over the past decade rather than zero: 2% per year because the acceleration of productivity growth produced by the high-tech revolutions behind the very real 'new economy' has made American companies much more productive. 2% per year because of shifts in the distribution of income away from labor and toward capital that have boosted corporate profits as a share of production. 2% per year because the argument of Glasman and Hassett in Dow 36000 was one-twentieth correct: they argued that increasing risk tolerance on the part of stock market investors would raise long-run price-earnings ratios by 400%; it actually appears that increasing risk tolerance has raised long-run price-earnings ratios by 20% or so. None of these three factors were obvious as of 1996 (although there were signs of the first and inklings of the third for those smart or lucky enough to read them). As of 1996, betting on Shiller's regression studies was a reasonable thing to do, perhaps an intelligent thing to do--but it was also an overhelmingly risky thing to do, as anybody who followed the portfolio strategy implicit in Shiller's analysis now painfully feels in his wallet or her purse. Economists muse about just why it is that stock markets around the world are subject to fits of 'irrational exuberance' and 'excessive pessimism.' Why don't rational and informed investors take more steps to bet heavily on fundamentals and against the enthusiasms of the uninformed crowd? The past decade gives us two reasons. First--if we grant that Shiller's regression analyses had correctly identified long-run fundamentals a decade ago--betting on fundamentals for the long term is overwhelmingly risky: lots of good news can happen over a decade, enough to bankrupt an even slightly leveraged bear when stocks look high; and lots of bad news can happen over a decade enough to bankrupt an even slightly leveraged bull when stocks look low. Thus even in extreme situations--like the peak of the dot-com bubble in late 1999 and early 2000--it is very difficult for even those who believe they know what fundamentals are to make large long-run bets on them. And it is even more difficult for those who claim they know what long-run fundamental values are and want to make large long-run contrarian bets to convince others to trust them with their money. As J.P. Morgan said when asked to predict what stocks would do: 'They will fluctuate.' Perhaps this is how it should be: if it were easy to pierce the veils of time and ignorance and to assess long-run fundamental values with a high degree of confidence, it would be easy and safe to make large contrarian long-run bets on fundamentals. In this case the smart money would smooth out the enthusiasms--positive and negative--of the overenthusiastic crowd. And stocks would fluctuate less. And there wouldn't be teasing evidence at the edge of statistical significance of large-scale deviations of stock market prices from fundamental values.

Subject: Paul Krugman's Money Talks From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 09:46:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 20, 2005 Paul Krugman's Money Talks By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman responds to questions about political balance in his column about lobbyist Jack Abramoff's payments to members of right-wing think tanks for writing editorials helpful to some of Abramoff's clients. Krugman points out that an a priori presumption that both sides are equally guilty of any transgression and therefore that any criticism of one side must be matched by criticism of the other is 'just silly': Paul Krugman, Money Talks: Looking for Dirty Democrats, Readers respond to Paul Krugman's Dec. 19 column, 'Tankers on the Take': Art Quillo, Laguna Niguel, Calif.: If ... there isn't any Democratic equivalent of Jack Abramoff — that's what the public deserves to be told. The final sentence of that paragraph should have read: And if there is equivalent activity on the Democratic side, it should be thoroughly exposed as well. W.D. Stanley, Burke, Va.: There is no doubt that it is a very questionable practice for a lobbyist to pay money to a member of any institute to have that person write an op-ed article ... But I do object to the very blatant suggestion that such practices are confined to persons inclined toward the right or conservative inclination. Surely you must also recognize that such practices occur in left wing institutes and think tanks as well — not to mention public and private universities where, although cash may not change hands, other items of value such as appointments, tenure and access certainly are conferred upon those who elect to expend time and energy writing op-eds about issues those audiences favor and value. While you may call it a slime attack to point out such matters, simple measures of fairness suggest you should point your sanctimony towards the equally abysmal, and very common practices, that happen not only in Washington but in universities all over this country Paul Krugman: By all means, let's expose whatever is out there. But I'd be really surprised if there's anything equivalent. ... There's no reason to believe that Democrats and/or liberals are any less susceptible to monetary temptation than conservatives and Republicans. There is, however, every reason to believe that the opportunities for sin have been much smaller. First of all, there has only been one period over the last 25 years — the first two years of the Clinton administration — when Republicans didn't control at least one house of Congress or the White House. And even then, Democrats weren't a disciplined party. So Democrats have always been subject to checks and balances. Republicans, by contrast, have had complete, disciplined control of all three branches for five years. ..[P]eople with an interest in corrupting the process had very little interest in corrupting Democrats, but a lot of interest in corrupting Republicans. Second, the think tanks that get heard in the media are overwhelmingly conservative — aside from Brookings, it's hard to find a liberal think tank that gets air time. And Brookings is a very loose organization, with a real diversity of views, not at all like Heritage or Cato. ... there's probably nobody worth corrupting. Am I confident that no liberal commentator was ever paid to boost some cause? No. But it's just silly to approach this matter with the presumption that there must be equal sin on both sides. As a structural matter, that's highly unlikely.

Subject: Señora Presidente? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 19:00:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/opinion/09gumucio.html?ex=1291784400&en=e37fd81b73b42bdf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Señora Presidente? By RAFAEL GUMUCIO Santiago, Chile CHILE is one of the more conservative countries on a continent that is not especially renowned as tolerant, forward thinking or democratically minded. Divorce was legalized here just last year, and abortion continues to be a taboo subject even for the most progressive of politicians. Our social codes and racial prejudices are deeply engrained. We are an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a history that has been marked - and continues to be marked - by the power of its military. Given this context, it is nothing short of extraordinary - even revolutionary - that the clear front-runner in the presidential vote being held on Sunday is Michelle Bachelet, a divorced mother of three who is an atheist and a member of the Socialist Party. Polls show Ms. Bachelet, a former defense minister, far ahead of her rivals, Sebastián Piñera, one of Chile's wealthiest businessmen; Joaquín Lavín, the ultraconservative former mayor of Santiago; and Tomás Hirsch of the Communist Party. Although a runoff is likely, the prevailing opinion here is that Ms. Bachelet will be the ultimate winner. If she is, she will be the first woman in the Americas to be elected president not because she was a wife of a famous politician, but because of her own record. That this is a probability is even more astonishing when one considers that nothing like it has occurred in countries like the United States or France, where the democratic tradition is far more stable and feminism's impact presumably far greater. Curiously, American television is now running a series that revolves around the 'novel' idea of a female president. What is fiction in the United States may well become reality in Chile. The twist is that the Chilean candidate is a far more interesting character than the female president portrayed on American TV: as defense minister, Ms. Bachelet oversaw the successors and subordinates of the men who killed her father and tortured her and her mother during the darkest moments of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. How has this happened? Chile, more than ever, is proving itself to be the polar opposite of Lampedusa's Sicily: in order for things to change, they have to stay the same - or rather, they have to look as if they are staying the same. That is the best way I can describe the spirit with which the country seems to be anticipating the elections: people are aware that no matter what the outcome an unprecedented cultural, political and social revolution is taking place. And at the same time, they seem surprisingly unfazed by it all, observing these sweeping changes with ease, aplomb, even delight. Perhaps this is because Chileans have by now grown accustomed to wild fluctuations in the country's political fortunes. This past year, the Chilean people saw rightist leaders - until recently General Pinochet's staunchest allies - renouncing all ties to him. General Pinochet is now under house arrest, held not only on human rights charges but also for his alleged role in a financial scandal involving millions of stolen dollars. In countless other ways, the Pandora's box of Chilean politics has been flung wide open: nowadays it isn't at all strange to see an ultraconservative Catholic candidate signing his name on a transvestite's legs as a publicity stunt, nor is it odd to hear Ms. Bachelet talk about how hard it is to find Mr. Right. For decades, even centuries, Chilean politics have largely been of the old-boy's-network variety, in which an all-male group of power brokers have run things on their own terms, within a select inner circle, forging alliances with one another and making deals with the press behind closed doors, far removed from the citizenry they represent. Change in Chile has come at a breakneck pace in recent years, as justice is finally being delivered to dozens of dictatorship-era cronies, and the pillars of the church and the political elite have been shaken to their foundations by a wave of pedophilia scandals involving both. The changes are abrupt and the contradictions are evident. Thanks to the country's growing economy, Chileans have access to more creature comforts than ever before, and yet prosperity somehow hasn't dulled their sensibilities: the populace that benefits from free-market economics also turned out in droves to pay tribute to Gladys Marín, the president of the Communist Party, when her coffin was carried through the streets of Santiago in March. People may be gulping down Starbucks and coveting iPods, but they are also devouring highly irreverent political magazines like The Clinic (for which I write) and flocking to politically oriented movies like 'Machuca,' which is about the 1973 coup led by General Pinochet. Some analysts think that the free-market economy is responsible for this unprecedented change in Chile's political and social landscape. But other countries that follow that economic model (Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States), seem to be slouching in the opposite direction toward a retrograde, hard-line conservatism. Economics, then, clearly do not tell the entire story. Other analysts attribute the change to the current president, Ricardo Lagos, who has concentrated on reconciling Chile with its tortured past. Even so the general consensus is that nobody - not Mr. Lagos, not the Chilean intelligentsia, and certainly not the power elite - was prepared for the seismic social and political shift represented by Ms. Bachelet's thriving candidacy. I don't think anyone would have predicted 10 years ago that we would ever arrive at this moment, but it seems that Chile is eager to usher it in. For us, political and economic stability - despite being so recent and so precious - is not enough. Just as in 1970, when they went to the polls and elected a Socialist president, and again in 1988, when they rejected their dictator, Chileans have proved themselves to be far more daring with their vote than their lifestyles. Perhaps this is because when they vote - in secret, where nobody can judge or criticize them - they reveal their truest colors, their passion for change, for improvisation and for leadership in a world that seems hell-bent on moving in the opposite direction.

Subject: Condi or Hillary From: Johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 02:11:13 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: What a great article Emma - and I like the part where they say the tv show is the fantasy here in the USA - but there is a chance for a female president reality - I would LOVE to see a condi and hillary runoff - that would break the ultimate glass ceiling.

Subject: Hugo Chávez and His Helpers From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:57:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/10sat2.html?ex=1291870800&en=eb1ffae3106662a4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Hugo Chávez and His Helpers The kind of lucky breaks President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been getting lately could tempt even a modest man - and Mr. Chávez is no modest man - to dream grandiose dreams. High oil prices, a terminally inept opposition and the Bush administration's scandalous neglect of its Western Hemisphere neighbors have left the field wide open for Mr. Chávez to bully people at home, buy friends abroad and annoy Washington at every turn. Since first taking office in 1999, Mr. Chávez has pushed through a new Constitution that lets him rule as a quasi dictator. He has marginalized Congress, undermined judicial independence and prosecuted political opponents. By tightening control of the national oil company, he has been able to use high world oil prices to increase funds for popular social programs for the poor, making him electorally unassailable. That dangerous concentration of power will most likely worsen after last Sunday's Congressional election, in which parties allied to Mr. Chávez won every one of the 167 seats. The opposition can blame only itself because it boycotted the polls even after its demands for stricter ballot secrecy were met. That petulant idiocy frustrated regional diplomats who had pressed the secrecy demand on the opposition's behalf, and it mystified and disenfranchised Venezuelan voters who had wanted a choice at the polls. Even without the boycott, pro-Chávez parties would have won a majority. But now not a single opposition voice will be heard in Congress, and Mr. Chávez is free to do whatever he likes. A month earlier, at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Mr. Chávez cavorted before crowds of anti-Washington protesters and networked with his fellow Latin American presidents. He is hoping that either Argentina or Brazil will sell him a nuclear reactor, a step that would be a very bad idea considering Venezuela's burgeoning friendship with Iran and the excessive indulgence Caracas has shown toward Iranian nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Washington's hemispheric influence continues to dwindle, partly because President Bush has not been attentive enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt restructuring. The United States should not further feed Mr. Chávez's ego and give him more excuses for demagogy by treating him as clumsily as it has treated his hero and role model, Fidel Castro, for the past four and a half decades. Instead, Washington needs to compete more deftly and actively with Mr. Chávez for regional influence, and look for ways to work with the hemisphere's other democracies to revive the multiparty competitive democracy that has now just about ceased to exist in Venezuela.

Subject: Growth and the Poor From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:47:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/25/opinion/25wed3.html?ex=1274673600&en=7df88c9ca2831f5d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss May 25, 2005 Growth and the Poor Last year should have been a good one for Latin America's poor; the region's economies grew by 5.8 percent. Yet outside Chile, Latin America's high growth rate is not cause for rejoicing. In places with relatively egalitarian income distribution, growth helps everyone. But in unequal countries, where the poor get only a few cents out of every new dollar, growth bypasses the poorest. Latin America is the world's most unequal region. That means growth will not reduce poverty unless Latin American governments redirect it to the poor. The first thing they must do is keep growing. Chile's achievements are in part the product of sustained growth. Unfortunately, most countries in Latin America are growing not because they have improved productivity, but because of the rise in the price of oil and other commodities, quick booms that lend themselves to quick busts. Many countries also are carrying debt loads far above what is considered sustainable and spend a big chunk of their treasury on servicing their debts. For three very poor countries, Honduras, Nicaragua and Bolivia, the international banks and their members are reducing debt, although not enough. But there is no help in sight for heavily indebted Uruguay, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and other countries. Latin American nations also typically take in far too little in taxes. To reduce poverty with what they do have, Latin American countries would do well to follow the model set by Chile, which has cut extreme poverty by 65 percent since 1990 by carefully targeting its spending. Chile makes direct payments to poor households. It has invested in rural primary education and helps buy housing for the poorest people. These programs have been successful because Chile is well governed enough to measure accurately which families need help and deliver it with little corruption. Some other countries have similar programs. Since 1997, Mexico has helped more than four million of the poorest families keep their children in school, eat better and stay healthier. In many countries, these programs need closer oversight to keep local politicians from siphoning off aid. But in general, such targeted help can make a difference. In Mexico, it is a safety net for the most marginalized. With sustained growth, however, such programs could help lift millions of people out of poverty.

Subject: Fiscal Growth in Latin Lands Fails From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:39:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/25/international/americas/25latin.html?ex=1272081600&en=0fc71bf8c5a5bb91&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss April 25, 2005 Fiscal Growth in Latin Lands Fails to Fill Social Needs By JUAN FORERO QUITO, Ecuador - Last year, Ecuador's economy grew at an astounding 6.6 percent, its inflation rate was the lowest in 30 years, and foreign investment surged. Wall Street celebrated, with a New York-based analyst of Latin American economies, LatinSource, praising Ecuador for 'outperforming even the most optimistic scenarios.' But those rosy numbers did not translate into better lives for Ecuador's poor or political support for Lucio Gutiérrez, who took power 28 months ago, was removed from power by Ecuador's Congress on Wednesday and left Sunday for asylum in Brazil. Though his interference with the judiciary was ostensibly the reason for his fall, many Ecuadoreans had become deeply disillusioned with his government, saying little had changed despite promises of more jobs, better schools and health care. At the shabby, 57-year-old Baca Ortiz public hospital in Quito, considered the country's leading children's hospital, patients have to bring their own medicine, and doctors say they lack clean facilities, decent living wages and even the most rudimentary equipment. 'The last thing the state cares about is education and health care,' said José Acosta, a staff doctor. 'If the state doesn't provide medicine, doesn't provide funding, how are we supposed to provide good care?' The discontent over a lack of state attention to basic social needs, despite increasingly positive macro-economic figures, is being played out across Latin America. Economic growth for the region hit 5.5 percent last year, the best in a generation, inflation is down, foreign reserves are growing, and credit ratings are solid. But the positive economic news has not translated into housing for the poor, more teachers, better hospitals or social peace. After years of fiscal prudence, privatizations and other market reforms prescribed by Washington, unjobless and poverty rates have hardly budged. Poverty remains pervasive, engulfing 44 percent of the population. 'The growth rate is not always an accurate benchmark for a country's authentic prosperity,' said Larry Birns, director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which tracks social and economic trends in Latin America. 'Expectations have risen, and they've risen faster than the growth rate.' The high price of oil and other commodities provided by these countries is fueling the solid economic growth across Latin America. Wall Street is particularly bullish about Peru, which has had strong long-term growth. The economy of Bolivia, one of the region's poorest countries, grew by nearly 4 percent last year, while Mexico topped 4 percent and Brazil, Latin America's largest economy, registered 5.2 percent growth. But Peru's president, Alejandro Toledo, remains the least popular leader in Latin America, and President Carlos Mesa in Bolivia has been battered by public protests. Vicente Fox's administration in Mexico is lacking popular support for its initiatives, and in Brazil many among the legions of poor believe they have been abandoned by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who embraced policies of fiscal restraint despite his leftist credentials. The reasons for the lack of gains are myriad, from corruption to ineptitude to poorly organized social systems. But many experts also say fiscal restraints, coupled with large public debts, are a chokehold on governments like Mr. Gutiérrez's. The public debt in many countries tops 40 percent of economic output. The cynicism among Latin Americans who feel shortchanged is palpable. Mónica Patiño, 44, and other parents at the 23 of May Elementary School in the poor southern part of Quito pool money to pay for blackboards, classroom benches, paint jobs and even the salaries of English and computer science teachers. Her son, Armando Estrella, 6, 'is beaten by a mile compared to a private school boy,' she said, noting that the poorly paid teachers deal with 45 children in a classroom. 'It's totally a mess.' An exception is Venezuela, where a boom in oil has generated the region's highest growth - 18 percent last year - providing billions of dollars that President Hugo Chávez has used to solidify his popularity by directing it into social programs. The new government here, well aware of how Mr. Gutiérrez was debilitated, is moving in another direction. The new president, Alfredo Palacio, 66, a cardiologist and former health minister, was Mr. Gutiérrez's vice president but had long ago broken with the president over the government's fiscal restraints. Indeed, Mr. Gutiérrez, who shifted from a critic of market reforms to a buttoned-down capitalist after he took office, had pledged to maintain fiscal discipline at all costs. He went so far as to cut subsidies for cooking fuel and food, enraging the poor. Mr. Palacio now offers a wholesale change. 'The country needs to invest in health, education, invest in the social,' he told the Quito newspaper El País. 'The 6.6 percent growth that is hyped is a farce.'

Subject: Fight Over Peru Gold Mine From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:31:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/25/international/americas/25GOLD.html?ex=1287892800&en=b11552f1154afd44&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss October 25, 2005 Tangled Strands in Fight Over Peru Gold Mine By JANE PERLEZ and LOWELL BERGMAN SAN CERILLO, Peru - The Rev. Marco Arana drove his beige pickup over the curves of a dirt road 13,000 feet high in the Andes. Spread out below lay the Yanacocha gold mine, an American-run operation of mammoth open pits and towering heaps of cyanide-laced ore. Ahead loomed the pristine green of untouched hills. Then, an unmistakable sign that this land, too, may soon be devoured: Policemen with black masks and automatic rifles guarding workers exploring ground that the mine's owner, Newmont Mining Corporation, has deemed the next best hope. 'This is the Roman peace the company has with the people: They put in an army and say we have peace,' said Father Arana as he surveyed the land where gold lies beneath the surface like tiny beads on a string. Yanacocha is Newmont's prize possession, the most productive gold mine in the world. But if history holds one lesson, it is that where there is gold, there is conflict, and the more gold, the more conflict. Newmont, which has pulled more than 19 million ounces of gold from these gently sloping Peruvian hills - over $7 billion worth - believes that they hold several million ounces more. But where Newmont sees a new reserve of wealth - to keep Yanacocha profitable and to stay ahead of its competitors - the local farmers and cattle grazers see sacred mountains, cradles of the water that sustains their highland lives. The armed guards are here because of what happened in the fall of 2004 at a nearby mountain called Cerro Quilish. For two weeks, fearing that the company's plans to expand Yanacocha would mean Quilish's desecration and destruction, thousands of local people laid siege to the mine. Women and children were arrested, tear gas was thrown, the wounded hospitalized after clashes with the police. In the end, the world's No. 1 gold-mining company backed down. Father Arana, who runs a local group formed to challenge the mine, helped negotiate the terms of surrender. Newmont withdrew its drilling equipment from Quilish - and the promised reserves from its books. Now, in large part because of the loss of Quilish, the company says production at Yanacocha may fall 35 percent or more in two years. The forced retreat, a culmination of years of distrust between the peasants and the mine, was a chastening blow for an industry in the midst of a boom. It underscored the environmental and social costs of the technologies needed to extract the ever-more-valuable ore from modern mines. And it showed how a rising global backlash against those costs was forcing mining companies to negotiate what has come to be known as 'social license' if that boom was to go on. But the history of Yanacocha, pieced together in a six-month examination by The New York Times and the PBS television program 'FrontlineWorld,' is also an excursion into the moral ambiguities that often attend when a first-world company does business in a third-world land. Gold miners say they have no choice but to go where the ore is; they cannot choose the governments they deal with. Yanacocha shows how one company maneuvered in a country, Peru, dominated by a secret web of power under a corrupt autocracy. Newmont gained undisputed control of Yanacocha in 2000 after years of back-room legal wrangling. Behind the scenes, Newmont and its adversaries - a French company and its Australian ally - reached into the upper levels of the American, French and Peruvian governments, employing a cast of former and active intelligence officials, including Peru's ruthless secret police chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Much of that arm-twisting has been dragged into the light, in secret recordings by the spy chief. The tapes, apparently intended to blackmail and manipulate Peru's powerbrokers, surfaced in 2000 and led to the downfall of Mr. Montesinos and the president he served, Alberto K. Fujimori. The tapes captured everything from plotting to fix elections to shopping bags of money being unloaded for payoffs in Mr. Montesinos's office at the Peruvian National Intelligence Agency. They captured Newmont's maneuverings, too. In one audio recording, the No. 3 Newmont executive at the time, Lawrence T. Kurlander, is heard offering to do a favor for Mr. Montesinos. 'Now you have a friend for life,' Mr. Kurlander tells the spy chief. 'You have a friend for life also,' Mr. Montesinos replies. Last year, a Justice Department investigation into whether Newmont's victory resulted from bribing foreign officials was dropped after the Peruvian government failed to cooperate fully and the statute of limitations expired, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the case. The Peruvian government investigated the Yanacocha affair without bringing charges. Mr. Kurlander has agreed to speak out publicly about his meeting for the first time. He says he regrets seeking out Mr. Montesinos, now in jail charged with everything from corruption to gun running and drug trafficking. But Mr. Kurlander and Newmont are adamant that no bribes were paid, nothing illicit done, at least not by them or their allies. 'Everybody involved on the American side, in the American government, that went to see him or spoke to him, asked for a level playing field,' said Mr. Kurlander, who retired in 2002. 'Not a single person asked for him to influence the outcome of the case.' Newmont's senior executives declined repeated requests for interviews for this article, though they did allow Times reporters to make an extensive visit to the Yanacocha mine. But in a written statement, Newmont said of its legal battle for the mine, 'We are satisfied that the company complied in all respects with applicable laws.' Whatever the past environmental problems, Newmont says Yanacocha now meets all Peruvian and international standards. And the company says it is committed to gaining and maintaining the approval of the community. Still, to many of the local people, the continuing struggle for Yanacocha evokes a tale of treachery nearly any Peruvian school child can recite. In 1532, the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the last Inca emperor, Atahualpa, in Cajamarca, the provincial capital 28 miles from Yanacocha. The young Inca, a god to his people, was held for months while he scrambled to amass a ransom: enough gold to fill a room as high as his arm could reach. He turned over his gold, expecting to be freed. But Pizarro killed him anyway. Living on Water At first, people here saw possibility in the mine. Yanacocha - 'black lake' in the indigenous Quechua tongue - sits in one of the poorest agricultural regions of Peru. 'When Yanacocha began its operations, we would only hear about how everyone was happy,' Father Arana said. 'The mine was going to bring jobs, improve roads.' No one thought much, he said, about the inevitable collisions. The collisions began almost immediately. In the Andean peasants' universe, water is the heart of the land. The people depend on it - for their animals, for drinking, for bathing. Community life is organized around it. But the mine lives on water, too. The bits of gold here, so small they are called 'invisible gold,' can be mined profitably only by blasting mountains, then culling the gold with vast quantities of cyanide diluted with similarly vast quantities of water. It was not long before the peasants began to complain. Streams and canals were drying up, they said. They were filled with murky sediment. The water smelled foul. But on the ledger books, Yanacocha was a fast success. The mine had started with 1.3 million ounces of reserves in the ground. Within a year, it claimed over 3 million. It was the biggest foreign investment in Peru. 'Everywhere we drilled and looked, there was gold,' said Len Harris, Yanacocha's first general manager. Dueling Companies Celebration soon gave way to strife. A year before, a partnership had been formed to develop the mine: Newmont; a Peruvian partner, Buenaventura; and a French government-owned company, Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM). No partner had a controlling interest. The World Bank's investment arm, the International Finance Corporation, later took a 5 percent stake, hoping to promote development in a country plagued by economic chaos and roiled by a Maoist insurgent group, Shining Path. With the mine expanding and the guerrilla leader captured, BRGM announced plans to sell a large part of its increasingly valuable stake to an Australia-based company, Normandy Poseidon. Newmont, considering the involvement of another major mining company unacceptable, sued, arguing that the partnership agreement gave it and Buenaventura first right of refusal on any sale. Twice, Peruvian courts agreed. Then, in September of 1997, the Peruvian Supreme Court issued a startling ruling, agreeing to review a case Newmont thought it had definitively won. Stunned and suspicious, the company called in Mr. Kurlander. Mr. Kurlander, then 56, had spent most of his life in government, as a prosecutor and as chief criminal-justice adviser to Gov. Mario M. Cuomo in New York. He later moved to corporate work and was recruited by Newmont in 1994. He had no experience in mining, but in an industry known for its rough edges, he became a top Newmont executive, valued for his political contacts and easy ability to walk between the halls of government and the corporate suite. On his arrival in Peru, Mr. Kurlander says, he was told by Newmont's lawyers and security chief that the French were 'behaving inappropriately in the litigation.' 'The mere fact that they were doing this,' he said in an interview, 'was unseemly at best and corrupt at worst.' Newmont, he said, was at a distinct disadvantage: the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act forbids American companies to pay anything of value to a foreign official in exchange for a 'result.' By contrast, in 1997, most European countries, France included, did not prohibit paying bribes. The French ambassador to Peru at the time, Antoine Blanca, said in an interview that no one connected to the embassy had ever offered bribes or otherwise acted improperly. Still, what emerges from documents and interviews with participants is a picture of three years of increasing pressure and intimated threats by Normandy and the government of France. In the Peruvian press, the French ambassador insinuated corruption of the judiciary; French government emissaries suggested to Peruvian officials that there would be consequences if Newmont was awarded the disputed shares. Normandy recruited Patrick Maugein, a well-connected French businessman. By phone, fax and letter, Mr. Maugein placed Newmont and Buenaventura on notice that the dispute had become a 'matter of state'; the French, he warned, 'had every intention of fighting it to the bitter end.' Mr. Maugein had ties to the French president, Jacques Chirac, and soon Mr. Chirac wrote to President Fujimori, urging a Supreme Court review and his personal intervention. Mr. Maugein declined to be interviewed for this article, but in a letter wrote that any allegations of illicit activity 'come from people who have been paid to make them.' From Lima, in the days after the Supreme Court agreed to take the case, Mr. Kurlander headed to Washington to enlist help on the American side. By the end of October 1997, Stuart E. Eizenstat, under secretary of state for economic affairs, wrote Peru's prime minister to press for 'a fair and impartial hearing,' according to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. 'A politically tainted decision would adversely affect U.S. investment in Peru,' he wrote On Jan. 5, 1998, Peru's Supreme Court came back with a preliminary decision; 3 to 2 for the French, one vote shy of victory. As the Peruvians prepared to assign two more judges to the case, Mr. Kurlander says, he and Buenaventura's chief, Alberto Benavides, appealed to Mr. Fujimori. Soon after, Mr. Kurlander said, the president's office sent word about the man to see. Spy Chief's Favor Bank Vladimiro Montesinos's titles never matched his stature. Officially, he was 'counselor' to Mr. Fujimori and de facto head of the National Intelligence Service. In reality, he was the second-most-powerful man in Peru - 'Rasputin, Darth Vadar, Torquemada and Cardinal Richelieu' rolled into one, according to an American Army intelligence report. The National Intelligence Service was also on the payroll of the C.I.A., which gave Mr. Montesinos a million dollars a year for his supposed help in combating the narcotics trade, according to former C.I.A. officials who approved the payments. This was the man Mr. Kurlander headed to see alone on Feb. 26, 1998. While he says he knew that Mr. Montesinos was 'an extremely bad man,' he maintains that the extent of the government's corruption and human rights abuses were not well known at the time. There was, however, one case he was aware of. Not long before, the Fujimori government had seized the television station of a Peruvian-Israeli businessman, Baruch Ivcher, after it began broadcasting reports tying the intelligence chief to drug trafficking and corruption. Mr. Kurlander knew that publicity about the case was threatening to become a headache for Peru's government. As the secret tape rolls, Mr. Montesinos says he is aware of Mr. Kurlander's problems and is 'very glad to do whatever I can for you.' Mr. Kurlander describes his own links to the intelligence community and how he has enlisted 'friends' - two former C.I.A. officials - to assist him, because the French side 'has been acting quite strangely.' Their conversation is interpreted by Grace Riggs, a lawyer and former lover of the spy chief who had a child with him. Soon Mr. Kurlander raises the Ivcher case. Mr. Montesinos assures him that the pursuit of Mr. Ivcher is not an anti-Semitic 'persecution,' and Mr. Kurlander offers to help by lobbying his fellow Jews in the United States and abroad. 'Tell him I going to help him with the voting,' Mr. Montesinos directs his translator. He is well aware of the 'tricky practices of the French government,' he says, making a joke about 'The French Connection.' The reference, in English, gets the men laughing. Soon spy chief and executive are pledging friendship for life. The spy chief then proceeds to discuss with another man, who has never been identified, the lawyers and judges who may need to be influenced. The conversation is in Spanish, which Ms. Riggs does not translate. Finally, she tells Mr. Kurlander that because he helps Mr. Montesinos 'without expecting anything in return,' the spy chef 'wants to do the same thing for you.' 'I appreciate that,' Mr. Kurlander replies. 'Amor con amor se paga,' Mr. Montesinos exclaims. Love is repaid with love.Still, Mr. Kurlander says, he had doubts. In the following weeks, 'nothing happened,' he said. 'I was very worried that we were lost.' In fact, the channel between Mr. Montesinos and the Americans was open and bustling. Peter Romero, then assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, acknowledged in an interview that he had twice called Mr. Montesinos to show that the case was being 'monitored' in Washington. 'He seemed to be a nice enough fellow,' he recalled. The 'compelling reason' to get involved, he said, came from Peruvian and American Embassy officials who confirmed the direct involvement of President Chirac and others at the top of the French government. 'We wanted to ensure that that was neutralized,' Mr. Romero said. Two and a half years later, Mr. Romero left government and was hired by Mr. Kurlander as a consultant on Peru for Newmont, where he remained for 18 months. On April 14, six weeks after the Montesinos-Kurlander meeting, the video cameras were rolling for a visit from the C.I.A. station chief, Don Arabian. As the meeting nears its end, Mr. Montesinos says he has been collecting information on the French attempt to influence the case and will not let them use 'extortion, blackmail and other gangster' methods. 'I'm not working with the telephones, but we will if necessary,' Mr. Montesinos says, an apparent reference to wiretapping. 'We'll sort out the technical support.' The men laugh. Mr. Arabian, who recently retired, declined a request for an interview. On May 8, the sixth Supreme Court justice voted in favor of Newmont and Buenaventura. With the vote deadlocked, 3-3, the court administrator appointed a final judge, Jaime Beltrán Quiroga. He was summoned the next day by Mr. Montesinos. A videotape shows the justice settled on the couch as Mr. Montesinos talks about how, as a lawyer he, too, would normally 'keep a distance' from events. But 'in these cases,' he says, 'one has to intervene directly.' Mr. Montesinos avoids direct pressure - 'as if we are imposing on you' - but reminds the judge that the case is a matter of national interest: the United States is a key guarantor of coming deliberations over Peru's border conflict with Ecuador. There is no discussion of payoffs, but the spy chief does question the judge about his professional ambitions. The men reminisce. 'Well, doctor, you have a friend here,' Judge Beltrán says. 'My dear, Jaime, then, a pleasure to see you, brother,' Mr. Montesinos replies, assuring his guest that he will soon be transferred to Peru's Constitutional Court. Judge Beltrán's vote was announced two weeks later: Newmont and Buenaventura were awarded BRGM's share - at the purchase price set in 1993: $109.7 million. When the final transfer was negotiated a year later, the stake was valued at more than five times that. Today Mr. Kurlander says that whatever his reservations at the time about meeting Mr. Montesinos, he went ahead because nearly everyone told him, 'If the French were to be stopped, he was the only one in Peru who would dare to do it.' The transcript is 'terribly unfair,' Mr. Kurlander says, and leaves out a number of his statements that all he wanted was a 'level playing field.' Mr. Kurlander's name has been attached to the meeting and his reputation harmed, he says, though he insists the meeting was no secret. He says his Newmont superiors and his partners in the Benavides family were thoroughly briefed. 'It was my government who recommended - strongly - that we speak with him,' Mr. Kurlander said at his home outside Denver. 'Tell me what my option is at that point. Do I lay down and just fold, fold up and go home? Or do I fight for what I think is right and fair and just?' In an interview at his Lima offices, Mr. Benavides, now Buenaventura's chief executive, insisted, 'We didn't know what Mr. Kurlander was doing,' and added that he did not learn about the Montesinos meeting until the tape was made public several years later. The Mercury Spill At Yanacocha, year after year, the mine's geologists had kept striking gold. And with every ton of earth sifted, it became ever clearer that the mine had not just ripped up the landscape; it had remade the social architecture, too. There were growing class divisions, between the many campesinos who had received well-paying jobs - Yanacocha would eventually employ as many as 2,200 people, two-thirds locals, full time, and up to 6,000 on shorter-term contracts - and the tens of thousands more who had not. People migrating to the region in pursuit of work brought overcrowding and rising crime. In June 2000, a truck contracted to carry canisters of mercury, a byproduct of mining, spilled 330 pounds of the poisonous metal over 25 miles of road around Choropampa, 53 miles from the mine. The villagers believed that the mercury was mixed with gold. They scooped it up. Some took it home to cook on their stoves. A World Bank report later said the mine delayed reporting the accident to the national authorities and initially played down its seriousness to the bank. In the end, the Peruvian government fined the mine $500,000; the company says it has paid $18 million more. A class-action suit has been filed against Newmont in Denver, charging that more than 1,000 people were harmed, some for life. The extent of that damage has been in dispute from the start. Even so, the spill left deep psychic scars. It became common mythology that mercury had killed newborn babies and caused cancer and other diseases, Dante Vera, a former Peruvian Interior Ministry official hired in 2004 as an adviser to Newmont, wrote in a report to company executives. At Newmont, it was becoming increasingly clear that the social turmoil was a business problem. The spill, Mr. Kurlander said in a speech a year later, 'served as a wake-up call for us.' Soon, he was headed back to Peru, to lead an environmental audit of the mine. Newmont kept the audit's results within the company, never acknowledging them publicly - either to its shareholders or to the local people. Mr. Kurlander found 'a high level of mistrust' of the mine. But the 44 findings of Mr. Kurlander's audit, which was given to The Times, also confirmed many of the villagers' specific complaints: that fish were disappearing and that lakes, streams and canals were being contaminated, at least one with cyanide. One stream, Quebrada Honda, had 13 fish per kilometer in 1997, but none by 2000, the audit said. Thousand of tons of rock not processed for gold recovery were generating dangerous acidic runoffs. In a letter after the audit, Mr. Kurlander says that as the mine expanded, 'we eliminated many environmental safeguards that were in the construction and environmental management plans.' In all, he wrote to Newmont's new chief executive, Wayne Murdy, the findings were so serious that they could jeopardize the mine's continued operation and leave senior executives subject to 'criminal prosecution and imprisonment.' Mr. Kurlander's tough words came on the heels of another memo to Mr. Murdy about the spill: On Jan. 18, 2001, Mr. Kurlander recommended that all the top executives, including himself and his boss, take cuts in their bonuses, of 50 to 100 percent, and that the punishment be made public. Mr. Kurlander singled out the company's environmental team, saying that despite public pledges, Newmont had failed to adhere to American environmental standards. To his disappointment, Mr. Kurlander said, some bonuses were indeed reduced, but without public notice and much more modestly than he had recommended. In a letter to Mr. Kurlander three years later, Mr. Murdy said the company had learned from the accident and the audit. Newmont, he said, spent $100 million to fix the environmental problems, including $50 million for a water-treatment plant and $20 million on two dams to prevent sediment from clogging streams and canals. Mercury is now shipped inside triple-sealed, stainless-steel containers and escorted by a convoy of cars. To Mr. Kurlander, the spill showed the folly of a company ignoring the people, particularly the people most set against the mine. In a memo, he warned that with the mine sunk so low in the peasants' esteem, Newmont would never be able to mine Quilish. 'We have come to this because we have been in denial,' he wrote. 'We have not heeded the voices of those most intimate with our mine - those who live and work nearby.' It was less than a year after the audit that he retired. The Peasants Protest The protests began not long after people began seeing the drilling machines up on the cone-shaped hill above Cajamarca. Quilish had long been on Newmont's drawing boards. Last year, Newmont mined three million ounces at Yanacocha, its most profitable single source of gold. But the more it pulls from the ground, the more it must replace to remain No. 1. Back in 2000, the local government had passed an ordinance declaring Quilish and its watershed a protected natural reserve. But Newmont had persuaded a Peruvian court that it had the right to mine because it had acquired the concession years before. In August 2004, the machines moved in. To many people, that was the final betrayal, said Mr. Vera, the former Newmont consultant. He quit this summer, saying his advice had been ignored. On Sept. 2, deploying boulders, vehicles, anything they could find, hundreds of campesinos blockaded the narrow mountain road that runs from Cajamarca to the mine. Several hundred armed officers, including 150 special operations police officers from Lima, were sent in to guard the mine. The first day was the most violent; protesters were arrested, many of them women and old people, according to Father Arana's colleague, Jorge Camacho. At times during the siege, the police used tear gas. One man was shot in the leg. The company kept the gold coming out of Yanacocha, but only by helicoptering the workers in. On Sept. 15, there was a regionwide strike, with street demonstrations in Cajamarca. The message, on one of the blizzard of placards in town, was: 'Listen Yanacocha. Cajamarca is to be respected.' The protests were organized by the peasants themselves, Mr. Camacho and others say. But the 43-year-old Father Arana, son of teachers from Cajamarca, had been nurturing the movement for many years, even before he founded his group, Grufides, in the late 1990's. (These days, it receives financial assistance from Oxfam.) The campesinos call him Father Marco, and he is a devoted adherent of liberation theology and its doctrine of social activism for the poor. He is not the easiest of men. Last spring, he met Newmont's chief, Mr. Murdy, on the sidelines of the company's annual general meeting in Denver. As the priest recalls it, Mr. Murdy tried to be conciliatory, saying he lived by his mother's motto: 'We are given one mouth but two ears to listen with.' Father Marco says he rebuffed the overture, replying, 'In the Bible, there is a saying about some people have eyes that don't see and ears that don't hear.' As the siege ran on at Yanacocha, the priest became a key negotiator between Newmont, the peasants and the Ministry of Mines. It was not long after the demonstrations in Cajamarca that the company surrendered. The machines came down from Quilish. At Newmont's request, the ministry withdrew its permit, too. What remains up on the mountain is a symbolic wall of mud and straw that the campesinos built to keep the miners at bay. Standing down at Quilish, with its 3.8 million ounces of reserves, has only intensified the need for new reserves. 'The pressure feels like you're laying track and knowing there's a locomotive right behind you,' said the mine's exploration manager, Lewis Teal. So Newmont is looking elsewhere, in the highlands near San Cerillo, where the jade-green lagoons and peaty grasses act as a store of water for the peasants below. Many people there worry about the effects of a new mine. Which is why, after Quilish, Newmont is paying for the Peruvian police units protecting the drilling team, said the mine's manager, Brant Hinze. Even so, Mr. Hinze said, leaving Quilish was the right thing to do. 'The thing that the company did - both Newmont and Buenaventura - is listen to the communities, and they said this is something we want you to stay away from,' he said. Newmont's Peruvian partner, Mr. Benavides, argued that exploration of Quilish had not been abandoned, simply suspended. 'We have the concession, and we have the land,' he said. He added: 'I do not understand what social license means. I expect a license from the authorities, from the minister of mines. I expect a license from the regional government. I don't expect a license from the whole community.' Still, the idea of social license is at the heart of the agreement that ended the siege: If Newmont hopes ever to mine Quilish, it first must win the community's consent. Company Social Work So to promote Yanacocha's well-being and expansion, Mr. Hinze has become the kind of mine manager he never imagined being. He says he had asked for the job running Yanacocha because of its sheer scale - 'it's big, it's profitable,' is how he puts it. Fifty years old, silver-haired and steely eyed, 6 foot 3 and 255 pounds, he is a man of scale himself. His idea of recreation, he says, is riding his Harley or swimming with hammerhead sharks. Now, he says, he spends 70 to 80 percent of his working time on social issues. On a recent day, he ate roasted guinea pig at a lunch with a peasant group. A few days later, he attended a ceremony celebrating a gift of $500,000 for a new road around San Cerillo. 'Modern mining can coexist with cattle, agriculture and tourism,' he told one gathering. 'Today we begin a new history for communities around here.' Newmont says that it paid $180 million in taxes to Peru's government last year, and that under a new law, half was returned to the Cajamarca region. But to its frustration, the company says, the local government has largely been unable to use the money to benefit the people - and most of the people here remain achingly poor. So the company, albeit ambivalently, has become something of a surrogate government. It is contributing money for schools and clinics and building some small water treatment plants in the villages. In all, the company says it will spend nearly $20 million this year on social programs. Water remains a divisive issue: Father Arana and his allies argue that a new, every-three-weeks testing protocol is insufficiently independent. The peasants continue to complain. But company and local officials say there have been no environmental accidents at Yanacocha in more than two years, and the mine says it manages its water to ensure there is enough for the community. But the biggest issue is the one looming over every modern industrial gold mine: What happens when the ore that lured the miners here is gone? Over 13 years, Newmont has moved mountains for gold - 30 tons of rock and earth for every ounce. By the time it is through, the company will have dug up a billion tons of earth. Much of it will be laced with acids and heavy metals. Three years ago, after Newmont acknowledged that 36,700 fish were missing from a river contaminated by the mine, the World Bank hired an American geochemist, Ann Maest, to study the streams and canals flowing from the mine. In the short term, she concluded, the water was safe for human use. But long term, she said in an interview, the company's own tests show that all the components are in place for the huge piles of rock to leak acids that will pollute surface and groundwater. The only preventive, she said, would be 'perpetual treatment.' Mr. Hinze, who was recently appointed head of Newmont's North American operations, insists that the company's plan for closing the mine will take care of long-term treatment and cleanup. 'We plan on being here a very long time,' he said. Newmont has yet to put aside money for long-term treatment, though it says it will comply with a Peruvian government requirement due to take effect in 2007. But to pay for cleanups, the company needs to keep profits high. To keep profits high, it needs to keep finding and mining more gold. Yet increasingly, the unmovable reality is that to keep mining more gold, it has to make peace with the people who will be here long after the miners leave. Mr. Hinze and Newmont insist that that can - in fact, must - be done, even if some people may never be won over. 'There will always be a level of mistrust,' he said. 'Unfortunately, we can't please everyone.' Mr. Vera, the former Newmont consultant, is not so confident. He says he sometimes thinks that the clash between the mine and the peasants is so fundamental as to be beyond even the best intentions. 'Mining negatively affects the Andean cosmic vision of the unity of nature,' he said. 'The conflict cannot be settled with money. Mining generates resentments that are difficult to heal.'

Subject: Latin America Fails to Deliver on Needs From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:28:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/international/americas/22bolivia.html?ex=1266814800&en=f39f4fe7c1ec29cf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland February 22, 2005 Latin America Fails to Deliver on Basic Needs By JUAN FORERO EL ALTO, Bolivia - Piped water, like the runoff from the glaciers above this city, runs tantalizingly close to Remedios Cuyuña's home. But with no way to pay the $450 hookup fee charged by the French-run waterworks, she washes her clothes and bathes her three children in frigid well water beside a fetid creek. So in January, when legions of angry residents rose up against the company, she eagerly joined in. The fragile government of President Carlos Mesa, hoping to avert the same kind of uprising that toppled his predecessor in 2003, then took a step that proved popular but shook foreign investors to their core. It canceled the contract of Aguas del Illimani, a subsidiary of the $53 billion French giant Suez, effectively tossing it out of the country and leaving the state responsible. 'For us, this is good,' Ms. Cuyuña said, voicing the sentiment in much of El Alto. 'Maybe now, they will charge us less.' That is far from certain. Even less certain is how she and 130 million other Latin Americans will get clean water anytime soon in a region where providing basic services remains among the most pressing public health and political issues. Governments like Bolivia's tried the task themselves before, abandoned it as too costly, and turned to private companies in the 1990's. Today as privatization is rejected, foreign investment is plummeting across the region and the challenge is being returned to states perhaps less equipped than a decade ago. The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now? 'The decisions that have to be made are stark and difficult,' said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. 'They're going to have to make some sort of compromise, and that compromise often means buying back and taking over those services - and then, of course, making them efficient in the hands of the state. Their track record doing this in the past was miserable.' Indeed, the heated backlash against free-market changes - fueled by the sense that they promised more than they delivered while offering overpriced, often flawed services - has at once left governments vulnerable to volatile protests and forced foreign companies to retreat. No companies have been more buffeted than those running public utilities offering water, electrical and telephone services, or those that extract minerals and hydrocarbons, which, like water, are seen as part of a nation's patrimony. In Peru, despite major economic growth, foreign investment fell to $1.3 billion last year from $2.1 billion in 2002. Ecuador has also seen investments sag, as oil companies that once saw the country as a rosy destination have faced the increasingly determined opposition of Indian tribes and environmental groups. Argentina, which has taken a decidedly leftist path in the economic recovery following its 2001 collapse, has recouped only a fraction of the investments it attracted just a few years ago. Across the region, companies are more than ever weighing political risks when considering expansion plans. Political leaders, meanwhile, are having to weigh the need for foreign investment against the demands of citizens who are increasingly quick to hit the streets. 'In the last decade, non-economic factors have become even more important in affecting investments,' said César Gaviria, former secretary general of the Organization of American States. 'Political risks have grown to a great degree,' added Mr. Gaviria, now chairman of Hemispheric Partners, a firm based in the United States that provides political and economic risk analysis to investors. 'There's no doubt about it.' The fall in foreign investment is perhaps most pronounced in Bolivia, where in 1999 it totaled $1 billion as gas companies flocked here to mine newly discovered fields. Last year, it fell to $134 million, as companies proved skittish after President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was ousted in uprisings set off by his plans to permit multinational companies to export Bolivia's natural gas. Those who resist the trends of globalization have been emboldened by what they see as the success of local people in asserting their control over resources. 'It has been phenomenal to see a movement largely made up of the indigenous and peasant farmers fight and win,' said Deborah James, who directs campaigns against American-led globalization efforts at Global Exchange, a San Francisco group. 'What you see is a massive popular rejection of transnational companies owning essential services.' Others, less enthusiastic, see a troubling degree of political instability and a perfect storm of uncertainty on the horizon. 'You see, in country after country, that the battle lines are being drawn over utility questions,' said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow who closely tracks the Andes for the Washington policy group Inter-American Dialogue. 'It builds a great resentment and rage that things so essential to people, like water, like electricity, are not being delivered in a fair and equitable way. That's a formula for rage that leads to mobilization, and that's why we're seeing a convulsed region.' In Uruguay, a referendum in October guaranteed public control over water resources, enshrining water as a 'basic human right.' In Chile's central valley region, 99.2 percent of voters in a plebiscite in 2000 rejected privatization of the state-run water company. (The government privatized anyway.) In Argentina, another French water provider was tossed out in 1998, while Ecuador's government has repeatedly failed to privatize telecommunications and electricity generating companies. In Peru, protests against plans to privatize electric utilities have been persistent, while as far north as Nicaragua and Mexico, activists have fought efforts to battle privatization plans for water systems. The battle surrounding Aguas del Illimani, which provided water for El Alto, is revealing of the anger over privatizations that many here say they were never consulted about and never asked for, but were put in place as a condition for loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Indeed, Aguas del Illimani was not the first company to get a taste of Bolivians' fury. In 2000, in the midst of angry demonstrations, the state annulled a contract with Bechtel, a multinational based in San Francisco that had doubled fees on being granted the concession in Cochabamba. In 2003, in the face of protests and instability, a consortium of companies signaled that it had all but called off a $5 billion pipeline project to transport natural gas to the Pacific, from where it would have been shipped to the United States. Under continuing pressure, the government of President Mesa is now moving forward with legislation that would raise taxes and increase government control of energy projects in Bolivia. So the stage was set for the outburst against Aguas, which grew out of a decision by Mr. Mesa to raise subsidized fuel prices on Dec. 30, even though the company did not seem a likely target before now. The Bolivian government had in fact welcomed Aguas in 1997 to turn around an inefficient public system that provided water to El Alto and the adjacent capital, La Paz. After it arrived, Aguas says it met its contractual obligations and expanded services, and even government officials concede that the company did an admirable job at first. Potable water, offered by the state water company to 152,812 households in the two cities in 1997, rose by 81,180 households in seven years. Sewage service was expanded to more than 160,000 households by last year from 95,995. But eight years into its contract, Aguas ran into problems. Profits were never as high as the company would have liked, since the former country people who flocked to El Alto, a mostly indigenous city of 750,000, were used to conserving and never consumed much water. When company officials asked state regulators for permission to increase monthly fees, their request was rejected. But the company won permission to increase the hookup fees, to $450 from just over $300. It was a fee most people here - where the average monthly wage is about $55 - could never hope to pay. 'It was contractual, so I cannot blame Aguas del Illimani,' said José Barragán, the government's vice minister of basic services, in charge of water service. 'But a prudent administrator would not have taken that road.' Mr. Barragán says that the government 'is not accusing Aguas for not complying with the contract.' Instead, he said, the company avoided government efforts to renegotiate so that service could be expanded, a contention the company denies. The lack of a resolution effectively left 200,000 people without any real chance of obtaining water service, Mr. Barragán said. 'That's completely false,' said Alberto Chávez, Aguas's general manager, emphasizing that the company had shown a willingness to meet with both the government and the leaders of Fejuve, an El Alto group that organized protests. Still, Mr. Chávez conceded that 70,000 people in Aguas's concession area in El Alto still had no water. Now, with Aguas's contract canceled, the question in El Alto remains how to expand and improve service. No one believes that the state or the city of El Alto, both cash poor, will be able to do so. 'Ultimately, if Bolivians are going to get real access for water it's going to have to be subsidized,' said Jim Shultz, director of the Democracy Center, a policy group in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city, that studies the effects of free market reforms. 'And it's going to have to be subsidized in some form of foreign assistance.' That, he noted, is not a realistic proposition, because Bolivia cannot afford to seek more loans and foreign governments are not so willing to make big cash outlays to a state they view as increasingly erratic. Many residents, like Franz Choque, 31, a construction worker, are worried. He said that he was not philosophically opposed to a private company running the water system. He only wanted the costs to be just and the service to be effective. 'It is O.K. for a foreign company to be here, but they should charge the Bolivian rate, not like in the country where they come from,' said Mr. Choque, as he worked on a new school that will have running water only because residents have pooled resources to pay for the hookup. 'Not everything can be free. We can pay a little. But we just want a fair price.'

Subject: Bolivia's Fight for Natural Resources From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:27:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/23/international/americas/23bolivia.html?ex=1274500800&en=958b56353478e572&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss May 23, 2005 Bolivia Epitomizes Fight for Natural Resources By JUAN FORERO LA PAZ, Bolivia - The struggle over globalization and who controls natural resources is being waged across Latin America, but the battle lines are no sharper anywhere than here in Bolivia, where a potent confederation of protesters plans a march on Monday to demand more state control of energy resources. Political analysts say the march - combined with a work stoppage and an Indian-style town hall meeting in a La Paz plaza - could further weaken the already debilitated government of President Carlos Mesa. It was just such a protest over energy policy that forced President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada from office in October 2003. Now, with Mr. Mesa politically incapacitated and Congress thoroughly discredited because it is seen as corrupt, protesters have become emboldened, with some calling for the outright expropriation of private gas installations operated by such energy giants as British Gas, Repsol-YPF of Spain and Petrobras of Brazil. Such demands have been gathering force, and they underscore the increasingly deep divisions in this Andean country, which despite its isolation has been at the forefront of a powerful backlash against market overhaul in Latin America. 'I think it's the most polarized the country has been in a long time,' said Jim Shultz, director of the Democracy Center in Cochabamba, which studies the effects of globalization on Bolivia. 'In October 2003, the issue was more volatile, but it was more volatile because it was basically everybody against the government. This isn't everybody against the government. This is a situation where Bolivia is split three or four different ways.' On one side, there are Bolivians like Carlos Alberto López, a former vice minister of energy who was educated at Harvard and the London School of Economics. Mr. López, now a consultant for energy companies, contends that nationalizing the oil industry would be a disaster for the country. He said Bolivia should instead be taking advantage of the fact that it has Latin America's second largest gas reserves by attracting foreign investors with favorable terms and then selling the gas to energy-hungry giants like Brazil or the United States. 'This was our last best hope for Bolivia's economy to grow,' Mr. López, 45, said in an interview. Across this capital, in a small office decorated with posters of the revolutionary icon Che Guevara, another protagonist expresses a sharply opposed viewpoint. 'The people have a right to nationalize and expropriate,' said Jaime Solares, 53, who started working at age 13, has a 10th grade education and heads the Bolivian Workers Central, the country's largest labor confederation. 'The people no longer believe in neo-liberalism.' The movement against market reforms appears to be gaining ground. Last week, Bolivia's Congress, under pressure from protesters, signed into law a new tax-and-royalty scheme so tough that energy experts say oil and gas multinationals will curtail investments. But groups like Mr. Solares's, with hundreds of thousands of members, say the law is too soft and want more restrictions. At the same time, a conservative, pro-globalization movement in the relatively prosperous eastern part of Bolivia is calling for a referendum on whether the region should have more autonomy, including control of its gas fields. Political analysts say the divisive crisis could lead to violence or, in time, the disintegration of a country whose state has little presence or control over its far-flung provinces. The discovery of large gas deposits in the late 1990's was supposed to have brought Bolivia more stability and wealth as the country's leaders tried to position Bolivia as a regional energy power. But the masses of poor indigenous people have never forgotten how the Spanish and a series of corrupt governments plundered the country's silver, tin and gold, leaving them more poverty-stricken than before. Flexing their political muscle, they have carried out protests that resulted in the departure of two foreign water companies and wreaked havoc with the government's energy plans. 'Those companies always come in with big promises, but all they do is rob,' said Rafael Condori, 18, an Aymara Indian who plans to take part in the protest on Monday. Such words could not be more troubling to Juan Carlos Iturri, an economist who said that many protesters are driven by slogans and do not take into account Bolivia's economic realities. 'Nationalization is not real and it cannot be sustained in time,' he said. 'They want a horse and a battle and nothing sounds better than saying, 'Die, transnationals.' ' But Bolivia's history seems to signal that the protests are not likely to fade away. A major revolution in 1952 led to nationalization of the largest tin mines, and charismatic leaders have revived the movement in recent years. Eduardo Gamarra, the Bolivian-born director of Latin American studies at Florida International University in Miami, referred to that history, saying in an interview, 'Bolivia is one of the few places in the world where you have a firm belief that nationalizing key industries is the way to go.'

Subject: Latin America Looks Leftward Again From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:26:20 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/weekinreview/18forero.html?ex=1292562000&en=558c4c3c738a08c7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 18, 2005 Latin America Looks Leftward Again By JUAN FORERO TACAMARA, Bolivia AT first glance, there's nothing cutting edge about this isolated highland town of mud-brick homes and cold mountain streams. The way of life is remarkably unchanged from what it was centuries ago. The Aymara Indian villagers have no hot water or telephones, and each day they slog into the fields to shear wool and grow potatoes. But Tacamara and dozens of similar communities across the scrub grass of the Bolivian highlands are at the forefront of a new leftward tide now rising in Latin American politics. Tired of poverty and indifferent governments, villagers here are being urged by some of their more radical leaders to forget the promises of capitalism and install instead a community-based socialism in which products would be bartered. Some leaders even talk of forming an independent Indian state. 'What we really need is to transform this country,' said Rufo Yanarico, 45, a community leader. 'We have to do away with the capitalist system.' In the burgeoning cities of China, India and Southeast Asia, that might sound like a hopelessly outdated dream because global capitalism seems to be delivering on its promise to transform those poor societies into richer ones. But here, the appeal of rural socialism is a powerful reminder that much of South America has become disenchanted with the poor track record of similar promises made to Latin America. So the region has begun turning leftward again. That trend figures heavily in a presidential election being held today in Bolivia, in which the frontrunner is Evo Morales, a charismatic Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who promises to decriminalize coca production and roll back market reforms if he wins. Though he leads, he is unlikely to gain a clear majority; if he does not, Bolivia's Congress would decide the race. Still, he is the most fascinating candidate, because he is anything but alone in Latin America. He considers himself a disciple of the region's self-appointed standard-bearer for the left, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, a populist who has injected the state into the economy, showered the nation's oil profits on government projects aimed at the poor, and antagonized the Bush administration with constant invective. 'In recent years, social movements and leftist parties in Latin America have reappeared with a force that has no parallel in the recent history in the region,' says a new book on the trend, 'The New Left in Latin America,' written by a diverse group of academic social scientists from across the Americas. Peru also has a new and growing populist movement, led by a cashiered army officer, Ollanta Humala, who is ideologically close to Mr. Chávez. Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, who won office in 2003, announced last week that Argentina would sever all ties with the International Monetary Fund, which he blames for much of the country's long economic decline, by swiftly paying back its $9.9 billion debt to the fund. The leftist movement that has taken hold in Latin America over the last seven years is diverse. Mr. Chávez is its most extreme example. Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, by contrast, is a former labor leader who emphasizes poverty reduction but also practices fiscal austerity and gets along with Wall Street. Uruguay has been pragmatic on economic matters, but has had increasingly warm relations with Venezuela. In Mexico, the leftist who is thought to have a good chance to be the next president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has distanced himself from Mr. Chávez. What these leaders share is a strong emphasis on social egalitarianism and a determination to rely less on the approach known as the Washington Consensus, which emphasizes privatization, open markets, fiscal discipline and a follow-the-dollar impulse, and is favored by the I.M.F. and United States officials. 'You cannot throw them all in the same bag, but this is understood as a left with much more sensitivity toward the social,' said Augusto Ramírez Ocampo, a former Colombian government minister who last year helped write a United Nations report on the state of Latin American democracy. 'The people believe these movements can resolve problems, since Latin American countries have seen that the Washington Consensus has not been able to deal with poverty.' The Washington Consensus became a force in the 1980's, after a long period in which Latin American governments, many autocratic, experimented with nationalistic economic nostrums like import-substitution and protectionism. These could not deliver sustained growth. The region was left on the edge of economic implosion. With the new policies of the 1980's came a surge toward democracy, a rise of technocrats as leaders and, in the last 20 years, a general acceptance of stringent austerity measures prescribed by the I.M.F. and the World Bank. Country after country was told to make far-reaching changes, from selling off utilities to cutting pension costs. In return, loans and other aid were offered. Growth would be steady, economists in Washington promised, and poverty would decline. But the results were dismal. Poverty rose, rather than fell; inequality remained a curse. Real per capita growth in Latin America since 1980 has barely reached 10 percent, according to an analysis of I.M.F. data by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. Meanwhile, many Latin Americans lost faith in traditional political parties that were seen as corrupt vehicles for special interests. That led to uprisings that toppled presidents like Bolivia's Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and Ecuador's Lucio Gutiérrez; it also spawned demagogues who blame free-market policies for everything without offering detailed alternatives. The new populism is perhaps most undefined here in the poorest and most remote corner of South America. Mr. Morales promises to exert greater state control over foreign energy firms and focus on helping micro-businesses and cooperatives. 'The state needs to be the central actor,' he said in a recent interview. But he is short on details, and that worries some economists. Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University development economist and former economic adviser here, says he empathizes with Bolivia's poor and agrees that energy companies should pay higher taxes. But he says Bolivia cannot close itself off to the world. 'Protectionism isn't really a viable strategy for a small country,' he said. If Mr. Morales does become president, he might well find that the slogans that rang in the streets are not much help in running a poor, troubled country. Mr. da Silva, the Brazilian president, acknowledged as much in comments he made Wednesday in Colombia: The challenge, he said, is 'to show if we are capable as politicians to carry out what we, as union leaders, demanded of government.'

Subject: Election for President in Bolivia From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:24:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/international/americas/19bolivia.html?ex=1292648400&en=756614a05be517fc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 19, 2005 Coca Advocate Wins Election for President in Bolivia By JUAN FORERO LA PAZ, Bolivia - Evo Morales, a candidate for president who has pledged to reverse a campaign financed by the United States to wipe out coca growing, scored a decisive victory in general elections in Bolivia on Sunday. Mr. Morales, 46, an Aymara Indian and former coca farmer who also promises to roll back American-prescribed economic changes, had garnered up to 51 percent of the vote, according to televised quick-count polls, which tally a sample of votes at polling places and are considered highly accurate. At 9 p.m., his leading challenger, Jorge Quiroga, 45, an American-educated former president who was trailing by as much as 20 percentage points, admitted defeat in a nationally televised speech. At his party's headquarters in Cochabamba, Mr. Morales said his win signaled that 'a new history of Bolivia begins, a history where we search for equality, justice and peace with social justice.' 'As a people who fight for their country and love their country, we have enormous responsibility to change our history,' he said. Mr. Quiroga's concession signaled that he was prepared to step aside and avoid a protracted selection process in Congress, which, under Bolivian law, would choose between the top two finishers if neither obtained at least 50 percent of the vote. 'I congratulate Evo Morales,' Mr. Quiroga said in a somber speech. The National Electoral Court had not tabulated results on Sunday night, though Mr. Morales echoed the early polls and claimed to have won a majority. His margin of victory appeared to be a resounding win that delivered the kind of mandate two of his predecessors, both of whom were forced to resign, never had. Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian-born political analyst from Florida International University in Miami, said Mr. Morales could be on his way to becoming 'the president with the most legitimacy since the transition to democracy' from dictatorship a generation ago. A Morales government would become the first indigenous administration in Bolivia's 180-year history and would further consolidate a new leftist trend in South America, where nearly 300 million of the continent's 365 million people live in countries with left-leaning governments. Though most of those governments are politically and economically pragmatic, a Morales administration signals a dramatic shift to the left for a country that has long been ruled by traditional political parties disparaged by many Bolivians. The victory by Mr. Morales will not be welcomed by the Bush administration, which has not hidden its distaste for the charismatic congressman and leader of the country's federation of coca farmers. American officials have warned that his election could be the advent of a destabilizing alliance involving Mr. Morales, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Venezuela's president, Hugo Chávez, who has seemed determined to thwart American objectives in the region. In comments to reporters after casting his vote in the Chapara coca-growing region on Sunday , Mr. Morales said his government would cooperate closely with other 'anti-imperialists,' referring to Venezuela and Cuba. He said he would welcome cordial relations with the United States, but not 'a relationship of submission.' He also pledged that under his government his country would have 'zero cocaine, zero narco-trafficking but not zero coca,' referring to the leaf that is used to make cocaine. Mr. Chávez, who has met frequently with Mr. Morales, expressed confidence that Bolivia would turn a new page with the election. 'We are sure what happens today will mean another step in the integration of the South America of our dreams, free and united,' he said earlier in the day from Venezuela. The election, which was marked by personal attacks, pitted two fundamentally different visions for how to extricate Bolivia from poverty. While Mr. Quiroga pledged to advance international trade, Mr. Morales promised to squeeze foreign oil companies and ignore the International Monetary Fund's advice. Mr. Morales enjoyed strong support in El Alto, a largely indigenous city adjacent to the capital, La Paz, where voters said they had tired of years of government indifference. 'The hope is that he can channel our needs,' said Janeth Zenteno, 31, a pharmacist in El Alto. 'We have all supported Evo. It is not just what he says. It is that this is his base and he knows us.' For Javier Sukojayo, 40, a teacher, the election could signal a transformation of Bolivia into a country where the poor have more say. 'It has been 500 years of oppression since the Spanish came here,' said Mr. Sukojayo, who counts himself as indigenous. 'If we are part of the government - and we are the majority - we can make new laws that are in favor of the majority.'

Subject: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:24:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/asia/20china.html?ex=1258606800&en=6af924a356976d31&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland November 20, 2004 China Widens Economic Role in Latin America By LARRY ROHTER SANTIAGO, Chile - The expected arrival here on Friday of President Bush, who personifies for Latin Americans the economic and political power of Washington, is being greeted with an uneasy mix of protests and hopes for greater growth. But while the United States may still regard the region as its backyard, its dominance is no longer unquestioned. Suddenly, the presence of China can be felt everywhere, from the backwaters of the Amazon to mining camps in the Andes. Driven by one the largest and most sustained economic expansions in history, and facing bottlenecks and shortages in Asia, China is increasingly turning to South America as a supplier. It is busy buying huge quantities of iron ore, bauxite, soybeans, timber, zinc and manganese in Brazil. It is vying for tin in Bolivia, oil in Venezuela and copper here in Chile, where last month it displaced the United States as the leading market for Chilean exports. While President Bush is spending the weekend here for the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, President Hu Jintao of China is here in the midst of a two-week visit to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba. In the course of it, he has announced more than $30 billion in new investments and signed long-term contracts that will guarantee China supplies of the vital materials it needs for its factories. The United States, preoccupied with the worsening situation in Iraq, seems to have attached little importance to China's rising profile in the region. If anything, increased trade between Latin America and China has been welcomed as a means to reduce pressure on the United States to underwrite economic reforms, with geopolitical considerations pushed to the background. 'On the diplomatic side, the Chinese are quietly but persistently and effectively operating just under the U.S. radar screen,' said Richard Feinberg, who was the chief Latin America adviser at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. 'South America is obviously drifting, and diplomatic flirtations with China would tend to underscore the potential for divergences with Washington.' Chinese investment and purchases are seen as vital for economies short on capital and struggling to emerge from a long slump. In Argentina earlier this week, for example, Mr. Hu announced nearly $20 billion in new investment in railways, oil and gas exploration, construction and communications satellites, a huge boost for a country whose economic vitality has been sapped since a financial collapse in December 2001. China is also increasingly willing to venture outside the economic realm. In March, for example, after Dominica, in the Caribbean, severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Beijing responded with a $112 million aid package, which includes $6 million in budget support this year and $1 million annually for six years. In Antigua, it has pledged $23 million toward the construction of a new soccer stadium. Political relations seem to be advancing most rapidly with Brazil, Latin America's most populous nation, where the left-leaning government has repeatedly floated the idea of a 'strategic alliance' with Beijing. The Brazilian government has made clear that it views closer ties with China as a card that can be played to offset American influence and trade dominance. While not suggesting that China could soon replace the United States as Brazil's main customer and partner, the aim is to force trade and other concessions from the United States and rich industrialized nations. 'We want a partnership that integrates our economies and serves as a paradigm for South-South cooperation,' President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in May during a state visit to China during which he was accompanied by nearly 500 Brazilian business executives. 'We are two giants without historical, political or economic divergences, free to think only about the future.' Before his visit, Mr. da Silva even hinted at negotiating a free-trade agreement with China, a step that Chile this week announced it would take. But China's impact in Brazil is already felt so strongly that the idea was quickly shelved after São Paulo business groups expressed fears of being overwhelmed by state-owned Chinese companies in their own domestic market. In 2003 China became Brazil's second-largest individual trading partner, and in recent months the Chinese have been seeking joint ventures that would expand trade even further and give them a significant investment stake. Brazil is one of the few countries to enjoy a trade surplus with China, and last year alone exports to China nearly doubled, to $4.5 billion. 'Over the past three or four years, the growth in trade has been explosive,' said Renato Amorim, formerly a diplomat in Brazil's embassy in Beijing and now the executive director of the Brazil-China Business Council. 'China is trying to assure reliable sources of supply of raw materials to deal with the shortages it faces, and since there are no conflicts on the political agenda, Brazil fits the bill.' Many of the minerals come from a part of the Amazon known as Carajas, which has the largest, purest reserves of iron ore and other strategic minerals in the world. At a complex at the mouth of the Amazon near Belém that produces alumina, the white powder that is refined from bauxite to make aluminum, production may soon double, with most of it expected to go to China over the next decade. Farther down the coast, Baosteel of China and Companhia Vale do Rio Doce of Brazil, the world's largest iron ore producer, are partners in a $1.5 billion steel venture to produce up to eight million tons of iron a year. Upriver in Manaus, Chinese delegations are negotiating long-term deals for timber. To the south, in Mato Grosso, similar missions are trying to lock up supplies of soybeans and cotton. The same is happening elsewhere, especially in agriculture. All across the South American heartland, from the Amazon to the pampas of Argentina, a boom in the cultivation of soybeans, used mainly as animal feed, has been propelled in recent years by the emergence half a world away of a Chinese middle-class with more income and a desire for more pork, chicken and beef. Concerned by what they see as Chinese advances, Japan and South Korea are also stepping up their efforts to secure their own supplies of raw materials in the region. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan visited Brazil in mid-September. President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea has also scheduled trips to Argentina, Brazil and Chile, planned around the Chinese visits. 'Within a few years there is likely to be a 'war' to develop raw materials,' Park Yong Soo, president of the state-run Korea Resources Corporation, told Reuters last month. 'China is challenging aggressively,' he added, leading to supply shortages and higher prices. The few Brazilian analysts who have experience dealing with China are also urging their government to be cautious. Ideological sympathies or some vague notion of third world solidarity, they say, should not get in the way of the national interest. In pursuit of their 'strategic partnership,' Brazil and China have jointly developed a satellite program, are discussing Brazilian sales of uranium for use in Chinese reactors, and recently marked the opening of a plant in China owned by the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. But it is clear to most Brazilian experts that China sees their country primarily as a source of raw materials, and that bothers them. Many are encouraging the government to fight for a more equal relationship, raising concerns from trade flows to environmental damage. 'Thus far, the discourse has been much more political that pragmatic, with all this talk of a South-South alliance,' said Eliana Cardoso, formerly a World Bank economist for China and now a university professor in São Paulo. She and others caution that though President da Silva has stressed that the Brazilian and Chinese economies are essentially complementary, China is also a rival. During President Hu's visit last week, the Brazilian government agreed to recognize China as a 'market economy,' a step that makes it harder to impose penalties on China for dumping exports. The influential Industrial Federation of São Paulo immediately criticized the move as a 'political decision' that leaves 'Brazilian industry in a vulnerable position' and will bring 'prejudicial consequences to various industrial sectors.' Not only are businesses concerned about China's making inroads into the domestic market; they also worry about exports of products with which Brazil has had some success abroad, from shoes and toys to chemicals and car parts. 'What Brazil has to insist on is that instead of exporting raw materials, we try to export processed goods,' Dr. Cardoso said. Marcos Jank, an economist who is an adviser to the Industrial Federation of São Paulo, agreed. 'China in the long term can rob markets from Brazil, because the hand of the state is still very strong in a lot of areas, including the exchange rate,' he said. 'It is a ferocious competitor in the things we export, as well as for markets and investments.' In fact, so much foreign investment has been going to China that Latin America is finding it difficult to obtain the capital it needs to finance its own growth. As a result Brazil, like neighboring Argentina, has been forced to court Citic, the state-controlled China International Trust and Investment Corporation, in hopes that at least a small part of China's estimated $500 billion in foreign reserves will make its way to the region. Thus far, China has been mainly interested in infrastructure projects that would assure a more steady flow of the products it is already buying from Brazil and Argentina. In particular, railways, ports, highways, gas pipelines and other energy-related projects are being studied. Earlier this month, a Citic delegation visited two dam sites in the Amazon that would be essential to the alumina and steel joint ventures in Brazil. Such projects have raised questions about the environment, especially in the Amazon. Environmental groups here look at China's dismal record on projects like the Three Gorges Dam and worry that the Chinese will be tempted to export their problems to Brazil. In fact, several of the projects being considered would be highly polluting, while others would be energy-intensive and probably inflict damage to the environment similar to what occurred at Three Gorges. Of special concern are a pair of plants that would process coal in Brazil, partly for export back to China. 'It would be sad if at the moment the Chinese are beginning to worry about being green, we continue on the old path of not evaluating this criterion in our commercial transactions,' the columnist Washington Novaes wrote this month in O Estado de São Paulo. Brazil must avoid falling into the trap of being 'a big supplier of commodities without compensation for the high environmental and social costs' that accompany that role, he added. Brazilian analysts agree that hard negotiations on this and a host of other issues lie ahead. Though the relationship with China is inherently unequal, they note, Brazil can get more of what it wants only if it avoids being impetuous and is as hard-nosed and pragmatic as the Chinese themselves. 'They want Brazil to continue to be a big producer of commodities so as to regulate prices, to depress them on world markets,' said Gilberto Dupas, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo. 'For China, any alliance with Brazil is eminently pragmatic and opportunistic, and much more tactical than strategic.'

Subject: Re: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 06:29:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Excellent article, This underlines how aggressive the chinese really are. The macroeconomic model is similar to that of Germany's after WW2, except with lower wage and social costs. Its funny isn't it, the same problems that arise in the American economy (income inequality) are now being exemplified in the Global Economy. With global consumption concentrated in only a few countries, the risk of a demand side shock is huge. And unless US GDP launches into a new stratosphere, something's gonna give....

Subject: Re: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Terri To: Poyetas Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 11:29:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Nice comments :)

Subject: Water to the Bolivian Poor From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:22:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/business/15water.html?ex=1292302800&en=3d5d84e4e7f221e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 15, 2005 Who Will Bring Water to the Bolivian Poor? By JUAN FORERO COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - The people of this high Andean city were ecstatic when they won the 'water war.' After days of protests and martial law, Bechtel - the American multinational that had increased rates when it began running the waterworks - was forced out. As its executives fled the city, protest leaders pledged to improve service and a surging leftist political movement in Latin America celebrated the ouster as a major victory, to be repeated in country after country. Today, five years later, water is again as cheap as ever, and a group of community leaders runs the water utility, Semapa. But half of Cochabamba's 600,000 people remain without water, and those who do have service have it only intermittently - for some, as little as two hours a day, for the fortunate, no more than 14. 'I would have to say we were not ready to build new alternatives,' said Oscar Olivera, who led the movement that forced Bechtel out. Bolivia is just days away from an election that could put one of Latin America's most strident antiglobalization leaders in the presidency. The water war experience shows that while a potent left has won many battles in Latin America in recent years, it still struggles to come up with practical, realistic solutions to resolve the deep discontent that gave the movement force in the first place. That discontent may have found its most striking incarnation in Bolivia. Here, protests against the introduction of stronger market forces have toppled two presidents since 2003. And the discontent has given Evo Morales, a charismatic Aymara Indian and nationalistic congressman who has channeled much of the anger of his poverty-stricken country, a slight lead in the polls ahead of the Dec. 18 elections. Frustrated that the economic restructuring prescribed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund failed to translate into sustained growth and reduced poverty, country after country in Latin America has either discarded or is questioning much of the conventional wisdom about relying more on market forces - known as the 'Washington consensus' - from the privatization of utilities to the slashing of social spending to unfettered trade. Much of the policy turn has come under pressure from the streets and the results have varied wildly. Argentina, for instance, has bounced back from economic collapse by ignoring crucial aspects of I.M.F. orthodoxy the last four years, while accepting others. Ecuador is tottering on the brink of political tumult even as the eight-month-old government of President Alfredo Palacio tries ramping up social spending. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez is forming state companies and spending lavishly - some say recklessly - on social programs, pleasing the poor, but failing to generate much foreign investment or business not linked to the overarching oil industry. Bolivia's back-tracking, more a product of roiling protests than government policy, began after the country became among the first in Latin America to apply market prescriptions wholeheartedly in the mid-1980's. The I.M.F. later asked for far-reaching measures in exchange for loans and other aid, and promised steady growth, up to 6 percent a year, that would cut into poverty. Bolivia's economy, though, grew at a dismal pace. Even the fund, in a 2003 memo, noted that a fall in per capita income and employment contributed to 'rising social tensions that erupted recently.' The fund and other institutions that helped guide Bolivia's economy blame grinding corruption, poor infrastructure and high pension costs. Officials at the I.M.F. also note that Bolivia, like other countries that seek help, come only when they are wracked by economic troubles that require tough choices. 'If you're spending more than you're earning, for a while that's fine,' said Caroline Atkinson, deputy director of Western Hemisphere operations for the fund. 'But if your borrowing gets too huge, then no one wants to fund you anymore, and you have to cut back.' But to Bolivians, the experiment was marked by failure. Privatized companies like the railroads went bust, while the energy industry is generating $100 million less in taxes and royalties than it did when it was state-run, budget officials said. 'They did everything right,' said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University who has been critical of the I.M.F. formula. 'They liberalized, they privatized and they felt the pain. Now it's 20 years later and they're saying, 'When is the gain?' ' In the end, market changes pushed by the I.M.F., the World Bank and American-educated Bolivian economists fueled anger that severely weakened governments and gave rise to Mr. Morales. Making his name leading Bolivia's powerful coca growers' federation, Mr. Morales has in the last four years used his outsider status, his 'up by the bootstraps' journey from very poor origins on Bolivia's high plains and his Indian roots to rail against market changes he says favor foreigners, not Bolivians. That is why Mr. Morales is pushing for a 'nationalization' of the gas industry that, while not leading to expropriation, will increase taxes and royalties on foreign energy companies; those combined levies were raised earlier this year to 50 percent. He also wants to tighten borders to keep out cheap products and focus the government's attention on cooperatives, a loose mix of indigenous and socialist business practices. 'We will have an economy based on solidarity and reciprocity,' Mr. Morales said in an interview. 'We do not dismiss the presence of foreign investment, but we want it to be real, fresh investment to industrialize our hydrocarbons, all under state control.' The proposals, to be sure, are vague. Mr. Morales, who did not finish high school, is guided on economic matters by Carlos Villegas, a left-leaning economist, and by his running mate, Álvaro García, a socialist intellectual, professor of sociology and former guerrilla who articulates the party's position. Much of the anger that has given Mr. Morales momentum began here in his home city, Cochabamba. The arrival of Bechtel quickly prompted heated protests when the water company increased rates, arguing that it needed more money to finance investment and expand service. In some cases, poor people ended up paying double their previous costs. It also became clear that Bechtel would not expand service to the impoverished south, where the company had no profits to gain from an expensive expansion. The ouster of the company meant the return of Semapa - but this time with more community control. Semapa has expanded service in fits and starts, with those receiving piped water and sewage service increasing to 303,000 people, from 248,000. The company also managed to lower costs and, oddly for a government company, reduce the work force. But Semapa still grapples with petty graft and inefficiencies, managers at the company said. Its most serious problem, though, is a lack of money. The company cannot secure big international loans, and it cannot raise rates, since few here could pay them. For a wide-scale expansion that would include a new dam and aqueducts, $300 million is needed, an enormous amount for a company whose capital budget is just shy of $5 million. 'I don't think you'll find people in Cochabamba who will say they're happy with service,' said Franz Taquichiri, one of the community-elected directors of Semapa and a veteran of the water war. 'No one will be happy unless they get service 24 hours a day.' On a tour of Semapa's facilities, Luis Camargo, the operations manager, explained that the water filtration installation is split into an obsolete series of 80-year-old tanks and a 29-year-old section that uses gravity to move mountain water from one tank to another. It is fine for a smaller city, he said, but what is needed now is to develop high-altitude reservoirs, a hugely expensive undertaking. 'We're trying to be realistic, and we're looking for aid from Canada and other countries,' explained Mr. Camargo, who has worked at Semapa 20 years. Thousands of people have given up on ever getting Semapa's water. At Rafael Rodríguez's home and small restaurant, a spigot in the yard provides water three hours a day from a community well. He has little good to say about Bechtel, but he noted that Semapa's pipes were far from reaching the neighborhood. 'I was hoping water would get here, but it just has not happened,' Mr. Rodríguez, 43, said. Community organizations, each with an average of 200 families, pool money to drill 200 feet into dry, soft dirt, searching for water that is then delivered through small, cheap pipes to homes in the vicinity of each well. Still, there are many people who cannot even depend on wells. Edwin Villa, 35, lives in a neighborhood that gets its water through deliveries made two or three times a week by freelance water dealers. The deliveries are sporadic, he said, and sometimes the water contains tiny worms. His children ask for piped water, but there is not much he can tell them. 'Our hope is that someday Semapa will reach this far,' he said. 'It would just be magnificent.'

Subject: Where the Incas Ruled From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:21:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/17/international/americas/17boli.html?ex=1247803200&en=6fdf1cc82248f171&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland July 17, 2004 Where the Incas Ruled, Indians Are Hoping for Power By JUAN FORERO ACHACACHI, Bolivia -After centuries of misery and discrimination, indigenous people across the region are flexing their political muscles, moving to wrest power from the largely European ruling elite but also dreaming of an independent state. Such a state could look a lot like this bleak town in the highlands, where the police and central government authorities were chased out long ago, their offices destroyed by seething Aymara Indians. The Bolivian flag has given way to the seven-color Wipala, the flag of the Indian nation. Roads linking this landlocked country to the world were also blockaded frequently, a lever to prod the government to meet ever-tougher demands. The political awakening has extended into Peru, where indigenous people have also closed highways and taken over some small towns. In Ecuador, groups of the Pachakutik movement have pledged to step up protests meant to force the resignation of President Lucio Gutiérrez, whom they helped to put in power but who has fallen out of favor over his free-market policies. It is in Bolivia, the most indigenous country in Latin America, where they hold the most influence. One crossroads for the two visions of Bolivia will come Sunday, when a referendum is held on the issue of how to use the country's abundant natural gas, either exporting it in the hope of conventional economic development, or keeping it for use at home. The outcome could ignite new protests unless President Carlos Mesa is able to finesse the issue through his complicated five-question ballot. He faces Indians who are increasingly aggressive in taking on the government, and have scored a series of victories. Just nine months ago, their protests forced President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozado to resign. Now, they want Mr. Mesa to expropriate Bolivia's oil and gas companies, a proposal he rejects. In local meetings, some Indians now even talk of forming a completely new nation, reaching across the scrub grass of the Andean highlands into Peru and Chile, where the Aymaras also live. It is a idea that has a powerful hold on this swath of the former Inca empire. 'We could remain part of Bolivia, but we want to run things,' said Ramón Yujra, the director of a school in Achacachi and an indigenous leader. Felipe Quispe, a former guerrilla and a prominent indigenous leader, went further. 'What we've been doing is taking out the government representatives, the police, the transit force, the judges, the subprefects, even the mayors,' he said. 'Like a drop of grease that expands, if this movement keeps growing, we will reach all of Bolivia.' Such talk is enthralling to his followers, and unnerving to the ruling elite and the government. Motivated by a distrust of the ruling class for ignoring their poverty, and rejecting global economics, they talk of a vague - critics say naïve - plan of returning to the Inca past, with a communal agricultural society. All decisions should be made by consensus in local councils, or allyus, these Indians say. The indigenous movement has surged in the first years of this century, using the ballot box, sometimes violence, and popular protest. In 2000, they stopped a plan by the Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, the huge conglomerate, from privatizing the water system in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city. Politically, Indians and their allies now control about a third of the 157 seats in Congress, up from a handful a few years before. But not all Indians, perhaps not even a majority, support Mr. Quispe's plans to found a new society 'on the communal system our ancestors lived,' fearing that breaking off from Bolivia would only mean isolation, conflict and increased poverty. Notably, Evo Morales, Bolivia's most influential indigenous leader and a perennial candidate for the presidency, has become a de facto ally of Mr. Mesa and is working within the political system to harness the country's gas riches to help his people. Still, indigenous leaders are confident that one day, sooner rather than later, the Indians will probably run the nation's government, either by winning the 2007 election, or possibly by capitalizing on the kind of revolt that ended Mr. Sánchez de Lozada's brief presidency. Many politicians agree that the Indians are on the verge of taking power, something that has not happened in Latin America in centuries. 'We want to reconstitute our own state,' said Eugenio Rojas, an indigenous leader and academic at the teachers college in nearby Warisata. 'There is no other option but a new strike. We need a revolution.' The indigenous have the numbers. They comprise up to 61 percent of the 8.3 million people in this vast country, the size of France and Spain combined, so big that over the years the national government's hold on the countryside has been tenuous, at best. Of Bolivia's 314 municipalities, 200 have mayors and other government officials who are indigenous. This highland region, where indigenous groups are most radical, contains three million Indians stretching across four states that make up a third of the country. Indeed, the battles between the indigenous and the nation's ruling classes - those of European heritage or mixed-race people called mestizos - have led to the most tumult here in Bolivia. Indigenous leaders have been particularly forceful ahead of a referendum Sunday that asks Bolivians about how they want their nascent, but potentially lucrative, gas industry developed. Its five questions ask whether the nation should revive its state-owned oil company, use gas to regain a coastline lost to Chile in war a century ago and exert tighter control over oil and gas. If the questions pass, the government hopes for a new, legal framework that will permit it to raise royalty rates on oil and gas companies and permit the exportation of gas, crucial to this country's development. 'The objective of the referendum is to immediately end the obstacles toward the sale of gas,' Mr. Mesa said in an interview in La Paz, the capital. 'If the response is positive, we can begin negotiating contracts for the sale of gas.' But the referendum does not ask the question many indigenous leaders wanted: whether to expropriate gas installations. Mr. Mesa's government said it opposes such a plan, citing the cost of buying out foreign-owned properties at more than $5 billion, more than half of Bolivia's tiny annual economic output of $8 billion. Many indigenous and labor groups, including the country's militant miners, remain frustrated at how natural resources have long been taken out of the country, with little to show in return. In Corpaputo, a town of mud-brick homes on the edge of snowcapped mountains, the people ask why gas should be exported to the United States when they have never known what it is like to bathe with hot water, or have heat in their homes. 'We do not have light, we do not have gas, we cook with wood,' said Julián Poma, 42, the leader of Corpaputo. 'They sell gas to other countries, and we get nothing.' Directing much of their anger at foreign exploitation, those indigenous groups are pushing for a nationalization of properties owned by British Gas, PetroBras, Repsol-YPF of Spain and others. The threat has slowed investments by oil and gas companies, dropping from $680 million in 1998 to $160 million last year. Mr. Sánchez de Lozada's plans to export gas by piping it to the Pacific Ocean through Chile, Bolivia's historic enemy, prompted bitter protests in which security forces killed dozens of demonstrators, most of them Indians. With the furor, Mr. Sánchez de Lozada was forced out of office. Mr. Mesa is now responding more gingerly to the pressure, to protect the nation's economic development and its brittle democracy That has not stopped some indigenous leaders - Mr. Mesa calls them a radical fringe - who say they plan to burn ballot boxes and hold strikes, particularly in El Alto, a city of 700,000 that is mostly indigenous and has been at the forefront of militancy. 'They have become even more radical and they seem more open to resorting to violent acts,' Ricardo Calla, the indigenous affairs minister, said of Aymara groups in the highlands east of the capital. 'You cannot underestimate its presence and how it is passing down to lowland regions.' President Mesa has tried to defuse tensions by pledging to negotiate and avoid the use of force, even in villages where officials have been forced out. The government has, in many indigenous towns, never really had much of a presence, and Mr. Mesa has been reluctant to wield force in an action that could provoke unrest. The president said he was instead undercutting support for them by giving Bolivia's Indians more say. Mr. Mesa is permitting a constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution, a move that will give Indians and others in rural areas more powers. He has also embarked on a campaign to explain to Bolivians how the export of natural gas can become the engine for economic development. 'We want to sell gas to benefit Bolivians,' Mr. Mesa said. Polls in Bolivia's urban centers show the referendum will probably pass, but political analysts say that does not mean Mr. Mesa's troubles are over. The five questions have been described as artfully written, vague enough that they will be open to interpretation. 'I'm concerned about those who lose, ' said Eduardo Gamarra, a Bolivian who directs Latin America studies at Florida International University in Miami. 'Are they willing to accept the results?' The indigenous have made important strides since a miners' revolution in 1952 instituted universal suffrage and expanded education. A 1994 law provided the distribution of funds to municipalities across the country in an effort to decentralize Bolivia. A Ministry for Indian Affairs has functioned for years. The Constitution recognizes Bolivia's multicultural and multilingual society. But for many, it is not enough. In three days of interviews in four indigenous villages across a swath of Andean highlands, Aymara leaders spoke of all kinds of ideas: separating from Bolivia, pressing for more resources, or simply having more autonomy. The clear message, though, was that they had little faith in their government and preferred to run things themselves. It is an idea that is already at work in many villages, even those that do not want a clean break from the capital. 'Each community is like a semi-state: they regulate water, their internal conflicts, their politics,' said Álvaro García, a sociologist who is close to Indian leaders. The state, he said, 'has not been completely expelled, but there is semiautonomy.' In schools and town offices in the highlands, the posters of past presidents or Independence-era generals have been replaced by those of Túpac Katari, who led a insurrection against the Spanish in 1781. Local councils have banned officials from the state or central governments. Prospective investors with mining companies have been chased out. 'We go to a crime scene but the people tell us we will be lynched,' said Marco Antonio Nina, a government investigator who has been unable to investigate the murder of a mayor and other crimes in isolated villages. 'People see you, and see the white face, and they do not want to let you in.''

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:22:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/16/05 S&P Index is 6.3 Large Cap Growth Index is 7.0 Large Cap Value Index is 8.1 Mid Cap Index is 14.6 Small Cap Index is 8.5 Small Cap Value Index is 7.5 Europe Index is 10.2 Pacific Index is 20.0 Energy is 45.6 Health Care is 15.2 Precious Metals 40.0 REIT Index is 12.8 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 2.3 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 3.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:21:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/16/05 Energy 41.4 Financials 7.1 Health Care 8.1 Info Tech 5.5 Materials 2.4 REITs 12.9 Telecoms 4.3 Utilities 17.9

Subject: Canada and Canadian Currency From: Dorian To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 06:15:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: ('...the Canadian economy right now has fundamentals that 'are the envy of the industrialized world.' We have a strong currency, healthy trade surplus and government finances that generate reliable surpluses, allowing a steady paydown of the public debt. We have record-low unemployment and exceptionally high corporate profitability. At a time of high energy prices, we produce more than we consume. Wow. I assumed Canada was one of the sounder economies and currencies, but this is impressive. If their worst concern is that the US economy might go south, it seems a better option to hold their currency than ours, all things considered. Dorian Times are good but for the 800-pound gorilla in the room JAY BRYAN, The Gazette Published: Saturday, December 17, 2005 Times are good in Canada, really good. Now watch out. The story is not quite as simple as that, of course, since we're talking about an economic forecast that takes into account factors from all over the globe. But this is the essence of a sobering new warning from chief economist Clement Gignac at the National Bank of Canada. Gignac paints a persuasive picture that 2006 could well be the year in which our luck runs out as years of accumulated financial excesses in the U.S. economy start to come unwound, beginning with the deflation of a housing bubble that may be stretched to its limit. Like any forecaster, of course, he could be wrong. Indeed, he says quite sincerely: 'I hope to be wrong.' But enough others share his concerns that they're well worth noting. There is a small good-news facet to this outlook: it's that Canada should suffer less than the U.S., since this country at least has a number of economic strengths that will act as shock absorbers if a serious slowdown hits. Indeed, Gignac notes the Canadian economy right now has fundamentals that 'are the envy of the industrialized world.' We have a strong currency, healthy trade surplus and government finances that generate reliable surpluses, allowing a steady paydown of the public debt. We have record-low unemployment and exceptionally high corporate profitability. At a time of high energy prices, we produce more than we consume. So why worry? Because we happy Canadians are perched on top of what many economists, including Gignac, regard as a financial volcano: the increasingly stressed U.S. economy. If it blows, we can expect to be shaken badly. There's lots to worry about in the U.S. Leading economic commentators have been expressing worry for years about that country's large, growing government deficits and trade deficits. The problem is complicated, but the major element is easy to spot: an economy that's been overstimulated by low tax rates and low interest rates. The low taxes show up on the government's books as growing deficits and in consumer pocketbooks as extra cash to spend. Low interest rates also fuel spending, partly by making it cheap to take out a consumer loan, but even more by spurring demand for real estate, which drives up housing prices. People sitting on an ever-more-valuable home don't worry much about saving, so they spend still more. Thus, the U.S. has a negative savings rate for the first time ever. The key symptom of these problems is a housing bubble similar to the stock bubble that burst so painfully five years ago. As the stock bubble did, it makes people feel prosperous because their wealth keeps rising, at least on paper. But when such a bubble bursts, this feeling of wealth is painfully reversed. The reversal of a housing bubble can be even more brutal, though, Gignac points out. Housing can't necessarily be sold easily, and its owners usually incurred a lot of debt to buy it. Gignac believes that 2006 is the year when the housing bubble will start to deflate. If this is abrupt, it could trigger a recession. More likely, he thinks, it will happen gradually and there will merely be a sharp economic slowdown. How sharp? U.S. economic growth from the end of this year through the end of 2006 will likely decelerate to 2.4 per cent from the past year's robust 3.7 per cent. The principal reason is that consumer spending growth will grind nearly to a halt, falling to the slowest rate in 15 years.Canada's overall growth will slow, too, even though the energy and commodity-driven economies of the West and the Maritimes should hold up well. The soft spot will be Ontario, which produces a larger percentage of North America's autos than any other locale, even Michigan. When consumers feel impoverished, the last thing they want to buy is a new car.Quebec will also be hurt, since it depends on exports to the U.S. and to Ontario. It will also feel it if a U.S. slowdown squeezes demand in other parts of the world, as it likely would. But its economy is much less vulnerable to a downturn in auto manufacturing and cushioned from another negative factor, high petroleum prices, by abundant hydro power. jbryan@thegazette.canwest.com Times are good but for the 800-pound gorilla in the room

Subject: You wouldn't think so if.... From: Mik To: Dorian Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:01:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Canada is currently going through elections. If you listen to the opposition parties, you wouldn't think that Canada is doing so well. Actually kind of funny trying to see them argue over the.... errr uhmmm... well Canada doesn't have any troops in Iraq, so that is not an issue.... errr... Canada has no financial deficits so that is not an issue.... Canada's health care is healthy so that isn't really an issue... uhmmm Canada's unemployment rate is at 6.4% (if they applied US calculation methods it would be 5%)... so that isn't an issue. The arguments that these politicians have, MUST be the MOST boring arguments on earth. But hey... I'd take boring over Bush any day ;-)

Subject: Re: You wouldn't think so if.... From: Emma To: Mik Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 19:27:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Canadians should be very very pleased with themselves. Australians and New Zealanders as well. All are joining the Nordics.

Subject: Economic Growth From: Emma To: Dorian Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 11:18:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: There is something altogether different happening here and internationally. Short term interest rates have been rising for 18 months with almost no significant effect on long term rates. The long term treasury is at 4.45%. Also, oil and energy costs have increased sharply before and since the Federal Reserve began this tightening cycle. Still, there is little core inflation while economic growth has been steady through these months. Internationally housing market activity has selectively slowed, while in America there are signs of slowing. Nonetheless there is reasonable growth through the developed markets, little core inflation, and with a strong dollar booming international stock markets in domestic currencies. There is a benign economic adjustment occurring through developed markets that I cannot similarly find looking through these last 35 years. The problem in America is a poor quality labor market, but this attribute to structural problems that will take a different political climate to change.

Subject: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 18:24:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/international/asia/20china.html?ex=1258606800&en=6af924a356976d31&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland November 20, 2004 China Widens Economic Role in Latin America By LARRY ROHTER SANTIAGO, Chile - The expected arrival here on Friday of President Bush, who personifies for Latin Americans the economic and political power of Washington, is being greeted with an uneasy mix of protests and hopes for greater growth. But while the United States may still regard the region as its backyard, its dominance is no longer unquestioned. Suddenly, the presence of China can be felt everywhere, from the backwaters of the Amazon to mining camps in the Andes. Driven by one the largest and most sustained economic expansions in history, and facing bottlenecks and shortages in Asia, China is increasingly turning to South America as a supplier. It is busy buying huge quantities of iron ore, bauxite, soybeans, timber, zinc and manganese in Brazil. It is vying for tin in Bolivia, oil in Venezuela and copper here in Chile, where last month it displaced the United States as the leading market for Chilean exports. While President Bush is spending the weekend here for the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, President Hu Jintao of China is here in the midst of a two-week visit to Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Cuba. In the course of it, he has announced more than $30 billion in new investments and signed long-term contracts that will guarantee China supplies of the vital materials it needs for its factories. The United States, preoccupied with the worsening situation in Iraq, seems to have attached little importance to China's rising profile in the region. If anything, increased trade between Latin America and China has been welcomed as a means to reduce pressure on the United States to underwrite economic reforms, with geopolitical considerations pushed to the background. 'On the diplomatic side, the Chinese are quietly but persistently and effectively operating just under the U.S. radar screen,' said Richard Feinberg, who was the chief Latin America adviser at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. 'South America is obviously drifting, and diplomatic flirtations with China would tend to underscore the potential for divergences with Washington.' Chinese investment and purchases are seen as vital for economies short on capital and struggling to emerge from a long slump. In Argentina earlier this week, for example, Mr. Hu announced nearly $20 billion in new investment in railways, oil and gas exploration, construction and communications satellites, a huge boost for a country whose economic vitality has been sapped since a financial collapse in December 2001. China is also increasingly willing to venture outside the economic realm. In March, for example, after Dominica, in the Caribbean, severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Beijing responded with a $112 million aid package, which includes $6 million in budget support this year and $1 million annually for six years. In Antigua, it has pledged $23 million toward the construction of a new soccer stadium. Political relations seem to be advancing most rapidly with Brazil, Latin America's most populous nation, where the left-leaning government has repeatedly floated the idea of a 'strategic alliance' with Beijing. The Brazilian government has made clear that it views closer ties with China as a card that can be played to offset American influence and trade dominance. While not suggesting that China could soon replace the United States as Brazil's main customer and partner, the aim is to force trade and other concessions from the United States and rich industrialized nations. 'We want a partnership that integrates our economies and serves as a paradigm for South-South cooperation,' President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in May during a state visit to China during which he was accompanied by nearly 500 Brazilian business executives. 'We are two giants without historical, political or economic divergences, free to think only about the future.' Before his visit, Mr. da Silva even hinted at negotiating a free-trade agreement with China, a step that Chile this week announced it would take. But China's impact in Brazil is already felt so strongly that the idea was quickly shelved after São Paulo business groups expressed fears of being overwhelmed by state-owned Chinese companies in their own domestic market. In 2003 China became Brazil's second-largest individual trading partner, and in recent months the Chinese have been seeking joint ventures that would expand trade even further and give them a significant investment stake. Brazil is one of the few countries to enjoy a trade surplus with China, and last year alone exports to China nearly doubled, to $4.5 billion. 'Over the past three or four years, the growth in trade has been explosive,' said Renato Amorim, formerly a diplomat in Brazil's embassy in Beijing and now the executive director of the Brazil-China Business Council. 'China is trying to assure reliable sources of supply of raw materials to deal with the shortages it faces, and since there are no conflicts on the political agenda, Brazil fits the bill.' Many of the minerals come from a part of the Amazon known as Carajas, which has the largest, purest reserves of iron ore and other strategic minerals in the world. At a complex at the mouth of the Amazon near Belém that produces alumina, the white powder that is refined from bauxite to make aluminum, production may soon double, with most of it expected to go to China over the next decade. Farther down the coast, Baosteel of China and Companhia Vale do Rio Doce of Brazil, the world's largest iron ore producer, are partners in a $1.5 billion steel venture to produce up to eight million tons of iron a year. Upriver in Manaus, Chinese delegations are negotiating long-term deals for timber. To the south, in Mato Grosso, similar missions are trying to lock up supplies of soybeans and cotton. The same is happening elsewhere, especially in agriculture. All across the South American heartland, from the Amazon to the pampas of Argentina, a boom in the cultivation of soybeans, used mainly as animal feed, has been propelled in recent years by the emergence half a world away of a Chinese middle-class with more income and a desire for more pork, chicken and beef. Concerned by what they see as Chinese advances, Japan and South Korea are also stepping up their efforts to secure their own supplies of raw materials in the region. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan visited Brazil in mid-September. President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea has also scheduled trips to Argentina, Brazil and Chile, planned around the Chinese visits. 'Within a few years there is likely to be a 'war' to develop raw materials,' Park Yong Soo, president of the state-run Korea Resources Corporation, told Reuters last month. 'China is challenging aggressively,' he added, leading to supply shortages and higher prices. The few Brazilian analysts who have experience dealing with China are also urging their government to be cautious. Ideological sympathies or some vague notion of third world solidarity, they say, should not get in the way of the national interest. In pursuit of their 'strategic partnership,' Brazil and China have jointly developed a satellite program, are discussing Brazilian sales of uranium for use in Chinese reactors, and recently marked the opening of a plant in China owned by the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. But it is clear to most Brazilian experts that China sees their country primarily as a source of raw materials, and that bothers them. Many are encouraging the government to fight for a more equal relationship, raising concerns from trade flows to environmental damage. 'Thus far, the discourse has been much more political that pragmatic, with all this talk of a South-South alliance,' said Eliana Cardoso, formerly a World Bank economist for China and now a university professor in São Paulo. She and others caution that though President da Silva has stressed that the Brazilian and Chinese economies are essentially complementary, China is also a rival. During President Hu's visit last week, the Brazilian government agreed to recognize China as a 'market economy,' a step that makes it harder to impose penalties on China for dumping exports. The influential Industrial Federation of São Paulo immediately criticized the move as a 'political decision' that leaves 'Brazilian industry in a vulnerable position' and will bring 'prejudicial consequences to various industrial sectors.' Not only are businesses concerned about China's making inroads into the domestic market; they also worry about exports of products with which Brazil has had some success abroad, from shoes and toys to chemicals and car parts. 'What Brazil has to insist on is that instead of exporting raw materials, we try to export processed goods,' Dr. Cardoso said. Marcos Jank, an economist who is an adviser to the Industrial Federation of São Paulo, agreed. 'China in the long term can rob markets from Brazil, because the hand of the state is still very strong in a lot of areas, including the exchange rate,' he said. 'It is a ferocious competitor in the things we export, as well as for markets and investments.' In fact, so much foreign investment has been going to China that Latin America is finding it difficult to obtain the capital it needs to finance its own growth. As a result Brazil, like neighboring Argentina, has been forced to court Citic, the state-controlled China International Trust and Investment Corporation, in hopes that at least a small part of China's estimated $500 billion in foreign reserves will make its way to the region. Thus far, China has been mainly interested in infrastructure projects that would assure a more steady flow of the products it is already buying from Brazil and Argentina. In particular, railways, ports, highways, gas pipelines and other energy-related projects are being studied. Earlier this month, a Citic delegation visited two dam sites in the Amazon that would be essential to the alumina and steel joint ventures in Brazil. Such projects have raised questions about the environment, especially in the Amazon. Environmental groups here look at China's dismal record on projects like the Three Gorges Dam and worry that the Chinese will be tempted to export their problems to Brazil. In fact, several of the projects being considered would be highly polluting, while others would be energy-intensive and probably inflict damage to the environment similar to what occurred at Three Gorges. Of special concern are a pair of plants that would process coal in Brazil, partly for export back to China. 'It would be sad if at the moment the Chinese are beginning to worry about being green, we continue on the old path of not evaluating this criterion in our commercial transactions,' the columnist Washington Novaes wrote this month in O Estado de São Paulo. Brazil must avoid falling into the trap of being 'a big supplier of commodities without compensation for the high environmental and social costs' that accompany that role, he added. Brazilian analysts agree that hard negotiations on this and a host of other issues lie ahead. Though the relationship with China is inherently unequal, they note, Brazil can get more of what it wants only if it avoids being impetuous and is as hard-nosed and pragmatic as the Chinese themselves. 'They want Brazil to continue to be a big producer of commodities so as to regulate prices, to depress them on world markets,' said Gilberto Dupas, director of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo. 'For China, any alliance with Brazil is eminently pragmatic and opportunistic, and much more tactical than strategic.'

Subject: Re: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 06:29:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Excellent article, This underlines how aggressive the chinese really are. The macroeconomic model is similar to that of Germany's after WW2, except with lower wage and social costs. Its funny isn't it, the same problems that arise in the American economy (income inequality) are now being exemplified in the Global Economy. With global consumption concentrated in only a few countries, the risk of a demand side shock is huge. And unless US GDP launches into a new stratosphere, something's gonna give....

Subject: Re: China's Economic Role in Latin America From: Terri To: Poyetas Date Posted: Tues, Dec 20, 2005 at 11:29:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Nice comments :)

Subject: Paul Krugman: Tanks on the Take From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 05:59:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 19, 2005 Paul Krugman: Tanks on the Take By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman has more on a story noted here Saturday in Cato Senior Scholar Resigns Over Lobbyist Payments: Tankers on the Take, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Not long ago Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the Institute for Policy Innovation, seemed on the verge of becoming a conservative icon. Before the Bush administration's sales pitch for Social Security privatization fell flat, admiring articles about the Bush plan's genesis often gave Mr. Ferrara credit for starting the privatization movement back in 1979. Now Mr. Ferrara has become a different sort of icon. BusinessWeek Online reports that both Mr. Ferrara and Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, were paid by the ubiquitous Jack Abramoff to write 'op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients.' Now, I never had any illusions about intellectual integrity in the world of right-wing think tanks. It has been clear for a long time that so-called analysts at many of these think tanks are, in effect, paid to support selected policies and politicians. But it never occurred to me that the pay-for-play schemes were so blatant. In fact, most deals ... probably aren't that blatant. For the most part, people employed by right-wing think tanks don't have to be specifically paid to support certain positions, because they understand that supporting those positions comes with the job... But it turns out that implicit deals ... are sometimes, perhaps often, supplemented with explicit payments for punditry. In return for Abramoff checks, Mr. Bandow and Mr. Ferrara wrote op-ed articles about such unlikely subjects as the entrepreneurial spirit of the Mississippi Choctaws and the free-market glories of the Northern Mariana Islands. ... Mr. Bandow has confessed to a 'lapse of judgment' and resigned from Cato. But neither Mr. Ferrara nor his employer believe that he did anything wrong. The president of Mr. Ferrara's institute told BusinessWeek Online that 'I have a sense that there are a lot of people at think tanks who have similar arrangements.' Alas, he's probably right. Let's hope that journalists ... track down those people with 'similar arrangements,' and that as they do, they don't fall into two ever-present temptations. First, if the latest pay-for-punditry story starts to get traction, the usual suspects will claim that liberal think tanks and opinion writers are also on the take. (I'm getting my raincoat ready for the slime attack on my own ethics...) Reporters and editors will be tempted to give equal time to these accusations, however weak the evidence, in an effort to appear 'balanced.' They should resist the temptation. If ... there isn't any Democratic equivalent of Jack Abramoff - that's what the public deserves to be told. Second, there will be the temptation to ... treat Mr. Abramoff as a rogue, unrepresentative actor. In fact ... Mr. Abramoff wasn't off on his own. He wasn't even a lobbyist in the traditional sense; he's better described as a bag man, running a slush fund for Tom DeLay and other Republican leaders. The point is that there really isn't much difference between Mr. Abramoff's paying Mr. Ferrara to praise the sweatshops of the Marianas and the Department of Education's paying Armstrong Williams to praise No Child Left Behind. In both cases, the ultimate paymaster was the Republican political machine. And inquiring minds want to know: Who else is on the take? Or has the culture of corruption spread so far that the question is, Who isn't?

Subject: Photos from IRAQ From: Marko To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 23:28:38 (EST) Email Address: markothewriter@gmail.com Message: Check out these pictures of civil affairs. http://www.markothewriter.net/photo.htm www.markothewriter.net/photo.htm

Subject: Photos from IRAQ From: Marko To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 23:27:11 (EST) Email Address: markothewriter@gmail.com Message: Check out these pictures of civil affairs. www.markothewriter.net/photo.htm

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 11:49:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/16/05 S&P Index is 6.3 Large Cap Growth Index is 7.0 Large Cap Value Index is 8.1 Mid Cap Index is 14.6 Small Cap Index is 8.5 Small Cap Value Index is 7.5 Europe Index is 10.2 Pacific Index is 20.0 Energy is 45.6 Health Care is 15.2 Precious Metals 40.0 REIT Index is 12.8 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 2.3 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 3.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 11:45:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/16/05 Energy 41.4 Financials 7.1 Health Care 8.1 Info Tech 5.5 Materials 2.4 REITs 12.9 Telecoms 4.3 Utilities 17.9

Subject: Snowy Egret Feeding From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 10:00:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5656&u=99|8|... Snowy Egret Feeding as Black Skimmer Feeds in Background Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

Subject: Manipulating a Journal Article From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 09:10:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun2.html?ex=1291957200&en=3523a8ac48842095&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 Manipulating a Journal Article When a prominent medical journal accused Merck-sponsored researchers of excising data from a scientific paper to play down the heart risks of the painkiller Vioxx, it further tarnished the reputation of a company once revered for its corporate ethics. The accusation may well have an impact on the myriad lawsuits filed against Merck because it undermines Merck's contention that it disclosed all it knew about the risks of Vioxx. More broadly, the incident underscores the danger that industry-backed studies may not tell the whole truth about products vital to a company's bottom line. The paper in question was published in The New England Journal of Medicine five years ago. It found a small increase in heart attacks among patients taking Vioxx as compared to those taking another painkiller, naproxen, but explained the difference away by suggesting that naproxen actually protected people from heart attacks, rather than Vioxx causing them. What aroused the ire of the journal's editors was an internal company memo revealing that the researchers knowingly suppressed data on three additional heart attacks among Vioxx users that was available months before the paper was published. Had that data been included, Vioxx would have looked five times as risky as naproxen, not four times, and would have looked potentially dangerous even in patients deemed at low risk of heart attacks. The journal also complained that data on other adverse cardiovascular events, like strokes and serious vascular problems, had been deleted from the paper two days before it was submitted. Merck insists that all this data was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, so the scientific paper may have had little impact on regulatory matters. But publication in a prestigious journal surely affected the attitudes of doctors and presumably helped Merck in its marketing efforts. Journals have only limited resources to look behind the data submitted to them, so doctors are on notice that they will need to take the findings of industry-backed studies with skeptical caution.

Subject: Ties to Industry Cloud From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 08:58:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/business/17clinic.html?ex=1292475600&en=d44d70e27af8c3e5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 17, 2005 Ties to Industry Cloud a Clinic's Mission By REED ABELSON and STEPHANIE SAUL Dr. Eric J. Topol, a cardiologist, has been perhaps the most public face of the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Foundation, a prominent medical center regarded as one of the nation's best. Not shy in the media spotlight, Dr. Topol has cultivated the persona of a Naderesque crusader against drugs he deems dangerous, as well as their makers. Some of his most impassioned criticism has been aimed at Merck and its drug Vioxx, the painkiller the company withdrew from the market over questions about its safety. But he has also been outspoken recently about other drugs. Now, Dr. Topol's bluntness - refreshing to his admirers, startlingly unscientific to his targets and his critics - has drawn a bright spotlight to his own conduct and that of the Cleveland Clinic. In the last month, he has been demoted and the clinic's image has been tarnished in what has become an unusually public dispute pitting him against the clinic's chief executive, Dr. Delos Cosgrove. Dr. Topol, who retains the position of chairman of cardiovascular medicine at the clinic, suggested in a Webcast on Thursday (www.theheart.org) that his unabashed willingness to take on Merck was a principal reason for his removal this month as head of the clinic's medical college. In what Merck lawyers have suggested is a vendetta, he described the company's behavior as 'appalling' in recent testimony in a Vioxx lawsuit. But his demotion has drawn attention to the mounting tensions between the clinic's research mission and its deep ties to the businesses that finance that research. Both Dr. Topol and Dr. Cosgrove refused to comment for this article, but associates say Dr. Topol may decide to leave the clinic. The dispute at the Cleveland Clinic goes far beyond a simple power struggle between strong-willed men who competed for the clinic's top job. Dr. Topol severed his ties to industry after being embarrassed last December by an article in Fortune magazine. But the continued controversy has focused attention on the many longstanding corporate ties at the clinic. Those business links involve not only staff doctors and researchers, but also Dr. Cosgrove and the clinic's board. The Cleveland Clinic is emblematic of the way the drug and medical device industries and the investment community work closely with medical researchers and doctors to develop and promote new medicines and technologies. Almost inevitably, such relationships raise concerns about possible conflicts of interest that could lead doctors to favor some treatments over others or to bias the results of medical research. 'It's not just the Cleveland Clinic,' said Les Funtleyder, a health care strategist at the investment company Miller Tabak & Company in New York. He says other high-profile academic medical centers also have numerous financial ties that raise the potential for conflicts of interest. Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, a former editor in chief for The New England Journal of Medicine, describes the potential conflicts at the clinic 'as extremely serious ones' but notes that the Cleveland Clinic is 'not unique at all.' It was Dr. Topol's criticism of Merck that indirectly brought the clinic's conflicts to the fore. After the drug was withdrawn in September 2004 by Merck, Dr. Topol, who in journal articles had questioned the drug's cardiovascular safety, criticized the company's conduct. Dr. Topol soon found himself under attack. He was the subject of the Fortune magazine article, which contended he had a conflict of interest. A hedge fund that listed Dr. Topol on its advisory panel had been a short seller of Merck's stock before the Vioxx withdrawal. Dr. Topol said he had nothing to do with the fund's action, which was a financial bet that the share price would fall. Dr. Topol also found himself under fire at the clinic, where he would later claim that the chairman of the trustees, Malachi Mixon, had been contacted by Merck's chief executive at the time, Raymond V. Gilmartin. In any event, the clinic investigated Dr. Topol's business dealings, according to people briefed on the inquiry. Dr. Topol suggested in his Webcast that the clinic's pique might be related to the relationship between Mr. Gilmartin and Mr. Mixon, who attended Harvard Business School together. Mr. Mixon, in an interview, would not discuss any conversations he had with Mr. Gilmartin on the subject. A Merck spokeswoman, however, denied that Mr. Gilmartin had ever contacted the Cleveland Clinic. After the Fortune article, Dr. Topol publicly announced that he would cut all ties to industry, which included relationships with Eli Lilly, deCode Genetics and the Medicines Company - despite the fact that many doctors at the clinic and elsewhere had similar consulting deals. 'I think there's a real problem in academics today,' he told The New York Times in January. 'There's a very close-knit relationship with industry, and it's too close when any individual can derive a profit from that relationship.' The Cleveland Clinic itself was at the time finishing a set of ethical guidelines in which physicians and researchers were encouraged to continue working with industry, but were told that their ties would require reviews. When his contract came up for renewal at the clinic at the end of last year, the clinic put Dr. Topol on a form of probation, giving him a six-month contract rather than the usual yearlong agreement, according to associates. It was a largely symbolic move, but associates said it angered Dr. Topol, who in 15 years at the clinic had been responsible for establishing the clinic's medical school and elevating the reputation of its cardiovascular medicine unit. On the Webcast, Dr. Topol said the conflict-of-interest committee, on which he served, had looked into the financial arrangements of other doctors, including Dr. Cosgrove, as well as the fact that clinic patients were being used in tests of medical devices made by companies in which the clinic had financial interests. Some of the clinic's perceived conflicts begin at the very top. Mr. Mixon, for example, is chief executive of Invacare, a major health care supply company. The company not only conducts about $200,000 a year in business with the clinic, but several people with clinic ties are on the Invacare board. They include Dr. Bernadine Healy, the former head of the Red Cross who is married to Dr. Floyd D. Loop, the cardiac surgeon who led the clinic until he retired last year and was replaced by Dr. Cosgrove. Dr. Healy, who could not be reached for comment, owns options for 41,570 shares of stock in Invacare, according to a securities filing from earlier this year. Mr. Mixon, who would not address other issues in this article, said his company's business dealings with the clinic constituted 'peanuts' in the context of his company's overall annual revenue of about $1.5 billion. A clinic spokeswoman, Eileen Sheil, said the clinic would not respond to questions about Mr. Mixon's company or Invacare's other board members. Nor would the clinic address questions involving a number of Dr. Cosgrove's financial arrangements, although Ms. Sheil said he had severed those ties. In a statement, the clinic said it had begun an independent review of conflicts, to be conducted by an outside group. Dr. Cosgrove, a well-regarded cardiac surgeon, is intimately familiar with the role physicians play in industry. His inventions include the Cosgrove-Edwards heart device, marketed by Edwards Lifesciences. The devices are used at the Cleveland Clinic, although the clinic would not discuss how or whether patients are informed of Dr. Cosgrove's connection when they are used. Dr. Cosgrove also spearheaded the clinic's entrepreneurial efforts through a venture capital fund. In an article last January, The New York Times described various companies in which the clinic had a financial interest, including AtriCure, the maker of a heart device. The Wall Street Journal featured AtriCure in a front-page article about the Cleveland Clinic this week. All of this attention threatens to tarnish the clinic's image as an institution conducting world-class medical research. 'All of these pieces of information coming out bit by bit are potentially damaging to the clinic's reputation,' said Dr. Mildred K. Cho, a medical ethicist at Stanford University. The clinic says its board of trustees has appointed an independent group to review the clinic's conflicts. But, in the meantime, Dr. Topol has been removed from the conflict-of-interest committee, a position he held by virtue of his leadership role at the medical college. The publicity may prompt change, said Dr. Kassirer, the former medical journal editor. 'The only question is whether it will really embarrass anyone. The clinic is so powerful, it has so much clout.'

Subject: Eastern Phoebe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 07:44:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5821&u=99|95|... Eastern Phoebe New York City--Central Park, Wildflower Meadow.

Subject: Sick and Vulnerable, Workers Fear From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 07:43:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/health/17patient.html?ex=1292475600&en=8604f5d9e455c35a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 17, 2005 Sick and Vulnerable, Workers Fear for Health and Their Jobs By LISA BELKIN When Marty Domitrovich was first told that he had cancer, he was a 51-year-old sales executive, so successful that he had two goals: to reach $1 million in commissions and bonuses and to become chief executive of his company, where he had worked since his summers in college. Before long, however, he could no longer travel, and on the bad days he did his work at home, lying on the couch and talking on the telephone. When Shannon Abert was first told she had scleroderma, she was 35, and loved her job teaching high school algebra. Until her illness was diagnosed, she was healthy and active, never taking a sick day from work, not even bothering to find a doctor who accepted her school district's insurance plan. Her disease progressed quickly, though, and soon she could not write on the blackboard, pull students' files or turn the classroom doorknob. Work takes on many meanings when illness strikes: a cause of added stress; a place to escape from that stress; a source of income, insurance, identity and normalcy; and a fear of losing all those and more. Both Mr. Domitrovich, now 58, and Ms. Abert, now 38, wanted to keep working after their conditions were diagnosed, and both asked their employers for help. One was told, 'We'll give you whatever you need.' The other recalls facing much more ambivalence, with one administrator telling her, 'We all have problems, just do the job.' In this way, their stories reflect the realities of being ill in today's workplace, at a time when sick workers have more legal safeguards than ever before, and yet also face gaps, inconsistencies and question marks in those laws. Yes, how an employee is treated after crossing the stark line from worker to patient is broadly defined by legislation. But it is more specifically determined by things like the culture of a workplace and the sensitivity of a boss. 'We've come a million miles from the bad old days,' said Robin Bond, who runs an employment law firm in Wayne, Pa., and represents individuals with claims against employers. 'But no law changes the basic fact that employers want to do what's good for business. Their job is not necessarily to do what is good for you.' At a time when a worker is most physically and emotionally vulnerable, the person must also adroitly navigate to protect himself or herself. 'I didn't want to worry about work, but work was all I worried about,' Ms. Abert said of the months after her illness was diagnosed in 2003. 'I had to keep my insurance. I had to pay my rent. 'When you're sick,' she said, 'trying to get out of bed every day, that's the worst time to have to worry about your job, but you have no choice.' Double Jeopardy: Health and Job Whether an employee enters a job with a diagnosed disability or becomes impaired after being hired, the worker faces the decision of whether and when to tell the employer. It is a choice loaded with emotion, and also with ramifications under the law. 'The diagnosis is a crisis in itself,' said Carolyn Messner, an oncology social worker and director of education and training for cancer care in Manhattan. 'The next crisis is telling people.' Mr. Domitrovich announced his devastating news almost immediately after he received it on Jan. 1, 2000. As vice president of sales and a regional manager for Cutco/Vector, which sells and manufactures cutlery, he was based in Chicago but traveled constantly. When he began experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms in 1999, it was impossible to keep his team from noticing that something was wrong. He said he did try not to let word spread beyond that small group, however, because 'as a leader you don't want to show too many of your weaknesses.' Soon the symptoms became more severe, and tests found an neuroendocrine islet cell tumor in the pancreas. The cancer had already spread to his liver. Mr. Domitrovich told his wife and grown children first; then, within days, he informed the chief executive of the company and his close staff. The company's yearly banquet for the regional sales team was held two weeks later, and he shared the news in a brief speech to the 700 people who attended. Ms. Abert, in contrast, kept her misery to herself. Her first symptoms appeared in the fall of 2002, when her fingers began turning purple, as if she had frostbite, but she knew that was unlikely in Clear Lake, Tex., near Houston. An internist theorized that she had developed carpal tunnel syndrome from writing math equations on the board, and gave her wrist splints, which only made the problem worse. The pain spread to her legs and toes, but she did not tell her principal because she did not want to be seen as a weak link. It was stress, she reassured herself. It would go away. It did not, and eventually, in January 2003, at the end of her school's winter vacation, a rheumatologist confirmed that Ms. Abert had scleroderma, a chronic connective tissue disease in which the body attacks itself, leading most noticeably to hardening of the skin. Now it was not pride, but fear and a need for privacy, that kept her quiet. On the one hand, she was still absorbing all that was happening to her and she was not ready to share that exquisitely personal process with the world. At the same time, she did not know whether her job was in jeopardy and she was too afraid of the answer to ask the question. Besides, if her supervisors and colleagues knew, she was certain her students would find out as well, meaning she would lose the authority a teacher must have to command a classroom. 'I can't look at them and say, 'Y'all, I'm not feeling well,' ' Ms. Abert said. 'They will wreak havoc.' This instinct for privacy is common, said dozens of employees, employers, lawyers, health care providers and patient advocates interviewed for this article. 'I don't want to be labeled as the sick person, where all people see is the disease,' says Tecela Harris, 38, who told only a version of the truth at a job interview for State Farm Insurance more than a decade ago, not mentioning that she had rheumatoid arthritis, which made her joints swell horribly and caused constant pain. 'They told me the job was for claims adjuster and it included climbing up on roofs,' Ms. Harris recalled. 'When they asked, 'Are you going to be able to do that?' I said I could do it.' The result was years of agony until, needing to take 70 days off to recuperate from foot surgery to correct damage from the disease, she finally revealed her illness to her boss in 2000. 'I was almost in tears,' during that conversation, said Ms. Harris, who is now on a recently approved medication that leaves her free of pain. 'My illness was not something I was proud of, so I didn't really want to share that.' And yet, while patients might prefer to keep silent, the law favors disclosure. Two pillars of legislation have come to define the rights of ill workers in recent years: the Americans With Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, requiring employers to make 'reasonable' accommodations for disabled or seriously ill workers, as long as they can perform the 'essential' functions of the job; and the Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, allowing workers to take up to three months off from work without losing their health insurance or job. Under each, employers are only obligated to help employees whose conditions are known to them. A worker who regularly misses work for chemotherapy treatments, but does not explain why, can be dismissed for absenteeism and cannot then appeal on grounds of disability. That creates a dilemma that is equal parts emotional and tactical. 'I advise workers not to tell their employer, unless they want to ask for accommodation because of a disability,' said Sharona Hoffman, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and an expert on the legislation. 'If you want to invoke the protection of the law, then you have to tell.' A Plan to Stay Alive Mr. Domitrovich armed himself for his early conversations with a business plan. He would never tackle a new business challenge without a plan, he said, and this was a new business challenge. Among his goals were to 'stay alive long enough to find a cure' and to 'see granddaughter go to grade school.' He told his bosses that he was certain he could keep working through his treatment, meeting sales projections. 'I believe my team can produce, even though I'm not there every day,' he remembers saying. Sales positions at Cutco/Vector are paid solely on the basis of commissions and incentive bonuses, so his own income along with that of his staff was on the line. For six months, Mr. Domitrovich was able to work with little trouble. The medication he was taking had few side effects and succeeded in restricting the growth of his tumor. But eventually the mass began to press on his biliary duct, requiring surgery to insert a stent to relieve the pressure. Then the cancer began growing faster. He entered a clinical trial, which slowed the growth, but by then years of toxic medication had damaged his gallbladder, which had to be removed. Through all this, he did meet his sales goals. His team's revenues increased 25 percent in 2001 and another 38 percent in 2002, which is the year he reached his $1 million income goal. (He also saw his granddaughter start kindergarten last year.) But the toll of work and treatment was heavy, and he decided that he could not keep up the pace. Before Mr. Domitrovich could tell his bosses of that decision, though, they made one of their own. They announced a restructuring, increasing four sales regions to six, and effectively eliminating his job. They suggested another role that he might play: running the Fair and Show program, which coordinated cutlery sales at places like local fairs and conventions. It was an important part of the business, but it would require travel, which he knew he could not do. When his disease was first diagnosed, Mr. Domitrovich joined a support group of cancer patients, and over the months, he said, he heard 'the horror stories.' The man with cancer of the jaw who had to take out a second and third mortgage on his home when he lost his job after his family medical leave time ran out. The man with stomach cancer who was told that his company would 'stand behind you 100 percent,' then let him go within six months. So Mr. Domitrovich did not turn down the new job right away. Instead he asked for some time to think about what work he would like to do next. 'I Am So Sick, I Can't Make It' Scleroderma patients have a particularly hard time getting out of bed in the morning, possibly because muscles stiffen and weaken overnight. Ms. Abert lived alone in the months after she became ill, and she had no one to help her with morning buttons and zippers. Each night she would take a sedative so she could sleep in spite of the pain, and even though she went to bed at 8 p.m., she was often late for the start of class at 7:30 a.m. Her students noticed, she said, just as they noticed the ulcers on her fingers and the steady weakening of her hands. She could not get the caps off the markers for the dry erase board. Even screwing the top off a bottle of water meant asking a student for help. But still Ms. Abert maintained the facade of health, until the fall of 2003, when the weather turned colder and she finally hit bottom. It was the time of year when the forms arrived for her to choose her benefit options for the next 12 months. She read carefully, but when she found nothing about long-term disability, she assumed she did not have that option. A search of the Internet found information about the Family Medical Leave Act, including the fact that the three months of leave were unpaid, and then neither her job nor her health insurance were protected. She could not imagine how she would cope under those circumstances. Still, she thought, maybe a few months off would help her regain some energy. So she dragged herself to the human resources department, where she recalls telling a counselor, 'I don't think I can do this anymore. I am so sick, I can't make it day to day.' His initial answer, she says, was: 'You don't look sick. We're all tired. Hang in there.' 'He kept saying 'It has to be measurable, you need documentation, it has to be something that can be measured,' ' Ms. Abert said of Steven Austin, the director of employment benefits and risk management for the school district. While Mr. Austin agreed that he probably did explain the need for documentation ('You have to provide certification for medical leave,' he said in an interview), he said he did not believe that he said anything harsher than that. He concedes, however, that others in the district may well have said such things to Ms. Abert. 'There wasn't a lot of support for her' from her superiors, Mr. Austin said, adding that he wondered whether her memory had put someone else's words in his mouth. Most in Need, Most at Risk The Catch-22 of the American health care system is that while many people work 'for the insurance,' when they become too sick to work and are most in need of that insurance, they are most at risk of losing it. This is particularly true of workers at small companies, which are not covered by existing law. (The Family and Medical Leave Act, for instance, only applies to workplaces with 50 or more employees.) One employee at such a company, who asked that her name not be used because she feared retribution from her former boss, learned the significance of this distinction the hard way when she had a brain tumor removed five years ago. Her employer, she said, 'told me that my tumor came at a really bad time for the company.' The woman had recently received a significant raise, $20,000. Her workplace was small - about a half-dozen employees - and a few months after her illness was diagnosed, the group's insurance premiums jumped. 'My raise was rescinded, to cover the increase,' she said. Experts fear that as insurance rates increase, even companies large enough to be constrained by law will make personnel decisions based on the cost of health care. Those costs, which were stable during most of the 1990's, have increased at double-digit rates for the past three years, said Glenn Melnick, a professor of health economics at the University of Southern California. Dr. Melnick thinks it is not coincidence that this environment led Wal-Mart, whose health costs increased 15 percent last year, to suggest what a confidential internal memorandum to the board of directors called 'bold steps.' If the company took action to 'dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart,' the widely leaked memorandum said, the potential savings would be $220 million to $670 million by 2011. The proposed method of dissuasion, as explained in the memorandum, was to define every job so that it included some form of physical activity ('e.g., all cashiers do some cart gathering'). Unfit people would be less likely to apply and if they did apply, the company could legally refuse them because they could not do the job as described. There is similar 'wiggle room' in laws requiring employers to provide 'reasonable accommodations' for employees, and here, too, experts are concerned. 'The key word when talking about accommodations is 'reasonable,' ' said Ms. Bond, the employment lawyer. 'And the employer gets to define that word.' If employers remain overwhelmed by health care costs, they may see this as an incentive to play hard ball, Ms. Bond and others fear, hoping that employees with health problems will just give up and go away, taking their expensive illnesses with them. Navigating the Obstacle Course Mr. Domitrovich suggested to his bosses that it was time that he left sales, stopped traveling and became a mentor. The result was 'Cutco/Vector University,' a management training program run by Mr. Domitrovich. His salary is only a fraction of his former commissions, but he maintains his insurance. 'We wanted to do whatever we could for Marty,' said Bruce Goodman, chief executive for Vector sales and president of Vector West. 'Marty is the conscience of our company.' Cutco/Vector might not be able to make similar arrangements for every ill employee, Mr. Goodman said, 'but in Marty's case there truly was never any consideration of should we fire him, should we put him out to pasture.' Ms. Abert, in turn, tried to stay at work. She became vocal about her condition after her meeting with human resources, and she asked the maintenance staff to change the doorknobs on the teachers lounge and on her classroom so that she could open them more easily. In the spring of last year, Ms. Abert's hands became seriously infected and she was hospitalized for much of the spring. Since then, she has been on long-term disability, which is a benefit available to every district employee, even though it was not in her packet of paperwork. She will receive 80 percent of her income until she is 65, but she will not receive insurance indefinitely. Her district policy has already lapsed, and she will pay $498 a month under COBRA until that too expires, next September. Her unexpected ally in navigating the system was the same human resources counselor who seemed so brusque at their first meeting. 'Once he saw I was really sick, he did everything he could to help,' she said of Mr. Austin, to whom she now turns for advice. Most recently, he told her not to return to teaching part time. If she did, the pay would be less than what she now receives on disability, though it would include insurance, making the equation temporarily worth it. But, he said, were she to require disability again, she would only be eligible for 80 percent of her part-time pay. Ms. Abert has considered trying to return full time, but she cannot figure out a way to fit her regimen of doctor's appointments into a teaching schedule. 'I can't close the classroom door and say 'I will be back in an hour,' ' she said. 'It's difficult being sick as a teacher. I guess it's difficult being sick in any job.'

Subject: Literacy Falls for Graduates From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 07:17:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16literacy.html?ex=1292389200&en=8e365867e81c95b3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 16, 2005 Literacy Falls for Graduates From College, Testing Finds By SAM DILLON The average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday. The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation's most important test of how well adult Americans can read. The test also found steep declines in the English literacy of Hispanics in the United States, and significant increases among blacks and Asians. When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills. There were 26.4 million college graduates. The college graduates who in 2003 failed to demonstrate proficiency included 53 percent who scored at the intermediate level and 14 percent who scored at the basic level, meaning they could read and understand short, commonplace prose texts. Three percent of college graduates who took the test in 2003, representing some 800,000 Americans, demonstrated 'below basic' literacy, meaning that they could not perform more than the simplest skills, like locating easily identifiable information in short prose. Grover J. Whitehurst, director of an institute within the Department of Education that helped to oversee the test, said he believed that the literacy of college graduates had dropped because a rising number of young Americans in recent years had spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet. 'We're seeing substantial declines in reading for pleasure, and it's showing up in our literacy levels,' he said. Among blacks and Asians, English literacy increased from 1992 to 2003. About 29 percent of blacks scored at either the intermediate or proficient levels in 1992, but in 2003, those rose to 33 percent. The percentage of blacks demonstrating 'below basic' literacy declined to 24 percent from 30 percent. Asians scoring at either the intermediate or proficient levels rose to 54 percent from 45 percent in 1992. The same period saw big declines in Hispanics' English reading skills. In 1992, 35 percent of Hispanics demonstrated 'below basic' English literacy, but by 2003 that segment had swelled to 44 percent. And at the higher-performing end of the literacy scale, the proportion of Hispanics demonstrating intermediate or proficient English skills dropped to 27 percent from 33 percent in 1992. 'These are big shifts,' said Mark Schneider, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, the arm of the Department of Education that gave the test. 'The Hispanic population in 2003 is radically different than in 1992, and many of the factors that have changed for Spanish-language immigrants make learning English more difficult,' Mr. Schneider said. 'They are arriving later, staying in the U.S. for a shorter period, and fewer are speaking English at home.' The 2003 test was administered to 19,000 people 16 and older, in homes, college housing and in prisons. A test conducted in homes across New York State in conjunction with the 2003 national test found that New Yorkers were less literate in English than their national counterparts. Eleven percent of New Yorkers performed at the proficient level in reading prose texts, compared with 13 percent nationally. And 19 percent of New Yorkers scored 'below basic,' while only 14 percent performed that poorly across the nation.

Subject: A Global Audience for Campy Drama From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 07:08:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/arts/television/06nava.html?ex=1288933200&en=0fbdc53e0e9f6576&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 6, 2005 A Global Audience for Campy Drama Shows Its Force By MIREYA NAVARRO LOS ANGELES DENNISE RODRÍGUEZ would rather watch 'The Simpsons' or E! than anything on Spanish-language television — except for telenovelas. Ms. Rodríguez, a 24-year-old Mexican-American college student from Oxnard, Calif., spent most of the summer glued to the set from 9 to 10 p.m., five nights a week, following the convoluted plot of 'La Madrastra' ('The Stepmother'), the latest blockbuster prime-time soap on Univision. The show, a Mexican export that ended in September, followed the fortunes of a woman who goes on vacation to Aruba with her husband and four other couples and ends up being wrongly convicted of the murder of one of her traveling partners. She is then released from prison 20 years later and must win back the love of her children as their stepmother, all while the real killer is still on the loose. 'La Madrastra' offered a compelling story line that wrapped up in six months — rather than the years it takes for intrigue to play out in the English-language soaps — and as usual the camera captured every tear in close-ups as unsubtle as the acting. 'People say the Spanish soaps are overdramatic, and it's true,' said Ms. Rodríguez, who was born and brought up in California. 'People even joke about it — my brother makes fun of me, but I still like watching them. I grew up with telenovelas.' The genre's popularity reflects the growth of the nation's Latino population, of course, but the lure seems to run deeper than the shows' overheated story lines and characters. 'When I see English soap operas, they are totally false — they make life seem so easy,' one teenager told Kristin C. Moran, an assistant professor of communications at the University of San Diego, who held focus groups with Latina teenagers for a 1999 study on telenovelas. 'They show that the best way to live life is to have money, and with the telenovelas, they show poverty and the poor who are fighting their way through to lead a successful life.' Univision, which is based in Los Angeles and is the nation's largest Spanish-language network, for the first time drew more prime-time viewers in the coveted 18-34 age group than all the other broadcast networks during some weeks this summer. And it did so on the strength of its telenovelas, which it imports mainly from Mexico. The soaps account for three-fourths of the network's programming and have performed extremely well this year — of the nearly 200 prime-time soaps that have appeared on Spanish- language television since 1992, Univision officials said, the four most-watched were Univision soaps broadcast in the 2004-5 season, including 'La Madrastra,' which drew an average of five million viewers each night. Market researchers say that Latinos — no matter their age or dominant language — tend to tune in to Spanish-language television for two main staples: newscasts, because networks like Univision and Telemundo cover Latino issues and Latin America with more breadth and resources than English-language networks; and telenovelas, which function like a kind of cultural touchstone. 'Whether you're U.S.-born and you're introduced to it by a parent or grandparent or whether you're foreign- born and you grew up with it, it's the kind of thing that's inherent in the culture,' said Derene Allen, senior vice-president of Santiago Solutions Group, a national consulting firm that specializes in multicultural markets. 'It's as Mexican as eating tortillas and as Venezuelan or Colombian as eating arepas.' But is it Latino, as in Mexican-American? With their Cinderella plots, European-looking stars and exaggerated melodrama, telenovelas can be galaxies away from what young American Hispanics would deem cool or relevant. Television producers trying to cater to young Latino audiences with English content note that Nielsen ratings data do not track viewers by place of birth, so it is hard to tell how many American-born Latinos are really watching soaps in Spanish. Several studies, they noted, have shown that most second- and third-generation Latinos prefer to watch television in English. But Viviana Rojas, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Texas in San Antonio who has studied Hispanic television viewing habits, cited a key factor that influences why so many are tuning in: Hispanic households often include both immigrants and natives living together. 'If you have a first-generation Latino in that family, telenovelas are going to be watched,' she said. Professor Moran, of the University of San Diego, said the girls in her study usually watched the soaps with others in the household in what was 'almost like a family ritual.' And although the young women also watched shows like 'Dawson's Creek,' she said, they still preferred the Spanish soaps to other television options because they saw a Hispanic presence not found in most English-language programming. Professor Moran, who said the young women were bilingual and from upper-middle-class backgrounds in San Diego, concluded that the biggest pull for these viewers was 'family traditions — watching from a very young age with your family — and the desire to see yourself represented.' Professor Rojas said that even when American audiences detect stereotypes and problems of class and sex roles — darker skinned actors portraying servants, for example — that prick their American sensibilities, they enjoy telenovelas as entertainment 'without much analysis.' Robert G. Rose, a former sales executive with Univision who now produces English-language syndicated shows for Latinos as head of the AIM Tell-A-Vision Group in New York, said many young Latinos find telenovelas 'corny, predictable, cheap, a little bit sexist, a little bit racist.' 'They're produced for a different market — the Mexican market,' he said. 'People just assume that all Latinos love telenovelas. That's not the truth.' Perhaps not all, but plenty do. Yvonne Ponce, 27, a senior billing coordinator with a mortgage company in Fullerton, Calif., said that even though she was bothered by all the melodramatic crying and what she called 'phony' acting, she valued the soaps as part of her Latino heritage. Ms. Ponce, who was born in Orange County, said she also found them a handy tool to expand her vocabulary in Spanish, which she speaks, she said, 'not too well.' And every now and then a telenovela comes along, like 'La Madrastra,' that really grabs her. On a Friday night during its the final week, she was at home with some of her sisters and cousins and their kids, to eat pizza and watch the climactic scenes, including the suicide of the villainous aunt, la tía Alba. The drama was in Spanish but the chatter was in English. Children ran around but sometimes even they would stop and be temporarily mesmerized. Among the 11 people crowded in the room was Joel Villalobos, 25, a cousin of Ms. Ponce's, who listed the addictive ingredients of 'La Madrastra': 'The mystery. The action. A lot of suspense.' Mr. Villalobos said he used to watch telenovelas with his parents but stopped at 18. He started going out at night, he explained, and now that he is married he watches with his wife, with whom he has a 4-year-old son. One of Ms. Ponce's sisters, Livier Ponce, 34, who was brought to America from Mexico as a 1-year-old, said she also quit watching telenovelas once, only to be pulled back in. 'I was soap opera sober for a long time until this one,' she said with a tone of resignation. After 'La Madrastra' came 'La Esposa Virgen' ('The Virgin Wife'), and most of the Ponce clan continues to watch. (Ratings for 'La Esposa Virgen' have yet to reach those for 'La Madrastra,' which Univision officials concede had the advantage of competing against reruns during the summer.) William F. Baker, president of Thirteen/ WNET, the public television station in New York, and the former president of Westinghouse Television, said telenovelas enjoy widespread appeal because they are generally more comparable to mini-series and shows like 'The Sopranos' and 'Desperate Housewives' than to daytime soaps in English. 'They're good television and they just stand on their own,' he said. Univision even broadcasts a telenovela on weekday afternoons specifically aimed at young adults. 'It's an escape or it's their reality, or a mix of both,' David Woolfson, senior vice president of network research said of that audience. Ms. Allen, the multicultural marketing specialist, agreed that all explanations go back to the fundamentals of good entertainment. 'Look at 'Friends,' which appealed almost equally to non-Latinos as English-speaking Latinos,' she said. 'When you sit down to watch television, you look for programs that absorb you.' And when it comes to entertainment choices, she said, Latinos 'have one foot in both worlds.'

Subject: A Guidant Bid That Wins From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 07:07:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/business/06place.html?ex=1291525200&en=44cdf7583268c9c3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 A Guidant Bid That Wins Even if It Appears to Lose By BARNABY J. FEDER Boston Scientific's attempt to crash Johnson & Johnson's merger party with Guidant caught Wall Street by surprise yesterday, but perhaps it should not have. As they analyzed Boston Scientific's takeover bid, many analysts saw logic as well as genius in the $25 billion offer. Adding Guidant would make Boston Scientific a leader in pacemakers and defibrillators, the one major heart device market where it has not competed. The worldwide market for defibrillators - about $8 billion a year - is the newest area for cardiac rhythm management devices, and according to Lazard Capital Markets, the segment should grow more than 20 percent annually over the next two years. That could go a long way toward revising Wall Street's unenthusiastic view of Boston Scientific's near-term prospects. Even analysts who see a strong chance that Johnson - which has offered $21.5 billion for Guidant - will raise its bid and end up with Guidant praised Boston Scientific's tactics. 'I think it's brilliant,' said Thomas Gunderson, who follows the medical device industry for Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. 'The worst case outcome for them is that they delay Johnson and force them to pay several million dollars more for Guidant, which weakens them as a competitor.' The initial reaction among investors was concern at how much debt Boston would assume in the offer - which includes $12.5 billion in cash - and how much it might dilute their holdings. Guidant shareholders would emerge with more than a third of the combined company. Boston Scientific's shares fell as low as $25.51, down more than 7 percent from Friday's close, immediately after the announcement. But they rebounded and ended down 98 cents, to $26.35. Boston Scientific's move served primarily to highlight the potential the device industry sees in cardiac rhythm management, which some analysts expect to grow at double-digit rates into a $13 billion business in 2008. By contrast, the cardiac segment in which Boston Scientific has been the industry leader - devices called stents that prop open the arteries that supply blood to the heart - is expected by most analysts to grow slowly once it passes the $6 billion level in the next year or two. New defibrillators that sense and respond to potentially deadly irregular heartbeats are driving the market. Traditional pacemakers, which increase the performance of hearts that are gradually weakening from disease, are a declining share of the business. The cardiac rhythm leader is Medtronic, the largest and most diversified medical device company. Guidant has long been a strong No. 2 with about 30 percent of the market, followed by St. Jude Medical. Boston Scientific's offer not only drove up Guidant's shares, which rose nearly 10 percent, to $67.98, but also focused attention on St. Jude, which rose 4.74 percent, to $50.56. Medtronic, a less likely takeover target because it is far larger, rose just under 1 percent, to $56.29. Boston Scientific, based in Natick, Mass., has been suffering for more than a year on Wall Street for the unexpectedly rapid adoption in 2004 of Taxus, its drug-covered coronary stent. Coronary stents prop open vessels that supply blood to the muscles of the heart after such arteries have been cleared of blockages. Taxus achieved $2 billion in sales its first year, a record in health care products. The sales and earnings growth was so strong that investors quickly decided nothing in the company's product pipeline could keep up the momentum. Its shares have been drifting downward since they peaked at $45.81 in April 2004, even though the company has poured more than $1 billion in the last year into share repurchases. The only domestic competition for Taxus has come from Cypher, a drug-coated stent made by the Cordis subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson. Investors have watched nervously as the 70 percent market share that Taxus grabbed after its introduction eroded to 55 to 60 percent. The two companies have been involved in fierce battles over which product is safer or easier to use but accumulating data seems to be pointing toward a standoff. Against that backdrop, falling prices, high penetration of the market and the expectation that rivals like Medtronic and Abbott Laboratories will eventually enter the market have soured Wall Street on the stents as a growth engine for Boston Scientific. Investors are also worried that Boston Scientific may end up owing Johnson & Johnson $1 billion or more for patent violations. As a result, many analysts had been saying that Boston Scientific's shares were undervalued, and some skeptics like Matthew Dodds, who follows the industry for Citigroup's Smith Barney subsidiary, had predicted that they could trade as low as $25 unless the company acquired new short-term growth opportunities. If it fails to gain control of Guidant, analysts said, Boston Scientific might go after St. Jude, which is based in St. Paul. But James R. Tobin, Boston Scientific's chief executive, has told analysts in the past that building St. Jude, the smallest player in the market, into a leader would be a larger challenge than his company wants. That would be particularly true because St. Jude, unlike Guidant, has signaled that it wants to remain independent. Boston Scientific's only other significant bet in cardiac rhythm management is an investment in Cameron Health, a start-up based in San Clemente, Calif. Cameron is in the early stages of developing a novel defibrillator that is surgically attached to the heart to monitor it and provide shocks when needed to restore normal heartbeats without the use of wires embedded in the heart. Such wires, known as leads, cause many of the complications in current designs. But Cameron is a long shot. And Guidant, in addition to already being a strong player in the market, has both highly regarded researchers and a respected sales and marketing force. 'Boston Scientific wants as many shots on goal as they can get,' said Daniel Owczarski, who follows device makers for Belmont Harbor Capital, a research firm in Chicago.

Subject: Golden-crowned Kinglet Taking Flight From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 06:34:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5819&exhibition=7&u=99|93|... Golden-crowned Kinglet Taking Flight New York City--Central Park, North Meadow.

Subject: Australia's Dangerous Fantasy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 17, 2005 at 06:32:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/opinion/17sallis.html?ex=1292475600&en=517c79fe0eb30514&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 17, 2005 Australia's Dangerous Fantasy By EVA SALLIS Adelaide, Australia LAST Sunday on Cronulla Beach, a suburb of Sydney, thousands of drunken white youths attacked anyone they believed was of Arab descent. Inspired by reports that Lebanese-Australians had assaulted two white lifeguards, text messages calling for a Lebanese 'bashing day' appeared on thousands of cellphones. Some of Sunday's assailants wore T-shirts that proclaimed, 'We grew here; you flew here,' or, 'Ethnic cleansing unit.' For many, the Cronulla Beach incident did not come as a surprise. Rather, it was the bubbling up of an undercurrent that is increasingly evident in Australian life. Newcomers, especially those who form linguistic or ethnically distinct groups, always have a hard time in Australia at first. But Australia is a country that has been created by many streams of immigrants and has come out the better for it. Greeks and Italians are among the largest non-Anglo groups and are fully integrated. Melbourne has the world's third largest Greek community. Vietnamese immigrants experienced racism and hostility when they first arrived in the late 70's and early 80's, but time, and the entry of increasing numbers of Vietnamese-Australians into public life, have eroded that prejudice. While this country is less diverse than the United States, its minority communities are a core part of its national identity. The notion of an all-white Australia is a fantasy and an anachronism. No dark-haired, dark-eyed Australian would have been safe on Cronulla Beach last Sunday, yet Australia is - has always been - substantially dark-haired and dark-eyed. And the expressed hostility toward 'Lebs' as recent intruders belies the history of Australia, where people of Lebanese ancestry have lived for more than a century. Several recent events have made this latest eruption of racism and xenophobia different from those of the past. While denying even that racism exists, our leaders have given tacit approval and support for it through policy, whether this is policy on refugees, security or Indigenous affairs. The policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers was strongly linked with border protection from 2001, and, as most asylum seekers of recent years have been from the Middle East and Muslim South Asia, 'border protection' has become protection from Muslim refugees in the popular imagination. Like the United States, Australia has new anti-terrorism legislation, first passed in 2002 and significantly strengthened just recently. Such laws have helped to validate broader community mistrust of Arab and Muslim Australians. Our government has done little to substantively allay fear of Muslim and Middle Eastern Australians generally or to increase public understanding and appreciation of their culture and contribution to Australian life. Arabic is the fourth most commonly used language after English in Australia, and the most commonly used language after English in New South Wales, Sydney's home state, yet it is taught in only a handful of schools and universities. In the last five years there has also been evidence of an increase in violence toward people of Arab appearance. An Iraqi writer I know begged his wife and daughter to stop wearing the hijab because of the potential of violence on the street. An Afghan refugee taxi driver in Adelaide said to my partner last night that he thought he would have to quit because his younger passengers were so nasty. In recent years high-profile cases in which Arab-Australian youths were charged with violent crimes generated a storm in the news media, as well as unchecked vilification on talk radio. Prejudice creates what it fears by curtailing young people's prospects. Young Arab-Australians are increasingly ghettoized in Sydney's poor suburbs, where they struggle for education and jobs. Their families are often prejudiced against non-Arab Australians; the racism of the minority and that of the broader society reinforce each other. I have Muslim friends who used to feel that they were Australians, but now cannot identify themselves in the negative space created for them in our community. I have non-Muslim friends who are furious at being mistaken for Muslims because of their Middle Eastern background; they are doing all they can to differentiate themselves from people they too are starting to openly dismiss. It has become fashionable, perhaps, to be racist, although none of us, not even our prime minister, is willing to call it what it is. What happened on Cronulla Beach warns us that our self-inflicted wounds are festering. A volatile part of our community is deeply alienated, unable to belong, and another volatile part has retreated to an irretrievable past and a mythical notion of racial purity. If contemporary Australians are to live at ease with ourselves, we need more education, less fear mongering and, not least, greater honesty about the culture of racism that is so damaging us.

Subject: Black Swan Vocalizing From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 19:50:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3550&u=207|266|... Black Swan Vocalizing Jamaica Bay NWR East Pond, New York.

Subject: Drugs, Devices, and Doctors.... From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 14:48:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 16, 2005 Paul Krugman: Drugs, Devices, and Doctors By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman looks at the conflict of interest due to financial connections between medical companies, medical researchers, and health care providers: Drugs, Devices and Doctors, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, is under siege. ... Merck stands accused of playing down evidence that Vioxx, a best-selling painkiller until it was withdrawn..., increases the risk of heart attacks. The most recent accusation of obscuring the evidence came from The New England Journal of Medicine, which discovered that the authors of a Merck-supported paper ... had removed data unfavorable to Vioxx. ... Dr. Eric Topol, a famed cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, has been warning about the dangers of Vioxx since 2001. In videotaped testimony at a recent federal Vioxx trial ..., he accused Merck of scientific misconduct... Two days after that testimony, according to Dr. Topol, he was told ...[his] position of chief academic officer ... had been abolished. A [Cleveland] clinic spokeswoman denied that the abrupt elimination of this post had any link to his Vioxx testimony. A few days later, The Wall Street Journal reported on a web of financial connections between the Cleveland Clinic, its chief executive and AtriCure, a company selling a medical device used in a surgical procedure promoted by the clinic. Dr. Topol ... was 'among those who questioned the ties,' the newspaper said. O.K., it's sounding complicated. ... The past quarter-century has seen the emergence of a vast medical-industrial complex, in which doctors, hospitals and research institutions have deep financial links with drug companies and equipment makers. Conflicts of interest aren't the exception - they're the norm. The economic logic of the medical-industrial complex is straightforward. Prescription drugs and high-technology medical devices account for a growing share of medical spending. Both are ... expensive to develop but relatively cheap to make. So the profit from each additional unit sold is large, giving their makers a strong incentive to ... persuade doctors and hospitals to choose their products. The tools of persuasion go beyond hiring cheerleaders as sales representatives. There are also financial inducements, sometimes disguised, sometimes blatant. A few months ago, Reed Abelson of The New York Times reported on a practice in which device makers give surgeons who are in a position to choose their products ... lucrative consulting contracts... Above all, the line between medical researcher and medical entrepreneur has been blurred. In her book 'The Truth About the Drug Companies,' Marcia Angell, a former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, writes that small companies founded by university researchers now 'ring the major academic research institutions ... hoping for lucrative deals with big drug companies.' Usually, she says, 'both academic researchers and their institutions own equity' in these companies, giving them a strong incentive to make the big drug companies happy. The ... whiff of corruption in our medical system isn't emanating from a few bad apples. The whole system of incentives encourages doctors and researchers to serve the interests of the medical industry. The good news is that things don't have to be that way. Economic trends gave rise to the medical-industrial complex, but only because those trends interacted with bad policies, which can be fixed. In future columns I'll talk about how serious health reform can reduce the conflicts of interest that taint our current system.

Subject: Legal Gadfly Bites Hard From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 11:15:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/international/asia/13lawyer.html?ex=1292130000&en=7f98b27b303c18ce&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Legal Gadfly Bites Hard, and Beijing Slaps Him By JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING - One November morning, the Beijing Judicial Bureau convened a hearing on its decree that one of China's best-known law firms must shut down for a year because it failed to file a change of address form when it moved offices. The same morning, Gao Zhisheng, the firm's founder and star litigator, was 1,800 miles away in Xinjiang, in the remote west. He skipped what he called the 'absurd and corrupt' hearing so he could rally members of an underground Christian church to sue China's secret police. 'I can't guarantee that you will win the lawsuit - in fact you will almost certainly lose,' Mr. Gao told one church member who had been detained in a raid. 'But I warn you that if you are too timid to confront their barbaric behavior, you will be completely defeated.' The advice could well summarize Mr. Gao's own fateful clash with the authorities. Bold, brusque and often roused to fiery indignation, Mr. Gao, 41, is one of a handful of self-proclaimed legal 'rights defenders.' He travels the country filing lawsuits over corruption, land seizures, police abuses and religious freedom. His opponent is usually the same: the ruling Communist Party. Now, the party has told him to cease and desist. The order to suspend his firm's operating license was expanded last week to include his personal permit to practice law. The authorities threatened to confiscate it by force if Mr. Gao fails to hand it over voluntarily by Wednesday. Secret police now watch his home and follow him wherever he goes, he says. He has become the most prominent in a string of outspoken lawyers facing persecution. One was jailed this summer while helping clients appeal the confiscation of their oil wells. A second was driven into exile last spring after he zealously defended a third lawyer, who was convicted of leaking state secrets. Together, they have effectively put the rule of law itself on trial, with lawyers often acting as both plaintiffs and defendants. 'People across this country are awakening to their rights and seizing on the promise of the law,' Mr. Gao says. 'But you cannot be a rights lawyer in this country without becoming a rights case yourself.' Ordinary citizens in fact have embraced the law as eagerly as they have welcomed another Western-inspired import, capitalism. The number of civil cases heard last year hit 4.3 million, up 30 percent in five years, and lawyers have encouraged the notion that the courts can hold anyone, even party bosses, responsible for their actions. Chinese leaders do not discourage such ideas, entirely. They need the law to check corruption and to persuade the outside world that China is not governed by the whims of party leaders. But the officials draw the line at any fundamental challenge to their monopoly on power. Judges take orders from party-controlled trial committees. Lawyers operate more autonomously but often face criminal prosecution if they stir up public disorder or disclose details about legal matters that the party deems secret. The struggle of Mr. Gao and others like him may well determine whether China's legal system evolves from its subordinate role into something grander, an independent force that can curtail abuses of power at all levels and, ultimately, protect the rights of individuals against the state. 'We have all tried to shine sunlight on the abuses in the system,' says Li Heping, another Beijing-based lawyer who has accepted political cases. 'Gao has his own special style. He is fearless. And he knows the law.' An Air of Authority Mr. Gao can cite chapter and verse of China's legal code, having committed it to memory in intensive self-study. He is an army veteran and a longtime member of the Communist Party. On a recent trip to rural Shaanxi Province, where he sneaked into a coal mine to gather evidence in a lawsuit against mine owners, he wore a crisp white shirt and tie and shiny black loafers, as if preparing for a day in court. He is also a flagrant dissident. Tall and big-boned, he has the booming voice of a person used to commanding a room. When he holds forth, it is often on the evils of one-party rule. 'Barbaric' and 'reactionary' are his favorite adjectives for describing party leaders. 'Most officials in China are basically mafia bosses who use extreme barbaric methods to terrorize the people and keep them from using the law to protect their rights,' Mr. Gao wrote on one essay that circulated widely on the Web this fall. After an early career that racked up notable courtroom victories, he has plunged headlong into cases that he knows are unwinnable. He has done pro bono work for members of the Falun Gong religious sect, displaced homeowners, underground Christians, fellow lawyers and democracy activists. When the courts reject his filings, as they often do, he uses the Internet to rally public opinion. His fevered assaults have a messianic ring. But although he became a Christian this fall and began attending services in an underground church, the motivation to pursue the most sensitive cases - and put his practice and possibly his freedom at risk - began a couple of years earlier. It was then that his idealistic beginnings as a peasant boy turned big-city lawyer gave way to simmering rage. Mr. Gao was born in a cave. His family lived in a mud-walled home dug out of a hillside in the loess plateau in Shaanxi Province, in northwestern China. His father died at age 40. For years the boy climbed into bed at dusk because his family could not afford oil for its lamp, he recalled. Nor could they pay for elementary school for Mr. Gao and his six siblings. But he said he listened outside the classroom window. Later, with the help of an uncle, he attended junior high and became adept enough at reading and writing to achieve what was then his dream: to join the People's Liberation Army. Stationed at a base in Kashgar, in Xinjiang region, he received a secondary-school education and became a party member. But his fate changed even more decisively after he left the service and began working as a food vendor. One day in 1991 he browsed a newspaper used to wrap a bundle of garlic. He spotted an article that mentioned a plan by Deng Xiaoping, then China's paramount leader, to train 150,000 new lawyers and develop the legal system. 'Deng said China must be governed by law,' Mr. Gao said. 'I believed him.' He scraped together the funds to take a self-taught course on the law. The course mostly required a prodigious memory for titles and clauses, which he had. He passed the tests easily. Anticipating a future as a public figure, he took walks in the early morning light, pretending fields of wheat were auditoriums full of important officials. He delivered full-throated lectures to quivering stalks. By the late 1990's, though based in remote Xinjiang, he developed a winning reputation. He represented the family of a boy who sank into a coma when a doctor mistakenly gave him an intravenous dose of ethanol. He won a $100,000 payout, then a headline-generating sum, in a case involving a boy who had lost his hearing in a botched operation. He also won a lawsuit on behalf of a private businessman in Xinjiang. The entrepreneur had taken control of a troubled state-owned company, but a district government used force to reclaim it after the businessmen turned it into a profit-making entity. China's highest court backed the businessman and Mr. Gao. 'It felt like a golden age,' he said, 'when the law seemed to have real power.' That optimism did not last long. His victory in the privatization case made him a target of local leaders in Xinjiang, who warned clients and court officials to shun him, he said. He moved to Beijing in 2000 and set up a new practice with half a dozen lawyers. But he said he felt like an outsider in the capital, battling an impenetrable bureaucracy. The Beijing Judicial Bureau, an administrative agency that has supervisory authority over law firms registered in the capital, charged high fees and often interfered in what he considered his private business. One of his first big cases in Beijing involved a client who had his home confiscated for a building project connected with the 2008 Summer Olympics. Like many residents of inner-city courtyard homes, his client received what he considered paltry compensation to make way for developers. When Mr. Gao attempted to file a lawsuit on his client's behalf, he was handed an internal document drafted by the central government that instructed all district courts to reject cases involving such land disputes. 'It was a blatantly illegal document, but every court in Beijing blindly obeyed it,' he said. In the spring of 2003, Beijing was panicking about the spread of SARS, a sometimes fatal respiratory affliction, and Mr. Gao was fuming about forced removals. He gave an interview to a reporter for The China Economic Times arguing that SARS was much less scary than collusion between officials and developers. 'The law is designed precisely to resolve these sorts of competing interests,' he said in that interview. 'But their orders strip away the original logic of the law and make it a pawn of the powerful and the corrupt.' An Empty Promise Mr. Gao is not the first lawyer to test China's commitment to the law. Even in the earliest days of market-oriented economic reforms, when the legal system was still a hollow shell, a few defense lawyers quixotically challenged the ruling party to respect international legal norms. One such advocate is Zhang Sizhi, a dean of defense lawyers, who has accepted dozens of long-shot cases that he views as advancing the law. He defended Jiang Qing, Mao's wife, when she faced trial after the Cultural Revolution. He also represented Wei Jingsheng, perhaps China's best-known dissident. Mr. Zhang argues that lawyers have prodded the party to develop a more impartial judiciary. But, he says, they must do so with small, carefully calibrated jolts of legal pressure. 'The system is improving incrementally,' he said. 'If you go too far, you will only hurt the chances of legal reform, as well as the interests of your client.' That view may reflect a consensus among seasoned legal scholars. But Mr. Gao is 37 years younger than Mr. Zhang, far less patient, and after his initial burst of idealism, deeply cynical. If Mr. Zhang's benchmark for progress is that every criminal suspect has the right to a legal defense, Mr. Gao's became the 1989 Administrative Procedure Law, which for the first time gave Chinese citizens the right to sue state agencies. By his reckoning, it remains an empty promise. 'The leaders of China see no other purpose for the law but to protect and disguise their own power,' Mr. Gao said. 'As a lawyer, my goal is to turn their charade into a reality.' Following his defeat in the Beijing land dispute he plunged into the biggest land case he could find, a prolonged battle over hundreds of acres of farmland that Guangdong Province had seized to construct a university. Legally, he hit another brick wall. But he fired off scores of angry missives about the 'brazen murderous schemes' of Guangdong officials. The storm of public anger he helped stir up got his clients more generous compensation. Mr. Gao said he was told later that the party secretary of Guangdong, Zhang Dejiang, had labeled him a mingyun fenzi, a dangerous man on a mission. 'He was right,' Mr. Gao said. This summer, a fellow lawyer-activist named Zhu Jiuhu was detained for 'disturbing public order' while representing private investors in oil wells that were seized by the government in Shaanxi, Mr. Gao's home province. Mr. Gao rushed to Mr. Zhu's defense with fellow lawyers, local journalists and tape recorders. He camped out in local government offices until officials agreed to meet him. He told one party boss that 'he would forever be on the wrong side of the law and on the wrong side of the conscience of the people' unless he let Mr. Zhu go, according to a recording of the conversation. After the intensive publicity campaign, Mr. Zhu was freed this fall, though under a highly restrictive bail arrangement that prevents him from practicing law. Most provocatively, Mr. Gao has defended adherents of Falun Gong, a quasi-Buddhist religious sect that the party outlawed as a major threat to national security in 1999. Mr. Gao has been blocked from filing lawsuits on behalf of Falun Gong members. But in open letters to the leadership, he said the secret police had tortured sect members to make them renounce Falun Gong. He described a police-run, extra-judicial 'brainwashing base' where, he said, one client was first starved and then force-fed until he threw up. Another of his Falun Gong clients, he says, was raped while in police custody. 'These calamitous deeds did not begin with the two of you,' he wrote in a letter addressed to President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. 'But they have continued under your political watch, and it is a crime that you have not stopped them.' The Police Circle The crackdown came first as a courtesy call. Two men wearing suit jackets and ties, having set up an appointment, visited his office. They identified themselves as agents of State Security, the internal secret police, but mostly made small talk until one of them mentioned the open letter Mr. Gao had written on Falun Gong. 'They suggested that Falun Gong was more of a political issue than a legal issue and maybe it was best left to the politicians,' Mr. Gao recalled. 'They were very polite.' When they prepared to leave, however, one of them said, 'You must be proud of what you have achieved as a lawyer after your self-study. Certainly you must be worried should something happen to derail that.' Mr. Gao said he talked to his wife and considered the future of his two children. He wondered whether he could still afford his Beijing apartment and his car if his business collapsed. 'Anyone who says he does not consider this kind of pressure is lying,' Mr. Gao said. 'But I also felt more than ever that I was putting pressure on this reactionary system. I did not want to give that up.' His resistance hardened. The Beijing Judicial Bureau handed him a list of cases and clients that were off limits, including Falun Gong, the Shaanxi oil case and a recent incident of political unrest in Taishi, a village in Guangdong. He refused to drop any of them, arguing that the bureau had no legal authority to dictate what cases he accepts or rejects. This fall, he said, security agents have followed him constantly. He said his apartment courtyard has become a 'plainclothes policeman's club,' with up to 20 officers stationed outside. He and his wife bring them hot water on cold nights. On Nov. 4, shortly after being warned to retract a second open letter about his Falun Gong cases, Mr. Gao received a new summons from the judicial bureau. This time, the bureau provided a written notice that said it had conducted routine inspections of 58 law firms in Beijing. Mr. Gao's, it was discovered, had moved offices and failed to promptly register the new address, which it called a serious violation of the Law on Managing the Registration of Law Firms. He was ordered to suspend operations for a year. When the requisite public hearing was held, Mr. Gao sent two lawyers to represent him. But he boarded a plane for Xinjiang, where he had a medical case pending and where he wanted to inquire about abuses against members of an underground Christian church. The edict was not only not overturned after the hearing, it was broadened. By late November, the bureau issued a new notice demanding that Mr. Gao hand over his personal law license as well as his firm's operating permit. Both had to be in the hands of the bureau by Dec. 14. The authority would otherwise 'use force according to law to carry it out.' When he received that second order, Mr. Gao had escaped his police tail and traveled to a location in northern China that he asked to keep secret. He was conducting a new investigation into torture of Falun Gong adherents. A steady stream of sect members visited him in the ramshackle apartment he is using as a safe house. He tries to meet at least four each day, taking their stories down long hand. 'I'm not sure how much time I have left to conduct my work,' Mr. Gao said. 'But I will use every minute to expose the barbaric tactics of our leadership.'

Subject: Delphi Workers Ponder Cuts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 11:14:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/14delphi.html?ex=1292216400&en=053e26e2f9583620&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 Protests Well Up as Delphi Workers Ponder Cuts By MICHELINE MAYNARD and JEREMY W. PETERS DETROIT - First, Robert S. Miller, the chief executive of Delphi, had his turn to capture the public spotlight, looking for deep cuts from unions. Now, workers at Delphi, the bankrupt auto parts supplier, are having their say against Mr. Miller's demands - on picket lines, in drafty union halls and on their bodies. On Thursday, workers in Dayton, Ohio, plan to wear red clothing to their factories, symbolizing the wages and benefits they say will bleed away if the company wins its demand for sharply lower wages and benefits. It is the most visible symbol yet of a grass-roots protest that is spreading among workers in cities like Toledo, Ohio; Kokomo, Ind.; and Rochester, home to plants with futures clouded by Delphi's bankruptcy filing in October. Nowhere is the concern deeper than in western Michigan, where the company's initial demand for wages as low as $9.50 an hour, versus the $27 an hour workers now receive, provoked outrage at plants in Wyoming and Coopersville, both outside of Grand Rapids, Mich. Workers at the two factories have joined forces to fuel the protests, holding meetings and staging informational picketing. 'You don't do a job like this all your life because you like it,' Tom Mitchell, 49, a repairman at the Wyoming plant, said Tuesday. 'You do it because there are rewards. And that's what they want to take away from us.' Jack White, president of the United Automobile Workers local at the plant, said workers were demanding fairness. 'It boils down to promises made, promises kept,' said Mr. White, 53. 'And that's really what I have heartburn about.' Such complaints may matter little in the courtroom, where the fate of Delphi workers will ultimately be decided. Once in bankruptcy, a company has the right to ask a judge to set aside its labor contracts and allow it to put sharply lower terms in place, if it can prove the action is vital to the company's survival. In fact, Mr. Miller said last month that persuading a judge to do that was 'a slam-dunk,' given that other parts companies pay their workers much less. But analysts said the protests were helping workers deal with a completely unfamiliar situation in an industry where labor negotiations have long centered on how much more a company can pay, not how much workers are willing to give up. 'At least you can make some noise,' said James P. Womack, an author and consultant on efficiency matters. 'At least you can shout a bit.' 'We've gone beyond the charted ocean where everybody understood what an iceberg was and what a supertanker was and what a whale was,' Mr. Womack said. 'Now there are all kinds of creatures leaping out of the water and nobody knows what these creatures are.' There are some signs that Mr. Miller, known as an overhaul specialist, is paying attention. On Tuesday, he told a news conference in Tokyo that he expected to reach agreements with Delphi's unions during the first quarter, and had set a Jan. 20 deadline for concluding the talks. Last week, Mr. Miller told The Wall Street Journal that Delphi was preparing its third proposal to the U.A.W. The company backed off from its first two contract offers, when union leaders flatly refused to make counterproposals to what they deemed 'obscene' cuts. Perhaps emboldened by their members' protests against Delphi, U.A.W. leaders have been much more public than in recent years, lately holding news conferences and giving interviews in which they have repeatedly denounced Mr. Miller and the company's efforts to slice wages and benefits. Officials warn that the union could use its ultimate weapon - a walkout - if Mr. Miller persists in seeking deep cuts. Richard Shoemaker, the U.A.W. vice president in charge of talks with Delphi, said this week that the union was 'keeping all of our options open,' including a strike. At the Delphi plant in Wyoming, workers are particularly upset that Mr. Miller accepted a $3 million signing bonus and $1.5 million in annual salary when he became Delphi's chief executive in July, not long before he began demanding that they cut their pay. Mr. Miller later said he would accept only $1 in salary for 2006. 'Give me $3 million and I'll work the next three years for a dollar,' said Herb Benedict, 60, a screw machine operator and a local union official. 'I'd be able to retire pretty good. Some sacrifice, huh?' Others said they felt slighted by Mr. Miller. 'Everybody in here is looking at it like this guy doesn't care about us,' said Dave Musselman, 48, a machine repairman with 28 years of seniority. 'He couldn't care less about the people on the floor.' Mr. White, the union local president, added: 'Saying, 'I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down,' is not the right approach. That's not going to resolve anything. All that's going to do is put the two parties that much farther apart.' Those wounded feelings, and the protests that they are fueling, ultimately could have a significant impact not only on the union's talks with Delphi, but also on the public's perception of the battle between Delphi and its unions, Mr. Womack said. 'At some point it becomes rather more emotional and political, rather than fact-based and using logic about where this has to end up,' Mr. Womack said.

Subject: It's Sensitive. Really. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 11:03:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13narw.html?ex=1292130000&en=5f116a30226b7e8b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 It's Sensitive. Really. By WILLIAM J. BROAD For centuries, the tusk of the narwhal has fascinated and baffled. Narwhal tusks, up to nine feet long, were sold as unicorn horns in ages past, often for many times their weight in gold since they were said to possess magic powers. In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth received a tusk valued at £10,000 - the cost of a castle. Austrian lore holds that Kaiser Karl the Fifth paid off a large national debt with two tusks. In Vienna, the Hapsburgs had one made into a scepter heavy with diamonds, rubies, sapphires and emeralds. Scientists have long tried to explain why a stocky whale that lives in arctic waters, feeding on cod and other creatures that flourish amid the pack ice, should wield such a long tusk. The theories about how the narwhal uses the tusk have included breaking ice, spearing fish, piercing ships, transmitting sound, shedding excess body heat, poking the seabed for food, wooing females, defending baby narwhals and establishing dominance in social hierarchies. But a team of scientists from Harvard and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has now made a startling discovery: the tusk, it turns out, forms a sensory organ of exceptional size and sensitivity, making the living appendage one of the planet's most remarkable, and one that in some ways outdoes its own mythology. The find came when the team turned an electron microscope on the tusk's material and found new subtleties of dental anatomy. The close-ups showed that 10 million nerve endings tunnel from the tusk's core toward its outer surface, communicating with the outside world. The scientists say the nerves can detect subtle changes of temperature, pressure, particle gradients and probably much else, giving the animal unique insights. 'This whale is intent on understanding its environment,' said Martin T. Nweeia, the team's leader and a clinical instructor at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. Contrary to common views, he said, 'The tusk is not about guys duking it out with sticks and swords.' Today in San Diego, Dr. Nweeia is presenting the team's findings at the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, sponsored by the Society for Marine Mammalogy. James G. Mead, curator of marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, where Dr. Nweeia is a research associate, said the exposed nerve endings appear to be unparalleled in nature. 'As far as I can see, it's a unique thing,' Dr. Mead said in an interview. 'It's something new. It just goes to show just how little we know about whales and dolphins.' He noted that no theory about the tusk's function ever envisioned its use as a sensory organ. In the Canadian wilds, the team recently conducted a field study on a captured narwhal, fitting electrodes on its head. Changes in salinity around the animal's tusk, Dr. Nweeia found, produced signs of altered brain waves, giving preliminary support to the sensor hypothesis. The unharmed whale was then released. With the basics now in hand, the team is working to understand how the narwhal uses the information. One theory is that the tusk can detect salinity gradients that tell if ice is freezing, a hazard that has killed hundreds of narwhals. Tusk readings may also help the whales track environments that favor their preferred foods. 'It's the kind of discovery,' said Dr. Mead of the Smithsonian, 'that opens up a lot of other questions.' Little about the narwhal's appearance or behavior offers clues to the tusk's sensory importance. The whale has eyes, though small ones. It also has a thick layer of blubber and no dorsal fin so it can swim easily under the ice. Like any whale, it must surface periodically to breathe air. And as in dolphins, its mouth is set in a permanent smile. The word narwhal (pronounced NAR-wall or NAR-way-l) is said to derive from old Norse for 'corpse whale,' apparently because the animal's mottled, splotchy coloring recalled the grayish, blotched color of drowned sailors. Though shy of humans, the animals are quite social. They often travel in groups of 20 or 30 and form herds of up to 1,000 during migrations. Males weigh up to 1.5 tons, grow about 15 feet long and are conspicuous by their tusks, which can grow from six to nine feet in length. A few females have tusks and, in rare cases, narwhals can wield two of the long teeth. Though often ramrod strait, the tusks always grow in tight spirals that, from the animal's point of view, turn counterclockwise. The long ivory tusk 'looks like a cross between a corkscrew and a jousting lance,' Fred Bruemmer, an Arctic explorer, wrote in 'The Narwhal' (Swan Hill Press, 1993). Narwhals live mainly in the icy channels of northern Canada and northwestern Greenland, but they are found eastward as far as Siberia. The whale's close cousin, the snowy white beluga, thrives in captivity. The shy narwhal tends to die. Arctic explorers have often observed them at a distance because narwhals frequently raise their heads above the water, their tusks held high. Jens Rosing, in his book 'The Unicorn of the Arctic Sea' (Penumbra Press, 1999), tells of seeing them during expeditions off Greenland. There the whales would frolic and apparently mate. 'Over a hundred can be seen at once,' he wrote. 'They often rise vertically out of the water, lifting themselves with strong movements of their tail fin so that half their body is above water.' Mr. Rosing added: 'There is great confusion of movement - both females and males take part. Often one can see a male and female shoot up from the water, trembling, belly to belly.' When luxuriating on their backs in the water, narwhals often turn their heads so their tusks point straight up. Dr. Nweeia of Harvard said the Inuit, the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who know the narwhal intimately, have a name for the whale that translates as 'the one that is good at curving itself to the sky.' Around A.D. 1000, the narwhal tusk debuted in history as a profitable lie. Historians say people in the far north learned of narwhals from Norsemen or perhaps from finding animal bodies occasionally washed up on northern shores. It is known that the Vikings hunted the narwhal and acquired tusks from Arctic natives. Unscrupulous traders passed them off as one of the most prized objects of all time: unicorn horns. The ancient Chinese, Greeks, Romans and other peoples had accepted the unicorn as real, and the arrival of the beautifully spiraled objects seemed to prove the animal's existence. The supposed horns sparked huge interest because they were said to have the power to cure ills and neutralize poisons. Kings and emperors, eager to foil assassins, had cups and eating utensils made of the precious horns. A London doctor advertised a drink made from powdered tusks that could cure scurvy, ulcers, dropsy, gout, consumption, coughs, heart palpitations, fainting, rickets and melancholy. The horns became an icon of power, both earthly and divine, in part because of their religious associations. In medieval times, the unicorn was seen as a symbol of great purity and of Christ, the motif common in religious art. The fantastic beast appeared in many thousands of images, Mr. Bruemmer wrote, and 'All carry a horn that is unmistakably a narwhal tusk, the only long, spiraled horn in all creation.' Churches put small pieces of 'unicorn horn' in holy water, giving ailing commoners hope of miracle cures. Meanwhile, the bishops of Vienna carried staffs made of the precious ivory, while St. Mark's Basilica in Venice displayed a horn wreathed in purple velvet. By the 17th century, the deception began to falter amid the expansion of New World exploration and multiplying reports of bizarre whales that bore long tusks. Ole Wurm, a Danish zoologist, investigated the matter and in 1638 exposed the horn's true origins in a public lecture. As the unicorn myth died a slow death, the reputation of the narwhal grew larger than life. Explorers claimed its tusk could punch holes in thick ice, and that males battled with their long tusks for supremacy. In 1870, Jules Verne told how a narwhal could pierce ships 'clean through as easily as a drill pierces a barrel.' Dr. Nweeia, a general dentist in Sharon, Conn., with an interest in dental anthropology, developed a taste for exotic investigations while doing research on Indian tribes in the Amazon and children in Micronesia. He lectured on how animal and human teeth differ, and eight years ago he began to wonder about narwhals and their odd tusks. 'They defied most of the principles and properties of teeth,' he recalled. Many narwhal reports proved contradictory, he found, and 'my interest spiraled like the tooth.' In 2000, Dr. Nweeia decided to investigate the animal closely and first trekked to its icy habitat in 2002, going to Pond Inlet, a tiny settlement at the northern tip of Baffin Island. There he met David Angnatsiak, an Inuit guide who agreed to help. Under international agreement, the Inuits are allowed to hunt narwhals, which they eat and harvest for their tusks. During expeditions in 2003 and 2004, aided by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Dr. Nweeia was able to gather head and tusk specimens, which he brought back for analysis. He and his colleagues tracked a clear nerve connection between the animal's brain and tusk, finding the long tooth heavily enervated. But why it should be so remained a mystery. The investigators zeroed in on the riddle with sophisticated instruments at the Paffenbarger Research Center of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal organization in Gaithersburg, Md. The American Dental Association finances the research center. Rough deposits of calcified algae and plankton coated the outside of the tusks Dr. Nweeia brought back. The scientists decided to remove them in an acid bath to get down to the surface of the tooth before viewing it under an electron microscope. First, however, they decided to give the uncleaned tusk a cursory microscopic examination. It was a shock. There, contrary to all known precepts of tooth anatomy, they found open tubules leading down through the mazelike coating to the tooth's inner nerves and pulp. 'That surprised us,' recalled Frederick C. Eichmiller, director of the Paffenbarger Research Center. 'Tubules in healthy teeth never go to the surface.' Extrapolating from a count of open tubules over one part of the tooth's surface, the team estimated that the average narwhal tusk had millions of openings that led down to inner nerves. 'No one knew that they were connecting to the outside environment,' Dr. Nweeia said. 'To find that was extraordinary.' His collaborators include Naomi Eidelman and Anthony A. Giuseppetti of the Paffenbarger Research Center, Yeon-Gil Jung of Changwon National University in South Korea and Yu Zhang of New York University. Increasingly, the investigation centers on how the whales use their newly observed powers. One central unanswered question is how sensory abilities in males might relate to herd behavior and survival. The scientists, noting that the males often hold their tusks high in the air, wonder if the long teeth might sometimes serve as sophisticated weather stations, letting the animals sense changes in temperature and barometric pressure that would tell of the arrival of cold fronts and the likelihood that open ice channels might soon freeze up. Dr. Nweeia noted that the discovery does not eliminate some early theories of the whale's behavior. Tusks acting as sophisticated sensors, he said, may still play a role in mating rituals or determining male hierarchies. He added that the nerve endings, in addition to other readings, undoubtedly produce tactile sensations when the tusk is rubbed or touched, and that these might be interpreted as pleasurable. This tactile sense might explain why narwhals engage in what is known as 'tusking,' where two males gently rub tusks together, Dr. Nweeia said. He added that the Inuit seldom report aggressive contact, undermining ideas of ritualized battle. Dr. Nweeia said that gentle tusking might also be a way that males remove encrustations on their tusks so tubules stay open, allowing them to better function as sensors. 'It may simply be their way of cleaning or brushing teeth,' he said. He called the basic discovery mind boggling, especially given the freezing temperatures of the Arctic. 'This is one of the last places you'd expect to find such a thing,' Dr. Nweeia said of the large sensory organs. 'Cold is one of the things that tubules are most sensitive to,' as people sometimes discover when diseased gums of human teeth expose the tubules. 'Of all the places you'd think you'd want to do the most to insulate yourself from that outside environment,' he said, 'this guy has gone out of his way to open himself up to it.'

Subject: Bring Water to the Bolivian Poor? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 11:00:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/business/15water.html?ex=1292302800&en=3d5d84e4e7f221e7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 15, 2005 Who Will Bring Water to the Bolivian Poor? By JUAN FORERO COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - The people of this high Andean city were ecstatic when they won the 'water war.' After days of protests and martial law, Bechtel - the American multinational that had increased rates when it began running the waterworks - was forced out. As its executives fled the city, protest leaders pledged to improve service and a surging leftist political movement in Latin America celebrated the ouster as a major victory, to be repeated in country after country. Today, five years later, water is again as cheap as ever, and a group of community leaders runs the water utility, Semapa. But half of Cochabamba's 600,000 people remain without water, and those who do have service have it only intermittently - for some, as little as two hours a day, for the fortunate, no more than 14. 'I would have to say we were not ready to build new alternatives,' said Oscar Olivera, who led the movement that forced Bechtel out. Bolivia is just days away from an election that could put one of Latin America's most strident antiglobalization leaders in the presidency. The water war experience shows that while a potent left has won many battles in Latin America in recent years, it still struggles to come up with practical, realistic solutions to resolve the deep discontent that gave the movement force in the first place. That discontent may have found its most striking incarnation in Bolivia. Here, protests against the introduction of stronger market forces have toppled two presidents since 2003. And the discontent has given Evo Morales, a charismatic Aymara Indian and nationalistic congressman who has channeled much of the anger of his poverty-stricken country, a slight lead in the polls ahead of the Dec. 18 elections. Frustrated that the economic restructuring prescribed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund failed to translate into sustained growth and reduced poverty, country after country in Latin America has either discarded or is questioning much of the conventional wisdom about relying more on market forces - known as the 'Washington consensus' - from the privatization of utilities to the slashing of social spending to unfettered trade. Much of the policy turn has come under pressure from the streets and the results have varied wildly. Argentina, for instance, has bounced back from economic collapse by ignoring crucial aspects of I.M.F. orthodoxy the last four years, while accepting others. Ecuador is tottering on the brink of political tumult even as the eight-month-old government of President Alfredo Palacio tries ramping up social spending. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez is forming state companies and spending lavishly - some say recklessly - on social programs, pleasing the poor, but failing to generate much foreign investment or business not linked to the overarching oil industry. Bolivia's back-tracking, more a product of roiling protests than government policy, began after the country became among the first in Latin America to apply market prescriptions wholeheartedly in the mid-1980's. The I.M.F. later asked for far-reaching measures in exchange for loans and other aid, and promised steady growth, up to 6 percent a year, that would cut into poverty. Bolivia's economy, though, grew at a dismal pace. Even the fund, in a 2003 memo, noted that a fall in per capita income and employment contributed to 'rising social tensions that erupted recently.' The fund and other institutions that helped guide Bolivia's economy blame grinding corruption, poor infrastructure and high pension costs. Officials at the I.M.F. also note that Bolivia, like other countries that seek help, come only when they are wracked by economic troubles that require tough choices. 'If you're spending more than you're earning, for a while that's fine,' said Caroline Atkinson, deputy director of Western Hemisphere operations for the fund. 'But if your borrowing gets too huge, then no one wants to fund you anymore, and you have to cut back.' But to Bolivians, the experiment was marked by failure. Privatized companies like the railroads went bust, while the energy industry is generating $100 million less in taxes and royalties than it did when it was state-run, budget officials said. 'They did everything right,' said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University who has been critical of the I.M.F. formula. 'They liberalized, they privatized and they felt the pain. Now it's 20 years later and they're saying, 'When is the gain?' ' In the end, market changes pushed by the I.M.F., the World Bank and American-educated Bolivian economists fueled anger that severely weakened governments and gave rise to Mr. Morales. Making his name leading Bolivia's powerful coca growers' federation, Mr. Morales has in the last four years used his outsider status, his 'up by the bootstraps' journey from very poor origins on Bolivia's high plains and his Indian roots to rail against market changes he says favor foreigners, not Bolivians. That is why Mr. Morales is pushing for a 'nationalization' of the gas industry that, while not leading to expropriation, will increase taxes and royalties on foreign energy companies; those combined levies were raised earlier this year to 50 percent. He also wants to tighten borders to keep out cheap products and focus the government's attention on cooperatives, a loose mix of indigenous and socialist business practices. 'We will have an economy based on solidarity and reciprocity,' Mr. Morales said in an interview. 'We do not dismiss the presence of foreign investment, but we want it to be real, fresh investment to industrialize our hydrocarbons, all under state control.' The proposals, to be sure, are vague. Mr. Morales, who did not finish high school, is guided on economic matters by Carlos Villegas, a left-leaning economist, and by his running mate, Álvaro García, a socialist intellectual, professor of sociology and former guerrilla who articulates the party's position. Much of the anger that has given Mr. Morales momentum began here in his home city, Cochabamba. The arrival of Bechtel quickly prompted heated protests when the water company increased rates, arguing that it needed more money to finance investment and expand service. In some cases, poor people ended up paying double their previous costs. It also became clear that Bechtel would not expand service to the impoverished south, where the company had no profits to gain from an expensive expansion. The ouster of the company meant the return of Semapa - but this time with more community control. Semapa has expanded service in fits and starts, with those receiving piped water and sewage service increasing to 303,000 people, from 248,000. The company also managed to lower costs and, oddly for a government company, reduce the work force. But Semapa still grapples with petty graft and inefficiencies, managers at the company said. Its most serious problem, though, is a lack of money. The company cannot secure big international loans, and it cannot raise rates, since few here could pay them. For a wide-scale expansion that would include a new dam and aqueducts, $300 million is needed, an enormous amount for a company whose capital budget is just shy of $5 million. 'I don't think you'll find people in Cochabamba who will say they're happy with service,' said Franz Taquichiri, one of the community-elected directors of Semapa and a veteran of the water war. 'No one will be happy unless they get service 24 hours a day.' On a tour of Semapa's facilities, Luis Camargo, the operations manager, explained that the water filtration installation is split into an obsolete series of 80-year-old tanks and a 29-year-old section that uses gravity to move mountain water from one tank to another. It is fine for a smaller city, he said, but what is needed now is to develop high-altitude reservoirs, a hugely expensive undertaking. 'We're trying to be realistic, and we're looking for aid from Canada and other countries,' explained Mr. Camargo, who has worked at Semapa 20 years. Thousands of people have given up on ever getting Semapa's water. At Rafael Rodríguez's home and small restaurant, a spigot in the yard provides water three hours a day from a community well. He has little good to say about Bechtel, but he noted that Semapa's pipes were far from reaching the neighborhood. 'I was hoping water would get here, but it just has not happened,' Mr. Rodríguez, 43, said. Community organizations, each with an average of 200 families, pool money to drill 200 feet into dry, soft dirt, searching for water that is then delivered through small, cheap pipes to homes in the vicinity of each well. Still, there are many people who cannot even depend on wells. Edwin Villa, 35, lives in a neighborhood that gets its water through deliveries made two or three times a week by freelance water dealers. The deliveries are sporadic, he said, and sometimes the water contains tiny worms. His children ask for piped water, but there is not much he can tell them. 'Our hope is that someday Semapa will reach this far,' he said. 'It would just be magnificent.'

Subject: Eugene J. McCarthy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 07:05:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/national/11mccarthy.html?ex=1291957200&en=700c431b1c41b6b2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race By FRANCIS X. CLINES Eugene J. McCarthy, the sardonic Senate dove who stunned the nation by upending President Lyndon B. Johnson's re-election drive amid the Vietnam War turmoil of 1968, died early yesterday. He was 89. A courtly, sharp-witted presence in capital politics for half a century, Mr. McCarthy, a Minnesota Democrat, died in his sleep at an assisted-living home in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, where he had lived for the last several years. His son, Michael B. McCarthy, said the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. Eugene McCarthy left his mark in a generation's skepticism toward war and the willfulness of political leaders. 'There is only one thing to do - take it to the country!' Senator McCarthy angrily declared in a Capitol corridor 15 months before the 1968 election, after hearing the Johnson administration make its case for the legality of the war. Mr. McCarthy, a man of needling wit, triggered one of the most tumultuous years in American political history. With the war taking scores of thousands of American and Vietnamese lives, he rallied throngs against this 'costly exercise in futility' and stoked a fiery national debate over the World War II model of an all-powerful presidency. He challenged Johnson in a primary, and the president, facing almost certain defeat, ended up withdrawing from the race. Mr. McCarthy was a disarming presence on the stump as he mixed a wry tone and a hard, existential edge in challenging the White House, the Pentagon and the superpower swagger of modern politicians. An acid-tongued campaigner, Mr. McCarthy was sometimes a puzzlement, veering from inspired speechifying to moody languishing. But he was the singular candidate of the Vietnam War protest, serving up politics and poetry, theology and baseball in a blend that entranced the 'Clean for Gene' legions who flocked to his insurgent's call. 'We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it,' he told them. His supporters were delighted by what they saw as his candor, yet some were troubled by the diffidence that marked his public persona. 'I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really,' he said, 'through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.' A Self-Styled Outcast Typically, he only frustrated his followers when he allowed that he was at least 'willing' to be president and, yes, might even be an 'adequate' one. Questions arose about his passion on the campaign as he built a reputation as an unapologetic contrarian. In his 1968 challenge and for decades thereafter, Mr. McCarthy played the self-outcast of the Democratic Party, even shunning Jimmy Carter to endorse Ronald Reagan, the Republican candidate for president in 1980. He was a chronic presidential campaigner, running in 1972, 1976 and 1988, 18 years gone from the Senate. He endorsed trade protectionism, the strategic defense initiative advocated by Reagan that was often referred to as Star Wars and, most passionately, the junking of the two-party establishment whose rules he came to despise. 'It's much easier for me to understand politicians who don't walk away from it,' he said when, at age 71, he once more knew he could not win but ran anyway, hectoring the latest Beltway incumbents. Mr. McCarthy stayed busy writing poetry and books about the decline of American politics, and kept his eye on Washington from his farmhouse in bucolic Rappahannock County, Va., 70 miles to the west, on 14 acres set amid the Blue Ridge Mountains. 'I think he has a rejection wish,' Maurice Rosenblatt, a Washington lobbyist who was a longtime friend, once said of the senator's perplexing mix of quixotic impulse and lethal hesitancy. 'He wants to reject others and be rejected by them.' But others, conceding his quirks, rated Mr. McCarthy the one stand-up, cant-free politician of their generation. 'Besides his conscience, there is his civility,' Joe Flaherty wrote in the antiwar heyday of The Village Voice. Mr. McCarthy delighted in commenting obliquely on politics and himself by reciting poetry on the hustings. His more zealous volunteers yearned for clarion calls, not pentameter. But this was not the style of a man steeped in the Thomistic tangents of his training as a Roman Catholic college professor. Standing a lean 6-foot-4, gray-haired and dryly smiling, the candidate McCarthy gave a memorable rendering of Yeats ('An Irish Airman Foresees His Death') in suggesting why he ran: Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds. As a speaker, Mr. McCarthy was an original but hardly stem-winding presence. 'Usually the cheers were greater when he came in than when he finished speaking,' noted the poet Robert Lowell, who frequently traveled with the candidate. Mr. McCarthy, once a semiprofessional baseball player, liked to burnish a kind of knuckleball oddness. In one of his own later poems, 'Lament for an Aging Politician,' he wrote: I have left Act I, for involution And Act II. There, mired in complexity I cannot write Act III. He identified simplistic partisanship as the ultimate enemy in the domestic strife over the Vietnam War. Invoking Whitman's call to human goodness - 'Arouse! for you must justify me' - candidate McCarthy's basic message to Americans was Daniel Webster's dictum to never 'give up to party what was meant for mankind.' A Soft-Spoken Campaigner As crowds rallied to him, he promised no new deals or frontiers. Rather, he slowed his baritone for a plain definition of patriotism: 'To serve one's country not in submission but to serve it in truth.' He showed more passion as contrarian than as dogged campaigner. At the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Senator McCarthy showed that speaker's fire so longed for by his later followers when he boldly nominated Adlai E. Stevenson, a twice-defeated presidential candidate, one more time despite - or because of - John F. Kennedy's lock on the nomination. 'Do not reject this man who made us all proud to be Democrats,' rang Mr. McCarthy's electrifying loser's plea. In Congress, Mr. McCarthy was an unabashed liberal unafraid to take on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin and his alarmist warnings about the Communist menace. More often, as he restlessly paced the backs of committee rooms or brought a tome to read during hearings, Eugene McCarthy was viewed by peers as something of a ruminator and a curmudgeon. Yet he was the one who dared to step forward and bell the White House cat when other Democrats would only complain. Grasping the unpopularity of the deepening war, he sought to make a party issue of it, announcing his primary candidacy against President Johnson, a fellow Democrat, in the hope of building pressure for a policy change. 'There comes a time when an honorable man simply has to raise the flag,' declared the senator, a onetime novice monk whose political role model was Sir Thomas More, the English statesman martyred in resisting Henry VIII's seizure of church power. Mocked by Johnson loyalists as a mere 'footnote in history,' Mr. McCarthy prevailed well enough in his time to observe, after driving Johnson into retreat, 'I think we can say with Churchill, 'But what a footnote!' ' Senator McCarthy's challenge was intended to prod, more than destroy, the president. But in unnerving Johnson in office, he shook Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York from his irresolution about challenging the president. The critical moment came in the New Hampshire primary of March 1968, when Mr. McCarthy beat the pundits' predictions and won 42 percent of the vote. Johnson, despite his incumbent's grip, could score only 49 percent. Within days, Senator Kennedy entered the race, embittering McCarthy supporters, not to mention their champion. Two weeks later, Johnson pre-empted greater popular rejection and astonished the nation by suddenly announcing in a postscript to a televised speech that he would not seek re-election and would devote his energies to ending the war. The Chicago Convention The year's tumult continued. Kennedy was assassinated in June in California as he edged out the McCarthy forces in a key round of the antiwar competition. The Democrats staggered to their convention in Chicago, where civic mayhem erupted. The party machine forced the nomination of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to face Richard M. Nixon, over the objections of war protesters, including draft-ripe college students. Many demonstrators were beaten in the streets by the Chicago police of Mayor Richard J. Daley, a party stalwart. 'I can still smell the tear gas in the Hilton Hotel,' Mr. McCarthy said in an interview nearly 30 years later. 'I said before the vote we were not going to win, and there was no point in having the student delegations in the streets thinking we could.' 'The party hasn't recovered from Chicago; sort of its integrity was lost,' he contended in his ninth decade, saying that modern issues of importance were being sidestepped as candidates ran to the drumbeat of the focus group for the office of 'Governor of the United States.' Robert Kennedy's brother, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said in a statement yesterday: 'Gene's name will forever be linked with our family. In spite of the rivalry with Bobby in the 1968 campaign, I admired Gene enormously for his courage in challenging a war America never should have fought. His life speaks volumes to us today, as we face a similar critical time for our country.' Mr. McCarthy viewed himself as the classic 'messenger who brought the bad news' to the party, never to be forgiven. He withheld his endorsement of Humphrey until a week before the 1968 election, using the intervening time to demand antiwar concessions, but also, in a characteristic display of aloofness, to cover the World Series for Life magazine. Baseball was his metaphor for politics and life. 'We know Nixon's stuff,' he said well before Nixon resigned in disgrace from the presidency. 'He's got a slider. And he's thrown a spitter so many years he's got seniority rights on it.' Eugene Joseph McCarthy, of Irish-German descent, was born March 29, 1916, in Watkins, Minn., the son of Michael J. and Anna Baden McCarthy. He graduated from St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., in 1935 and then earned a master's degree in economics and sociology at the University of Minnesota. He taught social science in Minnesota high schools for several years, then economics and education at St. John's and sociology at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul. The young McCarthy thought he might want to be a Benedictine monk, but he left the monastery after a nine-month novitiate trial. He later married a fellow teacher, Abigail Quigley. They had four children. Soon after the 1968 campaign, the McCarthys separated after 24 years of marriage. They never divorced. In addition to Michael McCarthy, of Seattle, Mr. McCarthy is survived by two daughters, Ellen A. McCarthy of Bethesda, Md., and Margaret A. McCarthy of Takoma Park, Md.; and six grandchildren. He is also survived by a brother, Austin McCarthy of Wilmer, Minn.; and a sister, Marian Enright of Walnut Creek, Calif. A daughter, Mary A. McCarthy, died in 1990, Michael McCarthy said. Public Figure, Private Man Mr. McCarthy remained active until the last few months. In January, he published a 173-page paperback collection of essays and poems, 'Parting Shots From My Brittle Bow: Reflections on American Politics and Life.' Stirred to politics by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Mr. McCarthy was elected to the House of Representatives in 1948 and served five terms before being elected to the Senate, where he served 12 years. In the 1968 campaign, Mr. McCarthy was the sort of candidate who could accept with equanimity a critic's charge that he ran 'against the powers of the presidency.' In manner, he was faulted for arrogance; in strategy, for not broadening his antiwar constituency with stronger ties to blacks and the working poor, as Robert Kennedy did. The McCarthy civil rights record was considered exemplary, yet when asked about the issue at a rally, he dismissively advised his questioner to look up his record. 'Record, hell! Tell us what you feel!' the citizen shot back at the candidate. Although his image was warm and witty on television, Mr. McCarthy stepped back from playing the candidate who engaged by self-revelation. Abigail McCarthy, respected in her own career as a writer, once said, 'The essential thing about Gene is that he's a private person, and in an all-confessional age, that's considered almost treachery.' The senator who defied his president and party was confessional in his reliance on Thomas More as 'the first modern man, the first political man.' 'He was forced to make a kind of individual and personal choice at a time when there was great upheaval,' Mr. McCarthy noted with satisfaction as he tried to explain himself to a nation also in upheaval.

Subject: Network Links South Asia and the U.S. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 07:00:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/business/15sbiz.html?ex=1292302800&en=f0330ecfae016ab2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 15, 2005 Mutual-Aid Network Links South Asia and the U.S. By JAMES FLANIGAN As recent investments by Microsoft, Intel and Cisco Systems attest, corporate America has come to view India not just as a source of low-cost talent but also as an emerging economic power to be reckoned with. Beyond the headlines about corporate acquisitions and the outsourcing of jobs, though, a little-known organization founded in California 13 years ago is having a significant impact in fostering business ties between the United States and India. That organization, Indus Entrepreneurs, was started by people like Suhas S. Patil, founder of Cirrus Logic in Austin, Tex., a chip maker, and Safi Qureshey, co-founder of AST Research, which made computer parts, as a mutual-aid network for Indian and Pakistani immigrants. Today, it has grown into an affiliation of 10,000 members in 10 countries that, by its own account, has helped create $250 billion in wealth by encouraging business start-ups. In the process, it has evolved into a behind-the-scenes incubator of companies in business services and technology operating in both South Asia and the United States. That cultural cross-pollination, by integrating the strengths and resources of both regions, has helped solidify the business relationship between them. Consider Secova eServices Inc., a two-year-old company that processes pension and health-benefit accounts for American companies from offices in Brick, N.J., and Chennai, India. Venkat Tadanki, Secova's founder and chief executive, says it has thrived - it is now approaching $10 million in annual revenue and growing - by exploiting the advantages of both locations. With labor costs in India a fraction of those in the United States, Secova saves millions of dollars a year by assigning most of the data-processing and simple accounting to the 50 employees in Chennai, Mr. Tadanki says. He says that Secova's 50 employees in New Jersey do what the ones in India cannot, keeping up with and explaining the intricacies of health insurance plans, sending out benefit checks and dealing directly with corporate customers. 'Not everyone with a few computers and a building in India can do human resource processing,' said Mr. Tadanki, a member of Indus Entrepreneurs, who has made a commitment to train newcomers from the Indian subcontinent on how to start and run a company in the United States. Underscoring the geographic fluidity of his operations, he runs his company from an office in Huntington Beach, Calif., and has attracted $1.5 million from Citicorp's India office in a financing that is part loan, part investment. Secova is the second company that Mr. Tadanki, a 43-year-old graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, has founded in the United States since 2000. The first was Daksh Inc., a San Francisco-based firm that operated customer-service centers in India for large corporations in the United States. He and his partners sold Daksh to International Business Machines in 2004. Another company that has tied together complementary strands of the Indian and American economies is the Equinox Corporation, a company in Irvine, Calif., that processes mortgage documents in India for American lenders. Even though mortgage financing is a highly efficient activity in the United States, Equinox finds a way to cut some costs out of the routine, says Don Ganguly, a member of Indus Entrepreneurs who founded Equinox in 2002 and recently sold it to i-flex Solutions, a large financial services firm in India. Ownership by the bigger firm allowed Equinox to open a processing center near New Delhi and take on more accounts. I-flex Solutions, in turn, has sold 40 percent of its shares to the Oracle Corporation, the American software giant that is interested in supplying fast-growing financial services businesses in emerging economies. Mr. Ganguly, an India-trained engineer who came to the United States 25 years ago to get an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says the interchange of business activity benefits the economies of both countries. 'Because we take out costs over there, U.S. companies can do more here - provide more services with higher productivity,' he said. At the same time, the additional work lifts living standards in India, where the $700 billion economy, though growing at an annual rate of more than 8 percent, is just half that of the state of California. Some Americans might deplore the loss of jobs to India and other low-cost countries. But Indian companies are also creating jobs in the United States. One example is Arcot Systems Inc., a company in Sunnyvale, Calif., that makes software for secure authentication of credit card and banking transactions on the Internet. Rammohan Varadarajan, an engineering graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology who came to the United States in 1982 to get master's degrees in chemical engineering and computer science from Louisiana State University, started Arcot in 1997 thanks to business associates and venture capital gained through Indus Entrepreneurs contacts. As Mr. Varadarajan worked on Arcot's special software, he attracted support and investment from Adobe Systems, the software developer based in San Jose, Calif., through contacts made at Indus Entrepreneurs conferences. Also he got programming help from Infosys Technologies, a consulting firm based in Bangalore, India. And he has attracted customers for Arcot's security software among banks and credit card companies around the world. With 90 employees at present - half in Bangalore, half in Sunnyvale - Arcot has $15 million in annual sales but $100 million in financing from investors that include Goldman Sachs, Onset Ventures, Visa International, Wachovia Bank and SEB, a division of Sweden's largest bank. 'Many of the investments would not have been made if we were not in India,' Mr. Varadarajan said. And, clearly, if Arcot's success continues, benefits will flow to companies in the United States, Sweden and India. It is in this widening world that Indus Entrepreneurs see opportunities. Shivbir Grewal, a lawyer and the Indus Entrepreneurs trustee for Southern California, for example, is an adviser to Chisk Inc., which is exploring ways to outsource routine legal-discovery work to India. Mr. Qureshey, a founder of Indus Entrepreneurs, is backing Quartics Inc., a company of young entrepreneurs based in Taiwan and Irvine, Calif., that is developing microprocessors for wireless streaming video. And Sangam Pant, a director of Evercore Partners, manages a venture fund that channels American institutional investments to Indian entrepreneurs in the United States and in India. Investors like Mr. Pant are introducing financial innovations to the Indian economy, which has been deregulating a heavily state-run system since 1991. 'We recently completed the first leveraged buyout' of an Indian firm by managers, he said. Increasing innovation will be the rule, predicts Apurv Bagri, the London-based chairman of Indus Entrepreneurs, who plans new chapters for his organization in Munich, Geneva, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. 'India is making a transition from being only a back office,' he said. 'In the pharmaceutical industry and others, you will see India's companies playing a bigger role in the world.'

Subject: Hugo Chávez and His Helpers From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 06:54:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/10sat2.html?ex=1291870800&en=eb1ffae3106662a4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Hugo Chávez and His Helpers The kind of lucky breaks President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been getting lately could tempt even a modest man - and Mr. Chávez is no modest man - to dream grandiose dreams. High oil prices, a terminally inept opposition and the Bush administration's scandalous neglect of its Western Hemisphere neighbors have left the field wide open for Mr. Chávez to bully people at home, buy friends abroad and annoy Washington at every turn. Since first taking office in 1999, Mr. Chávez has pushed through a new Constitution that lets him rule as a quasi dictator. He has marginalized Congress, undermined judicial independence and prosecuted political opponents. By tightening control of the national oil company, he has been able to use high world oil prices to increase funds for popular social programs for the poor, making him electorally unassailable. That dangerous concentration of power will most likely worsen after last Sunday's Congressional election, in which parties allied to Mr. Chávez won every one of the 167 seats. The opposition can blame only itself because it boycotted the polls even after its demands for stricter ballot secrecy were met. That petulant idiocy frustrated regional diplomats who had pressed the secrecy demand on the opposition's behalf, and it mystified and disenfranchised Venezuelan voters who had wanted a choice at the polls. Even without the boycott, pro-Chávez parties would have won a majority. But now not a single opposition voice will be heard in Congress, and Mr. Chávez is free to do whatever he likes. A month earlier, at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Mr. Chávez cavorted before crowds of anti-Washington protesters and networked with his fellow Latin American presidents. He is hoping that either Argentina or Brazil will sell him a nuclear reactor, a step that would be a very bad idea considering Venezuela's burgeoning friendship with Iran and the excessive indulgence Caracas has shown toward Iranian nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Washington's hemispheric influence continues to dwindle, partly because President Bush has not been attentive enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt restructuring. The United States should not further feed Mr. Chávez's ego and give him more excuses for demagogy by treating him as clumsily as it has treated his hero and role model, Fidel Castro, for the past four and a half decades. Instead, Washington needs to compete more deftly and actively with Mr. Chávez for regional influence, and look for ways to work with the hemisphere's other democracies to revive the multiparty competitive democracy that has now just about ceased to exist in Venezuela.

Subject: See Baby Touch a Screen From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 06:11:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/national/15toys.html?ex=1292302800&en=58dd752e24217917&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 15, 2005 See Baby Touch a Screen; but Does Baby Get It? By TAMAR LEWIN Jetta is 11 months old, with big eyes, a few pearly teeth - and a tiny index finger that can already operate electronic entertainment devices. 'We own everything electronic that's educational - LeapFrog, Baby Einstein, everything,' said her mother, Naira Soibatian. 'She has an HP laptop, bigger than mine. I know one leading baby book says, very simply, it's a waste of money. But there's only one thing better than having a baby, and that's having a smart baby. And at the end of the day, what can it hurt? She learns things, and she loves them.' New media products for babies, toddlers and preschoolers began flooding the market in the late 1990's, starting with video series like 'Baby Einstein' and 'Brainy Baby.' But now, the young children's market has exploded into a host of new and more elaborate electronics for pre-schoolers, including video game consoles like the V.Smile and handheld game systems like the Leapster, all marketed as educational. Despite the commercial success, though, a report released yesterday by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 'A Teacher in the Living Room? Educational Media for Babies, Toddlers and Pre-schoolers,' indicates there is little understanding of how the new media affect young children - and almost no research to support the idea that they are educational. 'The market is expanding rapidly, with all kinds of brand-new product lines for little kids,' said Vicky Rideout, vice president of the Kaiser Foundation. 'But the research hasn't advanced much. There really isn't any outcomes-based research on these kinds of products and their effects on young children, and there doesn't seem to be any theoretical basis for saying that kids under 2 can learn from media. 'If parents are thinking, 'I need a break, I'll put my 4-year-old in front of this nice harmless video,' that's one thing,' she continued, 'But if parents are thinking, 'This is good for my 3-month-old, it will help her get ahead in the world,' that's another.' In 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended no screen time at all for babies under 2, out of concern that the increasing use of media might displace human interaction and impede the crucially important brain growth and development of a baby's first two years. But it is a recommendation that parents routinely ignore. According to Kaiser, babies 6 months to 3 years old spend, on average, an hour a day watching TV and 47 minutes a day on other screen media, like videos, computers and video games. 'These new media toys are growing and becoming quite prevalent,' said Claire Lerner, a child-development expert at Zero to Three, a nonprofit advocacy group that includes information about brain development on its Web site. 'This generation of parents grew up thinking technology was all positive, so if they see their child looking happy, engaged with what's on the screen, it's very seductive. But a group of toddlers making up a story together is a much richer learning experience than dragging things across a screen to make a story. Children learn best in the context of relationships.' While there is no research on the effect of the new commercial products, earlier research has shown that educational television can teach 3- to 5- year-olds vocabulary and number concepts. Most child-development experts, however, say that babies under about 2½ are not sufficiently developed for such learning. Still, many parents buy their babies toys designed for older children, either believing that their children are unusually advanced or hoping the toys will make them so. Just minutes after spending $150 on a VideoNow player and cartridges (ages 7 and up) at a Manhattan Toys 'R' Us, Ms. Soibatian holds Jetta up in her stroller to see if she is interested in Learn Through Music Plus! (ages 2 to 5). At first, Jetta gently bops the screen with her whole hand, watching the flashing lights, but soon she notices the buttons, the index finger goes out, and a delighted Ms. Soibatian is ready to buy again. 'You're never too young to learn, and kids nowadays are more advanced because of all these educational toys,' said Iesha Middleton, another parent shopping at Toys 'R' Us. Ms. Middleton's son will be 3 next month. 'I tried to teach my son his ABC's when he was 1, and I didn't get very far, but with the Leapster, he learned A-Z really fast, and he can count up to 50.' Even Sesame Workshop, long the torchbearer in children's educational media, is moving into the infant market, with new 'Sesame Beginnings' DVD's for babies 6 months and up. 'There are all these babies watching videos, and we wanted to address the reality that's out there and come up with something that is at least appropriate,' said Gary Knell, Sesame's president. 'Ours are about sharing and caring, modeling good parenting, not the cognitive approaches that are more appropriate for 3- or 4-year-olds. We won't be making any boastful claims about school success.' Others have less restrained marketing: The 'Brainy Baby - Left Brain' package has a cover featuring a cartoon baby with a thought balloon saying, '2 2 = 4' and promises that it will inspire logical thinking and 'teach your child about language and logic, patterns and sequencing, analyzing details and more.' The V.Smile video game system - a 'TV Learning System' introduced last year - features the motto 'Turn Game Time into Brain Time' and cartridges called 'smartridges.' The V.Smile, named 'Best Toy of the Year' at the toy industry's 2005 trade show, has a television ad where a mom tells her children, 'You'll never get into college if you don't play your video games!' The game says it is designed for children 3 to 7. There are, as yet, no reliable estimates of the size of the market for such devices, but at toy stores nationwide, they are selling briskly. Educational toy companies say their products are designed with the existing educational and developmental research in mind but add that more research on media effects would be helpful. 'There's nothing that shows it helps, but there's nothing that shows it's does harm, either,' said Marcia Grimsley, senior producer of 'Brainy Baby' videos. 'Electronics are part of our world, and I think that, used appropriately, they can benefit children.' Ms. Rideout says parents need more help sorting through the array of electronic media: 'We have detailed guidelines for advertising and labeling products like down pillows and dietary supplements, but not for marketing education media products,' she said. Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Technology Review, has watched children play with many of the new products and believes that many of them have great education potential for older preschoolers. 'We spend a great percentage of our energy in preschool teaching kids about symbols, and interactive electronics are very good teachers of symbols,' Mr. Buckleitner said. 'V.Smile is like a hyperactive nanny with flashcards. We had a 4-year-old, on the cusp of reading, who was so excited about finding words in the maze that she got addicted, in an arcade-ish way, and wrote down 20 words on a piece of scrap paper, then came and said, 'Look at my word collection.' I asked if she could read them and she could. It was very motivating for her.' It does not work that way when the toy does not fit the child's developmental stage or pace: Mr. Buckleitner remembers a 2-year-old playing with an interactive electronic toy, but not understanding the green 'go' button; after coaching from her mother, when she touched a cow that mooed, she was frustrated by the cow's continued mooing while she touched five other pictures. 'The design people are still learning, so the technology will get better,' Mr. Buckleitner said. Still, he concedes that in teaching small children, 'There's not an educator alive who would disagree with the notion that concrete and real are always better.' Research bears that out. In a line of experiments on early learning included in a research review by Dan Anderson, a University of Massachusetts psychology professor, one group of 12- to 15-month-olds was given a live demonstration of how to use a puppet, while another group saw the demonstration on video. The children who saw the live demonstration could imitate the action - but the others had to see the video six times before they could imitate it. 'As a society, we are in the middle of a vast uncontrolled experiment on our infants and toddlers growing up in homes saturated with electronic media,' Mr. Anderson said.

Subject: The Burden of Medicaid Cuts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 06:01:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12mon1.html?ex=1292043600&en=82ade31c4900c859&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 The Burden of Medicaid Cuts House and Senate negotiators are beginning to grapple with the fateful issue of how best to restrain Medicaid spending. Their decisions will affect not only the ability of hard-pressed governors to rein in Medicaid costs that are eating up state budgets, but also the ability of some of the nation's poorest individuals to get medical care. The guiding principle should be to extract savings not from beneficiaries too poor to absorb the cost, but from industries and institutions better able to bear the burden. By those yardsticks the Senate's approach, which gets most of its savings from drug manufacturers, pharmacies and managed care plans, is far preferable to that of the House, which puts the burden on needy Medicaid beneficiaries. COST-SHARING The harshest measure in the House budget reconciliation bill would allow states to charge many beneficiaries premiums for the first time and would allow large increases in co-payments above the current nominal levels. The intent of this provision is to make people more aware of the costs of their health care and to create financial incentives for them to use the most cost-effective treatments - for example, health clinics instead of expensive emergency rooms. That sounds great in theory, but many studies have shown that even small increases in co-payments cause people who are barely scraping by to forgo medical care until they become so sick they end up in an emergency room anyway. The House bill compounds the problem by allowing health care providers to turn away people who say they can't make the payment. The savings that will be achieved through increased cost-sharing in Medicaid are not really savings in any meaningful sense. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fully 80 percent would come from a decrease in the use of Medicaid services. It seems unlikely that these services aren't needed, so either patients will go without care or someone other than Medicaid - in many places, publicly supported hospitals - will pick up the bill. PRESCRIPTION DRUGS This is the most fruitful area for savings, and the Senate has pursued it far more vigorously than the House. Auditors have repeatedly found that Medicaid pays pharmacies a lot more for drugs than the pharmacies pay to acquire them, so both houses would change the system to reflect costs more realistically. The Senate would also go after the manufacturers by significantly increasing the rebates that Medicaid collects from them, while the House bill makes only minor changes. No doubt many House members feel beholden to the pharmaceutical industry, which makes lavish campaign contributions, but it seems better to get savings from drug manufacturers and retailers than from needy beneficiaries. MEDICARE Before cutting Medicaid too deeply, Congress should seek some relatively painless cuts in the Medicare program that serves all elderly Americans. The House has refused to look in that direction, but the Senate quite sensibly chose to eliminate a $10 billion fund that was set up to provide extra payments to managed care plans as an incentive to participate in Medicare. The reason: so many private plans are rushing into the Medicare market in response to the new prescription drug coverage that the added subsidies now seem superfluous. The insurance industry is crying foul, and President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that eliminates the fund. But before imposing higher costs on Medicaid beneficiaries any compassionate Congress would take away payments to managed care plans that are no longer needed and unfair to boot.

Subject: Medical Journal Criticizes Merck From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:59:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/business/09vioxx.html?ex=1291784400&en=ff21715940095ef2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Medical Journal Criticizes Merck Over Vioxx Data By ALEX BERENSON An influential medical journal accused Merck yesterday of misrepresenting the results of a crucial clinical trial of the painkiller Vioxx to play down its heart risks. In a statement last evening, Merck denied that it had acted improperly. The New England Journal of Medicine's allegation could play a critical role in the thousands of lawsuits that Merck faces over Vioxx, an arthritis and pain drug. Vioxx was taken by an estimated 20 million Americans before the company withdrew it last year after a study linked it to heart attacks and strokes. In the three lawsuits that have reached trial so far, Merck has said that it promptly disclosed information about Vioxx's heart risks. But in an interview yesterday, Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, the journal's executive editor, sharply criticized Merck for the way it presented data from the clinical trial. The study, called Vigor, covered more than 8,000 patients and was published in the journal in November 2000, almost four years before Merck stopped selling the drug. 'They did not disclose all they knew,' Dr. Curfman said. 'There were serious negative consequences for the public health as a result of that.' In criticizing Merck and the study's authors at a time when the company's credibility is at issue in lawsuits, the journal is taking an extraordinary step. The publication is well respected and widely read by doctors and scientists, with a circulation of almost 200,000. Merck said in its statement that it had acted properly and promptly disclosed the results of the Vigor study, which found that the drug was more likely to cause heart problems than another pain drug. The November 2000 article 'fairly and accurately described the results of the study,' the company said. But Dr. Curfman said the study's authors had originally included some data unfavorable to Vioxx, then deleted it. Lawyers for plaintiffs said they believed that the journal's allegation would undercut the company's defense. Shares of Merck fell almost 5 percent yesterday after the journal published the editorial and a separate statement on its Web site (nejm.org) criticizing the company's behavior. In the editorial, 'Expression of Concern,' the journal said that the authors of the study had deleted some data about strokes and other vascular problems suffered by patients in the Vigor trial two days before it submitted the results to the publication. The authors, some of whom worked for Merck, also underreported the number of heart attacks suffered by patients taking Vioxx, claiming that there were 17 heart attacks when there were actually 20, the journal said. The authors have been asked to correct the study, the journal said. The authors of the Vigor study included independent researchers and Merck scientists, among them Dr. Alise Reicin, who has been a crucial figure in the company's courtroom defense. The study's results showed that patients taking Vioxx were four times as likely to suffer heart attacks as those taking naproxen, an older painkiller, which is known by the brand name Aleve. In fact, 20 patients taking Vioxx suffered heart attacks, compared with 4 taking naproxen, a ratio of five-to-one. Merck said at the time that the difference probably resulted from the fact that naproxen protected people from heart attacks, not because Vioxx caused them. Many independent scientists disputed the company's theory. If the authors had published the full data about strokes and other vascular problems, the company's theory would have been even harder to accept, Dr. Curfman said. 'The totality of the data didn't look good for Vioxx,' he said. Merck has said it had no clear evidence of Vioxx's cardiovascular dangers until a clinical trial last year indicated a heightened risk of heart attacks and strokes among patients taking the drug 18 months or longer. It was after those findings that Merck pulled Vioxx off the market in September 2004. Merck now faces more than 6,000 lawsuits from people who say they or their family members suffered heart attacks and strokes as a result of taking Vioxx, and tens of thousands more lawsuits are expected. The two cases that have been decided so far have resulted in one victory for Merck and one for a plaintiff. Jurors in Federal District Court in Houston yesterday began deliberations in the third case to reach trial. Christopher Seeger, who represented plaintiffs in the second trial - a victory for Merck in New Jersey state court in Atlantic City - said that he believed that the journal's allegations would make jurors less likely to trust the company. 'It's going to alter the landscape of the litigation,' Mr. Seeger said. 'They're accusing Merck of scientific misconduct.' Last month, a lawyer who represents people suing Merck showed Dr. Curfman a memo from July 2000 between Dr. Reicin and another Merck scientist, Dr. Deborah Shapiro. That memo showed that Dr. Reicin and Dr. Shapiro knew of the three additional heart attack deaths in the Vigor trial well before the journal published the results, Dr. Curfman said. Those heart attacks could and should have been included in the article, he said. In its statement, Merck said that three additional heart attacks 'did not materially change any of the conclusions in the article.' Merck shares, which traded around $30.20 before the journal posted its comments at 3:30 p.m., fell to $28.75 in extended after-hours trading. The stock has fallen almost 40 percent since Merck withdrew Vioxx. The memo also shows that Dr. Reicin and Dr. Shapiro knew of strokes and serious vascular problems suffered by patients taking Vioxx, Dr. Curfman said. Dr. Curfman said that, separately, he and other editors had examined the diskette on which the article was sent to the journal and found that the study's authors deliberately removed information about strokes and vascular problems two days before they submitted the study. 'There was some methodical editing of the manuscript to remove data,' he said. The information in the memo appears to contradict extensive testimony that Dr. Reicin gave in July in Angleton, Tex., in the first Vioxx suit to reach trial, said W. Mark Lanier, the plaintiff's lawyer in that case. Dr. Reicin should be investigated for perjury for her testimony, Mr. Lanier said. 'It totally destroys Reicin as a witness,' Mr. Lanier said. 'I think her testimony in the past is going to really come back and bite her.' Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for Merck, said the company could not comment on Mr. Lanier's allegations because of the Vioxx suit in Houston. The judge in that case has prohibited both sides from providing information to the press. Dr. Curfman said the journal had asked the independent authors on the Vigor article for a correction on Monday, but they had not responded. In its statement, Merck said it had learned 'only recently' of the journal's editorial and looked forward to offering a more complete response.

Subject: Merck Trial May Have Led to Demotion From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:58:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/business/10vioxx.html?ex=1291870800&en=8442b724bdac1b9e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Doctor Suggests Merck Trial May Have Led to Demotion By ALEX BERENSON Less than a week after his videotaped lambasting of Merck was played in a Houston federal courthouse, Dr. Eric Topol, a prominent cardiologist, has lost his title as chief academic officer of the Cleveland Clinic's medical college. In the courthouse yesterday, jurors continued deliberating whether Merck's painkiller Vioxx had caused the death of a Florida main in 2001. Dr. Topol said yesterday that he believed that his demotion might be related to his testimony in that case, the third Vioxx lawsuit to reach trial. Dr. Topol has questioned Vioxx's safety for years and said in his testimony, played in court last Saturday, that he believed that Merck acted irresponsibly and committed scientific misconduct when it promoted Vioxx. 'The hardest thing in the world is just trying to tell the truth, to do the right thing for patients, and you get vilified,' he said yesterday. 'No wonder nobody stands up to the industry.' Dr. Topol will remain the chief of cardiology at the clinic, a prestigious nonprofit health system with almost $4 billion in annual revenue, and the loss of his title as chief academic officer does not affect his salary. But he will lose his position on the clinic's governing board. His job change was first reported yesterday by The Cleveland Plain Dealer. Dr. Topol did not offer specific evidence to back his allegation. Eileen Sheil, a spokeswoman for the clinic, said that Dr. Topol was not being punished for his Vioxx testimony. Dr. Topol lost his title as part of a broader administrative reorganization, Ms. Sheil said. 'The organization made the decision that that position was no longer needed,' she said. The nine members of the Houston jury planned to begin a third day of deliberations today. The lawsuit was brought by the family of Richard Irvin, who died in 2001 of a heart attack after taking Vioxx for about a month. The case is the first Vioxx lawsuit in federal court, after trials in state courts in Texas, where Merck lost, and New Jersey, where Merck won. Yesterday, lawyers for Mr. Irvin's family asked Judge Eldon E. Fallon to declare a mistrial, claiming that Merck improperly withheld information from an article that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine in November 2000. On Thursday, the journal wrote that Merck had undercounted the number of heart attacks suffered by patients in a study of Vioxx to play down the drug's heart risks. Judge Fallon did not rule on the motion for a mistrial. Merck stopped selling Vioxx, a once-popular painkiller, last year, after a study of the drug showed that it increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Subject: Merck Manual, the Hypochondriac's Bible From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:51:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/health/15case.html November 15, 2005 Merck Manual, the Hypochondriac's Bible By HARRIET BROWN A copy of The Merck Manual of Medical Information has lived on my night table for over 25 years. Sometimes the thick red book tops the bedside pile; other times it's buried under a stack of newer obsessions. But it's always within easy reach for emergencies, bouts of insomnia and ordinary bedtime browsing. My postcollege roommate introduced me to The Merck in 1979. In the beginning, I paged through her copy each time I needed reassurance about some twinge, tingle or suspected tumor. When I realized I was borrowing it every day, I knew it was time to buy my own. The Merck, as we devotees call it, was first published in 1899. It was a little book, only 192 pages, aimed at doctors, pharmacists and, presumably, those in situations that had no doctors or pharmacists. Albert Schweitzer took a copy of it to Africa in 1913; 16 years later, Adm. Richard Byrd hauled one to the South Pole. I hauled my copy mostly to the bathroom, where I would lie in a steaming tub and pore over my symptoms du jour. Sometimes I'd turn pages at random, dipping into chapters like a dowser hunting for water, trusting to intuition and luck to find whatever I was looking for. Back then I read The Merck the way some people go to horror movies, seeking the cathartic release of other people's troubles, the rush of catastrophe averted. I might have problems, but at least I didn't have, say, cardiac tamponade - 'the most serious complication of pericarditis,' according to the book. I didn't have tropical sprue or a pulmonary embolism or, God forbid, Budd-Chiari syndrome. At least, I didn't think I had any of them. I was pretty sure, on the other hand, that I did have hypochondria, or, in the lingo of The Merck, hypochondriasis. When, in my 20's, I learned that I had mitral valve prolapse, I inspected at some length The Merck's line drawing of the heart. This was in the pre-Internet era, when you couldn't just Google a four-color, 3-D rendering of the heart or any other internal organ. There was a diagram of the heart's electric circuitry, a road map more engrossing to me than any terrestrial topography. There was a representation of the left anterior descending artery, the superior vena cava, the atrioventricular node. I studied atrial fibrillation and flutter, sick sinus syndrome and tachycardia. The very words were glorious, Latinate, thrilling in the way they both distanced me from what was going on in my body and deepened my understanding. I learned the fine art of diagnosis from The Merck, too, despite the fact that I never got around to attending med school. To this day, I am known as something of a lay medical expert among my friends and family. They bring me their symptoms; I tell them what to ask their doctors. When I don't have a hunch, I look it up. I am, if I say so myself, very often right. In my 30's, I turned to The Merck whenever my children got sick. I preferred it to the pediatric bible of my generation, Dr. Benjamin Spock's 'Baby and Child Care,' whose prescriptive, often judgmental tone got on my nerves. Even when The Merck led me astray, it seemed better attuned to the situation. Once at 2 in the morning, when my 8-year-old broke out in a blistering rash and spiked a fever of 104, my frantic page-turning prompted me to diagnose smallpox. (I was wrong, obviously; she had Kawasaki syndrome, which in some ways isn't so far off.) On the other hand, The Merck can be frustrating when you're in worried-parent mode. Try looking up a simple stomachache in the index. You'll find a list under stomach that includes 'acid in,' 'arteriovenous malformations in,' 'bleeding in,' 'intubation of,' 'obstruction of' and 'tumors of' but nothing under garden-variety stomach pain. Still, The Merck is more than just a handy reference book. While I can now find online answers to any question that occurs to me (and many that haven't), my copy of The Merck is dog-eared, its front cover curling back, its two-inch-wide spine broken in several places. For one thing, it's a tangible object; its unimaginative chapter headings and small type inspire a bibliophile's affection the way a computer monitor never could. But my attachment goes beyond the merely physical. For me, The Merck is a talisman against the frightening unknown. Pretty much all of the life-shattering ailments that have struck my family and friends have been things I've never heard of. So by worrying about ailments like endocrine neoplasia or Refsum disease, I am actively warding them off, keeping myself and my loved ones safe. Of course, I'm aware this is magical thinking on, say, a 3-year-old's level. Still, so far, so good. It is human nature to want to name things, to put a face on the bogeyman. The scariest thing of all - death - has a name, and it is no less scary for having one. But there's an entry for that, too, in The Merck Manual. And somehow that comforts me.

Subject: For Merck, Global Legal Woes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:48:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-page.html?res=9D04E7D61E3EF935A1575BC0A9639C8B63&fta=y August 26, 2005 For Merck, Global Legal Woes By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL Patients worldwide who suffered heart attacks or strokes while taking the painkiller Vioxx are preparing to sue its maker, Merck, exponentially increasing the company's potential liability. Last week, a jury in Texas found Merck liable in the death of Robert C. Ernst and voted to award $253.5 million to his widow, Carol. Jurors said they concluded that Merck was long aware of Vioxx's potential heart risks but concealed them. About 4,000 lawsuits are pending in the United States, but there are potentially many more around the world, especially in Europe, where Vioxx, used to relieve the pain of arthritis, was extremely popular. Merck withdrew it last September, after a study showed a link between long-term use of the drug at high dosage and heart attack or stroke. In the Texas case, state rules on punitive damages would limit Mrs. Ernst's total award to $26.1 million, and that could be reduced further on appeal. Still, if other cases go against Merck, the litigation could collectively become the biggest medical product liability action in history, exceeding in scope and economic effect the thousands of lawsuits associated with silicone breast implants in the 1990's, which drove their American manufacturer, Dow Corning, to file for bankruptcy protection. Lawyers are collecting data on thousands of cases, trying to assess whether they should sue Merck in the United States, where rewards are expected to be higher, or in their home countries, where there are likely to be fewer legal hurdles. Christine Peckham, 52, an Englishwoman who had two strokes in 2001 while taking Vioxx, has already filed court papers in New Jersey. ''Merck has to be made accountable since they knew about this problem at least seven months before I had my first stroke,'' said Ms. Peckham, who is now legally blind and uses a wheelchair. ''I can't work again, and there's no reason why British taxpayers should cover my costs.'' It is difficult to tally the exact numbers of suits being filed outside the United States. Lawyers are working on cases in Italy, France, Britain and Australia; in each of those countries, hundreds of thousands of people took Vioxx. Richard Meeran, special counsel with the law firm of Slater & Gordon in Australia, said the firm had at least 100 strong cases against Merck. But he expressed concern that huge verdicts in the United States might mean that clients abroad would not have time to pursue their claims effectively. ''Our main concern,'' he said, ''is that Merck will run out of money, given the number of claimants and the size of the U.S. award.'' After Dow Corning filed for bankruptcy protection in 1995, European women who contended that their silicone implants had ruptured and caused autoimmune diseases and other ailments received less money than Americans under a compensation plan established by a United States court.

Subject: Breaking the Oil Curse From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 05:23:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/opinion/16fri4.html?ex=1292389200&en=685534df69576dda&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 16, 2005 Breaking the Oil Curse Chad was supposed to be the exception in the tragic history of striking oil in poor countries, where oil has fomented corruption, eroded government institutions, undermined the development of a middle class, cut jobs and led to wars. In 2003, Chad became the site of an experiment to test whether oil money could pay for medicines and schools rather than luxury cars and weapons. The World Bank set up a system in which only 15 percent of the revenues from three oil fields would go into the general government coffers. Most of the rest would be spent on fighting poverty or saved for the post-oil years. Chad's agreement on these rules attracted ExxonMobil and other investors. The early results are not encouraging. There is little evidence of improvements in living standards, and a lot of worrisome signs that money is disappearing. Now President Idriss Déby, claiming the government is broke, has decided to scuttle the restraints on his spending. He wants to double the percentage of oil money that goes to general government funds, scrap any saving for the future and allow the money earmarked for antipoverty programs to be spent on security. The World Bank, which has $300 million in programs in Chad, has criticized the proposal. ExxonMobil has been silent. Both need to be warning Chad of the costs of breaking the deal. If the Chad project fails, the bank should reconsider whether it should continue to make oil loans in countries where governments are corrupt and citizens have no real powers - deals or no deals.

Subject: Krugman - contact From: Carol Selby To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 13:22:45 (EST) Email Address: wolf10539@netscape.net Message: Would anyone know how I could e-mail or otherwise contact Krugman? His 'official' sites don't give any e-mail address or anything. I have been able to get his articles on truthout.org until now - but now they say that TimeSelect has threatened to sue them. I'm trying to find out what happened to 'free press'. Thanks -

Subject: Times Select From: Jennifer To: Carol Selby Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 13:28:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Times Select costs from $40 to $50 a year and is well worth the cost. The service is free with a subscription to the New York Times. Otherwise the columns will not be fully available. Write to Princeton University if you wish to discuss the matter with Paul Krugman. I wish the service were free, but it is important that the New York Times be commercially successful to be a superb paper.

Subject: China Grows as Study Hotspot for U.S. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 09:19:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/12/08/international/IHT-08students.html December 8, 2005 China Grows as Study Hotspot for U.S. Students By MARGO BUCHANAN - International Herald Tribune China's rise as an economic powerhouse is resulting in a rapid expansion of its system of higher education, making it the fastest-growing destination for American foreign exchange students, a study has found. The number of American students seeking higher education in China has never been greater, increasing by 90 percent from 2002 to 2004, according to the study by the Institute of International Education, a research organization based in New York. At the same time, increasing numbers of Chinese students are attracted by university training in the United States, solidifying America's position as the top destination for Chinese students abroad, according to the study, which was financed by the U.S. State Department. Alan Goodman, president of the institute, ties the phenomenon to the pace of change in China, which is spending billions of dollars to expand and transform its higher educational facilities into world-class institutions. 'This is a real measure of the impact of globalization,' Goodman said during a recent visit to Paris during which he highlighted the study's results on China. 'The only way an American student is going to understand what a Chinese student might think about our country and its policies is to sit next to one in class.' The building spree in China is helping fuel student visits by Americans and other foreigners, drawn by the better facilities now available and by the prospect of gaining expertise in the world's most populous country. A total of 4,737 American students enrolled in Chinese universities in the 2003-2004 academic year, the institute's study found, up from 2,493 students the previous year. The jump in enrollment stems in part from a rebound in study in East Asia following the SARS epidemic, which closed down several programs in spring and summer 2003. Just before that severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak, however, the number of American students studying in China increased at a faster rate than any of the other top 15 destination countries, rising 33 percent from 2000 to 2001. The enrollment figures this year are 21 percent higher than the pre-SARS mark. China now ranks ninth as a host destination for American students, advancing from the No. 12 spot a year earlier. Britain continues to be the leading destination, attracting 16.8 percent of all American students who study abroad, the study found. Jobs are an important consideration for American students heading to China, according to Chih-Ping Chou, professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University. 'China is a job market,' Chou said. 'Twenty years ago only those interested in Chinese literature would study Chinese language. Now all professions have opened up.' For Chinese students in America, training in the United States has benefits beyond exposure to a new culture. 'Chinese students are more competitive if they've studied in the U.S.,' Denise Chu, overseas program manager for the Center of East Asian Studies at Stanford University, said by telephone. 'The Chinese government has a lot of incentive programs to recruit Chinese students once they've studied in the U.S.,' he said. 'They can get a higher salary and a better future.' In the 2004-2005 academic year, China sent more than 62,000 students to the United States, nearly 60 percent more than a decade earlier, the study showed. The Chinese now represent 11 percent of foreign students in the United States, the second-largest group behind students from India, according to the study. Nationwide in China, the number of students enrolled in higher education has more than doubled in less than five years. In 2000, the country counted 5.8 million university students; by 2004, that number had rocketed to 13.3 million. But for some, quick growth does not necessarily translate into top-class education, and this is one reason why some Chinese students enroll abroad. 'I came to the U.S. because I think the quality of higher education is much better here,' said Tao Xie, a fifth-year Chinese graduate student of American politics at Northwestern University. 'China's educational system is undergoing fundamental changes at the moment,' Xie added. 'But it still has a long way to go.'

Subject: What Would J.F.K. Have Done? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 09:16:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/opinion/04sorensen.html?ex=1291352400&en=7136d7c9d2cc2297&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 4, 2005 What Would J.F.K. Have Done? By THEODORE C. SORENSEN and ARTHUR SCHLESINGER Jr. WHAT did we not hear from President Bush when he spoke last week at the United States Naval Academy about his strategy for victory in Iraq? We did not hear that the war in Iraq, already one of the costliest wars in American history, is a running sore. We did not hear that it has taken more than 2,000 precious American lives and countless - because we do not count them - Iraqi civilian lives. We did not hear that the struggle has dragged on longer than our involvement in either World War I or the Spanish-American War, or that by next spring it will be even longer than the Korean War. And we did not hear how or when the president plans to bring our forces back home - no facts, no numbers on America troop withdrawals, no dates, no reference to our dwindling coalition, no reversal of his disdain for the United Nations, whose help he still expects. Neither our military, our economy nor our nation can take that kind of endless and remorseless drain for an only vaguely defined military and political mission. If we leave early, the president said, catastrophe might follow. But what of the catastrophe that we are prolonging and worsening by our continued presence, including our continued, unforgivable mistreatment of detainees? Each month that America continues its occupation facilitates Al Qaeda's recruitment of young Islamic men and women as suicide bombers, the one weapon against which our open society has no sure defense. The president says we should support our troops by staying the course; but who is truly willing to support our troops by bringing them safely home? The responsibility for devising an exit plan rests primarily not with the war's opponents, but with the president who hastily launched a pre-emptive invasion without enough troops to secure Iraq's borders and arsenals, without enough armor to protect our forces, without enough allied support and without adequate plans for either a secure occupation or a timely exit. As we listened to Mr. Bush's speech, our thoughts raced back four decades to another president, John F. Kennedy. In 1963, the last year of his life, we watched from front-row seats as Kennedy tried to figure out how best to extricate American military advisers and instructors from Vietnam. Although neither of us had direct responsibility on Vietnam decision-making, we each saw enough of the president to sense his growing frustration. In typical Kennedy fashion, he would lean back, in his Oval Office rocker, tick off all his options and then critique them: Renege on the previous Eisenhower commitment, which Kennedy had initially reinforced, to help the beleaguered government of South Vietnam with American military instructors and advisers? No, he knew that the American people would not permit him to do that. Americanize the Vietnam civil war, as the military recommended and as his successor Lyndon Johnson sought ultimately to do, by sending in American combat units? No, having learned from his experiences with Cuba and elsewhere that conflicts essentially political in nature did not lend themselves to a military solution, Kennedy knew that the United States could not prevail in a struggle against a Vietnamese people determined to oust, at last, all foreign troops from their country. Moreover, he knew firsthand from his World War II service in the South Pacific the horrors of war and had declared at American University in June 1963: 'This generation of Americans has had enough - more than enough - of war.' Declare 'victory and get out,' as George Aiken, the Republican senator from Vermont, would famously suggest years later? No, in 1963 in Vietnam, despite assurances from field commanders, there was no more semblance of 'victory' than there was in 2004 in Iraq when the president gave his 'mission accomplished' speech on the deck of an aircraft carrier. Explore, as was always his preference, a negotiated solution? No, he was unable to identify in the ranks of the disorganized Vietcong a leader capable of negotiating enforceable and mutually agreeable terms of withdrawal. Insist that the South Vietnamese government improve its chances of survival by genuinely adopting the array of political, economic, land and administrative reforms necessary to win popular support? No, Kennedy increasingly realized that the corrupt family and landlords propping up the dictatorship in South Vietnam would never accept or enforce such reforms. Eventually he began to understand that withdrawal was the viable option. From the spring of 1963 on, he began to articulate the elements of a three-part exit strategy, one that his assassination would prevent him from pursuing. The three components of Kennedy's exit strategy - well-suited for Iraq after the passage of a new constitution and the coming election - can be summarized as follows: Make clear that we're going to get out. At a press conference on Nov. 14, 1963, the president did just that, stating, 'That is our object, to bring Americans home.' Request an invitation to leave. Arrange for the host government to request the phased withdrawal of all American military personnel - surely not a difficult step in Iraq, especially after the clan statement last month calling for foreign forces to leave. In a May 1963 press conference, Kennedy declared that if the South Vietnamese government suggested it, 'we would have some troops on their way home' the next day. Bring the troops home gradually. Initiate a phased American withdrawal over an unannounced period, beginning immediately, while intensifying the training of local security personnel, bearing in mind that with our increased troop mobility and airlift capacity, American forces are available without being stationed in hazardous areas. In September 1963, Kennedy said of the South Vietnamese: 'In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it.' A month later, he said, 'It would be our hope to lessen the number of Americans' in Vietnam by the end of the year. President Kennedy had no guarantee that any of these three components would succeed. In the 'fog of war,' there are no guarantees; but an exit plan without guarantees is better than none at all. If we leave Iraq at its own government's request, our withdrawal will be neither abandonment nor retreat. Law-abiding Iraqis may face more clan violence, Balkanization and foreign incursions if we leave; but they may face more clan violence, Balkanization and foreign incursions if we stay. The president has said we will not leave Iraq to the terrorists. Let us leave Iraq to the Iraqis, who have survived centuries of civil war, tyranny and attempted foreign domination. Once American troops are out of Iraq, people around the world will rejoice that we have recovered our senses. What's more, the killing of Americans and the global loss of American credibility will diminish. As Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican and Vietnam veteran, said, 'The longer we stay, the more problems we're going to have.' Defeatist? The real defeatists are those who say we are stuck there for the next decade of death and destruction. In a memorandum to President Kennedy, roughly three months after his inauguration, one of us wrote with respect to Vietnam, 'There is no clearer example of a country that cannot be saved unless it saves itself.' Today, Iraq is an even clearer example.

Subject: 'What Lincoln Believed' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:13:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/books/review/22MALCOMS.html?ex=1130299200&en=141e0a8cbf993098&ei=5070 May 22, 2005 'What Lincoln Believed': The Great Democrat By SCOTT MALCOMSON 'IN 1863,'' Michael Lind begins, ''the democratic republic as a form of government was rare -- and in danger of extinction.'' He then looks around the world at the governmental forms prevalent in that year. This seems an odd way to start a study of Abraham Lincoln, but such indirection is Lind's way of saying: if you want to read my book, you're going to have to do it my way. Happily, Lind is not just demanding; he is intellectually bold and an enthusiastic researcher. In large doses, ''What Lincoln Believed'' can get claustrophobic. But taken a little at a time and in a generous spirit, it will almost certainly change the way you think about America and one of its greatest presidents. Among the world's ruling classes, Lind shows, opinion was running against democracy in 1863. Republics had been coming and going since the French Revolution, but mostly they had been going, and it looked possible that the form might soon be gone. For Lincoln, ''government of the people, by the people, for the people,'' as he put it in his speech at Gettysburg, was the essential promise of the American Revolution and of the United States. If the Union could be pulled through this civil war, democracy might endure. If the Union fell, democracy might fall with it. This zeal to secure democratic government as a covenant for future generations, against the political tide of the times, is what Lind finds most worth celebrating in Lincoln. He calls him the Great Democrat. This picture is set against three previously prevalent images: the Great Commoner, the Savior of the Union and the Great Emancipator. The first of these was part of Lincoln's own electoral mythology: the rail-splitter, studying by firelight, pressing ever forward with Midwestern grit. The Savior of the Union was, of course, a wartime image, but one grandly reasserted later in the 19th century as part of the effort to reconcile white Americans north and south. Lincoln the Great Emancipator, having been born in the last days of the war, went into a long hibernation as white Southern tribalism achieved its partial victory in the decades of racial segregation. This Lincoln re-emerged with the civil rights movement. Each of these stereotypes provides something like an anvil on which Lind hammers out his own ideas. Most of the pounding is at the expense of the Great Commoner and the Great Emancipator. Lincoln was a ''Henry Clay Whig,'' Lind explains: ''Henry Clay's plan for the American nation-state combined an industrial economy created by Hamiltonian methods'' -- that is, using protectionist tariffs and government spending to promote manufacturing and shrink the economic role of raw-material producers, mainly farmers -- ''with a white-only society created by Jeffersonian racial policies. His disciple Abraham Lincoln adopted Clay's entire nation-building program as his own.'' This was a democracy of aspiration, not mundane contentment; part of what made the commoner deserving of social honor was his desire to be uncommon. Such a democracy had to grow, as its work was never done -- and this thrilling, nerve-racking growth came with the glow of destiny. ''But for the difference in habit of observation,'' Lincoln once wondered aloud, ''why did Yankees, almost instantly, discover gold in California, which had been trodden upon, and overlooked, by Indians and Mexican greasers, for centuries?'' As his language suggests, Lincoln saw American destiny as white. For most readers today, Lincoln's protectionism and his promotion of cities will probably be more surprising than his casual (not theoretical) racism, or his belief that whites and blacks should be forever kept apart. After all, Lind is building on the ample work of W. E. B. Du Bois, Eugene H. Berwanger and Lerone Bennett Jr. -- and many others, although Lind's footnotes could have been more thorough than they are. By now it is, or should be, reasonably common knowledge that Lincoln, like Clay and a number of other leading antebellum American statesmen, believed sincerely in the mad project of resettling blacks, and in particular freemen, in warmer, more distant climes to create a white America. As Lind notes, the Free Soil movement so crucial to Lincoln's achieving the presidency was closely related to the colonization movement that preceded it. Both were concerned with sparing white workers from having to compete with black ones, initially in the newer states of the Midwest and then as far as California. A decisive portion of the population that settled these places came from the white lower classes of the South, people whose route upward was blocked by slave-owning Bourbons and whose route downward looked very like a descent, by degrees, into blackness. Such were the Lincoln forebears who moved into Illinois. In 1856, according to one source cited by Lind, about half the number of people who had left the South had settled in Illinois and Indiana. As Lincoln said in the 1850's, ''Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition, especially in the territories?'' He went on to warn that if slavery were allowed to spread, ''Negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave niggers.'' What might have been seen as separate questions -- the extension of black slavery and the existence of black people in America -- were rendered as one, because free black laborers, not just black slaves, were also expected to ''degrade'' white labor. Lind amply demonstrates Lincoln's acceptance of this view, though he fails to ask the obvious question: Was wage competition from blacks a reality, or likely to become one? This failure seems odd, especially since the periodic fanning of white lower-class fears of degradation would be a feature of postbellum political life. Besides, a sizable prewar Southern literature argued that racial slavery for blacks was the only alternative to eventual wage slavery, under industrialization, for a great many whites. The tormented relationship of racial and economic bondage both predated the war and continued well beyond it. Lind argues that while Lincoln did preserve the Union, his deep wish to advance democracy went unrealized. ''The amount of the earth's territory controlled by Western empires,'' he writes, ''expanded from 35 percent in 1800 to 67 percent in 1878 and then to 85 percent in 1914.'' Lincoln's hopes of defending the best of the 18th century against the worst of the 19th were borne out only ''in the middle of the 20th century in a way he could not have expected. The principles of the post-1945 world order enshrined in the U.N. Charter, the U.N. organization and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are those of the 18th-century American and French tradition of liberal republicanism.'' By looking at Lincoln from many angles, Lind makes an already somewhat mysterious president still more puzzling and more interesting. But the Great Democrat image that closes his book doesn't really bring it all together. Lind evidently hoped to do an end run around Lincoln's detractors by erecting a previously unnoticed new Lincoln, one ruled by a passion for republicanism. This puts the emphasis on Lincoln's character rather than on what he did with his life. It's an approach that may serve our need for heroes. But Lincoln's legacy to us is in what he did, not who he was, a distinction Lincoln himself seemed to appreciate -- which was and is part of his continuing fascination.

Subject: Sultans, Spices and White-Sand Beaches From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:11:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/travel/11zanzibar.html December 11, 2005 Zanzibar: Of Sultans, Spices and White-Sand Beaches By EDWARD WONG FEW ferry rides in the world can conjure up the wealth of expectations that arise on the two-hour trip from the verdant Tanzanian coast to Zanzibar. The name alone has for centuries endowed this region with a promise of splendor. Standing on the boat's deck, with the sun dipping low to the west, I watched as fishermen in catamarans paddled into small inlets. As we powered farther out to sea, the white sails of dhows began to appear on the horizon, a throwback to the days when the wooden ships regularly plied the trade routes between Africa and Arabia. We docked in the port of Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar Island (part of what is commonly referred to as the Spice Islands) and a city of labyrinthine alleyways and faded Omani palaces that is redolent of the glories of the old Islamic empires, more Middle Eastern in its feel than African. Women in full-length black robes streamed down the gangplank. A monsoon shower had swept in, drenching the port and sending everyone scurrying for the nearest taxi. Tourism in Zanzibar and other Muslim islands off the coast of East Africa is undergoing a resurgence, despite the war in Iraq and bombings in the Middle East that have frightened many Western travelers away from Islamic countries. Stone Town, the first stop for most travelers here, retains the atmospheric trappings of urban life in Muslim cities but hews to a much looser interpretation of Islam than many places in the Middle East. So while calls to prayer regularly resound through the streets, bars and restaurants serve alcohol with little restraint. Other fanciful indulgences abound: luxury hotels fashioned from the former manors of wealthy merchants, a native cuisine that brazenly drenches seafood in aromatic spices, and white-sand beaches just a few hours' drive from the city. The best way to see Stone Town is just to walk and, preferably, to get lost while doing so. My friend Tini and I hit the streets the morning after checking into the Tembo House Hotel, a former merchant's home right on the waterfront, and instantly found ourselves swept into the decaying opulence of the city. From the narrow passageways we ducked into the inner courtyards of old manors, pastel paint peeling from the walls. What lends Stone Town its charm are the remnants of empire, all piled atop one another and inflected by the native Swahili culture. The Persians were among the first foreigners to settle here alongside the indigenous people. The island was colonized by the Portuguese starting in 1503, and brought under the control of Oman in 1698. The sultan of Oman eventually moved the seat of his kingdom to Zanzibar, which resulted in an artistic renaissance in Stone Town, with Arabic influence becoming much more overt in the designs of manors and palaces. In the late 19th century, the British Empire annexed the island, only to have it gain independence decades later, before coming under the rule of the government of mainland Tanzania. The shadow of the Arabian peninsula, just across the Indian Ocean, falls everywhere in Stone Town. We made our way through the twisting streets, marveling at the thick wooden double doors with their arabesque carved lintels and large brass studs. One narrow alleyway led to another, with branches veering off in all directions and plenty of dead ends. There were groups of men in white robes and skullcaps playing pool in small cafes, and cramped shops selling everything from spices to television sets to long rolls of multihued cloth. It had the same feel as Cairo or Damascus or Lahore - the urban design of Zanzibar is the same as the one imprinted all over the Islamic world. Some of the most baroque edifices lie along the waterfront, including the former palace of the Omani sultans, which overlooks the harbor, and a towering old mansion called the House of Wonders, which has a museum of Swahili culture on the ground floor. There are surprising finds everywhere, like the pink Art Nouveau exterior of the Ciné Afrique, a shuttered movie theater in the north of the old town, along a street running east of the port. One stroll took us to an Anglican church that stood on the site where slaves who had been brought in from the mainland were sold. Nearby was a small museum dedicated to the memory of the slave trade - two musty cells in a dungeon evoke the cramped quarters in which manacled Africans were once imprisoned, after they had been marched to the coast from the continent's deep interior and dumped on ships. At night, locals gather at Forodhani Gardens, a strip of park on the waterfront right outside the House of Wonders. Before sunset, cooks begin setting up grills and tables along the water and laying out skewers of raw seafood. You can stroll along the stalls and pick different delicacies that are then grilled in front of you by lamplight, and wash it all down with mugs of fresh sugar-cane juice. One popular attraction is a 'spice tour,' which virtually all the travel agencies in Stone Town run. Our guide, Fuad, drove us past the former home of the British explorer and missionary Dr. David Livingstone and into the gentle hills outside town, where sprawling plantations have been set up to grow and harvest cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, peppercorn and other spices. Stopping at one plantation filled with lush tropical plants, we rubbed some cloves between our fingers and sniffed it. THIS is Zanzibar's cash crop,' Fuad said. 'But the Tanzanian government pays farmers so little for it that people often try smuggling it into Kenya.' With that, he drove us to another plantation, where we ended the tour by devouring kingfish cooked in a rich coconut curry. It is along the coast, though, that Zanzibar is at its most vivid. One day we took a minivan up to the beach at Kendwa, a small fishing village on the northwest shore of the island that is free of the crowds at the more popular backpacker resort of Nungwi. There was absolutely nothing to do there but laze around, eat seafood, read books and go swimming in the turquoise waters. The beach had three or four small lodges with simple bungalows right next to each other, and the one where we stayed, Kendwa Rocks, had a reputation for having wild full-moon parties. On our last night in Kendwa, we watched the blazing red orb of the sun sink into the ocean. The wind picked up and sped the dhows through the waters, their white sails puncturing the twilight calm.

Subject: TV Stardom on $20 a Day From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:02:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/arts/television/11mack.html?ex=1291957200&en=902af87c8ba6ddf4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 TV Stardom on $20 a Day By ROBERT MACKEY AMANDA CONGDON is a big star on really small screens - like the 4½- inch window she appears in on computer monitors every weekday morning or the 2½ inches she has to work with on the new video iPod. Ms. Congdon, you see, is the anchor of a daily, three-minute, mock TV news report shot on a camcorder, edited on a laptop and posted on a blog called Rocketboom, which now reaches more than 100,000 fans a day. In terms of subject matter, Rocketboom is actually quite a standard - one might even say traditional - Web log: Ms. Congdon comments on intriguing items she, and the site's producer, Andrew Baron, have found on the Web, and includes links to them which appear just below clear, smooth-playing video. The items tend to be developments in Internet culture (robots and flash mobs, say, or flash mobs of robots) with a sprinkling of left-leaning political commentary (Ms. Congdon announced the posting of Representative Tom DeLay's mug shot while wearing a party hat and blowing a noisemaker) and samples of Web video from around the world. What makes Rocketboom so different from most of the other video blogs, or vlogs, that have popped up in the last year or so is that the daily episodes are consistently entertaining. With Mr. Baron, 35, the designer who created the site and films the episodes, Ms. Congdon, 24, has fashioned a quirky, charming persona, with an inventive take on the news that is closer in spirit to Letterman than CNN. The fact that she is an attractive young woman probably doesn't hurt either. Regular visitors to the site tend to check in at the start of each workday, soon after new episodes are posted from the Rocketboom production studio - also known as Mr. Baron's one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. 'They won't always like it. It won't always be their cup of tea,' Ms. Congdon said, 'but they know a lot of times they will and, regardless, I'm not like screaming at them or telling them what to do. I'm kind of just like 'Hey, I'm here - this is what I think is cool.' ' It's not just cool, though, it's prescient. The vlog has been up and running for 14 months, but it's only in the last two that Web video has become new media's favorite new medium - since Apple Computer's iTunes online store began stocking vlogs, calling them video podcasts and making it easy to download them for free viewing on the new iPods. In fact, the day Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, introduced the video iPod to developers, he showed a playlist of video podcasts on his computer. Rocketboom was at the top. In case you're wondering, it has occurred to Mr. Baron and Ms. Congdon that they just might be sitting on a gold mine. At a cost of about $20 an episode, they reach an audience that some days is roughly comparable in size to that of, say, CNN's late, unlamented 'Crossfire' political debate show. They have no background in business, but Jeff Jarvis, who tracks developments in technology and culture on his blog, BuzzMachine.com (and who has served as a consultant to The New York Times on Web matters), pointed out to them that they might be able to charge $8,000 for an interactive ad at the end of the show, which would bring in about $2 million annually. The financial opportunity here has occurred to others, too. TiVo, which can now be used to watch Web video on home television sets, just signed a deal to list Rocketboom in the TiVo directory - making it as easy to record as conventional television programs like '60 Minutes' and 'Monday Night Football.' Giving up no creative control, Ms. Congdon and Mr. Baron will get 50 percent of the revenue from ads sold by TiVo to appear before and after their newscast, and their show will gain access to more than 300,000 TV sets connected to those new TiVo boxes. (That won't include Mr. Baron, though, since he gave up watching television years ago, and doesn't even own a set. He briefly considered buying one this year, but the thought passed. 'I guess I'm going to hold out,' he said.) THE rapid expansion in the number of vlogs and Web sites offering video podcasts strongly suggests how bored viewers are getting with standard commercial TV: a growing number of them are willing to seek out alternatives online, or just create one themselves. As recently as a year ago there were fewer than two dozen active vlogs. In mid-October, just after Mr. Jobs name-checked Rocketboom, and Apple added the category of 'Video Podcast' to the default menu of the new iPod, the site Vlogmap.org showed 415 vlogs worldwide. A month later Mefeedia.com, a site that allows users to watch and subscribe to vlogs, had 1,100 sites in its directory. Two weeks after that Mefeedia boasted of '2,017 vlogs and counting.' Rocketboom includes reports from vloggers both near (Boston) and far (Prague), with regular contributors based in Los Angeles, Minneapolis and 'the German-speaking part of Europe.' Many of the world's other vlogs are closer in form to diaries or home movies - with all the tedium that can imply. Still, some have their fans, such as the filmmaker Ross McElwee, whose personal documentaries, including 'Sherman's March,' have elevated the home movie into a serious art form. 'Most of the vlogs are quite boring,' he said recently by e-mail, 'but now and then there is one that for some reason seems to have something special.' Mr. McElwee cited one called Mom's Brag Vlog that documents events like trick-or-treating at the mall and a spider spinning a web outside a family's house. 'It's so mundane and down-to-earth that it's charming,' he said, 'in small doses.' On most vlogs, that's the only dose available. The average video runs no longer than a pop song and, as with blogs, it's easy to dip in to and back out of any site that fails to hold your interest. In the right hands, vlogs can become microdocumentaries of surprising beauty, wit and intelligence. The diarist Michael Verdi, for instance, uses his camcorder to deliver improvised monologues that Mr. McElwee said 'celebrate the frustrating banality' of those in-between moments, waiting for lights to turn green or planes to take off, that would be edited out of most biographies. One reviewer on Mefeedia wrote, 'Verdi is a household name amongst vloggers.' Rocketboom's Minneapolis correspondent, Chuck Olsen, profiles other people on his main site, Minnesota Stories, but also maintains a video diary called Secret Vlog Injection. One post there uses video that Mr. Olsen shot without permission during an indie-rock concert at a local club. The result records not only a great performance by the band but also Mr. Olsen's argument with the club's manager, who tried to confiscate his camera. The story evolves into a smart, funny discussion of copyright issues and the philosophical difference between the world-views of the vloggers and traditional media companies. 'There's no economic motive,' Mr. Olsen says in titles that appear on the screen like a news crawl, noting that the viewer is not being charged for the video. 'The point is to capture, and share, fantastic, fleeting moments.' The twist is that Mr. Olsen used his stolen images to make what might be one of the best music videos of the year, which could easily have been shown on MTV as an advertisement for the band. But not all vloggers are interested in making video that could be televised. Charlene Rule, who makes artful short pieces that appear on her vlog, Scratch Video (and have been shown at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village), uses fragments of her own life - like parts of a surprisingly long phone conversation with a wrong number, or a few seconds with a dress-maker helping her to 'make breasts' for the bridesmaid's outfit she wore to a friend's wedding. She takes a different approach from those vloggers who, she said, 'mimic TV.' Instead, she points to an ideal of personal filmmaking advocated by the director François Truffaut nearly 50 years before vlogs were invented (which she quotes on her site): 'The film of tomorrow' he wrote in 1957, 'will be even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them: it may be the story of their first love or their most recent; of their political awakening. ... The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.' The amount of spare time they have may also be a factor. 'One of the vlogs I stumbled upon recently,' said Mr. McElwee, who also teaches documentary film at Harvard, 'said 'If you have a few hours to kill, check out my photo blog that accompanies this vlog' - but it seems like years since I've 'had a few hours to kill.' ' But the new technology of podcasting solves that problem. Just as videocassette recorders first made it possible to watch television shows when you wanted rather than when they were broadcast, podcasting allows you to have shows (audio or video) sent directly to your computer, portable players or TiVo box for viewing at your leisure. A site like Ms. Rule's Scratch Video, which has about 8,000 subscribers, suggests that it may soon be possible for video producers to distribute their programs directly through the Internet - and possibly even make a living doing it, in much the same way novelists with small but loyal followings can build a career without ever cracking the best-seller list. Until now, both the television and film industries have been built on a model that requires producers to appeal to millions of people or be considered failures. If Amanda Congdon at one end of the spectrum and Charlene Rule at the other continue to add viewers at the rate they're going, they and the best of the other vloggers might just provide a viable alternative to that lowest-common-denominator business model. In other words, the revolution may just be vloggerized.

Subject: Information Technology Goods From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 05:01:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/worldbusiness/11cnd-hitech.html?ex=1291957200&en=748942b64ba7f2b9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 China Overtakes U.S. as Supplier of Information Technology Goods By DAVID LAGUE - International Herald Tribune BEIJING - After almost a decade of explosive growth in its electronics sector, China has overtaken the United States as the world's biggest supplier of information technology goods, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Data in the report, to be published on Monday, show that China's exports of information and communication technology - including laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras - increased by more than 46 percent to $180 billion in 2004 from a year earlier, easily outstripping for the first time United States exports of $149 billion, which grew 12 percent from 2003. The figures compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, also reveal that China has come close to matching the United States in the overall value of its trade in information and communications technology products. The value of China's combined exports and imports of such goods soared to $329 billion in 2004 from $35 billion in 1996. Over the same period, the value of American information technology trade expanded at a slower rate, to $375 billion from $230 billion. To some industry experts, the report is more evidence that China has made progress in its long-term plan to upgrade the capacity of its manufacturing as it strives to become a major economic power. 'It confirms that the Chinese economy is really moving up the value chain from simple manufactured goods like textiles, shoes and plastics to very sophisticated electronics,' said Arthur Kobler, a business consultant in Hong Kong and former president of AT&T in China. The most spectacular demonstration of China's ambition to become a consumer electronics heavyweight came in May this year when Lenovo, the Chinese computer maker, paid $1.75 billion to buy I.B.M.'s personal computer unit. Also, China's efforts to impose its own technology standards across a range of consumer products, including mobile phones, digital photography and wireless networks, are widely interpreted as a strategy to dominate the global market for information technology goods. Some analysts say they believe that Chinese technology exports would have overtaken the United States much earlier without restrictions applied by Western countries to China on the transfer of so-called dual-use technologies - which can be used for both civilian and military ends - to China after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. 'Without this trade barrier, China's information technology industry would have grown much faster,' said Li Hui, head of China research for Investment Bank CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report could also heighten fears among some critics that China's drive to build a powerful information technology and consumer electronics sector could have far-reaching military consequences for the United States. China's military industry works closely with information technology companies and the government's research and development sector in what some analysts have described as a 'digital triangle' that supports the country's rapid military modernization. 'The People's Liberation Army is moving very quickly to adopt practically every information-related aspect of military technology that the U.S. is pursuing at this time,' said Rick Fisher, vice president of the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington. In a report to Congress in November, the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission said the Pentagon had become reliant on an increasingly globalized private sector for some critical military technologies. 'This is taking place as China's position at the center of the global technology supply chain grows, raising the prospect of future U.S. dependency on China for certain items critical to the U.S. defense industry as well as vital to continued economic leadership,' the report said. It is foreigners who have driven much of the growth, with heavy investment from global giants like Intel, Nokia, Motorola, Microsoft and Cisco Systems. Figures from the Chinese Ministry of Commerce show that companies that had received overseas investment accounted for almost 90 percent of 2004 exports of high technology products. And foreign companies are increasing their research and development in China in a bid to generate real innovation. 'Ten years ago, it was done just to please the Chinese, but now these R.&D. facilities are integral to their global manufacturing,' said Mr. Kobler, the consultant. Leading integrated circuit manufacturers, however, have avoided setting up fabrication facilities in China in order to protect their chip designs and manufacturing technology. This means that China is still heavily dependent on imports of advanced chips it needs to assemble electronic products. But Ms. Li, the CLSA research chief, said, 'Most equipment makers are getting close to cutting-edge technology.' Recently, China has unveiled a supercomputer capable of 11 trillion calculations per second, making it among the fastest anywhere. Also, Tsinghua University has produced a microprocessor that matches Intel's Pentium II. For military analysts like Mr. Fisher, the combination of domestic innovation and the spill-over effect from foreign research and development means that China is now poised to make rapid strides in defense technology. 'China is quickly becoming an innovator and, as we know, it has the money to turn those ideas into weapons,' he said.

Subject: More Deaths Are Linked to Heart Device From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:55:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/14device.html?ex=1292216400&en=14fa2681e24ad902&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 More Deaths Are Linked to Heart Device By BARRY MEIER The Food and Drug Administration has received from the Guidant Corporation several new reports about recent patient deaths associated with short circuits in company heart devices, agency records show. The three new cases all occurred after June when Guidant recalled the heart devices at issue. The recalls took place after the company came under scrutiny for failing to promptly warn doctors and patients about the risks of short circuits. The new reports bring the number of known deaths associated with the flaw to seven. The added reports may reflect the fact that doctors and family members, in light of the attention given to the Guidant devices, are increasingly having the units checked for problems after a heart patient's death. They also suggest that the devices' possible contributions to earlier deaths may have gone unnoticed because implanted heart units are not routinely examined post-mortem. The new data may pose further legal problems for Guidant because the electrical failures, while involving different models, are all related to the company's use of an insulating material in a way that apparently made it prone to deterioration. The Justice Department, as part of an investigation into Guidant's handling of safety issues, is looking into its use of that material, called polyimide. In a statement, Guidant, which is based in Indianapolis, said that it 'regularly communicates information about product performance to various stakeholders including physicians and regulatory bodies.' The company also pointed out that it had recently begun publicly releasing more detailed data about product malfunctions. In 2002, Guidant discovered that one of its heart devices was prone to short-circuiting. Company officials declined to respond yesterday to written questions about the steps Guidant took, if any, at that time to determine if other company heart devices had the same flaw. Both the F.D.A. and Guidant have told patients with the affected units that they should consult with their doctors to decide whether the risks posed by the device outweighed those posed by replacement surgery. One heart device specialist, Dr. William H. Maisel, who is based in Boston, said yesterday that the new death reports should not necessarily affect those decisions, because most doctors look at a device's overall failure rate, rather than the percentage of those failures that involve deaths. Guidant, which is the country's second-biggest producer of defibrillators and pacemakers, is currently the subject of a bidding war between two corporate suitors, Boston Scientific and Johnson & Johnson. Boston Scientific's bid of $72 a share for Guidant is substantially higher than a revised deal struck last month between Johnson & Johnson and Guidant, which valued the device maker at $63.08 a share. The Guidant devices at issue include a defibrillator known as the Prizm 2 DR as well as a combination pacemaker and defibrillator known as the Contak Renewal and a related product, the Contak Renewal 2. A defibrillator senses and interrupts a potentially fatal heart rhythm; a pacemaker regulates a heart that is beating too fast or too slowly. Heart devices, like defibrillators, are vital products and all manufacturers of them have experienced recalls and problems. Guidant's problems came to light in May when The New York Times reported that the company had not told doctors for three years that the Prizm 2 DR had short-circuited and failed more than two dozen times. But internal testing by Guidant as well as reports filed with the F.D.A. by the company indicate that the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2 pose a significantly higher risk. The devices are used in patients with advanced congestive heart failure. In response to a reporter's request, the F.D.A. yesterday released recent filings by Guidant in connection with device failures. In a statement, Guidant said there were now five patient deaths associated with short circuits in either a Contak Renewal or a Contak Renewal 2, and two such deaths associated with the Prizm 2 DR. Apart from the death reports, there are no new filings involving malfunctions of the Contak Renewal devices. It is difficult to determine the role, if any, that a device played in a patient's death. But in F.D.A. filings, Guidant reported that it found signs of short-circuiting in the units as well as evidence in the device's computer memory showing that, in some cases, a unit had failed to provide therapy. In April 2002, Guidant discovered and fixed the insulation-related problem in the Prizm 2 DR. The company has said that units manufactured after that date have not short-circuited. But Guidant officials have yet to describe what steps they took in 2002, if any, to determine if the Contak Renewal was also prone to short-circuiting. The Contak Renewal was under review that year by the F.D.A., which approved its sale in December 2002. In both the Prizm 2 and Contak Renewal, Guidant used polyimide to insulate wiring within a component that sits atop the hermetically sealed portion of a heart device. That component contains the unit's battery and computer chip. Guidant's major competitors, Medtronic and St. Jude Medical, only use polyimide inside the sealed portion of a device where, engineers say, the material is not vulnerable to deterioration from exposure to moisture like bodily fluids. Guidant changed how it manufactured the Contak Renewal and Contak Renewal 2 in August 2004. The company said that it did not notify doctors about problems in those devices and the Prizm 2 DR earlier because the number of failures involving the units did not exceed company expectations. Last month, the Justice Department subpoenaed records about polyimide from Accellent, a company that supplied materials to Guidant. Julie Zawisza, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., said yesterday that the agency's investigation into Guidant was continuing.

Subject: The Senator Who Cried Wolf From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:54:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/opinion/14wed3.html?ex=1292216400&en=a93db8865ad7b866&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 The Senator Who Cried Wolf Strange things are afoot as Congress presses to end this year's woefully inadequate session by the weekend: coverage of impotence drugs has been restored in a Medicare budget proposal, while an emergency subsidy to help poor people pay their heating bills this winter is getting only anemic financing. But the biggest money issue being haggled over - the House and Senate dispute over cutting up to $50 billion in spending from assorted vital programs - is somehow tangled up in the Bush administration's insistence on drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. The House has already rejected this perennial chestnut on the anti-environmental agenda, but Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, is making tooth-and-claw vows to prevail in the final negotiations. He will be one of the chief bargainers on the final compromise, and he insists that he won't sign off on any deal that omits Alaskan drilling. So what if important issues are on the table - like proposed harmful cuts in food stamps for the poor? Clearly, damage to food stamps and the other draconian House cuts - in Medicaid, welfare child-support enforcement, student loans, etc. - should be rejected. This is particularly true in the context of the Republican leaders' parallel priority of enacting still more administration tax cuts to warm the hearts of the nation's most affluent this winter. But political negotiations in Washington inevitably involve posturing, and Senator Stevens has stepped forward as this season's Pagliacci of a posturer. Alaska drilling should never be palmed off as a money-saving measure, but that is the sleight-of-hand being attempted. House moderates who oppose the drilling as well as the welfare cuts must stand fast. They should keep in mind the senator's earlier melodramatic vow to resign from public office if pork money was rescinded for Alaska's notorious bridges to nowhere. An embarrassed Congress nevertheless scuttled the requirement to build the bridges. Alas, Senator Stevens remains at work.

Subject: Treatment Is Only Part of the Picture From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:37:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/health/22brody.html November 22, 2005 With Cancer, Treatment Is Only Part of the Picture By JANE E. BRODY More than 10 million people in the United States are cancer survivors, and their numbers increase daily. Many are considered cured. Some are still in treatment and one day may - or may not - be counted among the cured. Others are living with advanced disease. But nearly all have similar needs: •A need to know about and cope with the physical and emotional consequences of cancer and its treatment, including current challenges to quality of life and delayed health effects. •A need to know when to worry and when not to worry about symptoms that could signal a recurrence or a new cancer. •A need for reliable information and assistance on matters like diet, exercise and smoking cessation that may improve survival chances. •A need to deal with employment and insurance problems related to their medical histories. Such needs inspired a panel of the National Academies this month to call for major improvements in follow-up care for cancer patients, who are too often left to struggle on their own with serious cancer-related matters. Making a Plan 'Successful cancer care doesn't end when patients walk out the door after completion of their initial treatments,' said Dr. Sheldon Greenfield, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the University of California, Irvine, who led the committee. Patients need to have a 'survivorship care plan' that provides information critical to proper long-term care, including the exact cancer diagnosis, a detailed list of treatments received and the potential consequences of those treatments. 'Cancer can be considered a chronic disease, in part because of the serious consequences and persistent nature of some of cancer's late effects,' the committee said. This suggests that cancer survivors, like other patients with chronic diseases, need a plan for optimal functioning. The committee's findings are spelled out in a 500-page book, 'From Cancer Patient to Cancer Survivor: Lost in Transition,' produced by the Academies' Institute of Medicine and National Research Council. The recommendations were endorsed by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which represents 20,000 cancer treatment specialists, but it could take years for doctors to carry out the measures nationwide. For now, there are steps that cancer survivors can take on their own to enhance their knowledge and improve their medical, emotional and social well-being. If patients cannot do this for themselves, then someone who can serve as the patient's advocate - a family member or friend - should do it for them. A friend who just had surgery for breast cancer asked me how she could improve her diet or exercise habits and what supplements she should take to ward off a recurrence. In advance of further treatments, she also wanted to know how her appearance and sex life would be affected, now and in the future, by the various choices of postsurgery drugs and radiation. In the next 12 months, more than 211,000 women who learn they have breast cancer will face similar questions, but few will know how to get reliable answers. Many will go through life feeling as if the sword of Damocles hangs over their heads. I recognize the feeling. Although I have every reason to believe I was cured of breast cancer six years ago, I do worry whenever I get a new symptom that I can't explain, like a pain in my ribs, a suspicious bruise, soreness in my breast. Could it mean my disease has recurred or spread? Waiting for Warnings I was never told what to look out for. Nor was I told that hardening and extreme sensitivity of breast tissue could be a lasting consequence of radiation therapy. How many breast cancer survivors now taking an aromatase inhibitor like Arimidex know that their risk of developing osteoporosis and fractures is increased as a result, and what they can do to reduce that risk? When faced with a life-threatening illness, most patients readily accept their physicians' treatment recommendations no matter how dire the potential consequences. Only later do they wonder if something might have been done, say, to preserve their fertility or virility or to prevent lymphedema, chronic swelling of a limb after lymph node removal. Patients have a right to know beforehand if surgery planned for head and neck cancer is likely to affect their ability to speak, swallow or breathe, or, for patients with prostate cancer, what their chances are of experiencing incontinence or erectile dysfunction as a result of surgery or radiation therapy. It's not that knowing possible side effects is likely to prompt cancer patients to reject life-saving treatment. Rather, a prepared patient is better able to deal with such life-disrupting consequences. On the other hand, a patient who will gain only a short period of time from a debilitating therapy may choose not to be treated. Writing It Down At the time of diagnosis, through the course of treatment and after treatment is completed, patients or their advocates should come equipped to ask questions and record answers when meeting with their physicians. They should leave with a written record that includes these items: •The precise nature of the cancer, including its pathological type and stage, indicating its aggressiveness, scope and likelihood of spreading. •The treatments received, including the type and extent of surgery or radiation treatments, and a complete list of chemotherapeutic drugs and medications to prevent relapse, along with their possible long-term effects. •A monitoring program to check for the late effects of treatment, like heart damage, thyroid disorders or bone marrow disease. •A follow-up plan to check for a recurrence or the appearance of a second cancer. •A list of symptoms that might indicate recurrence or spread of the cancer. •Advice about diet and exercise that can help improve stamina and immune defenses and counter post-treatment depression, and referral, if needed, to a smoking cessation program. •A list of self-help groups for emotional and sometimes practical support, friendship and understanding of the problems of cancer survivors. The diagnosis of cancer often becomes a 'teachable moment' - a chance to persuade people to change habits that might have contributed to their disease or that may impede their recovery. Many cancer patients and survivors continue to smoke because they believe it is too late to quit, but cessation of smoking can reduce treatment complications, improve survival chances and reduce the risk of a second cancer, as well as the risk of developing heart and lung disease. Likewise, survivors should be encouraged to be active. An increase in physical activity enhances their vigor and vitality, cardiopulmonary fitness and overall quality of life and counters post-treatment depression, anxiety and fatigue. For significantly overweight patients, better diets emphasizing fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean protein can improve survival among those with breast and prostate cancer. As for unconventional remedies, the new report cites potential benefits from massage, imagery, relaxation training and participation in support groups, but notes that other measures, like phytoestrogens for breast cancer survivors on anti-estrogen medication, can be harmful.

Subject: Among Makers of Memory Chips for Gadgets From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:34:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/technology/12flash.html?ex=1292043600&en=4fb39fb9cd100298&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Among Makers of Memory Chips for Gadgets, Fierce Scrum Takes Shape By MARTIN FACKLER YOKKAICHI, Japan - Nestled in a valley in central Japan, surrounded by forested hills and terraced rice paddies, is one of the world's most sophisticated - and secretive - semiconductor plants. Inside the windowless plant, built by the Japanese electronics maker Toshiba, tiny cranelike robots shuffle along automated production lines, moving stacks of silicon wafers the size of dinner plates. Masked technicians watch as rows of tall machines grind the wafers, etch circuits on their surfaces and cut them into tiny rectangular computer chips. Inside, visitors are allowed to peek through windows at only a small part of the factory floor. Toshiba is anxious to guard the secrets beyond because it needs them to wage one of the most ferocious battles in today's electronics industry, for control of the fast-growing market for the advanced memory chips at the heart of portable music devices like the Apple iPod Nano. The fight pits Toshiba and its partner, SanDisk of Sunnyvale, Calif., a maker of memory cards, against Samsung Electronics of South Korea. Both camps are spending billions to build new factory lines, hire engineers and develop more powerful chips in a bid to gain supremacy. The chips, called NAND flash memory chips, differ from earlier computer memory chips in that data on them can be easily erased and replaced and they can store data even after the power is turned off. That makes them like miniature hard-disk drives, only much more durable because they lack moving parts. The newest flash memory chips are the size of a fingernail and can store two gigabytes, the equivalent of every word and image printed in nine years of a newspaper. While Toshiba invented the chips more than a decade ago, Samsung has seized the lead with bigger production volumes and lower prices. In the three months that ended in September, Samsung had a market share of 50.2 percent of the $2.97 billion in total global NAND sales, according to iSuppli, a market research firm based in El Segundo, Calif. Toshiba's share was 22.8 percent. SanDisk is not included in iSuppli's figures because it does not sell its chips, but instead uses them all in its own memory products. But Toshiba is fighting back. It plans, with SanDisk, to spend some $2.5 billion to expand the Yokkaichi plant, which is owned by Toshiba but is used by both companies to make the NAND chips. The new production lines will allow the plant to produce 48,750 wafers a month by March 2007, five times the current output. Each wafer yields hundreds of chips, though Toshiba will not say exactly how many. And competition is only getting more intense, as more than a half-dozen other chip makers try to muscle in. Hynix Semiconductor of South Korea has rapidly gained a 13.2 percent market share since starting production of NAND chips last year, according to iSuppli. Intel, the world's largest chip maker, said last month that it would team up with another American chip manufacturer, Micron Technology, and that each would spend $2.6 billion over the next three years to make NAND chips. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation of Shanghai, China's largest chip maker, also says it plans to produce the chips next year. 'This is one of the hottest markets in the industry,' said Joseph Unsworth, an analyst for Gartner, a market research company based in Stamford, Conn. The fight has also moved into the courts, where Toshiba and SanDisk are trying to repel newcomers by defending their patents on many of NAND's basic technologies. On Wednesday, SanDisk filed the latest in a series of lawsuits against Swiss-based STMicroelectronics, which started making NAND chips last year. In September, Toshiba filed a complaint with the United States International Trade Commission alleging that Hynix had infringed on three NAND patents. At stake is one of the fastest-selling electronics devices in recent years, though one that consumers may not have heard of because it sits inside other products. The chips allow people to store hundreds of songs on pocket-size portable music players, like the Nano or the U10 from iRiver. Flash memory chips also make possible everything from digital cameras to flash drives and memory cards. Meanwhile, the chips keep getting more powerful, even as manufacturers compete to shrink circuits etched on the silicon's surface, allowing chips to hold even more data. Chang-Gyu Hwang, chief executive of Samsung's chip business, caused some eyebrows to rise in skepticism in September when he predicted that the chips would soon hold enough data to make hard-disk drives obsolete, paving the way for lighter, thinner and tougher laptop computers. NAND chips are 'the backbone of the mobile electronics era,' Mr. Hwang said. Demand for NAND chips has exploded in recent years. Global sales rose to $10.7 billion this year, from $1.5 billion in 2000, according to Gartner, which forecasts that sales will almost double again in three years, to $18 billion. Demand is so hot, in fact, that manufacturers say they cannot keep up. Toshiba says it has had to turn down new customers and estimates that manufacturers can meet only about 70 to 80 percent of global demand. Big buyers like Apple and its rival Sony, maker of the Walkman, are signing multiyear deals with chip makers to ensure supply. Shrinking supplies of chips have forced some smaller music-device makers in China to stop production, analysts say. But scarcity has not driven up prices, as might be expected when demand surpasses supply. That is because companies have continued to slash prices in a cutthroat race for market share, say analysts. This year alone, critical prices will probably drop 56 percent, according to Gartner. One of the most aggressive price-cutters has been Samsung, which this year beat Toshiba to become the main supplier of memory chips for the Apple Nano. While details of the deal are not public, Samsung's price was so low that the Fair Trade Commission in South Korea said last month it was investigating to see if Samsung, the second-largest chip maker after Intel, had used its size to unfairly squelch competition. Samsung says it has not broken any laws. Samsung enjoys a commanding lead despite the fact that it still pays royalty fees to Toshiba for licensing NAND technology 10 years ago. Asked if it regretted selling the technology to Samsung, Toshiba said a second supplier was necessary at the time to kick-start the market for an unknown and untested product. 'The one that bought the technology is now the leader,' admits Shozo Saito, a vice president at Toshiba who runs the memory chip division. 'No matter how much we invest, it'll be hard to catch up.' To cement its advantage, Samsung said in September that it planned to spend $33 billion over the next seven years to expand production at its sprawling Hwaseong computer chip plant, though it will not say how much of that will be devoted to NAND chips. Samsung also said it would hire 5,000 more engineers to increase research and development of new chips. Not to be outdone, Toshiba said it planned to begin making a similar chip by the same time. At Toshiba's Yokkaichi plant, there is a palpable determination to catch up with the larger Korean rival. Engineers work in shifts around the clock to speed up development and production of new chips. Noriyoshi Tozawa, the plant's manager, said he kept workers on their toes with little reminders of darker times. One is an elevator that has been kept out of use since 2001; a sign on the doors says that it was turned off after a crash in computer chip prices almost forced the closure of the plant, which used to produce DRAM, another type of memory chip. 'You have to always be at the leading edge to stay alive in this industry,' Mr. Tozawa. 'We know what it's like to lose.'

Subject: Creativity With Order and Care From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:09:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/realestate/11habi.html?ex=1291957200&en=c73bb4500e1107f7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 Nourishing Creativity With Order and Care By CELIA BARBOUR WITH her trim haircut, matching sweater set and ballet-slipper shoes, Eva Jana Siroka looks right at home in buttoned-up Princeton, N.J. But when she and her husband, Glenn MacEwen, moved there from Kingston, Ontario, nine years ago, they weren't seeking the camouflage of suburban respectability. Leaving behind a steady income, they had resolved to support themselves like free spirits, by their creativity and talents. 'We became more bohemian,' Ms. Siroka insisted. Princeton, among the more affluent towns in New Jersey, might seem like an inhospitable place to begin a career as a midlife beatnik. But the pair were accustomed to university life - Mr. MacEwen had been a professor of computer science at Queen's University at Kingston - and they were drawn to Princeton's intellectual and international community. Ms. Siroka, who received her Ph.D. in art history from Princeton 20 years ago, had fond memories of the campus and town. These days, she paints, writes (she recently finished her first novel, 'Maddalena,' set in Renaissance Italy and published by Semele Books) and tends her remarkable garden. Mr. MacEwen consults in computer science, plays bagpipe and brews beer in his basement. Ms. Siroka knows a thing or two about bohemianism - more, certainly, than your average urban gypsy manqué. Originally from Czechoslovakia, she spent a year in Marseille, France, and another in Rome ('the love of my life,' she said), where she wandered from library to chapel to gallery, intoxicated by prints and paintings she discovered while researching her dissertation. Still, the prevailing sensibility in her home is one of order, frugality and care rather than tempestuous creative passions. And indeed, a person would need to be enormously disciplined to accomplish what she has with her home. Bought nine years ago for just under $250,000, the house, with its quarter-acre lot, bears few visible traces of its former self. It was built shortly after World War II, on a wide, quiet street of similar Cape Cod bungalows, each with clapboard siding, contrasting shutters and a little plot of grass out front. 'When the real estate agent first showed it to us, my husband said, 'Awful!' and we went away,' Ms. Siroka said. 'We're mortals, but we have aspirations to live in a place that is interesting.' But she liked the neighborhood, and the property stuck in her mind. A few months later, having found nothing better, they made an offer and bought the house - and she set about transforming it into the home of her dreams. (Mr. MacEwen, for his part, adopted a 'wake me when it's over' attitude.) Today, the place is a jaw-dropper. The house is clad in creamy stucco, a material that gives it a slightly confectionary quality. Her gardens front and back are formal - think Villa Medici, miniaturized and transplanted to suburbia. Every plant is placed according to a precise geometric plan; there are trimmed boxwood hedges and symmetrically arranged azaleas set just so among brick and gravel pathways. There's even a little stone putti birdbath in the middle of the backyard. Allusions to far-off lands are also evident the moment you step through the front door. The foyer floor is tiled in marble, in a checkerboard of rust and cream surrounded by a black border. 'In Italy, marble is it, really,' Ms. Siroka said. 'Princeton isn't Rome, however, so we just used it in the entrance.' The walls are hung like a 19th-century gallery with prints and paintings everywhere - side by side and top to bottom. 'When I come in the door, this reminds me of my travels,' she said, indicating the pictures. 'There's Rome; there's the Tiber.' The foyer itself sits on the footprint of the former dining room. Nearby is a grand, formal room facing the back that didn't used to exist. Upstairs, two previously cramped bedrooms remind you of how cathedral ceilings got their name - they now feel like lofty chambers tucked away in the upper reaches of a Gothic church. Most important to her are the windows. Oversize windows are everywhere, letting in views of the gardens and a deluge of light. 'Something to remind me of the Italian skies,' she said. The transformation of the house took an astonishing four months, and an investment roughly equal to the purchase price. She sketched and drafted; measured dimensions of all her furniture and arranged it on graph paper; made suggestions and requests; and faxed dozens of pages from Kingston to Princeton. Demolition of a screen porch began that May; over the summer, a back room was added and the roof was raised by eight feet. In mid-September, they drove nine hours from Canada and moved in. The floors were still a bit sticky, but no mind. 'This house is really me,' Ms. Siroka said. Throughout the house, her intensely romantic sensibility is held in check by an Old World frugality - she brings to the domestic arts a kind of fastidious tenderness. Empty liqueur bottles are displayed neatly alongside vintage cruets. Copies of old-master paintings made by Ms. Siroka hang throughout the house, typically wherever their colors and proportions best match the décor. Over the fireplace, for example, is a copy of a still life of pheasants and other game birds, 'painted for a nobleman for his hunting castle,' she said. 'Obviously, I don't have a hunting castle,' she said, 'so I reduced it in size when I made my copy.' In the informal living room, which she calls her Garden Room, there's a tiny 1970's painted metal cafe table and chairs meant for a patio; she and her husband have dinner there, by candlelight, most nights. There's a lovely Old World sweetness contained in this mixing of trash and treasure, a reluctance to abandon, discard or waste. 'Each object in my house has a story,' Ms. Siroka said. 'They've become very, very sentimental pieces.' Some objects, in fact, seem nearly animate. She greeted an English holly bush in the front yard, named Giuseppe. And she said a hearty 'Hello, Hans!' to a print hanging near the kitchen, made by Hans Speckaert, a Flemish Renaissance artist she studied for her dissertation. In a nice twist, friends like Speckaert have come back to life as characters in her book. You might expect someone who lives so much in her memories and stories to have a hard time relating to the ordinary folks living next door. But not so. 'When we moved in, I didn't know anyone,' she said. 'So I turned to my husband and said, 'I'm not going to wait 20 years to know my neighbors.' I went and knocked on the doors of 10 houses down the street and 10 houses up the street, and invited everyone to a party.' She served Swedish open-face sandwiches and Italian wine, and made enduring friends. What Ms. Siroka requires from a home is a place where she can be a hostess one day and a recluse the next; where she can cultivate her garden, write, paint, read and forever be reminded of her beloved Rome. The house she and Mr. MacEwen bought nine years ago was not that place. 'We're going to have to make it our own,' she told Mr. MacEwen then. And, in every way, she did.

Subject: Admiration for a Comedian From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 04:07:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/arts/13pryo.html?ex=1292130000&en=4c83cbec7a9ebdbe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Admiration for a Comedian Who Knew No Limits By JESSE McKINLEY He was widely considered the greatest stand-up comedian ever, but what made Richard Pryor exceptional, many of his comedic brethren said, was his willingness to be completely, utterly unfunny. Jerry Seinfeld, for example, who worked the same clubs as Mr. Pryor in the late 1970's and early 80's, said he distinctly recalled nights when Mr. Pryor would 'walk the room,' comedian lingo for driving patrons out into the streets. 'I remember people talking, saying Richard bombed last night,' Mr. Seinfeld said. 'Guys with reputations like that, they stay to the tried and true. You risk a little bit, but Richard risked everything all the time. He was the ultimate bullfighter on stage. He never let his instinct for self-preservation get in the way.' Mr. Seinfeld was just one of the many comedians mourning yesterday for Mr. Pryor, who died of a heart attack on Saturday after a long battle with multiple sclerosis. He was 65. For many comics, Mr. Pryor was considered both a fearless performer and a trailblazer onstage - a black man cracking wise about racism and other social ills in a supposedly integrated America. Sometimes, too, he was seen as an offstage cautionary tale, a man who spent some of his life and talent on hard living (tales of which, almost invariably, made their way into his act). 'Richard Pryor was the Rosa Parks of comedy,' said Chris Rock, in a statement. 'He took risks and chances that made it possible for a whole generation of comics to exist. No one ever rocked the mike like Richard Pryor.' The actor and comedian Bernie Mac was blunter: 'Without Richard, there would be no me.' But the question of what made Mr. Pryor so dynamic onstage is a trickier one, touching on his natural chops as a performer, his unsparing honesty and a moment in history when straight talk was in great demand. Paul Mooney, a longtime friend and a frequent writing collaborator, said Mr. Pryor's skills 'came from God.' 'It was innate,' said Mr. Mooney, who called himself Mr. Pryor's 'black writer' and lent the comic his first car, a 1952 Ford, during his early days. 'He could have been born in Japan and it still would have been there. Geniuses just are.' Mr. Mooney agreed that his friend shared a gift (and sometimes a curse) for confession. 'If you had any dirt or gossip about Richard, you couldn't talk about it because he'd tell it first,' he said. 'He would get so personal.' Mr. Mooney said Mr. Pryor was also diligent about writing and rewriting his material, and then performing it in a manner that made it often seem invented on the spot. 'That's the trick, to make you think it's improv,' he said. 'We'd have a skeleton, and he'd put the clothes on it.' Denis Leary, who says Mr. Pryor's 1979 concert film inspired him to become a comic, said Mr. Pryor had 'the full toolbox.' 'It's not just innate honesty, that whatever happened in his life was fodder for his act, but he was also verbally quick-witted, profane and profound,' Mr. Leary said. 'He was also a great mimic and physical comic. People forget but there's a moment in one of those movies where he does an impression of a deer getting surprised in the headlights. And he looks like a deer!' Mr. Pryor honed his stage presence working clubs with a mild-mannered act during the 1960's, before breaking away from that in 1967, quickly finding his voice inside of the characters (like Mudbone, a philosophical wino) drawn from his childhood growing up amid bordellos and bars in Peoria, Ill. By the early 1970's he was widely considered one of the funniest, and - for television censors - the scariest men in America. Lorne Michaels, the man behind 'Saturday Night Live,' says that NBC initially balked at letting Mr. Pryor be host of an episode in the show's first season, but allowed it only after demanding a seven-second tape delay. Mr. Michael said the reaction of the audience to Mr. Pryor - both in the studios and in the ratings - was explosive. 'The truth was an incredibly hot commodity in 1974-75,' said Mr. Michaels, who watched as Mr. Pryor did two long monologues that night, exactly 30 years ago today. 'The distrust of authority was at its absolute peak, with Watergate and the war, and he caught the wave.' Mr. Michaels said that episode, which also featured John Belushi as a sword-wielding samurai, went on to score even higher ratings when it was rebroadcast the next spring. 'It defined us,' Mr. Michaels said. 'It put us on the map.' 'Saturday Night Live' did a brief salute to Mr. Pryor on Saturday, showing a famous sketch featuring Mr. Pryor and Chevy Chase trading insults. Comedy clubs around the country were also planning tributes - formal and less so - to Mr. Pryor. At the Gotham Comedy Club in Manhattan, crowds gave rousing ovations to Mr. Pryor's memory on Saturday night. At the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, where Mr. Pryor cut his teeth in the early 1970's and performed until his failing health ended his stand-up career in the early 1990's, proprietors put a message - 'Rest in Peace, Richard' - on the club's marquee. Comedians, of course, are always trying to make a connection with their crowds, pumping them for personal details - 'Anybody out there from Jersey?' - that they can turn into public fodder. But in the end, Mr. Seinfeld said, he thought that Mr. Pryor's true gift was forcing people to come into his world, rather than pandering to theirs. 'He started with what he knew and brought you to it,' Mr. Seinfeld said. 'He made you fall in love with him. And he did it so that you would relate to things you didn't think you could relate to.'

Subject: How One Suburb's Black Students Gain From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:59:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/education/14education.html?ex=1292216400&en=743036da580565ee&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 How One Suburb's Black Students Gain By MICHAEL WINERIP SHAKER HEIGHTS, Ohio IT is hard to pick up an education article these days without reading about some excited governor or mayor who is busy closing the achievement gap. Test scores of minority children go up a few points, and there stands the politician on the 6 o'clock news declaring that merit pay for teachers or laptops in the classroom or the federal No Child Left Behind law is closing the gap between white and minority children. Here in this integrated, upper-middle-class Cleveland suburb, you would think they would be boasting. African-Americans' combined math and verbal SAT scores average 976, 110 points above the national average for black students. The number of black sixth graders scoring proficient on the state math test has nearly doubled in three years and is more than 20 percentage points above the Ohio average for blacks. Top black seniors get into top colleges. In recent years, Charles Inniss went to Princeton, Karelle Hall to Dartmouth, Winston Weatherspoon to Georgetown and Danielle Decatur to the University of Virginia. While many a politician discovered the gap in 2002, when No Child Left Behind required that test data be separated by race, Shaker Heights has battled it for decades. Twenty years ago, an after-school tutoring center opened at the high school. In 1990, a committee of a dozen top black male seniors, the MAC scholars (for Minority Achievement Committee), was formed to mentor struggling black underclassmen, and the program has become a national model, featured last year on CNN. Seniors like Malik Wiggins (who has an A average and works 18 hours a week at a grocery) and Kenneth Owens (who has a B , was the football team's fullback and plans to study dentistry) continue that tradition. Studies show the gap starts early, so eight years ago, Shaker Heights began giving 30 minutes of extra daily instruction to kindergartners who scored poorly for reading readiness. Three years ago, Shaker Heights started after-school study circles staffed by teachers and aimed at expanding black participation in honors and advanced placement classes. In six years, the number of blacks taking honors and A.P. courses has increased 50 percent. 'After the CNN story, I had 50 calls,' says Mark Freeman, the superintendent. 'They'd say, 'Can you tell us how you closed the gap?' They think we're done.' He tells them that even here, there is a long way to go. While it's good that No Child Left Behind has focused attention on the gap, the law is so driven by test scores that public discussion often takes a cartoonish form, as if a stiff dose of test prep will end the gap. Ronald Ferguson, a Harvard professor who has spent a decade studying the gap in 15 integrated suburbs like Shaker Heights, says it is not going away soon. In a 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that because of America's history of racial bias it would take 25 years more, and Professor Ferguson thinks maybe longer. 'If you were betting, it would be unwise to bet on anything less than 25 years,' he says. For every positive statistic there is a sobering one. Blacks' SAT scores here are still nearly 100 points behind the national average for whites (1,068) and 246 points behind the average of whites in Shaker Heights (1,222). The average grade for a black Shaker Heights senior is C , and it is B for whites. The high school is about half black, yet blacks make up 31 percent of the students in honors classes and 11 percent of those in A.P. classes. As Corbin Sykes, a MAC scholar with many A.P. courses, says, 'In all my classes except weightlifting, there's just a couple other African-Americans.' Professor Ferguson estimates that half the gap is economic. While many black residents here are professionals, the average black family income ($54,500) is half the white average. A black child looking for study help has parents with less academic experience (45 percent have four-year degrees versus 90 percent of whites). Half of black homes have a single parent, versus 10 percent for whites. Blacks are more transient. Half the black children in the kindergarten reading-support program in 2001 had moved away by the fourth grade. When Professor Ferguson compares blacks and whites of similar income, he finds whites outperform blacks (A- versus B at the top income). His research shows that in the same courses, blacks spend as much time on homework as whites but finish less of it. 'It's more a skills gap than effort gap,' he says. This is why the tutoring center is open from 4 to 7 p.m. daily. Andre Smith, a MAC scholar, apologized for not talking; he was going for calculus help. The middle and high school study circles grew out of research at the University of California, Berkeley showing that Asian-American students tended to study in groups, while black students struggled on their own. The sixth-grade after-school program here takes 60 of the brightest black students and pairs them with six teachers. 'We're giving them skills to study together,' says Chante Thomas, a teacher. 'But we also want them to find relationships with other smart kids that they'll have the rest of their time at Shaker.' THE gap is about culture, too. Professor Ferguson has run seminars with teachers emphasizing the challenges black children face and the need to push them to excel. Shaker Heights tries to hire blacks - 20 percent of teachers are black, as are three of the eight principals. And the gap's about child rearing. Professor Ferguson's surveys show that blacks read less to preschoolers than do whites and black students watch twice as much TV. A black parent group here has sponsored many projects aimed at narrowing the gap, including a summer enrichment program started in 1997. In October, Alisa Smith opened a parent room at the high school to encourage more adult involvement. Ms. Smith, a Columbia graduate and a stay-at-home mother, and her husband, a doctor, have three children in the schools, including Andre, the MAC scholar. While she says her children have been underestimated at times because they are black, over all she is delighted with the schools. Ms. Smith thinks federal supporters of No Child Left Behind could learn from Shaker Heights. 'If they spent as much time funding the kinds of programs we have in Shaker, as they do on testing,' she said, 'it would be a lot better law.'

Subject: The Lion, the Witch and the Metaphor From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:56:47 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12seigel.html?ex=1292043600&en=a801f8eea1f726c9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 The Lion, the Witch and the Metaphor By JESSICA SEIGEL THOUGH it's fashionable nowadays to come out of the closet, lately folks are piling in - into the wardrobe, that is, to battle over who owns Narnia: secular or Christian lovers of C. S. Lewis's stories. Children, of course, have been slipping through the magic cupboard into the mythical land for 50 years without assistance from pundits or preachers (though fauns and talking badgers have been helpful). But now that the chronicles' first book, 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' has been made into a Disney movie, adults are fighting to claim the action. And that means analyzing it. Or not. The 7-year-old who sat next to me during a recent showing said, 'This is really scary.' It was scary when the White Witch kills the lion Aslan, who dies to save the loathsome Edmund before rising to help him and his siblings vanquish evil. But adults reducing the story to one note - their own - are even scarier. One side dismisses the hidden Jesus figure as silly or trivial, while the other insists the lion is Jesus in a story meant to proselytize. They're both wrong. As a child, I never knew that Aslan was 'Jesus.' And that's a good thing. My mother recently remarked that if she'd known the stories were Christian, she wouldn't have given me the books - which are among my dearest childhood memories. But parents today will not be innocent of the religious subtext, considering the drumbeat of news coverage and Disney's huge campaign to remind churchgoing audiences of the film's religious themes. The marketing is so intense that the religious Web site HollywoodJesus.com even worried that ham-fisted promotion might ruin it for non-Christians. But a brief foray into Criticism 101 shows that the wardrobe is big enough for everyone. Symbolism, for example, is when one thing stands for another but is not the thing itself. Psychoanalysts, for instance, have interpreted 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' as Dorothy's quest for a penis - that is, retrieving the witch's broomstick. Does that symbolism - if you buy it - make Dorothy a pervert? No, because it's hidden. That's the point. Overt and covert meaning can exist independently. Those with a fiduciary, rather than phallic bent, might prefer the theory that L. Frank Baum's Oz stories are a Populist manifesto, with the yellow brick road as the gold standard, the Tin Man as alienated labor, Scarecrow as oppressed farmers, and so on. (And surely some Jungian theory about the collective unconscious explains why both Oz and Narnia are populated by four heroic characters fighting an evil witch.) Yes, it's allegory land, a place that strings symbols together to create levels of meaning, which a determined scholar has actually quantified as ranging from two to seven layers. (No word on why not eight.) Allegory, the oldest narrative technique, often involves talking animals, from Aesop's fox with the grapes to Dr. Seuss's Yertle the Turtle, supposedly a Hitler figure. Does that twist the Seuss tale into a political treatise on fascism? No, it adds another level for adults, it teaches morals (even the meekest can unseat the powerful, etc.), and it's fun - when plain little Mack burps, he shakes the bad king Yertle from his throne built on turtles. But which layer is more important - the surface or beneath? Deep thinkers specialize in hidden meanings (building demand, of course, for their interpretive expertise). An Oxford English professor, Lewis himself explored the depths in his scholarly books. But he also defended the literal, lamenting in his essay 'On Stories' how modern criticism denigrates the pleasures of a good yarn - and that was 50 years ago. While critics today call it 'fallacy' to interpret a work by citing the author's intentions, Lewis left a road map for us marked with special instructions for not annoying children. In his essay 'Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to Be Said,' he denounced as 'moonshine' the idea that he wrote the Narnia chronicles to proselytize the young. The lion Aslan, he wrote, bounded into his imagination from his experience as a Christian, coming to him naturally as should all good writing. 'Let the pictures tell you their own moral,' he advised in 'On Three Ways of Writing for Children.' 'If they don't show you a moral, don't put one in.' In keeping with that advice, the Narnia chronicles don't beat you on the head - nor does the faithful movie adaptation. If everyone stays on his own level - the surface for adventurers, and the depths for believers - we can all enjoy, so long as the advertisers stay out of the way. Jessica Seigel teaches journalism at New York University.

Subject: 'Lincoln's Melancholy': Sadder and Wiser From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:55:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/books/review/23cohen.html?ex=1134536400&en=05d0f2c8f0fbf398&ei=5070 October 23, 2005 'Lincoln's Melancholy': Sadder and Wiser By PATRICIA COHEN Can the generally disappointing crop of national leaders today be attributed to the Prozac Generation's addiction to cheeriness? That is one strain of thought in Joshua Wolf Shenk's book, which argues that Abraham Lincoln's lifelong struggle with depression was responsible for his becoming one of America's greatest presidents. The idea that suffering fuels creativity and wisdom is an old one, but in a country where 25 million people take antidepressants, it has its limits. The emotionally suffering artist stokes our romantic imagination; the emotionally suffering politician evokes panic. Who wants to think about Eeyore nose to nose with bin Laden? But depression, Shenk says, has gotten bad press. This is not a contrarian's gimmick; he has firsthand knowledge. In previous writings about his own depression, Shenk credited it with shaping his personality. That he would then conclude the same about his hero should not be all that surprising. If 'Lincoln's Melancholy,' a thoughtful but uneven book, is the product of a particularly personal experience, it is also the result of the latest currents in psychology and Lincoln studies. After years of dismissing the significance of Lincoln's inner life, scholars have reversed course in the last two decades. (A history of this history is nicely summarized in the afterword.) And in a series of 1998 lectures at Harvard, Andrew Delbanco linked Lincoln's private despair with his public work. 'The lesson of Lincoln's life,' he said, is that 'a passion to secure justice' can be a 'remedy for melancholy.' Shenk inverts this formulation. Melancholy, he declares, led Lincoln to have that passion. In making the case, he synthesizes the latest research, recounts family history and eyewitness testimony, and even offers readers his own interpretation of Lincoln's poetry. Trying to capture the mental state of someone who lived 150 years ago, however, is like trying to hold fast to a shadow. Fortunately, Shenk has a nuanced understanding of the difficulties: how psychiatric diagnoses can't account for reality's complexity; how some areas, like Lincoln's sex life, are unknowable; how incomplete sources, intuition and common sense are used to construct a story we call history. The structure of Shenk's story is like that of a mythic tale in which the hero sets out on a journey, goes through various trials and then uses the knowledge he gained along the way to triumph. That this journey takes place across the landscape of depression rubs against the modern American grain. 'Whereas 'melancholy' in Lincoln's time was understood to be a multifaceted phenomenon that conferred potential advantages along with grave dangers, today we tend to discount its complexities,' Shenk writes. 'As a culture Americans have strangely decided to endow optimism with unqualified favor. Politicians today compete to be the most optimistic, and accuse their opponents of pessimism, as if it were a defect.' This obsession with optimism operates like a kind of cultural Prozac. Shenk suggests that our culture's relentlessly exaggerated cheer interferes with sound political judgment. It's a provocative analysis, based on an imaginative blend of psychology and history. But that approach doesn't work nearly as well when applied to the specifics of Lincoln's life. In Shenk's eyes, Lincoln went through three stages of depression. The first hit in 1835, when he was 26, and remained through the ups and downs of his early political career in Illinois. 'I am now the most miserable man living. . . . I must die or be better,' he wrote in 1841. A presumed love affair with a friend who died, Ann Rutledge, has generally been cited as the cause of his first breakdown. But Shenk is skeptical, as he is also skeptical that Lincoln's second breakdown was caused by a temporary breakup with his future wife, Mary Todd. Depressives overreact to small events as much as to major ones, and Shenk discusses any number of things - including severe political troubles, profound doubts about Mary Todd, feelings for other women and bleak weather (a frequent trigger) - that could have been the cause. More important is what turned Lincoln from thoughts of suicide, and that was a sense of purpose, an 'irrepressible desire' to achieve something meaningful. Lincoln's marriage in 1842 to the emotionally troubled Mary Todd marks the second stage, Shenk writes. Stoic resignation (though not the most auspicious mood for a wedding) replaced the public exhibitions of despair. He maintained that reserve; in 1850, this candid chronicler of emotion barely mentioned the death of his 3-year-old son, Eddie. And though Lincoln remained an unconventional thinker, he increasingly turned to the Bible for solace. During this period, when he won election to the House of Representatives but lost out on two Senate seats, Lincoln adapted, Shenk says, working frantically and developing the discipline, creativity and perseverance that would later serve him in his political crusade. Finally, in the mid-1850's, Lincoln transformed his personal struggle into a struggle for universal justice. He responded to the loss of the Senate race to Stephen A. Douglas in 1858 not with suicidal musings but with resolve: 'The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one, or even, one hundred defeats.' Later, during the dark days of the Civil War, President Lincoln wrote, 'I expect to maintain this contest until successful, or till I die.' His experience with melancholy provided him with the creative juice that inspired his greatest writings, as well as with the religious feeling that inspired his idea of nationhood and his own role as an 'instrument' of a higher power charged with a sacred trust. At the end comes the hero's triumph: the Emancipation Proclamation fulfills his lifelong dream. Referring to his earlier rejection of suicide, Lincoln told a friend that he had indeed accomplished something meaningful: 'I believe in this measure my fondest hopes will be realized.' Shenk provides some fascinating details about Lincoln and offers a sensitive portrait of his emotional state. But in the end, no psychological profile can do justice to Lincoln's life. And the speculative 'may haves' and 'might haves' don't stretch far enough to connect cause with effect. For starters, some essential facts don't fit. The qualities that Shenk argues were the direct result of Lincoln's struggle with depression were clearly evident early in life, before the cloud of melancholy cast its shadow. Although Shenk writes that a sense of purpose was 'the key that unlocked the gates of a mental prison,' Lincoln had that drive from the beginning. 'Even in his early days,' Lincoln 'believed that there was a predestined work for him in the world,' his friend O. H. Browning said. In Lincoln's first published political speech, in 1832, he said his greatest ambition was to be 'truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem.' Nowhere in the book does Lincoln explicitly say, as Shenk insists, that his own emotional suffering sensitized him to the suffering of slaves. Shenk also overstates his case for Lincoln's melancholy, as when he characterizes perfectly appropriate responses - openly crying at the death of a close friend, disappointment at a political loss - as evidence of depression. When the specifics don't fit the story line, Shenk is forced to do some patchwork, so that the explanation of Lincoln's 'depressive realism' is followed a few pages later by an explanation of why his faith in progress and redemption also makes him a 'tragic optimist.' And while depressives may be politically acute, creative and spiritual, they don't have a monopoly on these attributes. It's obvious that the sum total of experience makes someone who he is. Precisely how that alchemy works is the mystery. Shenk's repeated references to Lincoln's gloomy appearance may be telling in a way he did not intend. By drawing attention so frequently to the outermost expression of Lincoln's sadness, he underscores how little we ultimately know about its innermost workings.

Subject: New York Through the Eyes of a Mouse From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:53:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/lifetimes/white-little.html October 28, 1945 Stuart Little: Or New York Through the Eyes of a Mouse By MALCOLM COWLEY Stuart Little By E.B. White Although Mr. and Mrs. Frederick C. Little were normal persons in every way, their second son looked very much like a mouse. Stuart, as they named him, had a mouse's sharp nose, a mouse's whiskers and a mouse's tail. At birth he was so small that a three-cent stamp would have carried him anywhere in the United States. At the age of 7, when he was fully grown, he weighed three and one-half ounces and was a little more than two inches tall, not counting the tail. He wore a gray hat and twirled a little cane. In his pleasant, mouselike manner, shy but inquisitive, he was always getting into scrapes. Once he tried to do gymnastics on the cord that hung from the window blind, to impress the household cat. The blind rolled up and Stuart was imprisoned there all morning. Once he tried to go skating in Central Park; but a dog chased him, and he had to hide in a celery grove on top of a garbage can. The can was emptied into a truck, the truck was emptied into a scow, and Stuart was carried out to sea. He would have drowned that time, except for a friend of his, a little wrenlike bird named Margalo, who let him cling to her feet and carried him back to his own window sill. When Margalo flew away to the north the following spring, Stuart went searching for her in a toy automobile with a real engine. He would drive into a filing station and say, 'Five, please.' 'Five what?' the attendant would ask, looking down at the car not half so big as a scooter. 'Five drops,' Stuart would answer in a firm if squeaky voice. 'Better look at the oil, too,' he would say before riding off to look for a brownish bird, in much the same spirit as Galahad seeking the Grail. Little Stuart is a very engaging hero, and 'Stuart Little' is an entertaining book, whether for children or their parents. If I also found it a little disappointing, perhaps that is because I had been expecting that E. B. White would write nothing less than a children's classic. He has all the required talents, including a gift for making himself understood. He never condescends to his readers: if they happen to be younger than the audience he reaches through The New Yorker, he merely takes more pains to explain his story. Style is even more important in children's books than in those for adults, because one often reads aloud to children, and a bad style wearies the reader, not to mention what it does to the listeners. Within his own range of effects, Mr. White has the best style of any American author: clear, unhackneyed and never tying the tongue into knots. He has, moreover, a talent for making big things small and homely, as if he saw the world distinctly through the wrong end of a telescope; or as if--to change the figure--he took his readers down the rabbit hole and showed them the bottle that Alice found there, the little bottle with 'Drink Me' printed on the label. The liquid in the bottle had a sort of mixed flavor of cherry tart, custard, pineapple, roast turkey, toffy and hot buttered toast; and when Alice drank it, she began shrinking until she was only ten inches high, so that she could look through a tiny door into the loveliest garden you ever saw. But the garden Mr. White describes in his essays is the world as a whole, and the effect of smallness is deceptive--just as the effect of bigness is deceptive in the authors who imitate Walt Whitman; they describe a world that is really bare and simple, whereas Mr. White's world merely gives, through art, the effect of simplicity. With this combination of talents in the author, one has high hopes for the book, and Mr. White doesn't always let us down. His dialogue is good from beginning to end. Each of the separate episodes is entertaining, and one at least is uproarious--I mean the boat race in Central Park with Stuart braving the storm at the wheel of a toy yacht. The day he spends as school teacher is an effective fable about the San Francisco Conference: 'Nix on swiping anything' and 'Absolutely no being mean' are the two fundamental laws he proposes for a world organization, and I doubt that our statesmen could improve on them. But the parts of 'Stuart Little' are greater than the whole, and the book doesn't hold to the same mood or move in a straight line. There are loose ends in the story, of the sort that make children ask, 'What happened then?'--and this time there isn't any answer. For example, a gray Angora cat plans to climb through the window and eat the little bird who is the heroine of the story. Margalo is warned and flies away; but we never learn what happened to the cat when she prowled through the house at night. We never learn what happened to Stuart as he pursued his search for Margalo: did he ever find her? Did he return to his family? Mr. White has a tendency to write amusing scenes instead of telling a story. To say that 'Stuart Little' is one of the best children's books published this year is very modest praise for a writer of his talent.

Subject: High Blood Pressure Concerns? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:50:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/health/13nutr.html?ex=1292130000&en=3ab293453120defd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 High Blood Pressure Concerns? Try Low-Fat Dairy By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Low-fat dairy foods may reduce the risk of high blood pressure, but no evidence suggests that whole milk products increase the risk. A new study has found that the fat content of dairy products may neutralize their protective effect. The researchers interviewed a group of 6,686 men and women who had graduated from universities in Spain, using questionnaires that gathered detailed information on consumption rates of whole and skim milk, yogurt, cottage cheese and 11 other dairy products. The participants also reported their body mass index, physical activity level, and any family history of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or high cholesterol. After statistical adjustment for other risk factors, the scientists found a 50 percent reduction in the incidence of hypertension in those with the highest consumption of low-fat dairy products compared with those who consumed the least. Dr. Alvaro Alonso, a co-author of the report and a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, does not recommend eating more low-fat dairy products, but substituting them for whole milk foods. 'In general,' Dr. Alonso said, 'the caloric intake of Americans is more than enough, and I believe that the nutritional advice should not be 'eat more of this,' but 'eat this instead of that.' ' The researchers cautioned that they studied only a highly educated Mediterranean population and that the consumers of low-fat dairy products in the study might have had other habits or traits that the study did not detect. Nevertheless, they write, 'the study provided evidence to support a possible role of low-fat dairy products in the primary prevention of hypertension, even in a population with a high total fat intake.' The study was published in the November issue of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Subject: Fabric Is Where Culture Meets Style From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:49:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/arts/design/13jeff.html?ex=1292130000&en=ecec8fad87c89ffb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 When Fabric Is Where Culture Meets Style By MARGO JEFFERSON Western and non-Western (or 'ethnic') clothes used to be defined in terms of fashion versus costume or national dress. Fashion was dynamic and inventive, eager to borrow from all kinds of cultures. Dress and costume were bound first and foremost to tradition; shaped of ritual and social practice committed to cultural preservation, not change. Then again, the divisions between art and craft used to be absolutely fixed as well; likewise those between high and popular or vernacular art. As recently as the 1980's, visitors to museums were sternly warned not to view exhibitions of work from Africa, Asia or South America as 'art' per se, but rather as collections of objects for religious and social use. Of course there is historical truth here. But truth is much more varied and mutable on both sides than we once thought. Context matters. We are still left with the problem of how to organize. How should we categorize all those rooms in museums given over to French, English and Early American furniture, to jewelry and silver? What about religious paintings or portraits commissioned by kings and wealthy merchants? Art or objects for social and religious use? Nothing embodies the shift in categories and ways of seeing more than clothing. For as it turns out, there is no part of the world where traditional dress and modernity - where group and individual styles - don't meet. Last week I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute to see 'Rara Avis,' an exhibition of clothes and accessories from the collection of Iris Barrel Apfel. Mrs. Apfel is much more than a connoisseur, she is an authoritative collector of antique fabric, a restoration consultant and, with her husband, the founder of Old World Textiles. She loves nothing better than prowling through thrift shops, salons and flea markets. (She jokes that she must have been a hunter-gatherer in a previous life.) Designers often call women with great style their muses. Mrs. Apfel has been her own muse. She has used her body as a meeting ground for the designs of haute couture and hoi polloi; of modernity and antiquity. The clothes of celebrated designers - Nina Ricci, James Galanos, Lanvin, Geoffrey Beene - are her palette. (So is upholstery fabric in the case of a leopard print A-line coat with matching boots and bag.) The work is finished after she has added a truly wondrous range of objects - bracelets from Turkey, cuffs from India, necklaces from South America, belts from North American Indian tribes, wraps, tobacco pouches and cuirasses. They are like found objects. Much of the jewelry, Western and non-Western, is mounted in cases or placed on scarlet-gloved hands. Each piece begins to look like a separate life form. Surely there is a species of black leather dragonfly somewhere, or a coal mine that produces lumps shaped like cuff bracelets and studded with rhinestones. A few days after seeing 'Rara Avis,' I went to the Axis Gallery in Chelsea to see 'Mfengu: Personal Objects and Textiles from South Africa.' It is an elegantly small collection. Skirts, cloaks and headscarves hang on the wall: this is dress as art. It is refined minimalism. (My colleague Holland Cotter cited the delicate severity of Agnes Martin.) The patterns of detailed, whimsical beading made me also think of Paul Klee. And the black headscarves look like constellations, with patterns of pale thread and white buttons that form circular and geometric shapes. It was tempting to think of this art as timeless. But then there was the fabric, which had once come from cattle skin, and had long since been adapted for use as British military blankets. The second room of the gallery was filled with mannequins dressed in 1960's clothes - pleated, wrapped, draped and always marvelously beaded - worn by South African Zulu and Xhosa women. What a glorious mélange of tradition and innovation! Dress had long been a code in these societies; you could tell a woman's ethnicity, age group and marital status from the color, shape and beading of her clothes and by her accessories. But here were beaded sunglasses fit for Bootsy Collins and Elton John, and a beaded headband topped by a western kerchief. Engaged women wrapped beads around thick bands of industrial steel brought to them by fiancés who worked in South Africa's mines. In some cases, glass beads that were once Venetian had given way to state-of-the-art plastic. Necklaces worn by nursing mothers (called 'nursing charms') were traditionally made from wood. Now, some resourceful craftswomen were making them from empty syringe cases and toothpaste caps. Western fashion lives by the myth of individuality even when it is dictated ('In: Purple. Out: Turquoise'), duplicated (ready-to-wear clothes) or mass-produced with a brand (Stella McCartney for H & M). How little we know about the individuality of non-Western clothes, especially among groups determined to preserve their traditions. Joan Broster, the fashion historian who collected South African clothes, was a pioneer in the field. Iris Barrel Apfel is truly an original. I expected that, and it delighted me. What I didn't expect - and what delighted me just as much - was the originality to be found among these rural South African women whose names we will never know.

Subject: Stealing From the Poor to Care From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:47:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/opinion/14walln.html?ex=1292216400&en=91d3549e8712390f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 Stealing From the Poor to Care for the Rich By NORMAN M. WALL Heathrow, Fla. FOR nearly 30 years I was chief of medicine and director of medical education at a Catholic hospital in a small Pennsylvania town. Because American-trained doctors usually preferred university hospitals or metropolitan areas, foreign medical graduates, mainly from Asia, filled all of the residency slots at our hospital, and we were happy to have them. The foreign-trained doctors who qualified tended to stay in the community, where they worked hard. Many who left went to other small communities and small hospitals where there was a need. But in all this time, I noticed that virtually none of these doctors returned home. I'm aware of only one doctor from my program who did so. When spots in medical centers were vacant, foreign-trained doctors often recruited friends and relatives in their homelands to fill them. It turns out that our gain was the developing world's loss. According to a study published in October in The New England Journal of Medicine, 25 percent of all doctors in the United States are foreign medical school graduates. A large majority - 60 percent - come from the developing world, where doctors are scarce and countries are being destroyed by AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases. Because the globalization that brings foreign doctors here also means the potential spread of viral-born diseases like avian flu to the West, it is increasingly clear that these diseases must be addressed at the source. By luring and keeping large numbers of immigrant doctors, the American medical establishment is reducing medical care where it is needed most - and, perversely, hastening the eventual arrival of health problems in our own communities. Why are we so reliant on foreign doctors? The problem is that even as the demand for doctors has grown significantly in the United States, medical school enrollment has barely budged. The annual number of medical school graduates has remained almost constant since 1980, despite a population increase of 50 million. Over that same period, only one new medical school has opened its doors. As baby boomers reach retirement, the shortage of doctors will only grow worse, creating even greater demand for doctors from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. American medical schools have long limited enrollment, thanks in part to a deeply ingrained elitism. Though medical schools are no longer excluding groups like Jews and Italian-Americans, there remains a strong bias in favor of training an elite few for research instead of rank-and-file general practitioners. What can be done to reverse this situation? First, create more places in American medical schools. Thousands of young Americans who would make good doctors are rejected by schools here. They go to Mexico and Europe to study medicine. There is not a medical school in America that cannot increase its enrollment without lowering its standards. The Council on Graduate Medical Education now endorses this approach, recommending that medical schools increase enrollment by 15 percent over the next decade. Second, open more medical schools. There are now only 125 medical schools for a population of nearly 300 million. Not all medical schools need to be world-class academic research centers. With more private support, and the opening of faculty slots to clinical physicians, new medical schools geared toward training general practitioners would increase the supply of American-trained doctors at a relatively low cost. Third, the United States should invest in training doctors and building hospitals overseas, particularly in Africa and Asia. While some American medical centers operate programs abroad, they need encouragement and greater financing. Outfitting clinics and hospitals is necessary to keep medical graduates at home in the third world. Pharmaceutical companies should also join in the effort to ensure critical drugs are available and affordable. Fourth, the World Health Organization, with generous American assistance, should augment the meager pay doctors and health care workers receive in the developing nations so they have a respectable salary. Only by taking these steps, and more, will we provide the incentives and encouragement for doctors to remain where they are most needed. The United States and other Western countries have not only ignored the appalling lack of qualified doctors in undeveloped countries, but because of self-interest have perpetuated this problem. We should resolve our shortage by ourselves, without stealing doctors from countries that desperately need them.

Subject: As Goes MBNA, So Goes Delaware From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:46:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/realestate/commercial/14mbna.html?ex=1292216400&en=9ead36364eac4a65&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 As Goes MBNA, So Goes Delaware By MAUREEN MILFORD WILMINGTON, Del. - When developers of a $90 million office building on Delaware Avenue here held a groundbreaking ceremony in September, the event had all the trappings of parties put on during the frothy 1980's. The gathering featured a buffet, speeches and socializing that were reminiscent of the festivities held after the state passed a series of favorable banking laws in 1981. The Financial Center Development Act, which eliminated ceilings on interest and fees for consumer loans, ignited an immediate migration of bank subsidiaries to Delaware. The flood of new jobs led to an office-building frenzy that transformed the city's skyline. But at the party for the city's newest multitenant building, there was 'an elephant in the living room' the guests pretended not to notice, one city official said. 'We all knew it was there, but didn't want to talk about it,' said Richard V. Pryor, the city's director of economic development. The event that threatens to turn the real estate market upside down is the imminent sale of the MBNA Corporation, the 23-year-old homegrown credit card bank that has its headquarters on Rodney Square. MBNA, the state's largest private employer, with approximately 10,500 employees, is on schedule to be sold to Bank of America of Charlotte, N.C., in early 2006. The merger announcement last summer, midway through one of the more active construction years for Wilmington, knocked the wind out of the market overnight. 'I'd be extremely bullish if it wasn't for MBNA,' said Robert Buccini, managing partner of Buccini/Pollin Group of Wilmington, developer of the new 15-story building named WSFS Bank Center for a major tenant and minority owner, WSFS Bank of Wilmington. The $35 billion sale of MBNA is expected to result in the loss of 6,000 jobs nationwide from both the credit card giant and Bank of America. Some analysts predict Delaware could shoulder at least half those cuts. In tiny Delaware, a loss of 4,000 jobs would represent about 1 percent of total employment, according to Michael D. Helmar, an economist with Moody's Economy.com in West Chester, Pa. 'That would be quite a blow for any state, but here it could be concentrated in Wilmington,' Mr. Helmar said. Concern in the real estate industry is that the job cuts could lead to an emptying out of office space that would drive down prices. Unlike many corporations today, MBNA preferred to own rather than lease buildings. The threat of rapidly climbing inventory comes at a time when the city has brought its supply to healthy levels. The vacancy rate at the end of the year in the central business district is expected to be about 10 percent, down from 18.2 percent in 2002, according to CB Richard Ellis, the commercial real estate brokerage firm. The fear is that MBNA's buildings will be sold at low prices. 'If they do that, it could dramatically affect the market,' said Philip Lipper, corporate managing director of Studley Inc. commercial real estate services in Iselin, N.J. For more than a decade, MBNA was Delaware's economic engine as it built on its expertise of issuing credit cards branded with the name of universities, professional and alumni associations and other organizations. Its rapid expansion softened the deep cutbacks beginning in 1991 at the DuPont Company, which has made Delaware its home for 203 years. MBNA, an underdog bank that started life in a converted suburban supermarket, became the biggest winner from the 1981 banking law. In 1995, the bank moved its headquarters to Wilmington and then began a steady transformation of the east side of Rodney Square, the green that is also home to DuPont. The bank is credited with the city's recent revival that made it a standout in the Philadelphia metropolitan region. 'We wouldn't be where we are if it were not for MBNA,' said Mr. Buccini, whose company has been the most active developer in the city since 1999 when it acquired two former DuPont buildings and renovated them for multitenant office use. MBNA now eclipses DuPont as the largest corporate owner and occupier of real estate in the city. It built six new buildings and acquired the former Daniel L. Herrmann Courthouse on Rodney Square. With an estimated 1.3 million square feet of space, it represents close to 10 percent of the total market in the central business district, brokers said. Statewide, the bank occupies about 4.6 million square feet from wealthy Greenville to the state's capital in Dover. Bank of America also has a presence in Delaware, with about 1,300 employees at two sites : Dover and near Newark. The bank would not disclose the size of its properties. As for future plans, neither MBNA nor Bank of America are talking. Daniel R. Reeder, senior vice president of CB Richard Ellis in Wilmington, said he had contacted MBNA because he had a client interested in buying or leasing more than 100,000 square feet in the suburbs. 'We can't get a response back,' Mr. Reeder said. Jim Donahue, a spokesman for MBNA in Wilmington, said the bank was following a deliberate integration process with the merger expected to close in early January, pending regulatory approval. Ernesto C. Anguilla, a spokesman for Bank of America, said the company had not made any decisions regarding real estate issues in Delaware. What is clear is Bank of America's management of its real estate. Since 2002, Bank of America has sold 416 properties to American Financial Realty Trust of Jenkintown, Pa., a publicly traded real estate investment trust that acquires and leases properties occupied by financial institutions. Bank of America is now a tenant in about 486 properties owned by American Financial Realty, renting a total of 14.6 million square feet. The bank occupies 39.1 percent of the space in the investment trust's portfolio and represents 33 percent of its total revenue. Muriel Lange, director of investor relations with American Financial Realty, said while she had nothing to report about future purchases from Bank of America 'obviously, we're interested in taking care of one of our best tenants.' 'If they come to us, we will be happy to evaluate it,' Ms. Lange said. Brokers said they expected the combined company to sell the former courthouse, a building MBNA bought and partly renovated but never occupied. Still, city officials say the city will get a psychological lift as work progresses on the WSFS Bank Center on Delaware Avenue, the main boulevard into downtown from Interstate 95. The 350,000-square-foot building, designed by Gensler architects, is 50 percent preleased. Besides WSFS Bank, which will make the building its headquarters, the Wilmington law firm of Morris, James, Hitchens & Williams has agreed to take about 60,000 square feet. Real estate brokers, however, are holding their breath as the year winds down. 'We're going into 2006 with our eyes on MBNA,' Mr. Reeder said. 'We've played out the moves in our mind, but who knows?'

Subject: No Sign of Progress on Farm Issue From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 03:45:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/worldbusiness/14trade.html?ex=1292216400&en=dbdf808673214318&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 No Sign of Progress on Farm Issue as World Trade Meeting Opens By KEITH BRADSHER HONG KONG - With protesters chanting slogans outside, scuffling with police and even jumping into the harbor, the World Trade Organization ministerial conference began here on Tuesday with ministers quickly starting talks on agriculture and assistance to the world's poorest countries. But while many countries vowed to provide aid and greater export opportunities for poor countries, there was, as expected, little sign of immediate progress on the core goal of lifting global barriers to farm trade. The 25-nation European Union has asserted that it cannot broaden substantially the cuts it prepared for the previous, unsuccessful ministerial conference two years ago in Cancún, Mexico, and it showed little sign of changing tack quickly, despite a series of rumors to the contrary. France has vowed to block any expanded initiative. Christine Lagarde, the French trade minister, said Tuesday evening that after meeting with her counterparts from the group's other 24 members, she was convinced 'there would be no move, no change, no additional offer.' But the European Union's member nations are scheduled to gather Thursday and Friday in Brussels to discuss budget policy. Trade ministers here will be watching those talks closely to see if they produce cuts in farm subsidies that might then be matched by a more conciliatory European negotiating position. Any such progress, however, would probably not provide much impetus to this week's meeting. Jim Sutton, New Zealand's trade minister, said late Tuesday night that a deal on agriculture would probably happen next year. 'It will, but not here in Hong Kong - expectations have been suitably reduced,' he said. Violent protests against globalization disrupted the W.T.O.'s Seattle conference in 1999 and the Cancún meeting; this year's conference faced protesters as well, though not to the same degree. Carrying banners like 'Target W.T.O.' and 'Smash the W.T.O. and Global Capitalism,' the demonstrators were channeled by police down streets lined with some of Hong Kong's oldest and shabbiest apartment buildings to a broad concrete cargo dock. The dock is several hundred yards across a bay from the convention center where ministers have gathered. A group of South Korean farmers, angry that free trade rules might force their country to permit increased imports of inexpensive rice, carried a heavy wooden altar bedecked with silk and flowers during the march. Shortly before reaching the dock, they set the altar ablaze and tried to use it as a battering ram to pierce lines of helmeted riot police guarding the convention center. Police pushed back and used a skin irritant spray to halt the protesters; no immediate arrests were made for fear that detaining protesters might make matters worse, but the police plan to investigate what happened, said Alfred Ma, the chief spokesman for the Hong Kong police. Seven demonstrators were injured, three requiring hospitalization, while two police officers suffered minor cuts and bruises, Mr. Ma said. Officers stood back and did nothing even when more than 100 protesters, mainly South Korean farmers, dived from the dock into the water, swimming toward the convention center. They soon turned back. The police said last week that a powerful shore current would prevent swimmers from succeeding on this route. Protesters from other countries focused on wages and visas for migrant workers, farm subsidies and fish tariffs. The opening day of the conference seemed at times more like a foreign aid gathering than a negotiating session on global trade. The European Union said Tuesday that it would increase its annual aid to very poor countries - to $1 billion starting in 2010 from $400 million now - to help them cope with the lost government revenue and other difficulties that may result from lowering duties. Japan said Friday that it would also increase aid, and the United States has hinted that it will follow suit this week. The European Union also criticized the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, for a newspaper advertisement critical of efforts here to limit food aid. European officials have been calling here for the United States to reduce the amount of American-grown food it gives to poor countries and donate cash instead, which may encourage poor countries' farmers to grow more. Industrialized countries have stepped forward in the last two days with plans to eliminate all duties and quotas on imports from 50 of the world's poorest countries, but each country has exempted a few of the most sensitive industries - often those in which very poor countries are actually competitive. The United States is excluding many textiles and Canada is excluding dairy and poultry. Seiichi Kondo, a senior Japanese diplomat, said Japan was still drawing up a list of exclusions that was likely to include rice and footwear. American officials have also been talking frequently with representatives of West African nations regarding American cotton subsidies, which depress the prices that West African farmers receive for their crops and which a W.T.O. panel has ruled illegal. The Bush administration has eliminated some of the subsidies and wants Congress to repeal others. While agreements on cotton and duty-free, quota-free access for the least-developed countries would give ministers something to show for their efforts, the preoccupation here with aiding the poor is starting to draw criticism in Washington. 'Negotiators need to keep the focus on the biggest issues that are clogging up the works,' especially access to overseas markets for agricultural exports, Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in a statement from Washington. 'That's why I'm concerned that cotton and quota-free, duty-free proposals could become the overriding focus of the Hong Kong ministerial.'

Subject: Economic Flexibility From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:47:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The dollar has been gaining strength for the last 10 years, but I would imagine the gains will lessen or even reverse in time, possibly in the coming year. So I have ample holdings abroad and will continue to, but I find no reason to worry now about a significant weakness in the American economy. What impresses me is the strength in the American economy as well as the strength in every developed economy no matter the increase in oil and gas costs or the slowing of several housing markets or the strength of the dollar. The flexibility of developed economies is quite impressive just now.

Subject: The ancient relic & the US dollar From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 12:02:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The following translated from the China Peoples Daily online: 'Asian central banks likely to increase gold reserves' 'When hedge fund pushed gold price to a record high in 18 years, central banks of Asian countries including China are expected to further increase their gold reserves, according to International Finance News reports. Russia, Argentina and South Africa have decided this month to increase their gold reserves, which reversed the selling trend in six years by world central banks, especially European ones. It is only a question of time for Asian central banks to follow and buy in gold: they hold 2.6 trillion US dollars in foreign exchange reserves, and able to change more of them into gold as a hedge against US dollar falls. The US dollar will inevitably slip further. Some budget deficits of the seven major industrial countries are at a record level, and central banks are 'printing banknotes' to devalue their currencies. Huge amount of budget deficits and debts in Europe, America and Japan will finally force them to increase real interest rates in an effort to drag economies back to the right track. This means slower growth rate and lower prices of stock, bond and real estate as well as faster increase of inflation -- a golden opportunity for central banks to buy in gold. Asian countries have good reasons to hold more gold. Compared with developed countries, their percentages of gold in foreign exchange reserves are apparently small. As the World Gold Council pointed out, Asian investors are the world largest gold consumers, but gold only takes 1.1 percent in China's official reserves, or 1.3 and 3.6 percent in Japan and India respectively. A sharp contrast is the American percentage of 63.8 percent, and over 50 percent in Germany, France and Italy respectively. Due to fluctuations of major currencies, Asian countries may not choose to change their US dollars into euros. Meanwhile, they don't like holding too much dollars, so one of the way outs is simply to have more gold. Of courses, Asian countries need coordination in this regard, since action from a single country may trigger strong fluctuations of exchange rates and harm economic activities.' By People's Daily Online

Subject: Re: The ancient relic & the US dollar From: im1dc To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:11:57 (EST) Email Address: im1dc@chartertn.net Message: Artcle #2 from The People's Daily News on GOLD: Gold price surge triggers investment craze 12:56, December 14, 2005 After international gold prices hit a 24 year high last week, jewellers in Shanghai have said they will once again raise the price of gold jewellery from this Tuesday - the last hike was just a few weeks ago. The sky high prices have triggered a gold fever in the city with more people buying gold bars and jewellery as investments. Jewellers in Shanghai increased the price of gold products on Tuesday as a result of the global gold price shooting up to a 24-year high of 527 US dollars an ounce in New York last Friday, with a weekly growth rate of more than 10 per cent over the last three weeks. Officials with the Shanghai Gold & Jewellery Trade Association didn't quantify the pending price increase, saying it all depends on market developments. The local retail gold price now stands at 157 yuan, or 19.4 US dollars per gram, an increase of 2-yuan this week alone and the 16th rise this year. A sales manager with Shanghai Laofengxiang company, a leading local jeweller, estimated the price could rise to 160 yuan per gram, referring to the market in Guangzhou, where the retail price has risen 6 yuan to 166 yuan per gram. Retail prices also jumped in Beijing and Fuzhou. During the past weekend, daily turnover of the gold store has approached 800 thousand yuan, even higher than that during the 'Golden Week' holidays. The price of gold bars also rose by about 2 yuan last week, but despite the soaring cost gold still appears to be retaining its allure as a safe haven for investors. Local banks have seen an increase in the number of customers and the turnover of gold has jumped as people expect the price to continue its upward spiral as the New Year and the traditional Spring Festival approach. Other sectors of the gold trade also saw a bullish market. For example, a gold trading product 'Jinhangjia' was launched this July which differs from paper trading and allows buyers to demand the physical delivery of gold. Over the past 3 months, the amount bought in this way almost tripled. And report says the overall trading volume has been holding steady at around 10 kilograms a day. Evening trade in gold is also booming in Shanghai since local banks began night trading last month. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Shanghai Branch has traded 10 kilograms of gold since December 1st when it began trading between 9:15pm and 11:30pm Monday to Thursday. The Bank of China Shanghai branch said in the evening market, its paper gold product called 'Huangjinbao' accounted for 1 third of the whole day's sales, after it began to sell paper gold 24 hours a day in the middle of last month. The bank said some people only have time to trade gold in the evening, so their evening trade volume is expected to account for 50 percent of daily sales. The evening market is synchronized with the global market, because it coincides with the closing of the London exchange and New York's opening. The price hike has been widely attributed to higher demand due to several reasons, including unstable international politics, high energy prices and the prospect of rising inflation. Source: CRI news

Subject: Re: The ancient relic & the US dollar From: im1dc To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:09:36 (EST) Email Address: im1dc@chartertn.net Message: From the English version website of The Peoples Daily News: One of two articles on GOLD I could find, other to follow: 17:21, December 13, 2005 'Paper gold' available for foreign currency accounts in Beijing The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has taken the first step in making gold trading available for foreign currency accounts, which is also know as 'paper gold' business. People only need to open multi-currency current accounts to make exchanges between US dollar and gold (ounce). Through this, investors can profit from the fluctuations of international gold prices. Similar with 'paper gold', the amount of gold held by individuals is only recorded in their accounts and they cannot withdraw physical gold. Investors therefore can save the costs for the storage, transportation and evaluation of gold. Since the 'paper gold' businesses provided by the Bank of China and the Bank of Construction are limited to Renminbi accounts, analysts hold that ICBC's offer this time is a new channel for those individual investors willing to hold foreign currencies. With the energy price hikes and fluctuations of US dollar as well as pouring hedge funds in recent years, the international gold prices has been growing. The price on Dec. 7 hit a 23-year high of US$508/oz. By People's Daily Online Link: http://english.people.com.cn/200512/13/eng20051213_227739.html

Subject: Comical From: Terri To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 12:38:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: This is fun but nonsense. A gold purchase of any size by Asian central banks to diversify from dollar holdings would be physically impossible and a monetary disaster. Imagine China buying $100 billion dollars in gold, and that would do little for diversification.

Subject: Re: Comical From: Pete Weis To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:03:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'A gold purchase of any size by Asian central banks to diversify from dollar holdings would be physically impossible and a monetary disaster.' Terri. Why are Russia, Argentina and South Africa increasing their gold reserves and the US and European countries holding so much in gold reserves if what you say is true? I think it's a fair question - don't you?

Subject: The reality From: Johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 21:44:46 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Pete I have been arguing this point over at siliconinvestor with several Gold Bugs. In reality, the USA has nukular bombs, nukular aircraft carriers, nukular stealth bombers, nukular submarines, basically I dont see anyone telling us we cant have what we want because we dont have shiny metal to trade them while we still have the worlds only Superpower Military and have to agree with Terri on this issue. Not that I disagree with warren that our currency is worthless because we dont make anything, or that china india will try to diversify away from dollars where we dont let them buy what they want with them - and try to get into GOLD - but the reality is - when they come to us for oil with dollars or gold - it wont matter - they wont get it until they have a military to TAKE it from us - which will take them a long time to build eh? Bush is crapping his pants over north korea because they want in on the Nukular Party too - not because of their horde of shiny metal. The naval shipping lanes we protect and bases we build are near OIL routes and production - not gold mines and gold shipping routes no? Gold is OK if you dont trust your government, you dont trust fiat, and the government is not going to use tanks or bombs or nukular to force thier full faith and credit on you - but I am betting Pete - if about 20 US military snipers have a few AR15's trained on your forehead and say your gold, your dollars, or your life - shiny metal is not going to mean much to you is it? Its not about the gold, or the dollars, its about the men with the guns who can put you in jail or put you in a six foot hole ultimately isnt it?

Subject: Re: The reality From: Pete Weis To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 07:41:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: In a global economy with all of its interdependence, there are limits and severe consequences for any nation no matter how powerful to force its military will on other nations. We are seeing that in Iraq. This is not to say, however, that competition for world resources won't end up in military conflict in the future - just that there will likely be no winners.

Subject: Re: The reality From: Johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 11:48:31 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Pete you are right of course - the empire can only stretch as far and last as long as its military might - which seems to take longer to weaken than the currency no? I think of egypt and rome, ancient china and spain. France with napolean and britain just 100 years ago. The USSR lost its currency valuation and military might in which order? I read many articles talking about problems with Iran and N Korea - I think there is more oil in Iran so in the interests of Empire if we are to expand our military presence to one of those regions - it seems Iran is the better choice eh?

Subject: Re: The reality From: Pete Weis To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 15, 2005 at 18:38:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: If we were to go into Iran. The neo-conservatives better use their connections to get their kids into the Texas or Alabama Air National Guard because the draft would have to be reinstated!!!!

Subject: HAHA From: Johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Fri, Dec 16, 2005 at 02:40:48 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message:

Subject: Looking Ahead From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 14:54:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: This is the time to be seriously looking ahead and thinking of any value that can be added to portfolios in the coming month. I would not be surprised if the dollar rally slowed, but I am not worried about the economy or stock or bond markets. Real estate? I am not decided.

Subject: Re: Looking Ahead From: Pete Weis To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:22:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Terri. Thanks for responding to my post. The heavy borrowing by our government to cover the fiscal deficit and heavy borrowing by US consumers to cover the current account deficit puts downward pressure on the dollar. Only higher interest rates and or heavy cuts in government spending or higher taxes can put the brakes on the slide. As you can see from the following Bloomberg article, the dollar had been sliding the previous three years before the 'rally' this year. Now with the housing market begining to slow, the main source for consumer borrowing is diminishing. This will slowdown the economy in 2006 and beyond. This means the Fed will stop its rate hikes and, in fact, may reverse direction and begin cutting again if things slow too much. This will cause the dollar to drop more sharply. This is why, IMO, Paul Krugman stated this last year that the dollar would begin to decline with a fading housing market in 2006. From Bloomberg: U.S. Trade Deficit Widened to a Record $68.9 Billion in October Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widened to a record $68.9 billion in October, as imports of crude oil, automobiles and televisions increased, a government report showed. The gap in goods and services trade reported by the Commerce Department today exceeded even the highest estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. In September, the shortfall was $66 billion. Imports rose 2.7 percent and exports increased 1.7 percent in October. The U.S. had record deficits with China, Canada and Mexico. U.S. economic growth may be limited in coming months as the country relies more on overseas rather than domestic production to meet demand for electronics, clothes and other goods, economists said. The resumption of Boeing Co. aircraft shipments and an increase in business equipment exports to overseas economies that are on the mend weren't enough to improve the trade balance. ``We saw a bit of a bounce back in exports, but there's only so far that can go,'' Michael Gregory, a senior economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns in Toronto, said before the report. ``Petroleum imports and a still-strong U.S. dollar will conspire to keep the gap near record levels for the next several months.'' Economists expected the deficit to narrow to $62.8 billion for the month compared with a previously reported $59 billion gap in September, according to the median of 61 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The estimates ranged from $59.5 billion to $65 billion. The U.S. dollar may extend earlier losses against the Japanese yen and euro. Against the yen, the dollar fell to 118.55 at 6:32 a.m. in New York from 119.95 yen late yesterday, according to electronic foreign-exchange dealing system EBS. The dollar is down 2 percent from a 32-month high against the yen on Dec. 5. The fluctuation was the largest of any currency today. U.S. Dollar The dollar also dropped to the lowest in a month against the euro and weakened versus at least a dozen other currencies after the Federal Reserve yesterday stopped saying there is ``accommodation'' in its policy. The dollar dropped to $1.2027 per euro from $1.1945. The dollar is still headed for the first annual gain in four years, climbing 15.5 percent against the yen and 12.6 percent versus the euro. It reached a two-year high against the euro on Nov. 15. The deficit in goods widened to a record to a record $73.9 billion from $71.3 billion in September. Imports Imports of goods and services increased to $176.4 billion in October from $171.8 billion. The value of crude oil imports rose even as the price fell to $56.29 a barrel, compared with $57.32 in September. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange averaged $62.39 a barrel last month, down from $65.55 in September. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted Gulf Coast energy supplies and drove prices to records in September. The U.S. imported 304.5 million barrels of crude oil in October, up from 278.5 million a month earlier. Exports of both goods and services rose to $107.5 billion in October from $105.8 billion the previous month. Exports of capital goods, which include civilian aircraft, rose $1.8 billion from September. Exports of industrial supplies, such as chemicals and fuel oil, increased $59 billion from a month earlier. Exports of consumer goods fell $554 million. The monthly trade deficit with China increased to $20.5 billion, the highest ever, from $20.1 billion in September. The U.S. trade deficit with China for the first 10 months of the year was $166.8 billion, compared with $131.1 billion at the same time last year.

Subject: Shiller and today's stock market From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 07:49:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: From Fortune: We're Still Too Exuberant The man who wrote the book on irrational investing says we haven't learned our lesson. I believe him. FORTUNE Tuesday, December 13, 2005 By Geoffrey Colvin One of the most important lessons you can ever learn about markets is also one of the easiest to forget: Just because prices are more reasonable than they were doesn't mean they're reasonable. I'm sorry to report that it's absolutely the lesson to keep in mind now that the Dow has hit 42-year highs and crept back up near 11,000. The preeminent teacher of that lesson is Robert Shiller, a Yale professor with a strong record of thinking independently and being right. His book Irrational Exuberance, arguing that stock prices were insanely high, appeared almost precisely at their peak in March 2000. Now he has updated the book to reflect 2005 valuations and concludes that, believe it or not, the market is still irrationally exuberant. How does he come to this conclusion? After all, stocks are generally lower than back in the bubble days, and we've had four years of economic growth to rehabilitate corporate profits. His answer is simple. As he told me the other day, all the competing theories boil down to one easy-to-understand calculation: 'The trailing P/E ratio for the S&P composite is still around 25, vs. a long-term average of 15.' That's a huge difference, much greater than what you read about in the newspapers. The commonly cited figures—a current market multiple of 17, vs. a historical average of 15.2—are based on the previous 12 months' earnings. But, as Shiller points out, that's foolish: 'Twelve months is kind of short, only a fraction of one business cycle.' So he uses a ten-year earnings average, an approach advocated by Graham and Dodd in Security Analysis, the value investor's bible. And while prices are clearly above the long-term trend any way you cut it, by that measure they are still mountainously beyond normal. For some people—I don't want to mention any names, but cast a glance at “Nope—We’re Too Gloomy”—that conclusion is impossible to accept. So they contort the numbers and cook up theories about why today's prices aren't really as high as they appear. The most significant theory, which surveys show is believed by vast armies of investors, is that stocks aren't as risky as we used to think they were, so they're actually worth more than investors have historically been willing to pay. In other words, we were simply wrong for the past several decades but at last have seen the light, and in that light today's overall market valuations make sense. Shiller would hoot at that one if hooting were his style. Instead he just mentions that this is 'the Dow 36,000 theory.' That 1999 book by investing columnist James Glassman and former Fed economist Kevin Hassett, you'll recall, argued that prices would rocket as the populace realized that in the long run, stocks always beat other investments, so they're really safer than conventionally thought. We must all thank Shiller for reminding us of this prediction from the book: '... a sensible target date for Dow 36,000 is early 2005, but it could be reached much earlier.' Or not. It's easy to make fun of Dow 36,000, but it's more important to recognize that the theory behind it is still at work, and it still doesn't add up. As Shiller points out with voluminous support, it just isn't true that stocks always outperform other investments over long-term periods, and, he says, 'there is certainly no reason to think they must in the future.' If that's true, then stocks would appear to be just as risky as ever. We are not in a 'new era.' Math still works the same way. And today's valuations are too high. No one wants to hear that. It's almost irresistible to believe that after all we investors have endured—the hellish bear market, the recession, the scandals—we've emerged from the crucible sadder but wiser, finally willing to face the truth about stock values. But it isn't so. The amazing reality is that we haven't learned our lesson even yet.

Subject: Interesting Essay From: Terri To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 12:28:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thanks, for the interesting essay. Shiller is always worth attending to.

Subject: Bear Problem From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 13:19:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The problem with bears is always the same, they offer no reasonable way to invest securely. So, I go about looking for value and faired well through the bear market and continue to do so. This is another bull market year in stocks, a superb bull market year internationally. Real estate continues to be strong. Bonds have been remarkably stable.

Subject: The Military From: Johnny5 To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 21:53:06 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: My Army Recruiting Father said son - as long as we have the worlds strongest military - we will get our way - never doubt that. Japan, Italy, Germany tested the war machine - and perhaps again at a time in the future modern war machines and nation states will be tested again - it seems that is what man always ultimately resorts to in the end - his war machine - it does not matter how much oil china wants or how much gold or dollars they have to trade for it - if we want more and have the bigger military - we win according to my pop - why is this any less true than at any other time in man's history?

Subject: Re: The Military From: M Paulding To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 23:47:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: It's less true now than it was then because history is no longer on our side.

Subject: No Sign of Progress on Farm Issue From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 07:07:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/business/worldbusiness/14trade.html?ex=1292216400&en=dbdf808673214318&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 14, 2005 No Sign of Progress on Farm Issue as World Trade Meeting Opens By KEITH BRADSHER HONG KONG - With protesters chanting slogans outside, scuffling with police and even jumping into the harbor, the World Trade Organization ministerial conference began here on Tuesday with ministers quickly starting talks on agriculture and assistance to the world's poorest countries. But while many countries vowed to provide aid and greater export opportunities for poor countries, there was, as expected, little sign of immediate progress on the core goal of lifting global barriers to farm trade. The 25-nation European Union has asserted that it cannot broaden substantially the cuts it prepared for the previous, unsuccessful ministerial conference two years ago in Cancún, Mexico, and it showed little sign of changing tack quickly, despite a series of rumors to the contrary. France has vowed to block any expanded initiative. Christine Lagarde, the French trade minister, said Tuesday evening that after meeting with her counterparts from the group's other 24 members, she was convinced 'there would be no move, no change, no additional offer.' But the European Union's member nations are scheduled to gather Thursday and Friday in Brussels to discuss budget policy. Trade ministers here will be watching those talks closely to see if they produce cuts in farm subsidies that might then be matched by a more conciliatory European negotiating position. Any such progress, however, would probably not provide much impetus to this week's meeting. Jim Sutton, New Zealand's trade minister, said late Tuesday night that a deal on agriculture would probably happen next year. 'It will, but not here in Hong Kong - expectations have been suitably reduced,' he said. Violent protests against globalization disrupted the W.T.O.'s Seattle conference in 1999 and the Cancún meeting; this year's conference faced protesters as well, though not to the same degree. Carrying banners like 'Target W.T.O.' and 'Smash the W.T.O. and Global Capitalism,' the demonstrators were channeled by police down streets lined with some of Hong Kong's oldest and shabbiest apartment buildings to a broad concrete cargo dock. The dock is several hundred yards across a bay from the convention center where ministers have gathered. A group of South Korean farmers, angry that free trade rules might force their country to permit increased imports of inexpensive rice, carried a heavy wooden altar bedecked with silk and flowers during the march. Shortly before reaching the dock, they set the altar ablaze and tried to use it as a battering ram to pierce lines of helmeted riot police guarding the convention center. Police pushed back and used a skin irritant spray to halt the protesters; no immediate arrests were made for fear that detaining protesters might make matters worse, but the police plan to investigate what happened, said Alfred Ma, the chief spokesman for the Hong Kong police. Seven demonstrators were injured, three requiring hospitalization, while two police officers suffered minor cuts and bruises, Mr. Ma said. Officers stood back and did nothing even when more than 100 protesters, mainly South Korean farmers, dived from the dock into the water, swimming toward the convention center. They soon turned back. The police said last week that a powerful shore current would prevent swimmers from succeeding on this route. Protesters from other countries focused on wages and visas for migrant workers, farm subsidies and fish tariffs. The opening day of the conference seemed at times more like a foreign aid gathering than a negotiating session on global trade. The European Union said Tuesday that it would increase its annual aid to very poor countries - to $1 billion starting in 2010 from $400 million now - to help them cope with the lost government revenue and other difficulties that may result from lowering duties. Japan said Friday that it would also increase aid, and the United States has hinted that it will follow suit this week. The European Union also criticized the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, for a newspaper advertisement critical of efforts here to limit food aid. European officials have been calling here for the United States to reduce the amount of American-grown food it gives to poor countries and donate cash instead, which may encourage poor countries' farmers to grow more. Industrialized countries have stepped forward in the last two days with plans to eliminate all duties and quotas on imports from 50 of the world's poorest countries, but each country has exempted a few of the most sensitive industries - often those in which very poor countries are actually competitive. The United States is excluding many textiles and Canada is excluding dairy and poultry. Seiichi Kondo, a senior Japanese diplomat, said Japan was still drawing up a list of exclusions that was likely to include rice and footwear. American officials have also been talking frequently with representatives of West African nations regarding American cotton subsidies, which depress the prices that West African farmers receive for their crops and which a W.T.O. panel has ruled illegal. The Bush administration has eliminated some of the subsidies and wants Congress to repeal others. While agreements on cotton and duty-free, quota-free access for the least-developed countries would give ministers something to show for their efforts, the preoccupation here with aiding the poor is starting to draw criticism in Washington. 'Negotiators need to keep the focus on the biggest issues that are clogging up the works,' especially access to overseas markets for agricultural exports, Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in a statement from Washington. 'That's why I'm concerned that cotton and quota-free, duty-free proposals could become the overriding focus of the Hong Kong ministerial.'

Subject: Fox Sparrow in the Snow From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:56:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5942&u=4|3|... Fox Sparrow in the Snow New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Subject: Eastern Screech-owl (gray morph) From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:55:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5948&u=4|0|... Eastern Screech-owl (gray morph) New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Subject: Clooney and a Maze of Collusion From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:20:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/movies/23syri.html?ex=1290402000&en=f2035e0a16ba7635&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 Clooney and a Maze of Collusion By A. O. SCOTT Swaddled in 30 extra pounds and a thick gray beard, George Clooney moves through his portion of 'Syriana' with furrowed brow and a slow, careful gait. His character, Bob Barnes, is a not-unfamiliar type in the world of movie espionage: the weary, cynical C.I.A. operative on the brink of an attack of conscience. Bob, who has spent his career in cheerful spots like Beirut and Tehran, is the kind of guy who knows a lot more than he says, and who speaks in a low monotone, evading more questions than he answers. When pressed for information - by an aggressive government bureaucrat or by his impatient teenage son (Max Minghella) - his default response seems to be, 'It's complicated.' Quite so. 'Syriana,' written and directed by Stephen Gaghan (who also wrote 'Traffic,' its obvious precursor), is a movie that demands and rewards close attention. Loosely based on the memoirs of a C.I.A. veteran, Robert Baer, on whom Mr. Clooney's character is modeled, it aims to be a great deal more than a standard geopolitical thriller and thereby succeeds in being one of the best geopolitical thrillers in a very long time. Along with Mr. Baer's book 'See No Evil,' it assimilates a whole shelf of post-9/11 nonfiction and journalism, spinning a complex, intriguing narrative about oil, terrorism, money and power. Parsing its details requires a good deal of concentration: important information is conveyed through whispered conversations and sidelong glances, and you may sometimes wish for a chart diagraming all the patterns of influence, connection and coincidence. But the mental labor of figuring out just what is going on is part of what makes the film such a rich and entertaining experience. And its sheer entertainment value - the way that Mr. Gaghan, with remarkable conviction and confidence, both honors and scrambles the conventions of the genre - is worth emphasizing. Since it deals with some contentious contemporary realities, it is likely to be greeted with a fair amount of chin-rubbing commentary. Though 'Syriana' is expressly a work of fiction, it will no doubt be subjected to a round of pseudo-fact-checking, and its dark, conspiratorial view of the present and recent past is likely to be challenged, either because it is too complicated or not complicated enough. Someone is sure to complain that the world doesn't really work the way it does in 'Syriana': that oil companies, law firms and Middle Eastern regimes are not really engaged in semiclandestine collusion, to control the global oil supply and thus influence the destinies of millions of people. O.K., maybe. Call me naïve - or paranoid, or liberal, or whatever the favored epithet is this week - but I'm inclined to give Mr. Gaghan the benefit of the doubt. And even if the picture's rendering of current events turns out to be entirely off base, the energy, care and intelligence with which it makes its points are hard to dismiss. There are four main storylines, linked by the anxious, irregular heartbeat of Alexandre Desplat's score - each one subject to enough twists and reversals to make plot summary a treacherous exercise. While Bob is sorting out his midcareer issues - his bosses, concerned about his maverick tendencies, appear to want either to confine him to a desk job or send him off to be killed somewhere - some members of the younger generation are finding troubles and opportunities of their own. Bennet Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) is a rising lawyer at a Washington firm who is called upon to run due diligence in advance of a merger between two energy companies. Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a financial analyst living with his family in expatriate luxury in Geneva, becomes the financial adviser to Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), who is eager to succeed his father as ruler of an oil-rich emirate and inaugurate a program of political and economic modernization. In Prince Nasir's country, meanwhile, a young Pakistani laborer named Wasim (Mazhar Munir) succumbs to the lure of radical Islam, seeking refuge from the dusty oil fields and crowded hostels in the tranquillity of a madrasa. These five characters - Bob, Wasim, Prince Nasir, Bennett and Bryan - add up to a sort of composite hero, though their heroism, collective and individual, is highly ambiguous. Not one of them is in possession of a clear conscience or a singular motive, and not one of them fully claims the audience's sympathy. Greed and ambition sometimes coincide with idealism, and self-interest shades into scruple. Each of the five is afflicted by family problems - the mutual disappointments of fathers and sons is the film's principal psychological motif - and throws himself into the world of money, politics and power as a way to escape or salve his private unhappiness. Viewed in hindsight, and as a whole, 'Syriana' can seem a bit chilly and schematic. Mr. Gaghan handles the main characters with analytical detachment, leaving it to the actors to supply each of them with a full measure of individuality. They prove more than equal to the task, and it is hard to single any one of them out. At different points in the film - and with the repeated viewings it amply repays - you notice Mr. Munir's delicate, watchful sensitivity; Mr. Damon's angry, boyish bravado; Mr. Siddig's icy mastery; or Mr. Wright's stealthy ferocity. Mr. Clooney, an executive producer as well as one of the stars, pushes understatement almost to the point of inscrutability. Is that guilt we see in Bob's eyes, or fatigue? Skepticism or fear? There are too many fine supporting performances to list, though Christopher Plummer, Chris Cooper, Amanda Peet, William C. Mitchell and Shahid Ahmed all deserve mention. A movie this crowded and wide-ranging - the number of speaking parts seems to be exceeded only by the variety of locations - inevitably resorts to various kinds of shorthand. The secondary characters tend to be stock figures. When a character is shown working in his garden and then, later, swirling brandy in a snifter, you know he is a bad guy. A man who shoots billiards in the middle of the day can be counted on to be feckless and self-indulgent, and anyone who makes a high-minded speech on the virtues of free-market capitalism might as well have 'fall guy' tattooed on his forehead. All of which is to say that 'Syriana' is, in the end, a movie. Rather than dispense with the familiar signposts of Hollywood storytelling, it brings them to a state of heightened attention and pushes beyond the clichés of heroism and suspense toward something a good deal more unsettling. Something you might even call realism.

Subject: Economic Hit Man From: Johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 22:29:07 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: He was using hookers to influence middle eastern princes since the 1960's - that is what it took to corrupt the prince - not money or power - but a blonde woman sex worker. Now people want me to believe if you have a little shiny metal in your pocket it will all BE OK - but as terri says - that is comical - its not about the gold - it never was - its about the power and those willing to do whatever it takes to weild it - like murder, kill, and destroy. I will have to watch this movie - thanks Emma.

Subject: America's Shame in Montreal From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:18:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/opinion/13tue1.html?ex=1292130000&en=16890ab75ba802ec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 America's Shame in Montreal The best that can be said of the recently concluded meeting on climate change in Montreal is that the countries that care about global warming did not allow the United States delegation to blow the whole conference to smithereens. Washington was intent on making sure that the conferees required no more of the United States than what it is already doing to restrain greenhouse gas emissions, which amounts to virtually nothing. At least the Americans' shameful foot-dragging did not bring the entire process to a complete halt, and for this the other industrialized countries, chiefly Britain and Canada, deserve considerable praise. It cannot be easy for America's competitors to move forward with costly steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while the United States refuses to carry its share of the load. Nevertheless, the Europeans and other signatories to the 1997 treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions - a treaty the Bush administration has rejected - promised to work toward new and more ambitious targets and timetables when the agreement lapses in 2012. For its part, the Bush administration deserves only censure. No one expected a miraculous conversion. But given the steadily mounting evidence of the present and potential consequences of climate change - disappearing glaciers, melting Arctic ice caps, dying coral reefs, threatened coastlines, increasingly violent hurricanes - one would surely have expected America's negotiators to arrive in Montreal willing to discuss alternatives. They did not. Instead, the principal negotiators, Paula Dobriansky and Harlan Watson, continued to tout the benefits of an approach that combines voluntary reductions by individual companies with further research into 'breakthrough' technologies. That will not work. While a few companies may decide to proceed on their own, the private sector as a whole will neither create new technologies nor broadly deploy them unless all countries are required to do their share under a regime that combines agreed-upon targets with strong financial incentives for reaching them. To believe that companies will spend heavily to reduce emissions while their competitors are not doing the same is to believe in the tooth fairy. The Europeans are finding solace in the fact that the Americans - after much kicking and screaming, and after public rebukes by Canada's prime minister and a surprise visitor named Bill Clinton - finally agreed to join informal 'nonbinding' discussions that will try to entice developing countries like China and India into the process. It's certainly true that without the developing nations on board, any effort to keep greenhouses gases at manageable levels will be for naught. China, for example, is building coal-fired power plants at a rapid clip and is expected to overtake the United States as the biggest producer of greenhouse gases in 20 years. But talk is cheap, and nonbinding talk is even cheaper. And talk alone will not get the developing world into the game. Why should India and China make major sacrifices while the United States, in effect, gets a free ride? The battle against global warming will never be won unless America joins it, urgently and enthusiastically. Our grandchildren will look back with anger and astonishment if we fail to do so.

Subject: Old, for Sure, but Human? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:13:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/science/13find.html December 13, 2005 Old, for Sure, but Human? By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD What is one to make of the intriguing footprints found in Mexico? The scientists who discovered them said last summer that they were made by humans walking in fresh volcanic ash 40,000 years ago. This seemed incredible, since no human presence in the Americas had been established earlier than about 13,000 years ago. So geologists went to the scene, near Puebla. They came to an even more astonishing conclusion: the prints were in 1.3-million-year-old rock, meaning the prints were laid down more than a million years before modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa. The surprising antiquity of the rock bearing the prints was determined by a research team led by Paul R. Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California. The researchers conducted repeated argon dating and investigated the magnetic imprint in the rock. All the tests yielded the 1.3-million-year date. In the journal Nature, the team wrote, 'We conclude that either hominid migration into the Americas occurred very much earlier than previously believed, or that the features in question were not made by humans on recently erupted ash.' The original discovery was made in 2003 by Silvia Gonzalez of Liverpool John Moores University in England. Dr. Renne questioned that these were, in fact, footprints. 'Their distribution is quite random, not like something made by early humans,' he said by telephone. Paleontologists she consulted, Dr. Renne said, agreed. It may be, they said, that the prints are recent breaks in the hard surface caused by vibrations from a nearby highway and an active quarry.

Subject: Hot Technology for Chilly Streets From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:11:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/technology/13skype.html?ex=1292130000&en=06e1efb9711e7049&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Hot Technology for Chilly Streets in Estonia By MARK LANDLER TALLINN, Estonia - Visiting the offices of Skype feels like stumbling on to a secret laboratory in a James Bond movie, where mad scientists are hatching plots for world domination. The two-year-old company, which offers free calls over the Internet, is hidden at the end of an unmarked corridor in a grim Soviet-era academic building on the outskirts of this Baltic port city. By 5 p.m. at this time of year, it is long past sunset, and a raw wind has emptied the streets. Inside Skype, however, things are crackling - as they are everywhere in Estonia's technology industry. The company has become a hot calling card for Estonia, a northern outpost that joined the European Union only last year but has turned itself into a sort of Silicon Valley on the Baltic Sea. 'We are recognized as the most dynamic country in Europe' in information technology, said Linnar Viik, a computer science professor who has nurtured start-ups and is regarded as something of a guru by Estonia's entrepreneurs. 'The question is, How do we sustain that dynamism?' Foreign investors are swooping into Tallinn's tiny airport in search of the next Skype (rhymes with pipe). The company most often mentioned, Playtech, designs software for online gambling services. It is contemplating an initial public offering that bankers say could raise up to $1 billion. Indeed, there is an outlaw mystique to some of Estonia's ventures, drawn here to Europe's eastern frontier. Whether it is online gambling, Internet voice calls or music file-sharing - Skype's founders are also behind the most popular music service, Kazaa - Estonian entrepreneurs are testing the limits of business and law. And by tapping its scientific legacy from Soviet times and making the best of its vest-pocket size, Estonia is developing an efficient technology industry that generates ingenious products - often dreamed up by a few friends - able to mutate via the Internet into major businesses. These entrepreneurs grow out of an energetic, youthful society, which has embraced technology as the fastest way to catch up with the West. Eight of 10 Estonians carry cellphones, and even gas stations in Tallinn are equipped with Wi-Fi connections, allowing motorists to visit the Internet after they fill up. Such ubiquitous connectivity makes Tallinn's location midway between Stockholm and St. Petersburg seem less remote. Even the short icebound days play a part, people here say, because they shackle software developers to the warm glow of their computer screens. For the 150 people who work at Skype, Estonia is clearly where the action is. 'What Skype has shown the world is that you can take a great idea, with few resources, and conquer the world,' said Sten Tamkivi, the 27-year-old head of software development. Whether Skype poses a mortal threat to telephone companies, as some enthusiasts suggest, is an open question. But it has become an undisputed technology star - a status cemented in September when eBay, the Internet auction giant, bought the company in a deal worth $2.5 billion. More than 70 million people have downloaded Skype's free software from the Internet, Mr. Tamkivi said, and it is adding registered users at a rate of 190,000 a day. On a recent evening, 3.7 million people were logged on to the service, nearly three times the population of this country. Professor Viik and others relish the attention that Skype has brought Estonia. But he says his country cannot build a long-lasting technology industry on a single hit or even a few hits: Kazaa was hugely popular before it ran into a blizzard of copyright-infringement lawsuits. Silicon Valley, Mr. Viik noted, is composed of clusters of companies that feed off one another. Skype is a closed company, with proprietary software and owners who are so secretive about their plans that for a time local journalists did not know where its offices were. The company's two founders are not even Estonian. Niklas Zennstrom is a Swede, and Janus Friis is a Dane. Skype's legal headquarters are in Luxembourg; its sales and marketing office is in London. Although Estonian developers wrote Skype's basic code, only a fraction of the eBay bonanza went into Estonian pockets. Part of the problem for Estonia's entrepreneurs is the nation's inexperience in capital markets. It regained its independence only in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Estonia's entrepreneurs do not yet have the Rolodexes of their Scandinavian counterparts. Recently, Tallinn got its first high-tech venture capital firm. Then, too, there is its small size. Estonia's entire software development industry employs roughly 2,500 people, less than the research and development staff at a major American technology company. 'Let's be frank,' said Priit Alamae, the 27-year-old founder of Webmedia, another leading software design firm. 'Estonia has 1.3 million people; we have 200 I.T. graduates a year; we do not have the resources to develop our own Microsoft.' The competition for talented recruits is driving up salaries more than 20 percent a year, he said. While Estonia remains cheaper than neighbors like Finland or Sweden, the gap is narrowing rapidly. In some ways, however, Estonia's labor shortage has contributed to its success. Companies here are extraordinarily efficient. And they tend to focus on niche products or on business models - like Skype's or Kazaa's - that can expand from a small base by word of mouth. Skype and Kazaa are powered by so-called peer-to-peer technology, which allows computers to share files or other information on a network without the need for a centralized server to route the data. In Kazaa's case, the files being swapped are songs. In Skype's case, they are voices. 'There is no new technology in Skype,' Mr. Viik said. 'It is an example of how you put together bits and pieces of technology in a clever way. Estonians are very good at putting together bits and pieces.' Necessity is the mother of invention, but what is it about Estonians that makes them the Baltic's answer to Bill Gates? 'People here are kind of introverted and into technology,' said Jaan Tallinn, a tousled-haired man who looks younger than his 33 years and wrote the software code that is the basis of Kazaa and Skype. 'We have long, cold winters when there isn't much to do, so it makes sense.' Other people cite history: Estonia's long subjugation by the Soviet Union, and the euphoria that came with freedom. 'It's as if a young country suddenly came into independence with great hopes but few material resources,' said Steve Jurvetson, a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Mr. Jurvetson, whose family has Estonian roots, has invested in a few start-ups here, most notably Skype. Estonia owes one thing to its former oppressor. In the 1950's, the Soviets chose the Baltic states as the site for several scientific institutes. Estonia wound up with the Institute of Cybernetics - basically a computer sciences center - that now houses Skype and many other firms. That scientific legacy remains embedded in society, people say. It is most visible in Estonia's receptiveness to new technology. Internet penetration is estimated by the telecommunications industry to be 49 percent of the population. Estonians use mobile phones to pay for parking, among other things. Most conduct their banking online, and more than 70 percent file their taxes on the Internet. The state issues a digital identification card, which allows citizens to vote from their laptops. In a rare disappointment, less than 2 percent of the electorate, or 10,000 people, voted electronically during recent local elections. One hurdle was that voters had to buy a card reader to authenticate their ID's. The government hopes for better numbers for the next election, in March 2007. Some people contend that Estonia's success is a function of hard work and happy circumstance rather than raw talent. 'I can't say that Estonians are the greatest software programmers,' said Allan Martinson, who last June started the first high-tech venture capital fund to be based here. 'You can find more talent in Russia.' While entrepreneurs complain about the shortage of skilled workers, more and more young foreigners are ready to trek to this northernmost Baltic nation for a job. Skype employs people from 30 countries; in the halls, one hears plenty of English, and even some Spanish. Oliver Wihler, 35, a Swiss software developer, moved to Tallinn from London in 1999, drawn by the heady professional atmosphere and by Estonia's parks and forests. Now he and a business partner, Sander Magi, 28, run a company called Aqris, which reformats Java software. 'The commute in London was a drag, and I missed not having any green space,' Mr. Wihler said. Estonia offers plenty of that. But Skype is relying on more than a pleasant lifestyle; it is taking a more traditional approach in its recruitment by offering stock options in eBay. But Mr. Tallinn says that is only part of the company's appeal. 'The other draw,' he said, 'is that if you want to work for a company that influences the lives of tens of millions of people, and you want to do it in Tallinn, there really isn't any other choice.'

Subject: Shuffle Actually Blazed a Trail From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:06:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/books/07stra.html?ex=1291611600&en=b5b92601d73e697b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 How a Black Entertainer's Shuffle Actually Blazed a Trail By JOHN STRAUSBAUGH At the height of his career, from the late 1920's into the mid-30's, Lincoln Perry soared as Hollywood's first black superstar. His 'Laziest Man in the World' shtick, so exquisitely honed that the New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote that it was 'as stylized as James Joyce,' made him an icon everywhere in the world. He effortlessly stole scenes from the finest actors in Hollywood, earning the respect of greats like Charlie Chaplin, Lionel Barrymore and Will Rogers. He owned a dozen chauffeur-driven limousines, served watermelon to white guests at his lavish soirées and caroused with Mae West and Jack Johnson. You say you've never heard of Lincoln Perry? Try his stage name: Stepin Fetchit. Long after Perry's performances have faded or been edited from our collective memory, 'Stepin Fetchit' lives on as an insult and a mark of shame, like 'Uncle Tom.' With his sleepy eyes, whining drawl and shuffling feet, Stepin Fetchit was the screen avatar of that hoariest and most loathed of stereotypes, the utterly servile yet totally shiftless Negro. Widely praised as a comic genius during his heyday, Stepin Fetchit is known now only as a race traitor. Perry/Stepin Fetchit presents an almost perfect case study in the conflicts and dualities that still confront black actors in Hollywood. Yet the opprobrium attached to his legacy has been so crushing that the first two book-length treatments of his life and career have only just now appeared. (That one of them was self-published through iUniverse suggests that Perry may languish beyond the pale of polite discourse for some time yet.) 'Stepin Fetchit,' by Mel Watkins, a former editor at The New York Times Book Review, is the more thorough and authoritative; 'Shuffling to Ignominy,' by Champ Clark, a correspondent for People magazine, is slighter but livelier. Both are revisionist, arguing that Perry should be studied within the context of his time, not simply condemned with politically correct hindsight. Perry was defined by his dualities. Born in Key West, Fla., in 1902, he was, like the great black minstrel and vaudevillian Bert Williams (1875-1922), of Caribbean lineage, a fact that afforded both men some critical psychological distance from the black Americans they caricatured as well as from the white Americans who guffawed at them. Perry's Bahamian mother steered him toward school and church, but his Jamaican father led him astray with his love of traveling carnivals and minstrel shows, which by the 1900's were largely performed by blacks in blackface. Perry was in his teens when he hit the road himself, touring the boondocks in a comedy and dance duo, Step and Fetchit. By the time he reached Hollywood in 1927, he had gone solo as Stepin Fetchit. The arrival of talking pictures that year spurred a brief gold rush in Hollywood for black performers, whose 'natural' singing and dancing talents were considered uniquely suited to the new technology. As Stepin Fetchit, Perry walked away with films like 'In Old Kentucky,' 'Hearts in Dixie' and 'Show Boat.' But as docile as Stepin Fetchit was on screen, Perry himself was demanding and argumentative with directors and producers. His penchants for drunken brawls and teenage girls made lurid tabloid copy and earned denunciations from black civic and church leaders. Despite his huge popularity with audiences, white and black, he had made himself a Hollywood pariah by 1936. In 1942, when Walter White, executive secretary of the N.A.A.C.P., lobbied the studios to end demeaning portrayals of blacks, he specifically cited Stepin Fetchit, and Perry's fate was sealed. He struggled on for three decades, appearing in some low-budget 'race pictures' (movies with all-black casts, shown in blacks-only theaters) and touring the 'chitlin circuit' of black nightclubs. But he had become an embarrassing reminder of a past most Americans would just as soon forget. Felled by a stroke in 1976, he withered away in a convalescent home until his death in 1985, while the movies he had made were quietly removed from general circulation (including the ones made with his friend Will Rogers, said to contain some of his finest work) or re-edited to cut out his bits. Only the insult of his name remained. Perry went to his grave bitterly insisting that he deserved better, that he was more a trailblazer than a race traitor, and both Mr. Watkins and Mr. Clark agree. It was his enormous success, Mr. Watkins argues, that made Perry the focus of so much condemnation, while hundreds of other black performers, then and now, had gotten away with shucking and jiving their way through more demeaning stereotypes. 'It could easily be argued,' he writes, 'that the comic image Lincoln Perry projected was not nearly as harmful, deleterious and degrading as the images projected by many of today's black comedians, rap artists and even television sitcom stars.' Mr. Clark persuasively contends that Perry's Stepin Fetchit was a sly trickster, following a centuries-old subversive tradition whereby blacks played the fool to fool whites. He notes how often Stepin Fetchit, by pretending to be too lazy and addled to understand the simplest directions, avoids doing the white characters' work, all the while muttering subtle sarcasms in a drawl that was indecipherable to whites but clear and hilarious to black audiences. Neither author adequately addresses the question of how much Perry's turbulent personal life reflected the enormous strain put on him by his professional life. But for trying to rescue Hollywood's first black megastar from knee-jerk condemnation and obscurity, both are to be commended.

Subject: Tokyo Exchange Struggles With Snarls From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 06:04:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/business/worldbusiness/13glitch.html?ex=1292130000&en=15b4819169ec6dfe&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Tokyo Exchange Struggles With Snarls in Electronics By MARTIN FACKLER TOKYO - What exactly is going on at the Tokyo Stock Exchange? Last month, a computer glitch shut down trading on the exchange, the world's second-largest after the New York Stock Exchange, for almost an entire day. Then last week, a typographical error by the Mizuho Securities brokerage generated a $330 million loss. On Friday, the prime minister demanded corrective steps, and regulators began an investigation. 'I can't imagine problems like these happening at the New York Stock Exchange,' said Neil Katkov, an analyst in Tokyo for Celent, a research firm based in Boston that specializes in financial technology. The Tokyo Stock Exchange, he said, 'hasn't brought its procedures and technology up to the norms of international exchanges.' The latest electronic mix-up began last Thursday during the initial public offering of J-Com, a small recruiting company. An employee at Mizuho, a subsidiary of the Mizuho Financial Group, mistakenly typed an order to sell 610,000 shares at 1 yen, or less than a penny each, instead of an order to sell one share at 610,000 yen ($5,057) as intended, the brokerage said. At that price, the sale would have been worth $3.1 billion, far more than the company's actual value. But the number of shares ostensibly being sold far exceeded the shares on offer. Mizuho's computer failed to catch the error, but that wasn't all. As Mizuho tried frantically to cancel the order, the computer at the Tokyo Stock Exchange blocked its efforts for about 10 minutes, the exchange said. Mizuho finally managed to buy back most of the mistaken order before investors did. But investors did buy about 100,000 of the nonexistent shares. Mizuho said Thursday that the typo would cost it 27 billion yen, or about $230 million, to reimburse buyers and cancel the order. But on Monday the stock exchange raised the total loss to 40 billion yen, or $330 million, ordering Mizuho to pay investors a premium of 300,000 yen, for a total payment of 910,000 yen for each share sold. The higher sum reflected an advisory group's calculation of where J-Com shares would have traded had the market not been flooded with the mistaken sell order. But the exchange also said it would share the cost of the debacle with Mizuho. It was not clear, however, how much of the loss the exchange would assume. In a hastily called news conference late Sunday evening, the exchange's president and chief executive, Takuo Tsurushima, admitted that a failure by the exchange's computer system was also at fault. Previously, the exchange had squarely blamed Mizuho, saying that the brokerage had not only botched the trade order but also had made an error as it tried to stop the order. But Mr. Tsurushima also made reference to a glitch on Nov. 1 that froze trading on the Tokyo Stock Exchange for all but 90 minutes of an entire day, an unusual and embarrassing mishap for one of the world's top bourses. 'I feel a heavy responsibility for having caused turmoil in the market twice in such a short time,' Mr. Tsurushima told reporters. He said he might resign, a customary gesture in Japan to take responsibility. The investors will get cash instead of J-Com stock, the exchange said. Cash settlements have been used in the past to compensate investors when natural disasters disrupted trading, but are rare otherwise. On Monday, Japan's Financial Services Agency ordered the Tokyo Stock Exchange to report on the cause of Thursday's failures. Japanese media reports said the agency may also order the exchange to completely revamp its computer system. That computer system was designed by Fujitsu, the Japanese electronics company. Last month, Fujitsu said it cut the pay of its top executives as punishment for the company's role in the November failure. Even Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi commented on the problem. 'We need to think more about putting safety measures in place to prevent confusion,' he said Friday, according to the Associated Press. The twin mishaps have raised concerns about the reliability of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's computer system at a time when a rebound in Japan's economy is bringing record trading volumes. Critics have castigated the exchange for failing to invest in modern computer systems or upgrade the system it has. And some traders say the incidents point to a deeper underlying problem. They fault a bureaucratic culture of secrecy at the exchange that makes it reluctant to reveal details of its trading systems, even to brokerages. Some foreign trading firms have complained that the exchange does not respond to even routine inquiries about its systems. Experts say other exchanges are far more transparent and rely on give-and-take with members to detect possible problems in the complex computer systems. They say the New York Stock Exchange routinely tests its computer system with big brokerages to avoid mishaps. But Mr. Katkov, the Celent analyst, noted that Thursday's failure highlighted another problem: the inadequate computer systems used by Japanese financial companies. 'An advanced electronic trading system should never have let this trade out of the gate,' he said.

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:59:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/13/05 Australia 16.0 Canada 29.3 Denmark 21.8 France 11.3 Germany 9.6 Hong Kong 7.5 Japan 22.1 Netherlands 14.7 Norway 29.4 Sweden 9.8 Switzerland 19.1 UK 8.4

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:59:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/13/05 Australia 20.6 Canada 24.2 Denmark 38.9 France 26.8 Germany 24.9 Hong Kong 7.2 Japan 43.1 Netherlands 30.6 Norway 42.2 Sweden 30.8 Switzerland 35.6 UK 17.7

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:57:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/13/05 S&P Index is 6.3 Large Cap Growth Index is 7.1 Large Cap Value Index is 8.0 Mid Cap Index is 14.7 Small Cap Index is 9.3 Small Cap Value Index is 8.0 Europe Index is 9.9 Pacific Index is 20.0 Energy is 48.6 Health Care is 15.2 Precious Metals 42.6 REIT Index is 13.1 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 2.1 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:57:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/13/05 Energy 44.5 Financials 7.0 Health Care 7.8 Info Tech 6.1 Materials 3.8 REITs 13.2 Telecoms 4.5 Utilities 16.4

Subject: Beating Malaria Means Understanding From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:56:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/health/13mosq.html?ex=1292130000&en=38fba7118e7cd139&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Beating Malaria Means Understanding Mosquitoes By NICHOLAS BAKALAR In Africa, 20 percent of the children get 80 percent of the bites from malarial mosquitoes, and an understanding of this could be central to controlling the deadly disease. Researchers have developed a mathematical model that describes the complex relationship between the proportion of people who are infected with Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria, and the rate at which people are bitten by the mosquitoes that carry it. Some people are bitten more than others because they live where mosquitoes are more common or because the mosquitoes, for various reasons, find them more attractive. Those who are bitten most often play a role in malarial transmission similar to that played by the most sexually active in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases: they are the ones who spread the disease. The people who are bitten most become infected and stay infected. Then the heavy biting continues, so large numbers of mosquitoes acquire the parasite from their blood and can transmit it to others. So, the total burden of disease is influenced by a small minority of people. A paper on the work appeared in the Nov. 24 issue of Nature. Identifying the 20 percent of the population that is most often bitten is hard, said David Smith, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the lead author. 'No one knows how to do this,' Dr. Smith said, 'so right now the goal is to protect everyone. However, the gains from targeting may be so large that it is worthwhile. I think this should become a very active area of research.' Accounting for these factors requires a mathematical model that describes the way transmission occurs and who is likely to be infected. Using such a model, health officials can direct prevention efforts more accurately by concentrating on those most likely to carry the parasite. 'What I liked about this paper is that it is an elegant analytical extension of the 20-80 rule,' said Thomas W. Scott, a professor of entomology at the University of California, Davis, who was not part of the study. 'It may be difficult to identify who the 20 percent are that are contributing most to transmission,' Dr. Scott said, 'but if they could be identified, there would be a huge payoff in improved public health.' Two factors are central to the model: the proportion of people who are infected and the rate at which people are bitten by infectious mosquitoes. In applying the model, the researchers found that selective biting and susceptibility to infection play an important role in determining the proportion of people infected. But immunity to infection in early childhood does not. This may be because people who are immune can nevertheless still infect others. The model also shows that it is difficult to reduce the proportion of people who are infected just by reducing the number bitten. Cutting the rate of biting in half would reduce the number of people infected by only 4 percent, the researchers concluded. Halving it again would reduce the number by 5 percent more. Because so few people get so many of the mosquito bites, applying control measures uniformly across the population will almost certainly be unsuccessful. But focusing on the small number of people who are bitten most often should have much wider community benefits by reducing the number of asymptomatic carriers, lowering the rate of parasites among mosquitoes, and finally decreasing overall transmission among the population, the researchers said.

Subject: Paul Krugman: Costco versus Wal-Mart From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 05:51:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/ December 14, 2005 Paul Krugman: Costco versus Wal-Mart By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman is asked about the comparison between Costco and Wal-Mart: Putting Pressure on Wal-Mart, by Paul Krugman, Money Talks: David Gross, Palo Alto, Calif.: I agree with you completely ['Big Box Balderdash']. In addition, you could cite Costco, as a comparison, as a competing high-volume, deep-discount retailer which pays its employees well, with good benefits. In addition, its social posture is excellent, and quite unique in corporate America... Paul Krugman: I didn't have space to get into comparisons between Wal-Mart and other big box employers. The contrast with Costco ... is telling. There is ... a counter-argument from Wal-Mart's defenders. Costco caters to a much higher-income clientele ..., so that Costco's customers may place a higher value on the intangible benefits ... from a workforce that is relatively content, and also more experienced because of lower turnover. It's probably true, given the relatively low income of its customers, ... that Wal-Mart's most profitable strategy is the one it has chosen: low wages, high turnover, and low prices at the expense of service. But there are tradeoffs: if Wal-Mart were pressured into paying its workers better, the cost to the company would be much less than the added wages, because of all the factors that make treating workers decently profitable for Costco. What this means is that the corporate profitability case for low wages at Wal-Mart is true, but less compelling than ... the raw numbers might suggest. The message I take from this is that a pressure campaign against Wal-Mart has a good chance of succeeding. If public pressure makes a low-wage policy less attractive, Wal-Mart might well be persuaded to shift toward a more Costco-like wage structure.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: Costco versus Wal-Mart From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 08:13:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Paul Krugman makes a very good point here. Costco not only has higher quality service but generally higher quality products in its stores for very good prices. Yet they are able to turn a good profit. Those who oppose this view might argue: However their (Costco) employees tend to be (on average) younger and from middle class to upper middle class backgrounds and they are more selective in their hiring. Wall-Mart, on the other hand provides jobs to people Costco wouldn't hire like older retirees who need to augment their incomes. The disturbing thing to me is the direction of employment in the US is, and has been, in the direction of Wall-mart's policies and this will be very bad for the US economy in coming years if this trend doesn't reverse.

Subject: Riding the High Country From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 12:49:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/movies/09brok.html?ex=1291784400&en=b7a1c213e4a9ad68&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Riding the High Country, Finding and Losing Love By STEPHEN HOLDEN THE lonesome chill that seeps through Ang Lee's epic western, 'Brokeback Mountain,' is as bone deep as the movie's heartbreaking story of two cowboys who fall in love almost by accident. It is embedded in the craggy landscape where their idyll begins and ends. It creeps into the farthest corners of the wide-open spaces they share with coyotes, bears and herds of sheep and rises like a stifled cry into the big, empty sky that stretches beyond the horizon. One night, when their campfire dies, and the biting cold drives them to huddle together in a bedroll, a sudden spark between Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) flares into an undying flame. The same mood of acute desolation permeates the spare, gnarly prose of Annie Proulx's short story, first published in The New Yorker in 1997, adapted by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana. Mr. McMurtry knows about loneliness. Its ache suffused his novel and his screenplay for 'The Last Picture Show,' made into a film 34 years ago by Peter Bogdanovich. The sexual bouts between these two ranch hands who have never heard the term gay (in 1963, when the story begins, it was still a code word transiting into the mainstream) are described by Ms. Proulx as 'quick, rough, laughing and snorting.' That's exactly how Mr. Lee films their first sexual grappling (discreetly) in the shadows of the cramped little tent. The next morning, Ennis mumbles, 'I'm no queer.' And Jack replies, 'Me neither.' Still, they do it again, and again, in the daylight as well as at night. Sometimes their pent-up passions explode in ferocious roughhouse that is indistinguishable from fighting. This moving and majestic film would be a landmark if only because it is the first Hollywood movie to unmask the homoerotic strain in American culture that Leslie Fiedler discerned in his notorious 1948 Partisan Review essay, 'Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey.' Fiedler characterized the bond between Huckleberry Finn and Jim, a runaway slave, as an unconscious romantic attachment shared by two males of different races as they flee the more constraining and civilizing domain of women. He went on to identify that bond as a recurrent theme in American literature. In popular culture, Fiedler's Freudianism certainly could be applied to the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Minus the ethnic division, it might also be widened to include a long line of westerns and buddy movies, from 'Red River' to 'Midnight Cowboy' to 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid': the pure male bonding that dare not explore its shadow side. Ennis and Jack's 20-year romance begins when they are hired in the summer of 1963 by Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid), a hard-boiled rancher, to work as sheepherders on Brokeback Mountain in the Wyoming high country. (The movie was filmed in Alberta, in the Canadian Rockies.) Subsisting mostly on canned beans and whiskey, the two cowboys develop a boozy friendship by the campfire. So taciturn and bottled up that he swallows his syllables as he pulls words out of his mouth in gruff, reluctant grunts, Ennis tells Jack of being raised by a brother and sister after his parents died in a car crash; Jack, brought up in the rodeo, is more talkative and recalls his lifelong alienation from his father, a bull rider. When signs of an early blizzard cut short their summer employment, Ennis and Jack go their separate ways; Ennis's farewell is a simple 'See you around.' Both, though, are torn up. Ennis marries his girlfriend, Alma (Michelle Williams), and they have two daughters. Jack meets and marries Lureen (Anne Hathaway), a Texan rodeo queen, with whom he has a son, and joins her father's farm-equipment business. Four years pass before Jack, who is living in Texas, sends a general-delivery postcard to Ennis, who has settled in Wyoming, saying he will be in the area and would like to visit. The instant they set eyes on each other, their suspended passion erupts into a spontaneous clinch. Alma sees it all, and her face, from that moment on, remains frozen in misery. The reunited lovers rush to a motel. So begins a sporadic and tormented affair in which the two meet once or twice a year for fishing trips on which no fish are caught. Jack urges that they forsake their marriages and set up a ranch together. But Ennis, haunted by a childhood memory of his father taking him to see the mutilated body of a rancher, tortured and beaten to death with a tire iron for living with another man, is immobilized by fear and shame. Both Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal make this anguished love story physically palpable. Mr. Ledger magically and mysteriously disappears beneath the skin of his lean, sinewy character. It is a great screen performance, as good as the best of Marlon Brando and Sean Penn. The pain and disappointment felt by Jack, who is softer, more self-aware and self-accepting, continually registers in Mr. Gyllenhaal's sad, expectant silver-dollar eyes. The second half of the movie opens up Ms. Proulx's story to follow both men's slowly crumbling marriages. For years, Alma chokes on her pain until one day, after she and Ennis have divorced, it rises up as if she were strangling on her own bile. As Jack, desperately frustrated, has clandestine encounters with other men, Ms. Hathaway's Lureen slowly calcifies into a clenched robotic shell of her peppery younger self. 'Brokeback Mountain' is not quite the period piece that some would like to imagine. America's squeaky closet doors may have swung open far enough for a gay rodeo circuit to flourish. But let's not kid ourselves. In large segments of American society, especially in sports and the military, those doors remain sealed. The murder of Matthew Shepard, after all, took place in 'Brokeback' territory. Another recent film, 'Jarhead' (in which Mr. Gyllenhaal plays a marine), suggests how any kind of male behavior perceived as soft and feminine within certain closed male environments triggers abuse and violence and how that repression of sexual energy is directly channeled into warfare. Yet 'Brokeback Mountain' is ultimately not about sex (there is very little of it in the film) but about love: love stumbled into, love thwarted, love held sorrowfully in the heart. Or, as Ms. Proulx writes, 'What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.' One tender moment's reprieve from loneliness can illuminate a life.

Subject: Missing the Point on Poor Countries From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 12:34:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/58a7891c-6b40-11da-8aee-0000779e2340.html December 12, 2005 Doha Round is Missing the Point on Poor Countries By Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, and a vast chorus of world leaders have warned that the possible failure of the Doha trade talks would be a catastrophe for the world and a lost opportunity to alleviate poverty in developing countries. However, as the parameters of a possible deal are hammered out in back-room meetings, we should remember that the content of the agreement matters more than the agreement itself. As it stands, the Doha round is rushing headlong – if any trade agreement can be described as “rushing” – towards a conclusion that would do very little for the poorest countries. The current log-jam centres on the European Union’s offer to reduce its agricultural tariffs on condition that developing countries agree to open their manufacturing and services sectors. This offer is the brainchild of Peter Mandelson, EU trade commissioner and veteran political tactician. He recognises that either the developing countries will accept the pact, in which case he can claim to have delivered a win for Europe’s exporters, or they will reject it, in which case he can saddle them with the blame for the failure of the round. Unfortunately this agriculture for services and manufacturing deal is an entirely wrongheaded way to frame the negotiations. For one thing, it is misleading to present European agricultural liberalisation as a concession to the developing countries. The Common Agricultural Policy is an unsustainable system that cheats European taxpayers and consumers and is running foul of Europe’s expansion and reform agendas. Since 2003 it has been on the brink of collapsing under its own weight. Mr Mandelson has done a brilliant job of repackaging the inevitable reforms to the CAP as a concession to the poor countries – but it is surely too much for him to ask them to offer concessions in return. Ask the expert Guy de Jonquières, the FT’s Asia columnist and commentator, will answer your questions on the WTO meeting in Hong Kong on Thursday December 15. Send your questions in now to ask@ft.com Go there Second, it is inappropriate for the largest and richest countries to be demanding a quid pro quo from the poorest. The developing countries are in no position to bargain with the superpowers. Demands for reciprocity ignore the egregious unfairness of the world trade system, which over 50 years has reduced tariffs on goods of export interest to the rich countries and protected goods that should be exported by the poor countries. Mr Mandelson’s deal is also based on the assumption that poor countries should satisfy themselves with being agricultural suppliers to rich nations. It asks developing countries to expose their manufacturing industries to competition from more advanced and larger economies, potentially throwing those workers into unemployment, and it asks them to forgo attempts to promote their own service sector industries. A trade agreement that would restrict the policy options of developing countries is not the best to promote long-term industrialisation. Finally, in spite of the predominance of agricultural issues in the development agenda, many of the poorest countries actually have very little to gain from agricultural reform in the short run. While liberalisation offers clear benefits to agricultural powerhouses such as Australia and Brazil, most of the poorest nations are net food importers. Reductions in subsidies will increase the price they pay for imported commodities, leaving them worse off in the short run. Also, most of the poorest nations are beneficiaries of special schemes granting them free market access to European and US markets. These countries are exempt from tariffs on their exports, so tariff reductions would only benefit their competitors’ exports at their expense. The rich countries often quote grandiose estimates of the potential gains from a successful conclusion to the round in attempts to weaken the resistance of sceptical developing countries. However, the size of the gains resulting from the round cannot be known until the nature and scope of the reform programme is determined in the final agreement. As the round becomes less and less ambitious, the potential economic benefits are becoming smaller and smaller. There is much that could be done by the World Trade Organisation to promote development and deliver gains to poor countries. But few of those things are included in the emerging agenda. Our book Fair Trade for All details what a true development round would look like – one that reflects the interests and concerns of the developing countries and is designed to promote their development. Our conclusion is that there is broad agenda beyond agriculture that would deliver benefits to the poorest countries, but which has been almost entirely ignored in the Doha round. There is much that could be done to reduce tariffs on industrial goods. The structure of rich countries’ tariffs is heavily biased against the goods exported by poor countries, particularly labour-intensive industrial goods and processed foods. Rich countries collect tariffs four times higher on their imports from poor countries than on imports from other rich countries. There is also much that could be done to increase the mobility of workers. Migration – particularly temporary schemes to allow workers from developing countries to work on short-term projects in rich countries – would enable workers from poor countries to fill labour shortages in rich countries and send part of their pay back to their families. The flow of remittances from migrant workers in rich countries is an important source of development finance and now exceeds total aid flows from rich countries. Finally, the Doha round needs to get serious about “aid for trade”. In recent years the EU and US have slashed tariffs to the poorest countries under special schemes granting them free market access. Yet despite the good intentions behind these schemes, we have witnessed almost no increase in the volume of exports from beneficiary countries. This experience belies the rhetoric of politicians who espouse the virtues of trade over aid. Market access is not enough. Without assistance to overcome gaps in infrastructure, boost product quality and connect to international supply chains, tariff cuts have little effect on trade from the poorest nations. In Doha in 2001, the developing countries were promised a “development round”, one that would redress the imbalances of the past and create opportunities for the future. But what has emerged since then clearly does not deserve that epithet. The irony is that both the rich and poor countries could benefit from a fair and development-oriented agenda. We should be content with nothing less. Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 and was chief economist and senior vice-president of the World Bank 1996-2001. Andrew Charlton is of the London School of Economics.

Subject: What they are not telling you From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 21:03:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Very interesting that they talk about developing countries cutting their tariffs on manufactured goods. This is actually intriguing and I will watch this closely. The tariffs charged on imported goods into most African countries is actually more of a form of taxation. Let put it like this - Uganda (and many other African countries) doesn't really have a system of charging personal tax on its people. Most of the population earns way too little to pay tax and the remainder make use of the fallen bureaucracy to evade tax. So in order to raise tax revenue, the governments look to other modes such as a tariff on imported goods. So this is not quite fair of the EU to demand no tariffs on the EU goods as the situation is quite different from the developing country's perspective. HOWEVER!! having said this, the tariff charged at most borders of developing countries also becomes a source for bribery and corruption. So by removing all laws related to tariffs, we may be able to clamp down on the culture of bribery and corruption. So this is really an intriguing topic. The issues surrounding the concept of protecting jobs in developing countries by keeping manufactured goods out is really more of a red herring. Normally what ever manufactured goods are made in a developing country - the factory is owned by a European and he/she is exporting to Europe. There is one serious issue that we also need to be careful in allowing for free trade. As many people here know that President Bush and his cronies have favoured big business (Haliburton) so too does this happen in developing countries. There are many 'president Bushes' out there. Many leaders of developing countries are looking for the reduction of tariffs as it will benefit a certain group of farmers within their country. You will most likely find that those farmers are some how related to the country leader and we have a siutation of cronism. In essence, by dropping tariffs, we will favour a rich few within the country with a trickle down effect. The principle of.... get this new term... 'Economic Democratisation' is not really being favoured in trade liberalisation. So opening borders to trade may not be the panacea to the problems of the developing world but rather offer a means to ensuring the status quo. Most developing countries still need to learn how to become internally competitive before becoming externally competitive. Meaning that they need to learn how to harness the economic power of their masses and not allow for islands of wealth in a sea of poverty. Compare most South American countries to China. China is learning how to make people within their economy become buyers and widen their market. South America has only viewed new sources of income as fixed cake and the rich get the biggest slice. Only when the rich learn that by sharing the cake, we can actually get the cake to grow faster, which is good for everyone. Now the last controversial issue that I have picked up. The EU has also been playing a clever game. I have picked up that much debate is on the 'value' of goods being imported into the EU and how this 'Value' has grown. Also how the EU has indeed contributed towards 'Aid for Trade' which they can then brag, 'look we are helping, look at the figures.' Unfortunately, the devil is in the detail. Botswana exports beef to the EU. This is one commodity that the EU is not afraid of seeing rapid growth from Africa (there appears to be minimal impact on their local beef industry). Knowing this, the EU has given a lot of assistance in (pardon the pun) 'beefing up' Botswana's cattle industry. So on paper, imports into the EU have grown significantly in 'value' but it's not really fare when a sugar farmer in Mozambique would like to export to the EU and faces the argument that, 'We are already offering assistance and exports to the EU are growing'. From my perspective, the DOHA talks are not going to be the deciding factor in getting the developing world to suddenly start growing. More trade liberalisation will most probably result in a lucky few getting richer while the overwhelming majority will continue to live in poverty. On ther other hand, trade libiralisation may in a bizarre way may contribute towards a decrease in bribery and corruption and make these developing countries a little cleaner.

Subject: Playing with figures From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 21:08:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Also be careful of some of the statistics that are thrown around. I have often heard of statements like, 'The EU subsidizes their farming industry to the amount of a couple billions Euro each year. This is the amount that developing countries are missing out.' Yes it is true that the EU gives subsidies but it's not necessarily to the detriment of farmers in developing countries. Many of those subsidies are internal or bail out plans to save a farming sector. Hey even, Australia, USA and Canada are losing out on the EU market through subsidies. Agriculture is not exclusive to the developing world nor is the down sides of the EU's subsidy protection.

Subject: Excellent From: Emma To: Mik Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 10:09:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Excellent analysis.

Subject: Some more info From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Dec 14, 2005 at 17:59:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I have just come across this interview between a newspaper and Florie Liser, US assistant trade representative for Africa. The interview is regarding the World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade talks that have begun in Hong Kong with ministerial representation from 149 member countries, with six days to find an agreement acceptable to all the member countries where it’s hoped the protectionist tariffs and subsidies can be lowered to make world trade more equitable. Now I have below a pure quote from Florie Liser. The words that Florie Liser uses are actually quite carefully crafted, partly true and partly altered to deceive. Notice that Florie correctly points out that African countries under the Agoa agreement already get preferential treatment with no tarifs on products. But Florie stops short of saying this only applies for a certain group of products. Florie candy coats the discussion in comparing Bangladesh who is not entitled to all those same preferential treatments. Well for starters, she misses out that the preferrential tarif treatments are geogrpahically sorted and Bangladesh has its own tarif benefits under its own geographic grouping. But this is the part I like the most, avoiding the true issue. Least Developed Countries (LDC) would like to ask for special treatment with regards to certain commodities such as 'Sugar'. It's bad enough that the USA has protects its sugar industry from the World but why not make special allowance for Sugar from LDCs? Come come Florie, you have carefully crafted your response to hide from the facts. Here is Florie's statement: FLORIE LISER: It’s being presented, but in different areas. I’ll just give you one example where we continue to be puzzled, but we know that it’s a position that the African group has taken collectively. As members of the least developed countries - and of course the majority of the least developed countries (LDCs) are African - as a group have taken the position that they would like to get a commitment for duty free, quota free treatment of all LDC products from all LDCs. Now we have as you know the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) where we allow African countries to send their products - both LDC and non-LDC African countries - to send their products to the US duty free. So about 98% of what Africa sends to us comes in duty free, but some of the other LDCs like Bangladesh and Cambodia actually don’t have duty free access to the US markets for the same products that the Africans do. So in the area as an example of apparel the African countries have really been making progress in penetrating the US market - it’s created tens of thousands of jobs for them. There has been a lot of investment in the apparel sector in Africa because of Agoa - essentially support for duty free and quota free access for all LDCs would give non-African LDCs like Bangladesh, already very competitive in producing apparel and the fourth largest exporter of apparel to the US - duty free treatment. What we have said is we are not sure why the Africans would take that position. We think that, and our studies show that it’s going to have a negative impact on the African LDCs.

Subject: It Takes a Potemkin Village From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 12:17:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/12/it_takes_a_pote.html December 10, 2005 It Takes a Potemkin Village Mark Thoma emails us that the New York Times is worth reading for the excellent Frank Rich: It Takes a Potemkin Village - New York Times : WHEN a government substitutes propaganda for governing, the Potemkin village is all. Since we don't get honest information from this White House, we must instead, as the Soviets once did, decode our rulers' fictions to discern what's really happening. What we're seeing now is the wheels coming off: As the administration's stagecraft becomes more baroque, its credibility tanks further both at home and abroad. The propaganda techniques may be echt Goebbels, but they increasingly come off as pure Ali G. The latest desperate shifts in White House showmanship say at least as much about our progress (or lack of same) in Iraq over the past 32 months as reports from the ground. When President Bush announced the end of 'major combat operations' in May 2003, his Imagineers felt the need for only a single elegant banner declaring 'Mission Accomplished.' Cut to Nov. 30, 2005: the latest White House bumper sticker, 'Plan for Victory,' multiplied by Orwellian mitosis over nearly every square inch of the rather 'Queer Eye' stage set from which Mr. Bush delivered his oration at the Naval Academy. And to no avail. Despite the insistently redundant graphics - and despite the repetition of the word 'victory' 15 times in the speech itself - Americans believed 'Plan for Victory' far less than they once did 'Mission Accomplished.'... Mr. Bush's 'Plan for Victory' speech was, of course, the usual unadulterated nonsense.... The specifics were phony.... Once again inflating the readiness of Iraqi troops, Mr. Bush claimed that the recent assault on Tal Afar 'was primarily led by Iraqi security forces' - a fairy tale... Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, promptly released a 59-page report documenting his own military's inadequate leadership, equipment and training. But this variety of Bush balderdash is such old news that everyone except that ga-ga 25 percent instantaneously tunes it out.... What raised the 'Plan for Victory' show to new heights of disinformation was the subsequent revelation that the administration's main stated motive for the address - the release of a 35-page document laying out a 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' - was as much a theatrical prop as the stunt turkey the president posed with during his one furtive visit to Baghdad two Thanksgivings ago. As breathlessly heralded by Scott McClellan, this glossy brochure was 'an unclassified version' of the strategy in place since the war's inception in 'early 2003.' But Scott Shane of The New York Times... turned up... the document's originating author: Peter Feaver, a Duke political scientist who started advising the National Security Council only this June.... an expert on public opinion about war, not war.... [W]hat Mr. McClellan billed as a 2003 strategy for military victory is in fact a P.R. strategy in place for no more than six months. That solves the mystery of why Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Army, who is in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that he had never seen this 'National Strategy' before its public release last month.... The Pentagon earmarks more than $100 million in taxpayers' money for various Lincoln Group operations, and it can't get any facts? Though the 30-year-old prime mover in the shadowy outfit, one Christian Bailey, fled from Andrea Mitchell... facts are proving not at all elusive... cash payoffs, trading in commercial Iraqi real estate and murky bidding procedures for lucrative U.S. government contracts.... The more we learn about such sleaze in the propaganda war, the more we see it's failing for the same reason as the real war: incompetence. Much as the disastrous Bremer regime botched the occupation of Iraq with bad decisions made by its array of administration cronies and relatives (among them Ari Fleischer's brother), so the White House doesn't exactly get the biggest bang for the bucks it shells out to cronies for fake news. Until he was unmasked as an administration shill, Armstrong Williams was less known for journalism than for striking a deal to dismiss a messy sexual-harassment suit against him in 1999....

Subject: Analyzing Republican Economic Policy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 10:52:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/12/analyzing_repub.html December 12, 2005 Analyzing Republican Economic Policy at the Appropriate Level Only Fafglof... Fafbllog... Fafablog... 'No more blooging while drunk!!'... Fafblog can analyze the economic policy of the Republican leadership at the appropriate level: Fafblog! the whole worlds only source for Fafblog. : Nature's Harmonious Money Cycle: So you can't afford to heat your house and somebody went and cut your Medicaid and food stamps. 'Oh no!' you say, burnin a spare child for warmth. 'Whatever will I do.' Don't worry poor people! Hope is on the way in the form a multi-billion dollar tax cuts! 'Oh but Fafnir those tax cuts won't help me,' you say, 'the vast majority are going to super-wealthy investors.' Sure they will! When we help out the richest one percent we help out everybody! It's all on accounta the mysterious beauty of Nature's Money Cycle. Money starts out in Congress where it rains from Senatorial clouds in the form of torrential tax cuts. It collects in rivers and flows downhill into billionaires and large corporations where it is evaporated by lobbyists and rises into the air in the form a campaign contributions which condense in the atmosphere which turn into Congress again, which rain the tax cuts and start it all over again and the wheel of life rolls on. The Money Cycle is all around us every day! Can you find yourself in the Money Cycle? That's right! You're the tiny microscopic planktony thing about to get eaten by the octopus! You're right next to the leprechaun with the magical pot of pixie gold who's gonna pay down the national debt. So if you're feelin cold, sick and hungry this winter while Larry Ellison buys an extra boat, don't feel sad! We're all part of Nature's Money Cycle, and someday some a that boat's gonna trickle down to you! Maybe a piece of the bowsprit, after Larry throws it out to buy a better boat. I hear that's delicious in a lemon marinade.

Subject: Chad Backs Out of Pledge to Use Oil From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 07:05:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/international/africa/13chad.html?ex=1292130000&en=992f796ff5aa8dab&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 13, 2005 Chad Backs Out of Pledge to Use Oil Wealth to Reduce Poverty By LYDIA POLGREEN ACCRA, Ghana - When the World Bank said more than five years ago that it would help Chad build a $4.2 billion pipeline to export the oil discovered in the southern part of that landlocked, deeply impoverished nation, it seemed an opportunity to give the lie to the resource curse that is the painful experience of virtually every oil-rich African nation: that oil wealth typically creates more problems for poor countries than it solves. In exchange for World Bank loans to build a 670-mile underground pipeline through Cameroon to export its oil, the Chadian government passed a law requiring that almost all of the money it earns on oil exports be spent for poverty reduction and that 10 percent be put aside as a 'future generations fund,' to leave something behind once the estimated one billion barrels of oil have been exhausted. But in October, Chad's government abruptly announced at a meeting with the World Bank in N'Djamena, the capital, that it plans to alter that law and funnel more money into its general budget and increase spending on security. Under the new proposal, the future generations fund would be scrapped and military spending would be added to the list of 'priority sectors' that until now focused on spending in areas like agriculture, housing, health care and education. 'These are fundamental changes to the agreement Chad made on oil revenue management,' said Ian Gary, an expert on oil at Oxfam America who has written several research reports critical of the Chad oil industry. The changes, he said, make it far less likely the people of Chad will see any benefit from the billions of dollars Chad's oil fields are likely to pump into the economy, which in turn undermines the antipoverty rationale of the World Bank's role in the project. The World Bank acknowledges that the Chadian government faces serious financial problems, and needs the money to pay salaries for civil servants and to deal with security threats, and has offered technical assistance to help bring spending under control. 'The adopted bill redefines the priority areas, abolishes the future generations fund, alters the way in which funds are allocated and extends the law to apply to new oilfields,' Hourmadji Moussa Doumgor, a government spokesman, told Reuters. Paul Wolfowitz, president of the World Bank, released a statement expressing 'serious concerns' about the changes. 'In the World Bank's view, these modifications alone will fail to provide a lasting solution to the recurring financial problems that Chad faces,' the statement said. 'To the contrary, they threaten to undermine the objectives of socioeconomic development, poverty reduction, accountability and transparency that guided World Bank Group and other international support for the Chad-Cameroon pipeline project.' World Bank officials have been in constant negotiations with the Chadian government over the proposed law, which is now before the legislature. Approval is largely a formality because the legislature is controlled by the party of Idriss Déby, who seized power after a civil war in 1990 and was elected president in 1996. Under the current law, all payments made by ExxonMobil and its partners, which run the oil operation, go into an escrow account at Citibank in London, while taxes on oil profits and other indirect revenue go directly into the state treasury. Of the money that goes to the escrow account, 10 percent is set aside for Chad's post-oil future, 72 percent goes to poverty reduction project and the remainder is split between the federal government and the local authorities where oil is extracted. A committee that includes government officials and civil society representatives must approve projects paid for with money from direct oil sales. In addition to scrapping the future fund, the new law would double the percentage of money the federal government can spend without oversight to 30 percent. The proposed changes have drawn angry reactions from civic groups in Chad, many of which were skeptical about the pipeline deal to begin with and warned the World Bank that the government would pull out once the oil money started flowing. 'It was at the very beginning clear that the government has adopted that law only to get the World Bank approved oil project,' said Delphine Djiraibe of the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights, one of the groups that fought the pipeline deal. 'Now that everything is finished and money is coming in, the government is doing whatever they want regardless of the agreement they have signed with World Bank or commitments they have made to use oil money to fight poverty.' Chad, one of Africa's poorest countries, has a long history of instability and bloodshed. A vast, arid land about three times the size of California, it is home to 10 million people. A majority of its citizens rely on subsistence agriculture and animal herding. It ranks 167 of 177 nations on the United Nations Development Index. Transparency International's 2005 survey of corruption around the world gave it the worst score, an ignominy it shares with Bangladesh. Since gaining independence from France in 1960, it has been tormented by civil wars fueled by ethnic and religious tensions. Like Sudan, its restive neighbor to the east, its northern population is largely Muslim and has dominated the country's politics, while its southern half is largely Christian and animist. Mr. Déby's rule has been a relatively stable period in the country's history, but the troubles in the Darfur region of Sudan, which borders eastern Chad, have spilled over into Chad along with 300,000 refugees. Internal divisions, along with reports of Mr. Déby's failing health, have led to much speculation that the government is on shaky ground. 'All of this is taking place against a backdrop of increasing fragility of the Déby regime,' Mr. Gary said. The push to spend more on security has occurred as the Chadian military has been afflicted by defections and low morale. A group of soldiers who defected have started a rebel movement on the eastern edge of the country, and Mr. Déby overhauled the republican guard responsible for his safety in October. Last month, he also shuffled the military leadership. Since it began exporting oil in 2003, Chad has taken in about $300 million, and under the petroleum revenue management law, two-thirds has gone to things like education, water systems, health care and basic infrastructure and transportation. About $30 million has gone into the future generations fund, while 5 percent of the money has gone back to the oil-producing regions for development.

Subject: Aid Army Marches to No Drum at All From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 07:02:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/international/07letter.html?ex=1291611600&en=001f2b4f8918010c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 Amid Squalor, an Aid Army Marches to No Drum at All By MICHAEL WINES BLANTYRE, Malawi - Here in Malawi's second city and in the capital, Lilongwe, it is hard to find an office building without some benevolent organization come to help Malawi's throngs of poor. The United Nations is here in force. The British are omnipresent in this, their former colony. Some major charities occupy two floors in Lilongwe office blocks. Malawi may be destitute - in 2001, the average earnings were less than 50 cents a day - but commercial real estate is thriving. It makes one wonder why, with so many experts here to do good, the rest of the country not only isn't thriving, but is slipping backward. Since 1981, the United States Agency for International Development said in a troubling report in September, outsiders have sought to fix Malawi's ills through more than 20 economic adjustment programs devised by the World Bank and eight related loans from the International Monetary Fund. International charities poured in countless private dollars. Overseas development assistance - foreign aid - totals about $35 per person, and makes up $8 of every $10 spent on economic development. Yet despite that, the report states, only Yemen, Ethiopia and Burundi have worse rates of chronic malnutrition than does Malawi, where 49 percent of all children are stunted. Moreover, that rate has not improved for 15 years. Malawi is now suffering through one of the worst hunger emergencies in Africa. The ostensible cause is drought. The real reason, however, is worsening poverty. Many of the 12 million or so people are now so poor that they have nothing to fall back on in good times, much less bad ones. By most appearances, neither legions of charity workers nor phalanxes of money-toting economic structural adjusters have done much except, perhaps, to prevent stunting among even more malnourished children. Why? Malawi's decline is a long and tangled story. The British set up tea and tobacco plantations in what was then called Nyasaland, taking peasants off their own land to grow more profitable crops. After the British left in 1964, an avaricious dictatorship expanded the plantations, leaving farmers with ever-smaller plots. By 1988, 8 in 10 farmers cultivated less than three acres of land - hardly enough to live on, much less make a profit. A major drought ravaged those small farmers in 1992, and every effort to revive them has failed or, often, backfired. Families have increasingly resorted to casual labor to survive, further reducing the time they have to tend their own tiny fields, forcing them to sell off crucial assets like cattle to buy food. In theory, all this is reversible. 'Technically, we know what to do,' Suresh Babu, a senior researcher at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said in an interview. 'We know how to prevent this crisis, to put them on a long-term path of development.' Mr. Babu knows: from 1989 to 1994, he advised Malawi's government and the United Nations on food issues. But practically, Mr. Babu says, Malawi's problems are intractable. International organizations and Malawi leaders disagree over anti-poverty strategies. Government corruption siphons money and will. Global charities compete for their own pet projects, rather than cooperating on an integrated plan. Malawi hasn't the money or political consensus to do what is needed on its own. Take irrigation: Amid drought, a gigantic freshwater lake runs virtually the entire length of eastern Malawi, enough water to saturate millions of now-parched acres. Yet only 2 percent of Malawi's arable land is irrigated. Virtually all of that grows cash crops like tobacco and sugar cane, not the corn that all Malawians eat. The government wants to extend water to small farmers, but lacks money. So charities build local irrigation projects, but when they finish and leave, the projects fall apart for lack of maintenance and expertise. Why doesn't Malawi train its own experts to improve agriculture? It did: Mr. Babu says he trained 450 experts in food policy and nutrition during his five years there. But 'when I go back, I don't see them,' he says: about 150 have died, many victims of AIDS. Others left the government for better-paying jobs in global charities or the United Nations. That, say Mr. Babu and others, is central to the problem. Malawi and its kin lack the capacity - skilled managers and policy makers, good roads and machinery, investors and entrepreneurs - to sustain any effort to climb out of poverty. So outsiders take up the task, often with conflicting aims and shortterm success, often to the government's dismay. Such examples barely describe the difficulties attending African poverty. Books have been written on this topic. Many, with titles like 'The Road to Hell' and 'Lords of Poverty,' lay the blame for third-world squalor at the feet of foreigners who want to end it. There is even a hilarious poem demonizing 'the development set': We bring in consultants whose circumlocution Raises difficulties for every solution Thus guaranteeing continued good eating By showing the need for another meeting. If only the solution to Malawi's agony were as simple as punishing craven charities, however. Most people here want to do good, and succeed in the short run. But to many, this is a Salvation Army without a general, marching in different directions while poverty and pestilence pillage the civilians. Seed is available, but without irrigation. Irrigation ditches are dug, but without fertilizer. Water, seed and fertilizer are donated, but the farmer is dying of AIDS. A healthy farmer raises a crop, but government grain policies make him sell his corn for a pittance. A farmer sells his crop, but thousands in this densely populated country face similar hurdles, and stumble. 'The money being poured into Malawi is huge,' said Sylvester Kalonge, the Malawi coordinator for food security and emergencies for CARE International. 'But it's not holistic. CARE has holistic programs, but how much geographic coverage can they have? So the impact is localized, and maybe the impact will be washed away in a few years' time, and things will be worse.' And so Mr. Kalonge and his fellow saviors in the global aid network labor against the latest hunger crisis. 'That's what we do,' he said. 'We keep people alive.'

Subject: Eastern Screech-owl Being Harassed From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:52:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5946&u=4|6|... Eastern Screech-owl Being Harassed by a Black-capped Chickadee New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Subject: Black-capped Chickadee Looking From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:50:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5943&u=4|4|... Black-capped Chickadee Looking for the Eastern-Screech Owl New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Subject: Port in Shanghai, 20 Miles Out to Sea From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:48:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/business/worldbusiness/12port.html?ex=1292043600&en=cdcdc7dede8b455b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 A New Port in Shanghai, 20 Miles Out to Sea By DAVID BARBOZA SHANGHAI - China has opened the first phase of what could eventually become the world's largest container shipping port, a deepwater facility on an island about 20 miles out to sea. The Yangshan Deep Water port is this city's effort to keep up with the explosive growth of exports in the Yangtze River Delta region, which has grown into a strong rival to China's long-dominant Pearl River Delta area. Some experts say the new port could eventually help Shanghai overtake Hong Kong as the world's biggest container shipping port, while also posing new challenges to Singapore and Busan, South Korea, two of Asia's leading trans-shipment hubs. 'This is a major development,' said Wu Wenhua, a researcher at the Institute of Comprehensive Transportation in Beijing. 'This port will help make Shanghai a major shipping and financial center. They didn't have a deepwater port, so this was a major breakthrough for them.' Other experts say the city of Shanghai might have to spend up to $18 billion over the next 15 years to complete the construction of this complex port, which will be able to accommodate much bigger cargo ships and by 2020 could handle alone as many as 20 million 20-foot-equivalent containers. The Yangshan Deep Water port is another one of China's large infrastructure projects, which are meant to ensure that the country's soaring economic growth does not stall because of energy shortages, transportation bottlenecks or land and labor restrictions. And few cities in China are as ambitious as Shanghai, which is building skyscrapers, superhighways and bullet trains, as well as leveling entire districts and relocating tens of thousands of people to prepare itself for the 2010 World Expo. Shanghai now operates the world's third-busiest container shipping port behind Hong Kong and Singapore, which each handled just over 20 million 20-foot-equivalent unit containers last year. Shanghai's ports handled nearly 15 million of the containers last year, up from about 6 million in 2001, even though this city lacked a deepwater port that would have allowed bigger ships to dock. Its existing ports along the Yangtze and Huangpu Rivers are about 23 feet deep. And they are prone to silting and other problems that have helped create transportation and export bottlenecks. But on Saturday, Shanghai opened the first five berths of the Yangshan Deep Water port, which can handle as many as three million 20-foot containers. The port, which sits amid a cluster of islands far out in the East China Sea, is 49 feet deep. To get cargo to and from the Yangshan Deep Water port, the government built a six-lane bridge 20 miles long - one of the world's longest bridges - to connect the coastal region of Shanghai to a pair of islands that belong to nearby Zhejiang Province. The bridge took two and half years to build with 6,000 full-time workers. It will soon be tested by armies of cargo truck drivers who may sometimes have to navigate fog and high winds to reach the Yangshan Islands to unload. The coastal city of Ningbo, also near the new Yangshan port, has also been growing fast. And officials in Ningbo, a city in Zhejiang Province, pushed to make their city the site of the biggest port in the Yangtze River Delta region. But Shanghai officials were able to persuade Zhejiang officials to allow them to virtually annex a cluster of islands and stretch a bridge from Shanghai into their territory, helping Shanghai retain its regional dominance. At a news conference here Saturday, Shanghai officials said the city government financed the project, but now some of the world's biggest cargo port operators are negotiating with Shanghai officials for a role. By 2020, if necessary, the islands could have as many as 50 berths. But some experts here say that building the Yangshan port is as much about prestige as money. Shanghai seems determined to be a financial and trading capital. And without a new deepwater port, it could have faced losing out to rival ports in the nearby coastal city of Ningbo or other areas of China and Asia. 'This speeds up the process of positioning Shanghai as an international shipping center in northeast Asia,' said Yang Xiong, deputy mayor of Shanghai.

Subject: The Excluded Middle From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:47:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/books/review/11bai.html?ex=1291957200&en=6d405aacbb51dc8e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 11, 2005 The Excluded Middle By MATT BAI Over the last few years, in this time of Democratic despondency, there has emerged a new genre of comfort books for liberals - books that seek to expose the nefarious means by which conservatives have amassed power, while at the same time reassuring urban liberals that they bear none of the blame. Thomas Frank's best-selling 'What's the Matter With Kansas?,' for instance, advanced the premise that rural voters just aren't sophisticated enough to vote in their own interests. In 'Don't Think of an Elephant!,' the linguist George Lakoff took a slightly different angle, suggesting that these voters weren't dumb, exactly, but that their brain synapses had been rewired by the Republicans' skillful manipulation of language. Now come Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, political science professors at Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, with 'Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy.' Hacker and Pierson offer a variation on this same theme: voters can't make the right choices, they contend, because our system of government itself has dangerously malfunctioned. The authors begin with the basic premise, buttressed with a sheaf of studies and laid out in clinical prose, that the American electorate is no more conservative than it ever was. 'When Reagan was elected in 1980, the public mood was more conservative than in any year since 1952,' Hacker and Pierson write. 'But by the time of George W. Bush's election in 2000, Americans had grown substantially more liberal' and their views 'were virtually identical to their aggregate opinions in 1972.' This represents an immediate break with Frank, who argued that American voters have swerved hard right in response to social issues, but to anyone who's actually talked to voters around the country it is also a more plausible claim. For all the hype about the so-called religious right, most rural and exurban voters display little ideological zealotry; rather, they seem inclined toward mild conservatism on economics and foreign policy, along with a reverence for individual liberty - a combination which places them firmly in the historical mainstream of American politics. By design, Hacker and Pierson argue, American democracy should force politicians to cater to this political center, and yet the Republican majority in Washington has all but ignored it. As a case study, the authors examine the G.O.P.'s tax cuts, which have reduced federal taxes to their lowest level since 1950. Even administration officials admitted, privately, that Americans weren't clamoring for a tax cut. And, as has often been reported, roughly 40 percent of these tax cuts went to the 1 percent of Americans who make the most money, while the average voter will get little more than years of budget deficits. How is it, Hacker and Pierson ask, that Republicans have managed to pursue such an extreme policy without incurring any political consequences? Their answer is that Republicans have learned how to game the system shamelessly. Groups like Americans for Tax Reform and the Club for Growth enforced party discipline, forcing moderate Republicans to back the president or risk being unseated. The administration dishonestly marketed the tax cuts, promoting the idea that they would somehow transform the lives of middle-income families. And by inserting so-called sunset provisions into the final law, which made the tax cuts appear to expire when the intention was to renew them, they were able to disguise their true cost in the budgeting process. In all of these ways, the authors contend, Republicans managed to enact a policy that benefits the few while appearing to champion the many. Hacker and Pierson go on to expand this argument into a broader indictment of Republican leaders, who, they claim, have sabotaged the checks and balances built into American government so that they can fool voters while governing in the narrow interests of extremists. In particular, they accuse Republicans of manipulating the media (as evidenced, for example by the embarrassing revelation that the administration paid commentators for favorable coverage) and of ruthlessly redrawing congressional districts. No doubt Hacker and Pierson wish their book could have arrived a year ago, rather than at this moment of upheaval in Washington, when their underlying argument - that Republicans have figured out a way to do whatever they want without fear of centrist rejection - is being effectively disproved. After all, President Bush's poll numbers have reached historic lows, and moderates in Congress, sensing that the president can no longer protect them, have refused to extend tax cuts and slash critical spending. Bush's Social Security plan, which gets extended treatment in 'Off Center,' is effectively dead. The political center is apparently not the doormat the authors believe it to be. Nonetheless, the deeper message of Hacker and Pierson's book will no doubt resonate with a lot of readers - the idea that Republicans win elections by manipulating the electoral system and misrepresenting their policies, so that voters are unable to understand what they're voting for. There is substantial truth to most of Hacker and Pierson's claims about Republican tactics. But is this duplicity really the sole reason, or even the main one, that so many moderate voters continue to help elect conservatives? Could it be, for instance, that the threat of terrorism and the G.O.P.'s historic advantage on issues of national security are contributing factors? (It's worth noting that Bush's presidency was in deep distress before the attacks of Sept. 11.) Hacker and Pierson flatly dismiss this idea; their book is concerned only with domestic policy, they say, because that's what voters care about most. What about the perception of Democratic elitism, which alienates a lot of rural voters who might otherwise vote for an alternative candidate? The authors reject this as a media exaggeration, and assert that poor and working-class Americans have never identified as strongly with the Democratic Party as they do today. This may be true of voters in the aggregate, but it conveniently fails to acknowledge what exit polls have made starkly clear - that middle-income white men have fled the party by the planeload in recent elections, providing the Republican margin of victory. In fact, Hacker and Pierson can't seem to find any significant fault among Democrats at all, save for their chronic but so darn lovable disunity. Like Frank and Lakoff, the authors seem to prefer the more self-ennobling explanation that conservatives have seized power from an unwitting electorate. For all its pretensions to objectivity, 'Off Center' deteriorates into just the latest example in our political discourse of what might be called confirmational analysis - that is, a work whose primary purpose is to confirm what its audience already believes. In the end, for all its talk about the political center, there is a radical current that runs through 'Off Center' - an insinuation that American democracy no longer works simply because Democrats haven't been winning. This is most pronounced in discussions of the Electoral College, which Hacker and Pierson dream of abolishing, and the structure of the Senate, which they deplore. Citing the New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg, the authors point out that if each senator represents half his state, then the Democratic minority in the Senate actually represents 30 million more voters than the Republican majority. This is very interesting, but, as a couple of political scientists should know, it's also irrelevant; our democracy is not, in fact, an Athenian democracy but a republic of states that was designed to protect small states from the dictates of urban elites. That some liberals, Hacker and Pierson among them, would reinvent the system now for their own ends is highly ironic, given that this is precisely the kind of contempt for the traditions of American democracy of which they accuse their opponents. Which just goes to show you that the real threat to our system of government is ideological certainty - no matter whose ideology happens to be at issue.

Subject: Always the Season for Reinvestment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:08:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12mon3.html?ex=1292043600&en=6a0bb4a553b895a7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Always the Season for Reinvestment Even as consumers are driving the economy and spending money they do not have in this holiday season, American businesses are sitting on hoards of cash. The best idea the corporate chieftains can come up with is to write dividend checks and buy up their own shares in record quantities. That's money in the pockets of wealthy investors. It's also more of the kind of short-term thinking this country can ill afford in an era of global competition. Instead, more should be invested in the future health of those same businesses. There is nothing wrong with dividends or buybacks. Investors should be compensated for the risks they take betting their capital on company performance. But Standard & Poor's estimates that the 500 companies in its flagship index will have plowed more than half a trillion dollars into dividends and share repurchases by the end of the year, handily topping the previous year's record in each category. And many major companies still maintain huge stashes of cash in reserve. A Merrill Lynch survey last month found that a majority of fund managers believed companies were underinvesting in their businesses. It isn't for lack of money. Corporate profits have been setting records too. But a lot of those gains are driven by cost-cutting. While that may be a great move right now, it could hamper production and innovation down the road. Some caution is understandable, given that a lot of companies got burned when the Internet bubble burst. But it is time to start spending more on things like technology, plants and workers. American consumers are constantly exhorted to spend and never more so than during the run-up to Christmas. Shop until you drop on Black Friday. Click until your wrist hurts on Cyber Monday. And indeed, despite high debt burdens, American consumers have done exactly that, wearing out the magnetic strips on their credit cards. It's about time this country's chief executives emulated their customers a little.

Subject: Interest in Nuclear Power From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:07:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/international/europe/12finland.html?ex=1292043600&en=582c16feaf1938e9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Finland Rekindles Interest in Nuclear Power By LIZETTE ALVAREZ HELSINKI, Finland - Finland is nothing if not pragmatic and law abiding. So when Finland, a country with a long memory of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and considerable environmental bona fides, chose to move ahead this year with the construction of the world's largest nuclear reactor, the nuclear industry portrayed it as a victory, one that would force the rest of Western Europe to take note. But the decision to build the reactor, Olkiluoto 3, Europe's first in 15 years, was not taken quickly or lightly. The proposal, which was fiercely opposed by the Green Party, wound its way through nearly every committee in Parliament, was the subject of intense lobbying and was exhaustively covered by Finland's numerous newspapers. Ultimately, the 1,600 megawatt reactor was approved in 2002 by a vote of 107 to 92. Construction began this year in Olkiluoto, a small island on Finland's southwestern shore. The plant is scheduled to open in 2009. 'There was only one question that has been discussed more in Parliament, and that was Finland's E.U. membership,' said Anneli Nikula, vice president for corporate communications at Teollisuuden Voima Oy, the Finnish power group that is building Olkiluoto 3 and operates two of Finland's four existing reactors. 'All the facts were on the table.' Now, with continued spikes in gas and fuel prices, fears about overdependence on foreign oil and the growing threat of global warming, Finland's decision to embrace nuclear energy appears prescient. A number of countries that have turned away from nuclear power in recent decades, including the United States, are reconsidering their options and freshening up languishing proposals to build nuclear plants. Others with a renewed interest in nuclear energy include Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hungary and Slovakia. 'There is an expectation that others will follow, both because of the way the decision was made and the boosting of confidence in being able to get through all the oppositional fear-mongering,' said Ian Hore-Lacy, the director of public communications for the World Nuclear Association, an industry lobbying group. The United States, which has not had a nuclear plant on order since 1978, is experiencing a groundswell of interest. Taking the first step in a long process, Constellation Energy, a Baltimore-based holding company, announced in late October that it would apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to construct and operate a pressurized water reactor like the kind being built in Finland, possibly in upstate New York or Maryland. The Finnish reactor, designed by Areva, the French state-controlled nuclear power group, is being built by Framatome ANP, a joint venture of Areva and Siemens, a Germany company. In addition, President Bush signed into law an energy bill in August that offers billions of dollars in research and development funds and construction subsidies to companies willing to build new nuclear plants. Several utility companies have applied for early site permits, a preliminary step toward building reactors. Worldwide, the resurgent interest in nuclear power is even more pronounced. Twenty-three reactors are under construction this year in 10 countries, most of them in Asia, which has aggressively pursued nuclear energy. India is building eight reactors. China and Taiwan are building a total of four reactors and are planning eight more. Russia is building four and South Korea is planning eight. The Finnish government first sought approval to build its fifth nuclear reactor in 1993, while memories of the Chernobyl catastrophe lingered. Few were willing to accept the risks. Twelve years later, a skittish and uncertain energy market has changed everything. Global warming, Finland's dependence on foreign sources of natural gas and oil, and the potential impact of high electricity prices on Finland's crucial energy-intensive industries have managed to trump concerns about nuclear energy's safety and waste. That same shift is occurring in many other countries as well, with a few notable holdouts, including Germany, Sweden and Belgium. At the same time, the nuclear industry, which says its newer reactors are safer and more affordable, deftly reframed the debate, focusing on the potential benefits to the economy and environment. Finland takes seriously its commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to lower carbon dioxide emissions, which are produced in large quantities by burning oil, coal and gas, a position that weighed heavily in the reactor's favor. 'The climate change debate was not here 10 years ago,' said Oras Tynkkynen, a Green Party member of Parliament who opposed the reactor and accused the government of failing to pursue renewable energy - wind power, for example - as a solution. 'Now all they say is we have this terrible problem with climate change and we need to do something about it. It's hard to refute in 15 seconds.' Nuclear energy's selling points were timely: it does not create emissions, unlike coal, oil and gas, and provides predictable electricity prices, a major bonus for Finnish industries, nuclear proponents said. 'The only viable alternative, if we want to maintain the structure of the economy, maintain our industries and meet our Kyoto targets, is nuclear,' said Juha Rantanen, the chief executive officer of Outokumpu, one of the world's largest steel producers and one of Finland's biggest energy users. 'We can't have a declining economy. We face huge challenges and an aging population. Something had to be done.' Environmentalists, however, argued that nuclear reactors could never be entirely safe. They are always radioactive, and their waste remains toxic for 100,000 years. But the designers of Areva's pressurized water reactor, which is costing $3.5 billion to build, helped counter those arguments. In the event of a core meltdown, they said, the nuclear material would flow into a separate enclosure for cooling. They also said that the reactor is being built with enough concrete to withstand the impact of an airliner. In the end, Finland's largest trade union supported the project, basically sealing the deal. Environmentalists, who argue that building more nuclear reactors simply allows the government to put off serious investment in alternative energy, are now confronting possible plans for a sixth reactor in Finland. 'It makes life nice for 10 years,' Mr. Tynkkynen said. 'But in the long term it causes trouble.'

Subject: 'You Beast,' She Said, and Meant It From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:05:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/12/13/movies/13kong.html December 13, 2005 'You Beast,' She Said, and Meant It By A. O. SCOTT Among the reasons 'King Kong' - the old 100-minute black-and-white version, that is - has retained its appeal over the years is that it reminds audiences of the do-it-yourself, seat-of-the-pants ethic of early motion pictures. In 1933, when RKO released it, sound film was in its infancy, and film itself was in the midst of a coltish, irrepressible adolescence. Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, who directed the first 'Kong,' understood the alchemical convergence of gimmickry and sublimity that lay at the heart of the medium's unrivaled potential to generate spectacle and sensation. That potential still exists, but it may be harder to find these days, given how much bigger and more self-important movies have become. In his gargantuan, mightily entertaining remake, 'King Kong,' Peter Jackson tries to pay homage to the original even as he labors to surpass it. The sheer audacious novelty of the first 'King Kong' is not something that can be replicated, but in throwing every available imaginative and technological resource into the effort, Mr. Jackson comes pretty close. The threshold of sensation has risen drastically since the 30's, when movies were still associated with older, somewhat disreputable forms of popular culture. Unlike the 1976 remake, which tried to drag the story into the corporate present, Mr. Jackson's version returns it to the Great Depression, reminding us that the road to the multiplex stretches back through the music halls and burlesque houses of those bygone days. Of course, this new 'King Kong' (written by Mr. Jackson and his frequent collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) cost more than $200 million to make and can hardly be called scruffy. It arrives burdened with impossible expectations and harassed by competition from all sides. The director, who not so long ago was making low-budget monster movies in his native New Zealand, clearly wants to hold onto the artisanal, eccentric spirit of the past - his own and that of the art form he loves. But at the same time he must live up to the success of his 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and prove to a glutted, gluttonous audience that large-scale, effects-driven filmmaking is still capable of novelty, freshness and emotional impact. He succeeds through a combination of modesty and reckless glee, topping himself at every turn and reveling in his own showmanship. His 'King Kong,' though it has a few flourishes of tongue-in-cheek knowingness - including references to Cooper and Fay Wray and shots that directly quote the original - never feels self-conscious or arch. And though it presents the interspecies love story between Kong (Andy Serkis, who also plays a shipboard cook named Lumpy) and Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts) with touching sincerity, the picture wears its themes lightly, waving away the somber, allegorical sententiousness that too many blockbusters ('Lord of the Rings' included) rely upon to justify their exorbitant costs. The movie is, almost by definition, too much - too long, too big, too stuffed with characters and over-the-top set pieces - but it is animated by an impish, generous grace. Three hours in the dark with a giant, angry ape should leave you feeling battered and exhausted, but 'King Kong' is as memorable for its sweetness as for its sensationalism. After setting a nostalgic mood with Art Deco titles and James Newton Howard's old-fashioned movie-palace overture, 'King Kong' plunges into a New York of vaudeville houses, soup lines and Hooverville encampments. Ann, a winsome, wholesome hoofer, is performing in a threadbare revue that shuts down just as Carl Denham (Jack Black) loses the star of his next movie. Somehow, he entices not only Ann, but also her favorite playwright, the Barton Finkish Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), onto a rusty tub whose unsavory captain (Thomas Kretschmann) captures and transports exotic animals. Denham's plan is to take his film crew - which also includes his anxious assistant (Colin Hanks) and lantern-jawed star (Kyle Chandler) - to Skull Island, where they will discover ... Well, take a guess. The sea voyage is, for the most part, a diversion and a tease. Denham frets and schemes, Ann and Jack make tentative moves toward romance, and we also meet the noble first mate (Evan Parke) and his skittish young protégé (Jamie Bell). The actors take evident pleasure in shedding the demands of naturalism and trying out an older, more emphatic screen style. Mr. Black holds some of his clownishness in check and adapts some of his 'School of Rock' monomania to the task of playing Mr. Jackson's alter ego. The rest of them mainly serve as dramatic fodder for the coming battles with Kong and the islanders. First among these are the human Skull Islanders, whose grunting, wild-eyed savagery is one bit of nostalgia Mr. Jackson might have forgone. But their seaside settlement is soon abandoned for the island's green, craggy interior, which gives biodiversity a whole new meaning. There are enough dinosaurs to overrun Jurassic Park, and every kind of slithery, crawly, beetly thing you can imagine, as well as some you can't. At times, the blending of computer-generated imagery and live action is pushed to a point where the seams begin to show, as in a Pamplona-style running of the brontosauruses, with various human actors darting between the legs of rampaging lizards. But two scenes are so madly inspired that they are likely to become touchstones: a three-way T-Rex versus Giant Ape wrestling match in a deep ravine hung with vines, and a battle involving fanged worms and giant vampire crickets (at least I think that's what they were). In this world, Kong, while certainly irascible, also shows himself to be a pretty evolved guy. Apparently the only nonhuman mammal on the island, he is a grumpy vegetarian who treats the people sacrificed to him as playthings rather than prey. He takes a special shine to Ann, not just because she is blond and lovely, but because of her pratfalls and dance moves, which turn out to be the universal basis of entertainment. The rapport between Ms. Watts and Mr. Serkis is extraordinary, even though it is mediated by fur, latex, optical illusions and complicated effects. Mr. Serkis, who also played Gollum in the 'Lord of the Rings' movies, is redefining screen acting for the digital age, while Ms. Watts incarnates the glamour and emotional directness of classical Hollywood. Together they form one of the most unlikely and affecting screen couples since Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina did their beast and beauty act in 'La Strada.' Come to think of it, there is a touch of Fellini in Mr. Jackson's sentimental, ambivalent love of theater and spectacle. Returning to New York, 'King Kong' evolves from jungle adventure to pop tragedy, as the big monkey becomes a symbol for ... well, for quite a few things, not all of them coherent. According to Denham, his captivity and display prove the power of show business to make the mysteries of creation available to anyone with the price of admission. In his mouth, this sounds both appealingly democratic and grossly cynical, which is fitting enough, since that is precisely the paradox Mr. Jackson embraces. He intuitively understands that the machinery of mass spectacle has the power to despoil and demystify whatever it touches and, at the same time, the ability to endow easy pleasures with a durable and genuine nobility. The climax of 'King Kong' - one of the most familiar sequences in movies, and one that never grows old - exemplifies both tendencies. It is shameless and exalted, absurd and sublime, vulgar and grand. It's what movies were made for.

Subject: Hi, Venice? It's Istanbul. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:03:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/arts/design/11unge.html December 11, 2005 Hi, Venice? It's Istanbul. Can You Send a Painter? By MILES UNGER Boston — When Rudyard Kipling wrote, 'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,' he had obviously forgotten about the long history of the Venetian Republic. A child of Byzantium, Venice exploited its ancient ties to that crossroads of Europe and Asia to build up a thriving trade in goods and ideas that shaped its art, architecture and institutions. When the Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, Venice was largely cut off from the original source of its prosperity and, as importantly, its cultural vitality. Decades of war followed, and Venice found itself on the front lines in a clash of civilizations between the Islamic world and Christian Europe, an uncomfortable position for a nation that preferred trade to conflict and prided itself on its cosmopolitan outlook. It was an unequal contest between a rising superpower and a mercantile republic whose glory days were behind it, so when the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II extended to Venice an offer of peace, the Senate quickly grasped it. Along with the usual demand for territorial concessions and chests filled with treasure, Mehmed had one more request to make of the Venetians: that they send to his court one of the many fine painters practicing in the city. The Senate chose the best they had, ordering Gentile Bellini to stop his work decorating the doge's palace so that he might turn his talents to beautifying the sultan's palace in Istanbul. The story of Gentile Bellini's nearly two-year sojourn (1479-80) in the Ottoman capital is the subject of 'Gentile Bellini and the East,' an exhibition opening on Wednesday at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here. The show captures a rare moment of fruitful cross-cultural exchange in what has often been a sorry tale of xenophobia, religious intolerance and tit-for-tat atrocities between two great civilizations. The paintings and drawings Bellini completed in Istanbul, as well as those he made upon his return, serve as reminders of the benefits of cultural border crossing. Among the works Bellini created while at the sultan's court was his famous 'Seated Scribe,' in which the Islamic passion for the written word is lovingly conveyed by a European with a gift for illusionistic rendering. Here in miniature we can watch a thrilling drama unfold as one great tradition reaches out to touch another. Bellini depicts the young scholar, dressed in sumptuous robes and completely absorbed in his task, with the respect due to one whose dedication to learning embodies a pinnacle of human achievement. There is no hint of condescension here. Given the evident sympathy of the artist for his subject, it is hard to believe that the two belonged to peoples whose normal means of communication was in the form of gunpowder and iron shot. The exhibition also recalls a time when artists were central figures in the diplomatic give and take, along with prize racehorses and other trophies that were traded among the great courts of Europe and Asia. (When, a couple of years after Bellini's voyage, Lorenzo de' Medici wished to confirm an end to hostilities with Pope Sixtus IV, he did so by sending some of his favorite artists - including Botticelli and Ghirlandaio - to Rome to decorate the new Sistine Chapel.) A more unusual transaction involving art and politics is also recorded in the Gardner exhibition. It comes in the form of a bronze medal by Bertoldo di Giovanni with a portrait of the sultan based on a drawing Bellini had made while in Istanbul. The work was commissioned by Lorenzo in gratitude after Mehmed delivered his brother's murderer to Florence in chains. Bellini sailed to Istanbul as a cultural ambassador, but that rather tepid term - conjuring up images of ballerinas performing dutifully before yawning dignitaries - hardly conveys the cultural gulf that a Venetian artist had to leap across or the motives of the powerful ruler who invited him. Mehmed was a man of large appetites and larger ego, and his desire for a Venetian painter of the first rank had less to do with promoting mutual understanding than with his ideas about what befitted a ruler with global ambitions. Bellini was the perfect candidate. The techniques and disciplines he learned in his father's workshop were the kind that traveled well. They placed a premium on the accurate description of forms and textures, allowing the artist to record exotic places as easily as more familiar terrain. His portrait of the Ottoman ruler reveals the skills that so enchanted his patron. Set within an illusionistically rendered arch decorated with a jewel-encrusted cloth, the turban-crowned Mehmed appears fully human and yet every inch a king. The carefully individuated features, including the sharply hooked nose and receding chin, demonstrate that Mehmed preferred accuracy to empty flattery. The preference was not due to modesty, however; an inscription in the lower left-hand corner, now largely obliterated, once read 'Victor Orbis' ('Conqueror of the World'). According to a contemporary account, 'when the emperor beheld the image so similar to himself, he admired the man's powers and said that he surpassed all other painters who ever existed.' Bellini remained in the Ottoman capital for nearly two years, then returned home, his notebooks filled with images of the customs and costumes of the Near East. His 'St. Mark Preaching in Alexandria' (1504-07), with its crowd of turbaned spectators, anachronistic minarets and exotic locale (enhanced by the inclusion of a giraffe in the background), teems with sights and sounds recalled from his time in Istanbul. 'The Reception of the Venetian Ambassadors in Damascus,' painted by one of his followers, likewise reflects the broader cultural vistas this sojourn opened up. For a generation and more, Italian paintings were populated by elaborately robed merchants in settings enhanced by Moorish arches and palm trees, much of this directly inspired by or borrowed from the drawings Bellini made as souvenirs of his trip. Of course Bellini's voyage, like all such exercises in cultural diplomacy, could not fundamentally alter the course of history. Mehmed died only a few months after Bellini's departure. He was succeeded by his son Bayezid II, a religious puritan who found his father's eclectic tastes unsuitable and sold off Bellini's paintings and drawings in the bazaar at Istanbul - where Bellini's fellow Venetians snapped them up at bargain prices. The rivalries, misunderstandings and mutual suspicions that set Muslims and Christians at one another's throats for generations remained. But 'Gentile Bellini and the East' eloquently attests to the possibilities that open up when two cultures treat each other with respect and pool their resources.

Subject: Far Apart on Medicaid Changes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 06:01:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/politics/12medicaid.html?ex=1292043600&en=adb48b7a39ae0004&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 House and Senate Still Far Apart on Medicaid Changes By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - Members of Congress will soon plunge into battle over the future of Medicaid as House and Senate negotiators try to resolve huge differences in legislation that would allow states to cut benefits and increase charges for millions of low-income people, including many children. Medicaid is a flash point in a larger budget bill on which Republican leaders say they plan to reach agreement by year's end. The Bush administration and the National Governors Association support changes approved last month by the House as a way to curb the explosive growth of Medicaid, which is financed jointly by the federal government and the states. Many federal and state officials have concluded that Medicaid, which insures more than 50 million low-income people, is unsustainable in its current form. The cost shot up 54 percent in the past five years and now exceeds $300 billion a year. Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, a Democrat, said earlier this year that Medicaid was 'on the road to a meltdown' and would 'bankrupt all the states' if Congress did not intervene. But senators of both parties, advocates for poor people and public health groups, including the March of Dimes and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose many provisions of the House bill. The changes, they say, would harm children and disabled people of all ages who rely on Medicaid. The Senate bill would keep benefits intact. It would expand Medicaid, by allowing parents of severely disabled children to buy coverage and by stepping up efforts to enroll people already eligible. In the past few years, many states have trimmed Medicaid benefits and restricted eligibility for adults. But Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the House bill would be 'the first significant retrenchment in federal health benefits and coverage for children.' The House bill makes three major changes: ¶States could charge premiums and higher co-payments for a wide range of Medicaid benefits, including prescription drugs, doctors' services and hospital care. ¶States could scale back benefits, capping or eliminating coverage for services now guaranteed by federal law. ¶States could end Medicaid coverage for people who failed to pay premiums for 60 days or more. Pharmacists could refuse to fill prescriptions, and doctors and hospitals could deny services, for Medicaid recipients who did not make the required co-payments. Under current Medicaid law, a health care provider cannot deny care or services because of a person's inability to pay. On Medicaid, as on other issues, the Senate could agree to accept some provisions of the House bill as part of a compromise. In a detailed analysis of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that 70,000 to 110,000 people would lose Medicaid coverage for failure to pay premiums. It estimated that states would establish co-payments for 11 million Medicaid recipients, half of them children, and increase existing co-payments for an additional 6 million people. 'In sum,' the budget office said, 'we expect that about 17 million people - 27 percent of Medicaid enrollees - would ultimately be affected by the cost-sharing provisions of the bill.' Certain groups of beneficiaries and certain services would be exempt from the changes authorized by the House bill. Under current law, Medicaid officials cannot charge co-payments for children under 18 and cannot charge for specific services like emergency care. For other services and for prescription drugs, the maximum co-payment is generally $3. Democrats, who are generally opposed to the House and Senate budget bills, are excluded from the current negotiations. The chief negotiators on Medicaid are Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans. Mr. Barton, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said that higher co-payments were needed to 'encourage personal responsibility' among Medicaid beneficiaries. 'Co-payments have not changed in 20 years, and they're unenforceable, to boot,' Mr. Barton said. But Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said, 'Under the House bill, beneficiaries will see their co-payments increase much faster than their income, and that will reduce their ability to get medically necessary care.' In 2003, when Oregon expanded its Medicaid program, it received federal permission to charge premiums of $6 to $20 a month for certain new beneficiaries. It charged co-payments of $5 for a doctor's office visit, $2 or $3 for most prescription drugs, and $15 for some medicines. Tina D. Edlund, research manager at the Oregon Office for Health Policy and Research, said: 'The co-payments discouraged both appropriate and inappropriate use of services. Of the 90,000 people who were subject to premiums, 40,000 dropped off the rolls, and the poorest of the poor were disproportionately affected.' 'We thought the premiums were relatively small,' Ms. Edlund said, 'but for people with very low incomes, they proved to be significant.' At public hospitals and children's hospitals, doctors worry that some Medicaid recipients, faced with premiums and higher co-payments, will go without drugs and doctors' services, and their conditions will worsen. 'People dropped from Medicaid for failure to pay premiums will become uninsured,' said Dr. Patricia A. Gabow, chief executive of the Denver Health system, which runs a public hospital and 20 clinics in Colorado. 'They will delay care and end up with costly complications.' About one-sixth of all Medicaid recipients qualify for coverage because of mental or physical disabilities. They see Medicaid as indispensable because it pays for therapy, rehabilitation, personal care services and equipment they need to work and to perform basic activities of daily living. 'The Medicaid package is far better than private insurance,' said Martha E. Ford, a lobbyist for the Arc, formerly known as the Association for Retarded Citizens. Parents of children with severe disabilities - even some who can afford private health insurance - want to be able to buy Medicaid coverage for their children. The budget bill passed by the Senate would allow them to do that. 'It's consistent with the compassionate conservative agenda advanced by the president,' said Mr. Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Mr. Grassley's vision of Medicaid is fundamentally different from that in the House bill. He would extend coverage to disabled children in families with low and moderate incomes, while the House would make it easier for states to cut back such coverage. The House bill appears to protect children in families with incomes below the poverty level (about $16,000 for a family of three). But it would allow states to decide how income should be defined. The House bill closely follows bipartisan recommendations from the National Governors Association, which said states should have the option to increase co-payments and alter benefits to resemble commercial insurance. Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican who is chairman of the association, said: 'Governors are not looking for ways to cut people off and to make life more miserable for poor people. We are looking for ways to give at least some benefit to people who have nothing. The only way we can do that is to have a flexible package of benefits.' At the same time, negotiators have to take account of moderate Republican senators like Gordon H. Smith of Oregon. Mr. Smith voted for the Senate version of the budget bill but said he would vote against the final version if it cut Medicaid benefits or coverage. On this issue, he said, he is 'unwilling to compromise.'

Subject: Remaking the French Ghettos From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:59:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12mon4.html?ex=1292043600&en=7f0cc9d36c459cc9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Remaking the French Ghettos The rioting that recently engulfed the impoverished suburbs of Paris recalls the riots that plagued America's inner cities in the 1960's. The new policies being developed by the French government - job training, dropout prevention and antidiscrimination measures - echo some of the policies America adopted back then. But the French program that is likely to make the most difference in the riot-torn areas became law two years ago. The French urban renewal program, which calls for razing many of the high-rise buildings in the suburban ghettos to create more-livable, mixed-income housing, was a welcome departure from policies that isolated immigrants in crime-ridden communities. The United States learned this lesson the hard way, after many of its great cities were damaged by massive public housing projects that were originally seen as places for working families but then deteriorated into drug-infested reservations for the poorest of the poor. In almost every city, public housing frightened away the middle class, drove down local property values and limited the horizons of the families who lived in them. It was clear by the 1970's that high-density public housing projects were toxic for cities and the families they housed. Congress eventually created a program that encouraged cities to raze the projects and replace them with more habitable scattered housing. The poor who did not find places in these developments often received vouchers that allowed them to move elsewhere. As a result, several American cities have seen some of the worst housing projects in the country give way to vibrant new communities. The United States has unfortunately taken a piecemeal approach to this issue, gradually choking off money to one of the most successful urban renewal plans in the nation's history. The French, however, have jumped headlong into the process, committing themselves to transforming all of their ghettos. If the French government stays the course, and beats back narrow-minded opposition, the renewal program could yield fine results for the communities that were epicenters of the recent riots.

Subject: Dreams Mix With Fury Near Paris From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:59:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/international/europe/12suburb.html?ex=1292043600&en=4754646b0930883f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Immigrants' Dreams Mix With Fury Near Paris By ELAINE SCIOLINO LA COURNEUVE, France - Djamila has built her life around her sons. An Algerian-born nurse's aide who left the two husbands who abused her, she has soldiered on in the housing projects of this tough town near Paris, long confident that her four children would reap the benefits of being born French. Yet each son found it harder to make his way in this world. And now, at 58, Djamila is caught between a determination that her youngest son will succeed and a sense of foreboding that he will not. 'I was happier than my children are,' she said over tea and biscuits in her well-scrubbed, lace-curtained, two-bedroom apartment in one of France's roughest housing projects. 'This is a place where gangrene has set in.' Her son, who goes by the nickname Looping, is 22 and jobless. He uses a simpler metaphor to describe his life. 'The sun never shines,' he said. 'The buildings are gray. The people are gray. Everything is gray. It's the same people and there is nothing to do, nothing to do. You wake up every morning looking for work. But why? There isn't any.' La Courneuve, a town of 35,000 people of 80 nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, is a world away from Paris, though only a 10-minute ride on the high-speed intercity train. It has become a symbol of France's failure to integrate millions of Arab and African immigrants - many of them Muslims - and their French-born children and grandchildren. It is also here that events helped start the riots that recently gripped poor neighborhoods throughout France. The frustration and fury of the rioters is still visible in the two charred carcasses of delivery trucks that flank the main road into La Courneuve. They are even more apparent in conversations with the town's residents, those who, like Djamila, struggle to make do, and those who, like her son Looping, feel that every way out is blocked. They asked that their last names not be used, fearing reprisals from the police, or even from neighbors. Promised the ideal of a republican France, where the state is blind to race, religion and ethnicity and all citizens enjoy equal opportunity, both generations feel betrayed. For Djamila, who is more outspoken than Looping, the overcrowded, underfinanced schools are 'huge vacuums' that turn out students without trades and then blame the parents. The police are not guardians of the peace, she said, but corrupt, 'beautiful bastards' who extort money or pocket the hashish they seize from neighborhood hoodlums. The young - including Looping, she fears - easily fall victim to the cheap and plentiful hashish 'that destroys their brains,' she said. Those who burn cars are not evil, but understandably alienated. Her sons are never considered French, even though they were born in France, but rather 'children of immigrants.' 'Why do you think the young have revolted?' she asked. 'There is no exit, no factories, no jobs for them. They see too much injustice, too, too, too much. Society no longer offers them anything - no values, no morality, no place.' Menace and Merriment Outside the Balzac, the toughest public-housing apartment block in this tough town outside Paris, a young man rams a Peugeot into a parked car, piercing the afternoon ennui with the sound of crashing metal and tinkling glass. No police officers witness the act, but a band of comrades approve it with a loud whoop. A few hundred yards away, some 50 women gather in a down-at-the-heel community center called Africa for a very different sort of neighborhood entertainment. Here it is the music that is loud. As the crowd sings a song in Arabic about a bride on her wedding night, a woman wearing a smile of mischief arches her back, rotates her hips and starts dancing. Sensuality, not anger, fills the airless, windowless basement. 'We need to find ways to celebrate, to party,' said a 71-year-old volunteer as she pulled women onto the dance floor. 'We need to get our women out of the house.' La Courneuve is a town that menaces but also welcomes. Branded by France's police intelligence agency as one of the country's 150 'no go zones,' where police officers should enter only with major reinforcements, La Courneuve was caught up in the violence in which rioters torched cars, trashed businesses and ambushed the police. It is here that a policeman was seriously injured and hospitalized one night in November when a metal ball was dropped on his head. It is also here that the police beat a young man who hurled insults at them, a moment of frustration and panic that was captured by a television crew and prompted the suspension of several officers. Still, these projects struggle to preserve a spirit of community. Volunteers help elementary schoolchildren with their homework in a damp storage room with bare light bulbs and a concrete floor, steps away from street thugs who deal drugs, hashish mostly, but keep to themselves. Residents might refuse to tell outsiders their full names, for fear of retribution by the police or the petty gangsters, then invite them into their homes. Even for Djamila, La Courneuve is a familiar neighborhood, a place where even the hashish dealers offer to carry her packages, where slightly older, more experienced men protect and settle scores for the younger ones, like Looping. 'The jewel of the family,' she calls him, a 'good boy who makes mistakes, doesn't work but has a golden heart. He has everything ahead of him. Our young are not bad. They are very loyal to each other, like a family. All is not completely lost.' Nowhere to Go For Looping, the dream is to flee. But getting a job is hard with only a high school degree in accounting, an Arabic name and a five-digit postal address starting with '93,' which identifies him as a resident of the suburbs. So he reads mystery novels and trolls the Internet every day looking for work that does not come. 'I didn't have a choice; the national education system told me what I had to study even though I wanted to know right at the beginning whether there would be a job at the end,' he said over coffee with three of his friends at Le Pasteur, a cafe-restaurant. 'People on the outside see us as car-burners and strange beings, when what I want at 22 is not to have to ask my mother for money.' Unemployment, which plagues three generations and averages 28 percent in the projects in La Courneuve, is much higher among young people. The average income is less than $10,000 a year here; the average Parisian makes more than twice that. Most families here receive some form of public assistance. Looping agrees with his mother that his older brothers had an easier time finding their way a decade ago, when France's economy was healthier. His eldest brother is married and has a 2-year-old son and a secure job as a shuttle bus driver at a Paris airport. A second brother, who owns a small long-distance phone center, found refuge in Islam. When he was still a teenager, he grew a long beard, donned robes, began to pray five times a day and go to the neighborhood mosque. He married a woman who wears long black gloves and a black veil that covers her body and even her face. A third brother, who had a respectable job in a cosmetics business, was recently laid off. With $4,700 due in back rent, he moved back in with his mother and sleeps on the pullout couch in the living room. As for Looping, he is a man on the edge. He is so respectful that he won't smoke a cigarette in front of his mother, yet so desperate that he feels the pull of crime. He has no girlfriend; that would take money. 'When I'm in a really bad state,' he said, 'I have this desire to go into Paris, grab a few handbags and come back home again.' After all, he added: 'In the eyes of people or the police when I walk on the street, in front of institutions or an employer, I am considered like a thug. Women hide their purses when they go by me.' Then he thinks of the fate of Tony Montana, Al Pacino's dishwasher-turned-drug-lord character in the 1983 film 'Scarface,' whose aura hovers over French suburbs like La Courneuve. Scarface-like thugs are the heroes of films and rap songs about life here. 'Tony dies in the end, that's the moral of the film,' he said. 'But the young thugs don't see it that way. They think they're smarter than Tony.' His mother has paid $400 for a training program so that Looping can get a special license to drive construction vehicles. He is grateful, despite the strict rules she imposes on him - the early curfews, the limits on his comings and goings, the careful monitoring of his friendships. But he is disgusted by the litter in the hallways and the habits some of the new immigrants, who toss trash out the windows and allow their young children to wander the streets. 'They even throw diapers out the windows,' he said. 'It's miserable to say this, but it's as if we live in a garbage dump, so what difference does it make if there is one more bag of trash thrown into it?' Fertile Ground for Violence In the early 1960's, the landscape of La Courneuve was transformed when a concrete jungle of apartment blocks was built as low-income, temporary lodging for migrant labor. The 'cité of 4,000,' as it was called, after its number of apartments, was considered at the time to be a model of modern urban architecture. But the walls of the projects were thin, the elevators tiny and temperamental, the resources to support the projects meager. The Communist Party, which for decades had given the town's working-class residents a vision and an anchor of social support, lost most of its power and influence. Many of the families who could move away left. For many of its residents, the 14-story Balzac stands as a monument to a failed urban experiment. Its elevators have a will of their own. A urine smell invades the corridors. Graffiti call the police 'assassins.' For a fee, middlemen have been known to break down a door and install squatters in a vacated apartment. Yet the view from the balconies of the long, high building capture the complexity of life here: a dusty area below that once was a soccer field, the high-speed intercity train tracks that lead into Paris, the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre in the distance. Instead of being renovated, the building is scheduled to be demolished in a few years, just like those with names like Renoir and Debussy have been in recent years. The urban renewal project is ambitious: to relocate residents into smaller, more intimate buildings. The apartments will be smaller and more expensive. The Balzac is perhaps best known for a tragedy last Father's Day. It was in front of the building that a death last June set off a chain of events that led to the country's recent urban unrest. An 11-year-old, Sidi-Ahmed Hammache, was accidentally shot to death in a feud between a group of ethnic Tunisians and ethnic Comorans as he washed his father's car. Guns are rarely used to settle scores in France, and the boy's death shocked the country. The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, a possible presidential candidate for 2007, rushed to the scene, trailed by television cameras. He vowed to 'clean' La Courneuve's housing projects with a 'Karcher,' the brand name of a high-powered hose used to wash off graffiti. To the townspeople, the words smacked of racism. Even those who fully embraced the goal of cracking down on crime were enraged. After two youths of African origin were accidentally electrocuted while hiding from the police on Oct. 27, the waves of car-burning began. Looping and his friends stayed on the sidelines. But one of those swept up in the violence in La Courneuve was Yacine, a pimply, Algerian-born 17-year-old high school student. He had never been in trouble before. But when he and a friend found themselves in front of a group of anti-riot police officers, they succumbed to a temptation to throw stones at them. 'We yelled at them and called them things like 'sons of bitches,' ' he said. 'The police beat us. They called us 'dirty Arabs.' They said, 'Go back to your country.' We yelled back, 'Dirty French.' ' Police officers handcuffed them and charged them with incitement to riot. Yacine went to the hospital where a doctor bandaged his face and wrote him a note excusing him from school for a week. He and his parents did not protest. They would have needed a lawyer, and they would lose anyway, he says. Interviewed days later, with his nose still swollen, his left cheek gashed and bandaged, Yacine was angry. 'Before this, I would have never thought that I could get into a fight with the police,' he said. 'Now, if I'm asked to beat a French, I would do it. I don't feel French.' Looping knows the feeling. If he is in trouble, he says, he does not turn to the police for help, but to the 'older brothers' in the neighborhood. 'They can settle the problem 10 times faster than the police,' he said. The police, he added, often stop him and his friends for no reason, check their identity papers and empty their pockets looking for drugs. Three years ago he was arrested when officers mistakenly thought he was part of a group insulting them. 'Sure, they hit me, that's routine for them,' he said. Rather than fight the charge, his mother paid the $300 fine. A Juvenile Revolution Playing pool one evening at Le Pasteur, Looping and three of his friends offer their analysis of the unrest that rocked France. 'This is not an Islamic revolution, make sure you understand that,' Looping said. 'It's a juvenile revolution!' declared Josselin, 22, who is half-French, half-Vietnamese and works in a marble factory. Neighborhood Muslim leaders have campaigned hard to make it clear that the urban unrest had nothing to do with Islam, radical or otherwise, and that many of the country's rioters came from Catholic or animist backgrounds. Soon after the violence started, for example, the powerful Union of Islamic Organizations in France, which runs the biggest mosque in the Paris area - it is on the edge of La Courneuve - issued a fatwa. It forbade 'every Muslim seeking satisfaction and divine grace' to take part in any act of violence. Police investigators are quick to point out that there is no link between the recent riots and radical Islam. Asked by Le Monde recently about such a link, Pascal Mailhos, director general of the Renseignements Généraux, the police intelligence agency, replied, 'The participation of radical Islamists in the violence was nil.' Still, there is a widespread recognition, both here and throughout France, that humiliation and alienation can lead young people to embrace religious extremism and even terrorism. Connections to radical individuals and groups in nearby Arab countries are strong. Indeed, in recent years, La Courneuve and the surrounding suburbs have been the origin of some of the most serious plots of terrorism involving radical Islamists. In 1994, in one of France's first encounters with radical Islamic terrorism, two unemployed French-born men from La Courneuve hid their faces behind masks and shot up a hotel in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh. Two Spanish tourists were killed. During their trial in 1995, they testified that during several months of indoctrination, they watched videos of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims and of Palestinian suffering in Israeli-occupied territory, then were sent to a military training camp in Pakistan. They were condemned to death. President Jacques Chirac interceded with the Moroccan government to have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Their involvement in terrorism still baffles residents of the town, including Looping and his mother. 'They were the 'grand ones' of the neighborhood for me,' Looping said. 'They were super nice and super respectful. If they saw a young girl being harassed, they'd give her a hand. If a young guy didn't have any money, they'd give him money. I was stunned by what happened.' In 2002, in what is still a continuing investigation, the police arrested three men from La Courneuve along with others from a nearby suburb on suspicion of plotting to attack the Russian Embassy and other targets in Paris with cyanide gas. Among the items discovered by the police were radical Islamic literature, more than $25,000 in cash, counterfeit passports and a protective suit used in handling toxic chemicals. One of those arrested had trained in Afghanistan and Chechnya. In September, the police bored in on suburbs like La Courneuve as well as parts of Paris where they uncovered a group of young men planning to fight with the insurrection in Iraq. A Tunisian-born man in his mid-20's who was arrested lived in La Courneuve. A Feeling of Frenchness On a bone-chilling morning at the town cemetery on Veterans Day, a group of white-gloved veterans from various wars carried the French flag, the town's brass band played 'La Marseillaise,' and a moment of silence was observed, an annual ritual throughout all of France's cities and towns. Various political parties laid bouquets in honor of the war dead. Even in La Courneuve, there is a determination to hold on to the rituals of the French Republic. 'Long Live the Republic! Long Live France! Long Live Peace!' Alfred Jannier, the 74-year-old president of the local veterans' association, told the crowd. Gilles Poux, the town's Communist mayor, followed with a speech criticizing the government for the riots. 'In recent years, governmental policy choices have made the situation worse,' Mr. Poux said. 'We need more than boastful speeches and a state of emergency.' The solution, he added, was simple: 'more money: money for training, for jobs, for housing, for urban renewal, for security, for prevention, for health.' Looping was not there. For him, the event celebrated the other France, a colonial, imperial France that has not yet come to terms with ethnic Arabs like him. But even as he expresses his feeling of not belonging, he talks of his Frenchness and his claim to the rights he is owed. If he wants to leave, he wants to leave the poor spaces of La Courneuve, not France. He dreams of being a popular actor or a writer in 10 years. He will have a wife and two children and a cottage for them and a cottage for his mother, he says. Hers will have a garden where she can read books. He will travel to Japan, to Thailand, to the United States. 'But that, Madame, is only my dream,' he said. 'For me, it is inaccessible. The most I can ever aim for is a steady job that pays something every month.'

Subject: Paul Krugman: It's the Price of Gas From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:55:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/ December 13, 2005 It's the Price of Gas, Stupid! By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman is asked how Bush's poll numbers for his handling of the economy can be rising if people are dissatisfied with the economy's performance: How's Bush Doing? Just Check the Price of Gas, Paul Krugman, Money Talks: Ronald Hernandez, Saint Amant, La.: ... if the economy is doing so poorly for the average Mary or Joe, then why are the latest polls consistently showing that more and more people are feeling better about it? ... And, oh yes, I am from the Katrina area and am well aware of how the Bush machine is working on its latest portrait. They are in the process of painting a picture of unpreparedness and incompetence within Louisiana's state and local governments in reaction to the worst natural disaster ever in the United States. Paul Krugman: The latest polls do show some improvement in peoples' perception of the economy, although it's still strongly negative. But there's no mystery there: it's all about gasoline prices. It turns out that there's a stunningly close relationship between short-term movements in Bush's approval rating and changes in the price of gasoline. You can see it for yourself at an interesting web site, Professor Pollkatz's Pool of Polls. (The site is very anti-Bush but provides interesting data analysis whatever your politics.) In fact, given the fall in gas prices back to pre-Katrina levels, the surprising thing is how little of a boost Bush and his economic performance ratings have received.

Subject: . . . - - - . . . ? From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 13, 2005 at 05:33:21 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: The way to help ourselves by helping others By Joseph Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton (Filed: 12/12/2005) Politicians from more than 140 countries will fly into Hong Kong this week, to try to fix the hopelessly distorted world trading system. To get a sense of how important this is, try the following experiment. Imagine a world without trade barriers or subsidies, and think of what would have to be invented to get to where we are now. Imagine a United States senator rising to his feet and asking for £2billion each year to give to a handful of cotton farmers on the condition that they continue to produce a loss-making crop, even though it can be imported from Africa at half the price. Consider an MEP asking for subsidies for the sugar industry, even though sugar can be produced much more cheaply in warmer climes. It sounds improbable, but we have now reached the stage where the European Commission is paying 40pc of its budget propping up inefficient industries which employ just 2pc of its workforce. The rich countries that make up the OECD give more than £200billion to their farmers each year, and maintain high tariffs to keep cheaper food out. These handouts do not even go towards protecting the livelihoods of small 'village' farmers. Instead, they flow towards giant farming corporations, which calculatingly change their crops to maximise their subsidies. In Europe, the largest 1pc of farms receive more than the smallest 40pc. These trade policies are a lesson in incoherence. The US has a huge hole in its budget, but gives billions to farmers, who make up just 1.7pc of the population. Gordon Brown wants to make poverty history, so he should consider this awkward fact. Rich nations give developing countries £50billion in aid each year, but cost them three times as much in protectionist trade policies. At this week's meeting, the gathered politicians have to ask themselves one thing: why should we give poor countries aid money, and at the same time deny them the opportunity to work and trade their way out of poverty? A 1pc increase in Africa's share of world trade would bring it over £30billion - more than three times the aid increase agreed by the G8 at Gleneagles. The current round of trade talks started in Doha four years ago. It is called the 'development' round because of its stated aim to draw poor nations into the trading system. The Doha meeting took place just two months after the attacks of September 11, and it was agreed that fighting poverty, advancing globalisation and helping development was in everyone's interest. Sadly, less than two years later it had become clear the talks were seriously off-track. The 2003 meeting in Cancun ended in a walk-out, after many participants accused the US and Europe of reneging on their promises, especially over agricultural reform. Now, the WTO is scrambling to avoid another embarrassing failure, but the prospects of reaching a substantial agreement in Hong Kong are fading. Politicians will now have to choose whether to scale back their ambitions, or hold off on an agreement and restart talks next year. The latter is the lesser of two evils. A compromise deal would be a regrettable missed opportunity. Delay at Hong Kong would be a mini-failure in itself - an admission that too little progress has been made. This aside, our book, Fair Trade for All, comes to the conclusion that there is a broad agenda beyond agriculture that has been almost entirely ignored in the Doha round of talks. Tariffs on industrial goods must be slashed, and the set-up must be altered so that the types of goods exported by poor countries, such as processed foods, are not unfairly penalised. There is also much to gain from increasing the mobility of workers. Workers from poor countries should be allowed to carry out short-term projects in rich countries. This would help the flexibility of the labour force, and also allow workers to send part of their pay home. The flow of money from migrant workers in rich countries is a crucial source of development finance, and is already greater than all the aid money that is given every year. Our vision of a true development round shows there are many ways of helping ourselves while helping developing countries, even if certain special interests in the rich world suffer. Politicians have the chance to deliver real gains to poor countries, and they must also preserve the reputation of the WTO. They must take a step back from the current debates and the political machinations to ask themselves what the talks should really focus on. Joseph Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 and was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank between 1996 and 2001. His new book, Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development, co-authored with Andrew Charlton of the London School of Economics, will be published this month. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/12/12/ccwto12.xml

Subject: It Takes a Potemkin Village From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 13:47:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/12/it_takes_a_pote.html December 10, 2005 It Takes a Potemkin Village Mark Thoma emails us that the New York Times is worth reading for the excellent Frank Rich: It Takes a Potemkin Village - New York Times : WHEN a government substitutes propaganda for governing, the Potemkin village is all. Since we don't get honest information from this White House, we must instead, as the Soviets once did, decode our rulers' fictions to discern what's really happening. What we're seeing now is the wheels coming off: As the administration's stagecraft becomes more baroque, its credibility tanks further both at home and abroad. The propaganda techniques may be echt Goebbels, but they increasingly come off as pure Ali G. The latest desperate shifts in White House showmanship say at least as much about our progress (or lack of same) in Iraq over the past 32 months as reports from the ground. When President Bush announced the end of 'major combat operations' in May 2003, his Imagineers felt the need for only a single elegant banner declaring 'Mission Accomplished.' Cut to Nov. 30, 2005: the latest White House bumper sticker, 'Plan for Victory,' multiplied by Orwellian mitosis over nearly every square inch of the rather 'Queer Eye' stage set from which Mr. Bush delivered his oration at the Naval Academy. And to no avail. Despite the insistently redundant graphics - and despite the repetition of the word 'victory' 15 times in the speech itself - Americans believed 'Plan for Victory' far less than they once did 'Mission Accomplished.'... Mr. Bush's 'Plan for Victory' speech was, of course, the usual unadulterated nonsense.... The specifics were phony.... Once again inflating the readiness of Iraqi troops, Mr. Bush claimed that the recent assault on Tal Afar 'was primarily led by Iraqi security forces' - a fairy tale... Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, promptly released a 59-page report documenting his own military's inadequate leadership, equipment and training. But this variety of Bush balderdash is such old news that everyone except that ga-ga 25 percent instantaneously tunes it out.... What raised the 'Plan for Victory' show to new heights of disinformation was the subsequent revelation that the administration's main stated motive for the address - the release of a 35-page document laying out a 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' - was as much a theatrical prop as the stunt turkey the president posed with during his one furtive visit to Baghdad two Thanksgivings ago. As breathlessly heralded by Scott McClellan, this glossy brochure was 'an unclassified version' of the strategy in place since the war's inception in 'early 2003.' But Scott Shane of The New York Times... turned up... the document's originating author: Peter Feaver, a Duke political scientist who started advising the National Security Council only this June.... an expert on public opinion about war, not war.... [W]hat Mr. McClellan billed as a 2003 strategy for military victory is in fact a P.R. strategy in place for no more than six months. That solves the mystery of why Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey of the Army, who is in charge of training Iraqi troops, told reporters that he had never seen this 'National Strategy' before its public release last month.... The Pentagon earmarks more than $100 million in taxpayers' money for various Lincoln Group operations, and it can't get any facts? Though the 30-year-old prime mover in the shadowy outfit, one Christian Bailey, fled from Andrea Mitchell... facts are proving not at all elusive... cash payoffs, trading in commercial Iraqi real estate and murky bidding procedures for lucrative U.S. government contracts.... The more we learn about such sleaze in the propaganda war, the more we see it's failing for the same reason as the real war: incompetence. Much as the disastrous Bremer regime botched the occupation of Iraq with bad decisions made by its array of administration cronies and relatives (among them Ari Fleischer's brother), so the White House doesn't exactly get the biggest bang for the bucks it shells out to cronies for fake news. Until he was unmasked as an administration shill, Armstrong Williams was less known for journalism than for striking a deal to dismiss a messy sexual-harassment suit against him in 1999....

Subject: Sesame Street Goes Global From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 10:25:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/business/media/12sesame.html?ex=1292043600&en=b06fbcb7011c498f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Sesame Street Goes Global: Let's All Count the Revenue By DOREEN CARVAJAL - International Herald Tribune PARIS - When a squeezable - and bankable - star named Elmo made a belated appearance in France this year, long after his Muppet birth in the United States, doubts emerged immediately about the puppet's proper French esprit. Was Elmo too sweet? Did the google-eyed creature with a crimson shag and the voice of a child lack sufficient Gallic irony? Thirty-six years after the original 'Sesame Street' had its debut in the United States, Elmo has left his familiar neighborhood for a fresh wave of globalization, bound for countries that are discarding dubbed American versions for homegrown productions inhabited by characters with names like Nac, Khokha and Kami. The makeovers - in places like Bollywood, Paris, Tokyo and South Africa - are transforming what it means to be a Muppet. One result is new licensing income from global co-productions that are subsidizing more treats for the Cookie Monster back in Sesame Workshop's New York headquarters. Revenue at Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization, increased 4 percent, to $96 million, last year, primarily because of new income from international licensing. France is the latest country to offer up its version, '5, Rue Sésame,' a quaint street of tall buildings and bright blue skies, flower boxes and, of course, a tidy village bakery stocked with baguettes. But certain American puppets are gone, including one that you might expect could rattle French sensibilities: Sesame Street's floppy-armed front man, Kermit the Frog. 'It took us a year and a half to launch this show,' said Alexandre Michelin, programming director for France 5, a public television channel, and the co-producer, with Sesame Workshop, of the show, now two months old. 'We had to adapt it to keep 'Sesame Street' values and ours, finding a way to make it work with French issues.' For Rue Sésame, that means there is a glancing scene of a tall suburban building laced with graffiti - a nod to suburbs around the country that were engulfed in riots a few weeks ago. The bakery is run by Baya, an Arabic-looking woman, although - in another reflection of French sensibilities - her origins are never mentioned. Big Bird has also vanished, replaced by an enormous yellow character, Nac, whose trumpet nose, vivid colors and whimsical nature were tested with children and reviewed by a French psychologist. The American bird disappeared because the French co-producer wanted a distinctive puppet star that could also be a mascot for the station. Patricia Chalon, the psychologist, also helped the film's creators shape other new Muppet characters, like Griotte, a little girl in a wheelchair, and tweaked messages to help young viewers understand why a character was speaking in sign language. The same sort of review is taking place now in India, where a co-production of a new 'Sesame Street' version in Hindi is in development for a debut early next year. Miditech, a leading Indian television production company based in New Delhi, recently called a news conference to introduce new characters for the show, which will be broadcast on Turner International's cartoon network. Big Bird was also eliminated in this version, replaced by a seven-foot lion named Boombah, who for now speaks in Hindi but eventually will master other tongues in a nation with 15 official languages, excluding English. Along this streetscape, an Internet cafe replaces the communal French bakery. 'If it is to work in India, the Indian kid watching it should not feel it is American or foreign,' said Niret Alva, president of Miditech, who said that the American version never made the leap beyond a niche channel in India to reach an audience of children estimated at more than 157 million. Miditech is a company better known for popular reality shows like 'Indian Idol,' and it already is laying plans to enlist stars from that show, along with Bollywood musical celebrities, to dance with the Muppets. The new co-producers and Sesame Workshop offer many altruistic reasons for creating the shows, like spreading a message of tolerance and diversity in France, promoting unity between rural and urban areas in India and easing ethnic tensions in Kosovo. But beyond those motives, there are the important side benefits of new income from licensing and merchandising, particularly from new characters with distinctive national identities. Last year, more than 68 percent of Sesame Street's revenues came from income from licensing of products. Japan started its own version of 'Sesame Street' last year, and Sesame Workshop's 4 percent jump in revenue last year came largely from licensing agreements in Japan. Today, 'Sesame Street' appears in more than 120 countries, and about 25 of them are co-productions. France had a more American version of 'Sesame Street' in the 1970's and early 1980's, but stronger local competition pushed it off the air. A new wave of co-productions started in the last five years, among them the Arabic Egyptian broadcast, 'Alam Simsim,' which is now seeking to take a pan-Arab version to other Arabic-speaking countries. The global merchandizing income is most important because it 'is subsidizing the show in the U.S. and subsidizing the research that we do at the workshop,' said Gary Knell, chief executive of Sesame Workshop in New York. He added, though, that 'there are many countries, like Bangladesh or Kosovo, where we go in where there is no expectation of making any money on ancillary income from product sales.' Such is the case with the new Cambodian version, 'Sabai Sabai Sesame' ('Happy Happy Sesame'), which will be broadcast for the first time Tuesday, financed in part by the United States government. The show is basically an American version dubbed in Khmer, which is much less expensive than creating a local co-production. But countries with large populations and high disposable income have a commercial incentive to develop their own versions. France 5's commercial arm, France Télévision Distribution, for example, is developing a two-stage strategy to bring merchandise to the market over the next nine months. Turner International has struck a licensing agreement with Sesame Workshop in India. The efforts to develop new international versions of 'Sesame Street' are documented in 'The World According to Sesame Street,' a feature-length film that will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January, although its creators are still looking for a distributor. The filmmakers, Linda Goldstein Knowlton and Linda Hawkins Costigan, said they set out to explore the backstage dramas of versions in South Africa, Bangladesh and Kosovo, where they found Muppets could be agents of social change and understanding. They point to Kami, an H.I.V. positive puppet on 'Takalani Sesame' in South Africa. 'Talk to anyone under the age of 45 in the United States, and they all can relate to 'Sesame Street' because they grew up with it,' Ms. Hawkins Costigan said. 'And now you can expand it to all these countries.' In France, the creators of 'Rue Sésame' are studying their completed shows and considering whether some cultural values need further adjusting. 'We had the feeling that it was a little bit too sweet, too nice,' Mr. Michelin, of France 5, said. 'We need some irony. It's very difficult to evaluate, but we have the feeling that in France we can be a little edgier.'

Subject: Forest's Colorful Jewels in a Fight From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 09:41:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/science/17flow.html?ex=1122177600&en=11a0f016f9adc0e9&ei=5070&emc=eta1 May 17, 2005 Forest's Colorful Jewels in a Fight for Their Lives By BARBARA WHITAKER Inside a 10-foot-high fence at the Meadowlark Botanical Gardens in suburban Washington, woodland wildflowers have been putting on a carefully choreographed show since mid-March. The bloodroots took the stage first, unfurling white petals around their yellow hearts, and were followed by delicate Virginia bluebells and dainty pink spring beauties. Over the last week, red, white and yellow trilliums joined blue dwarf-crested iris and a handful of pink lady's slippers on a simulated mountaintop. But outside such meticulously cultivated gardens, these jewels of the forest, which include cherished flowers known as spring ephemerals, are under siege. 'They're being devastated,' said Keith P. Tomlinson, manager of Meadowlark, in Vienna, Va. As an example he used the Mather Gorge trail in Great Falls National Park a few miles away on the Potomac River. There, bluebells, golden ragwort and trilliums are being crowded out by invasive plants and ravaged by deer. 'They're fighting for their lives,' he said. In deciduous forests from Maine through South Carolina and stretching to the Midwest, the story is much the same. Although in some areas, spring-blooming wildflowers have other enemies, including housing developments, changes in forest densities, pollution and even nonnative worms. 'I'm concerned about many of the spring wildflowers of our woodlands through the northeastern America, where their abundance is being significantly decreased,' said Dr. Robert K. Peet, a professor of biology and ecology at the University of North Carolina. The trend would be easy to miss. True spring ephemerals like Dutchman's breeches, Virginia bluebells, trout lilies and spring beauties flower and die in the few weeks after winter's freeze has broken and before the trees have fully leafed out and blocked the sun. The ephemerals live the rest of the year underground and are believed to have life spans of tens to hundreds of years like the trees around them. While often lumped in with those spring ephemerals, other woodland spring wildflowers like trillium lose their blooms but keep their foliage above ground throughout the summer. Determining long-term trends for wildflowers can be tricky because species can go several years without flowering, said Dr. Charles D. Canham, senior scientist and forest ecologist with the Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y. In addition, forests change, and the understory plants change along with them. A large, and beloved, stand of yellow lady's slipper orchids disappeared on the 6,500-acre Mohonk Preserve in New Paltz, N.Y., over 100 years. The loss was related to a thickening of the forest canopy rather than outside influences. Few broad studies have been done on perils confronting woodland spring wildflowers. But limited surveys and anecdotes suggest that there is reason for concern. 'Our forests are becoming less interesting,' said Dr. Tom Rooney, a research scientist at the University of Wisconsin who has examined the problem. 'It's similar to going to an art museum, and each time you go, there are a few pieces of art missing. It's even more insidious because of connections between the species.' In Wisconsin, where historic data from several hundred forested sites are available, Dr. Rooney said, native species have declined 18 percent in richness over the last 50 years, including the spring ephemerals and other related wildflowers. 'In places that have had very limited or no deer hunting, native plant losses are four times greater than those open to deer hunting,' Dr. Rooney said. 'The deer population has been growing steadily since the 1960's. They are having a profound effect on the spring ephemerals and other wildflowers.' At the Daniel Smiley Research Center of the Mohonk Preserve, researchers have been studying a stand of red trillium for several years to determine the deer's effects. 'We can get the first flower out, but probably within a week almost all the plants are chewed off,' said Paul C. Huth, the preserve's director of research. Mr. Huth said the plants were about half their previous size and did not flower. Rivaling the deer for destructiveness are invasive plants like Japanese honeysuckle, garlic mustard and mile-a-minute weed. 'In another 20 years, if the progression of invasive plants continues as it is, we can only expect that the diversity of spring ephemerals is going to continue to be reduced in association with the overbrowsing by the deer,' Mr. Tomlinson said. Sally Anderson, president of the Virginia Native Plant Society and a resident of the western Shenandoah Valley, said invasive plants like garlic mustard and stilt weed constantly competed for space on her acre and a half, much of it wooded, while the process of clearing nearby lots to build houses has taken habitat once rich with trillium grandiflorum. The problems, Ms. Anderson said, go deeper than the loss of the flowers. 'The seeds of a lot of our spring ephemerals are transported by ants,' she noted. 'So if confined by roads and driveways and houses, the plants not going to move as easily, and they are going to lose the genetic intermixing that keeps them healthy.' Some botanists and ecologists say there is a much bigger story, beyond the threat to wildflowers, that involves the decline and diversity of understory plants. The loss of one species will probably not make a huge difference, but the loss of biodiversity in the groundcover will. In parts of the Eastern United States, forests are widely thought to be on the rebound as land cleared for agriculture and now abandoned reverts to its former state. But research is showing that much of the diversity in those forests is missing and that many spring woodland wildflowers have not reappeared. 'What we have back is a shadow of its former self,' said Dr. Canham of the Institute of Ecosystem Studies. 'There's very little rigorous documentation of plants like trillium or bloodroot. They could be much rarer now than they were 50 years ago, but it would be very hard to prove that.'

Subject: The dollar & the bond market From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 08:11:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Does the bond market really tell us much about what's going on with the US dollar? Or can we get a better idea by tracking price hikes at the local supermarket? From the NYT's: U.S. Foreign Money Addiction Means Trouble Saturday December 10, 12:58 pm ET By Ellen Simon, AP Business Writer U.S. Addiction to Foreign Money Spells Trouble, Leading to Burgeoning Trade and Budget Deficits NEW YORK (AP) -- It's an addiction. Every day, the United States sucks in more and more of it from abroad, just to keep the nation going. We speak, of course, about foreign money. At our current rate of trade and budget deficits, foreigners need to purchase $2 billion in dollar-denominated assets each day just to keep the dollar stable, said Axel Merk, who manages $60 million at Merk Investments and runs the Merk Hard Currency Fund. Over half the national debt is now financed by foreigners, according to Roger Ibbotson, chairman of the financial consulting firm Ibbotson Associates in Chicago and a professor at Yale School of Management. That's been true since 1980, but the difference now, he says, 'is the scale of the game.' 'I guess everyone wants to keep this game going,' Ibbotson said. But if one of the countries we're most dependent on drops out, it could be 'like a bank run.' David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's, is also concerned. 'If this money stopped coming, the dollar would take a dive and U.S. bond yields would have to come up. That would constrain capital spending and housing and slow down the U.S. economy.' Foreign investments in U.S. bonds and equities set a record in September, the last month for which data is available. Foreigners bought $1.01 trillion in U.S. securities in the 12 months ending in September, up from $866.6 billion for the same period in 2004, according to U.S. Treasury International Capital, which tracks foreign purchases of U.S. securities. Why did foreign investors' interest in the U.S. intensify? For one thing, investors can get a better return on U.S. bonds than they can in their home countries. Yields in the United States have been near 4.5 percent, while yields on Euro bonds are closer to 3.2 percent and yields on Japanese bonds are near 1.5 percent. Second, our massive trade deficit has sent tens of billions of dollars abroad, as imports increased while exports declined, which has helped foreign business owners sock away plenty of dollars. And our budget deficit means the federal government keeps issuing more debt. Then, there's our personal savings rate, which has been hovering near zero. 'We need the money because we're not saving any,' Wyss said. 'We need it from anyone who has a spare yen to lend us.' At the same time, economic growth in Europe and Japan has been weak, Wyss said. 'The U.S. was the only large safe market where the yield looked reasonable.' The gush of foreign money 'is critical to keeping the U.S. dollar from collapsing, because we have a large trade deficit,' said Daniel Katzive, foreign exchange strategist at UBS. 'If the deficit wasn't financed, the dollar would fall until it reached a level where U.S. assets were more attractive to foreign investors.' It's simple accounting, he said: Cashflow in must equal cashflow out. 'If it doesn't, you have a big adjustment until you reach equilibrium.' Some argue that the waterfall of foreign money has also prettied up U.S. Treasuries. A study released as part of the Federal Reserve Board's International Finance Working Papers Series asserts that the yield on 10-year Treasury notes would be a full percentage point less without abnormally high flows into bonds. That's because increased demand for U.S. Treasuries has pushed the yield on Treasuries lower than it would be otherwise. Normally, Wyss said, foreign investors would be reluctant to stake so much on the Treasury market because they would be worried that a decline in the dollar would erode their returns. But, in recent years, the Japanese and Chinese central banks have intervened to keep the dollar high. 'Central banks have trained investors that there's not much risk there,' he said. 'That scares me.'

Subject: Larry Craig Versus the Salmon From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 06:03:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12mon2.html?ex=1292043600&en=0080be8ca29e4eec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 Larry Craig Versus the Salmon Small wonder Senator Larry Craig was once touted as 'legislator of the year' by the National Hydropower Association: the Idaho Republican has just shown how galvanized he can get on behalf of the Northwest power dam industry by slipping a sentence into a budget bill that would choke off financing for the hard-working federal agency that counts endangered salmon in the Columbia River. For years, the Fish Passage Center has been tolling the decline of salmon as they fought their way around federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. This agency has supplied vital and entirely neutral information in the endless struggle between environmentalists and the power industry. Earlier this year, a federal judge was so exasperated at a ludicrous administration proposal that the dams should take precedence as 'immutable' parts of nature that he ordered that more water be spilled over the dams to ease the salmon's passage to the ocean and survival. The decision alarmed the hydropower industry, and, sure enough, its legislator of the year sprang into action, deleting the fish center's $1.3 million in funding from a budget bill. Senator Craig, whose election campaigns enjoy a sluiceway of donations from electric utilities, denounced the worthy agency on the Senate floor as a source of 'false science' and 'data cloaked in advocacy.' The crestfallen manager of the center offered the best defense of the work done by its dozen biologists and computer scientists. 'What we do is just math,' she told The Washington Post. 'Math can't hurt you.' Surely, in the final budget compromise, House negotiators will strike a blow for common sense and stand up for plainly endangered math as much as salmon.

Subject: Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 05:25:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/26/business/26walmart.ready.html?ex=1287979200&en=e9a0f5ce669f026e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss October 26, 2005 Wal-Mart Memo Suggests Ways to Cut Employee Benefit Costs By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart. In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive. To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for 'all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering).' The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefit costs because critics had attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid. Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011. In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits. 'We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates,' she said. 'Our benefit plan is known today as being generous.' Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan. 'This is not about cutting,' she said. 'This is about redirecting savings to another part of their benefit plans.' One proposal would reduce the amount of time, from two years to one, that part-time employees would have to wait before qualifying for health insurance. Another would put health clinics in stores, in part to reduce expensive employee visits to emergency rooms. Wal-Mart's benefit costs jumped to $4.2 billion last year, from $2.8 billion three years earlier, causing concern within the company because benefits represented an increasing share of sales. Last year, Wal-Mart earned $10.5 billion on sales of $285 billion. A draft memo to Wal-Mart's board was obtained from Wal-Mart Watch, a nonprofit group, allied with labor unions, that asserts that Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are too low. Tracy Sefl, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart Watch, said someone mailed the document anonymously to her group last month. When asked about the memo, Wal-Mart officials made available the updated copy that actually went to the board. Under fire because less than 45 percent of its workers receive company health insurance, Wal-Mart announced a new plan on Monday that seeks to increase participation by allowing some employees to pay just $11 a month in premiums. Some health experts praised the plan for making coverage more affordable, but others criticized it, noting that full-time Wal-Mart employees, who earn on average around $17,500 a year, could face out-of-pocket expenses of $2,500 a year or more. Eager to burnish Wal-Mart's image as it faces opposition in trying to expand into New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, Wal-Mart's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., also announced on Monday a sweeping plan to conserve energy. He also said that Wal-Mart supported raising the minimum wage to help Wal-Mart's customers. The theme throughout the memo was how to slow the increase in benefit costs without giving more ammunition to critics who contend that Wal-Mart's wages and benefits are dragging down those of other American workers. Ms. Chambers proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance. She called for cutting 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and cutting company-paid life insurance policies to $12,000 from the current level, equal to an employee's annual earnings. Life insurance, she said, was 'a high-satisfaction, low-importance benefit, which suggests an opportunity to trim the offering without substantial impact on associate satisfaction.' Wal-Mart refers to its employees as associates. Acknowledging that Wal-Mart has image problems, Ms. Chambers wrote: 'Wal-Mart's critics can easily exploit some aspects of our benefits offering to make their case; in other words, our critics are correct in some of their observations. Specifically, our coverage is expensive for low-income families, and Wal-Mart has a significant percentage of associates and their children on public assistance.' Her memo stated that 5 percent of Wal-Mart's workers were on Medicaid, compared with 4 percent for other national employers. She said that Wal-Mart spent $1.5 billion a year on health insurance, which amounts to $2,660 per insured worker. The memo, prepared with the help of McKinsey & Company, said the board was to consider the recommendations in November. But the memo said that three top Wal-Mart officials - its chief financial officer, its top human relations executive and its executive vice president for legal and corporate affairs - had 'received the recommendations enthusiastically.' Ms. Chambers's memo voiced concern that workers were staying with the company longer, pushing up wage costs, although she stopped short of calling for efforts to push out more senior workers. She wrote that 'the cost of an associate with seven years of tenure is almost 55 percent more than the cost of an associate with one year of tenure, yet there is no difference in his or her productivity. Moreover, because we pay an associate more in salary and benefits as his or her tenure increases, we are pricing that associate out of the labor market, increasing the likelihood that he or she will stay with Wal-Mart.' The memo noted that Wal-Mart workers 'are getting sicker than the national population, particularly in obesity-related diseases,' including diabetes and coronary artery disease. The memo said Wal-Mart workers tended to overuse emergency rooms and underuse prescriptions and doctor visits, perhaps from previous experience with Medicaid. The memo noted, 'The least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart.' The memo proposed incorporating physical activity in all jobs and promoting health savings accounts. Such accounts are financed with pretax dollars and allow workers to divert their contributions into retirement savings if they are not all spent on health care. Health experts say these accounts will be more attractive to younger, healthier workers. 'It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one,' the memo said. 'These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart.' Ron Pollack, executive director of Families U.S.A., a health care consumer-advocacy group, criticized the memo for recommending that more workers move into health plans with high deductibles. 'Their people are paying a very substantial portion of their earnings out of pocket for health care,' he said. 'These plans will cause these workers and their families to defer or refrain from getting needed care.' The memo noted that 38 percent of Wal-Mart workers spent more than one-sixth of their Wal-Mart income on health care last year. By reducing the amount of time part-timers must work to qualify for health insurance, Wal-Mart is hoping to allay some of its critics. One proposal under consideration would offer new employees 'limited funding' so they could 'gain access to the private insurance market' after 30 days of employment while waiting to join Wal-Mart's plan. Such assistance, the memo stated, 'would give us a powerful set of messages to use in combating critics. (For instance, 'Wal-Mart offers associates access to health insurance after they've worked with us for just 30 days.')'

Subject: New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 05:21:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/business/01walmart.ready.html?ex=1288501200&en=ac9edfbdf2f9a81f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 1, 2005 A New Weapon for Wal-Mart: A War Room By MICHAEL BARBARO BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Inside a stuffy, windowless room here, veterans of the 2004 Bush and Kerry presidential campaigns sit, stand and pace around six plastic folding tables. Open containers of pistachio nuts and tropical trail mix compete for space with laptops and BlackBerries. CNN flickers on a television in the corner. The phone rings, and a 20-something woman answers. 'Turn on Fox,' she yells, running up to the TV with a notepad. 'This could be important.' A scene from a campaign war room? Well, sort of. It is a war room inside the headquarters of Wal-Mart, the giant discount retailer that hopes to sell a new, improved image to reluctant consumers. Wal-Mart is taking a page from the modern political playbook. Under fire from well-organized opponents who have hammered the retailer with criticisms of its wages, health insurance and treatment of workers, Wal-Mart has quietly recruited former presidential advisers, including Michael K. Deaver, who was Ronald Reagan's image-meister, and Leslie Dach, one of Bill Clinton's media consultants, to set up a rapid-response public relations team in Arkansas. When small-business owners or union officials - also employing political operatives from past campaigns - criticize the company, the war room swings into action with press releases, phone calls to reporters and instant Web postings. One target of the effort are 'swing voters,' or consumers who have not soured on Wal-Mart. The new approach appears to reflect a fear that Wal-Mart's critics are alienating the very consumers it needs to keep growing, especially middle-income Americans motivated not just by price, but by image. The first big challenge of the strategy will come Nov. 1 with the premiere of an unflattering documentary. 'Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price' was made on a shoestring budget of $1.8 million and will be released in about two dozen theaters. But its director, Robert Greenwald, hopes to show the movie in thousands of homes and churches in the next month. The possibility that it might become a cult hit like Michael Moore's 1989 unsympathetic portrait of General Motors, 'Roger & Me,' has Wal-Mart worried. So, Wal-Mart has embarked on a counteroffensive that would have been unthinkable even a year ago. Relying on a preview posted online, Wal-Mart investigated the events described in the film and produced a short video contending the film has factual errors. (Mr. Greenwald denies there are errors and says that Wal-Mart has not seen the final cut.) Wal-Mart has also begun to promote a second film, 'Why Wal-Mart Works & Why That Makes Some People Crazy,' which casts the company in a rosier light. Wal-Mart declined to make its executives available for the Greenwald film, but it participated with the second film's director, Ron Galloway. The war room team helped distribute a letter, written by Mr. Galloway, that challenges Mr. Greenwald to show the two movies side-by-side. To keep up with its critics, Wal-Mart 'has to run a campaign,' said Robert McAdam, a former political strategist at the Tobacco Institute who now oversees Wal-Mart's corporate communications. 'It's simply nonsense for us to let some of these attacks go without a response.' Wal-Mart's aggressive new posture is a departure from its tradition of relying on an internal staff to manage the company's image. The war room, which is part of a larger Wal-Mart effort to portray itself as more worker-friendly and environmentally conscious, runs counter to the philosophy of the chain's founder, Sam Walton. Believing that public relations was a waste of time and money, the penny-pinching Mr. Walton would not likely have hired a public relations firm like Edelman, Wal-Mart's choice to operate its war room. So what has changed? For one thing, Wal-Mart's critics have become more sophisticated. For years, unions hurled little more than insults at the chain. But over the last year, two small groups - Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart - set up shop in Washington with the goal of waging the public relations equivalent of guerilla warfare against the company. Wal-Mart Watch received start-up cash from the Service Employees International Union; Wake Up Wal-Mart is a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Unions have tried, unsuccessfully, to organize Wal-Mart's employees. At the suggestion of Wake Up Wal-Mart, members of the nation's largest teachers' unions staged a boycott of Wal-Mart for back-to-school supplies this fall. Wal-Mart Watch, meanwhile, set up an automated phone system that called 10,000 people in Arkansas in June seeking potential whistle-blowers willing to share secrets about the retailer. Wal-Mart did not rebut such attacks, even when Wal-Mart Watch released a 24-page report blasting the company's wages and benefits. Wal-Mart Watch said the report had been downloaded from its Web site 55,000 times. Once a darling of Wall Street, Wal-Mart's stock price has fallen 27 percent since 2000, when H. Lee Scott Jr. became chief executive, a drop that executives have said reflects, in part, investors' anxieties about the company's image. Sales growth at stores open for more than a year has slowed to an average of 3.5 percent a month this year, compared with 6.3 percent at Target. And Wal-Mart is facing growing resistance to new urban stores, with high- profile defeats in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. There is some evidence that criticism is influencing consumers. A confidential 2004 report prepared by McKinsey & Company for Wal-Mart, and made public by Wal-Mart Watch, found that 2 percent to 8 percent of Wal-Mart consumers surveyed have ceased shopping at the chain because of 'negative press they have heard.' The Greenwald movie threatens to make matters worse. It features whistle-blowers who describe Wal-Mart managers cheating workers out of overtime pay and encouraging them to seek state-sponsored health care when they cannot afford the company's insurance. And it travels across small-town America to assess the effects on independent businesses and downtowns after a Wal-Mart opens. The film is a particular concern now that Wal-Mart is trying to move upscale, a strategy it hopes will appeal to higher-income consumers. In the last year, Wal-Mart has introduced a line of urban fashions called Metro 7, hired hundreds of fashion specialists to monitor how clothing is displayed in stores, and produced more polished advertising. But for the fashion strategy to pay off, Wal-Mart must win over a group of shoppers who are sensitive to criticism of the chain's record - consumers, in the words of Wal-Mart's chief executive, 'who are not worried about their next paycheck.' Hence the war room in Bentonville. Wal-Mart executives realized they were unprepared to react to what Mr. Scott began to call the most expensive campaign ever waged against a corporation. So the company quietly mailed a letter to the country's biggest public relations firms several months ago seeking their help in developing a response. The contract went to Edelman, which assigned its top two Washington operatives to the account. Wal-Mart would not say what it is paying Edelman, nor would it allow interviews with the war room staff. Mr. Dach, who is active in environmental and Democratic causes, was an outside adviser to President Clinton during the impeachment battle. Mr. Deaver was President Reagan's communications director and the creative force behind Mr. Reagan's so-called Teflon image. Edelman also dispatched at least six former political operatives to Bentonville, including Jonathan Adashek, director of national delegate strategy for John Kerry, and David White, who helped manage the 1998 re-election of Representative Nancy Johnson, a Connecticut Republican. Terry Nelson, who was the national political director of the 2004 Bush campaign, advises the group. In turn, Wakeup Wal-Mart is led by, among others, Paul Blank, former political director for the Howard Dean presidential campaign, and Chris Kofinis, who helped create the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign. Wal-Mart Watch's media team includes Jim Jordan, former director of the Kerry campaign, and Tracy Sefl, a former Democratic National Committee aide responsible for distributing negative press reports about President Bush during the 2004 campaign. The war room staff arrives at Wal-Mart's headquarters, a short drive from a nearby corporate apartment where they live, by 7 every morning. The group works out of an old conference room on the second floor, christened Action Alley, the same name Wal-Mart gives to the wide, circular aisle that runs around its stores. Three display boards are covered with to-do lists. One says: 'Promote Week of 10/24/05: MLK Memorial Donation. Urban/blighted community plan.' Two large maps show the location of Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores across the United States. The team starts the day by scanning newspaper articles and television transcripts that mention Wal-Mart. Next come conference calls with Wal-Mart employees around the country to plan for events. Whenever possible, Mr. McAdam said, the war room will try to neutralize criticism before it is leveled. That was the strategy behind what Action Alley considers its first coup. In late September, after several unions broke off from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the splinter groups announced they would hold a convention in St. Louis on a Tuesday. Action Alley members, assuming Wal-Mart would be a target of criticism during the union gathering, arranged for Wal-Mart to hold its own news conference the day before. It invited three local suppliers, a sympathetic local official and a cashier to say that Wal-Mart had a positive effect on the community. 'If you look at many of the stories that were written about that overall convention, they've got our messages in them,' Mr. McAdam said. 'In the past, when we've just responded to something somebody else is doing, it's sort of 'you know, by the way, Wal-Mart says ...' We got ahead of this one.' A campaign atmosphere pervades Action Alley. A small bus with the words 'Clinton-Gore' on the side sits on the table. When discussing Wakeup Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart Watch and the Greenwald movie, Mr. McAdam slips into political-speak. 'The people who show up at Mr. Greenwald's film are probably not swing voters,' he said. 'They are probably the true believers of their point of view and I doubt there is a heck of a lot we can do to change their minds.' Mr. McAdam continued: 'They've got their base. We've got ours. But there is a group in the middle that really we all need to be talking to.'

Subject: Global warning (by B. DeLong) From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:51:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Eyes Wide Shut on Global Warming By J. Bradford DeLong, Nov. 2005 (http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/delong42/English) The Kyoto Treaty on controlling climate change was, as Harvard professor Rob Stavins puts it, “too little, too fast.” On one hand, because it covered only those countries projected to emit roughly half of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions by mid-century, it was not an effective long-run safeguard against the dangers of global warming. On the other hand, because it required significant and expensive short-run cuts in emissions by industrial countries, it threatened to impose large immediate costs on the American, European, and Japanese economies. In short, the Kyoto agreement meant lots of short-term pain for little long-run gain. The European Union and American economists in the Clinton administration argued for passage of the Kyoto Treaty only by creating models for something that wasn’t the Kyoto Treaty. They projected that developing countries would enter the Kyoto framework at some point, and would trade their rights to emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the United States and Europe in return for development aid. But, all these years later, I have yet to meet anyone who knows what they are talking about who is prepared to defend Kyoto as a substantive global public policy. ”It was a way of getting the ball rolling,” on climate change, say some. ”It was a way of waking up the world to the seriousness of the problem,” say others. Under neither of these interpretations can those who negotiated and signed the Kyoto Treaty be said to have served the world well. Of course, the world has been served a lot worse since. President George W. Bush sided with his vice president, Dick Cheney, in denying that a global-warming problem even exists (his treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, and his administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christine Whitman, disagreed). This has probably cost the world a decade of wasted time in developing a policy to deal with the problem, particularly given that intentional inaction is likely to continue until Bush’s term is finished. But the political cards will be reshuffled, and there will be a new deal on global warming, when America next elects a president in November 2008. By 2009, the US may have a State Department willing to speak up again. Unless we are extraordinarily fortunate and learn that climatologists have overlooked some enormously important channels of carbon sequestration, the models predicting global warming will still be grimly accurate in 2009. When the time comes to revisit international policies on global warming, two things should happen. First, the world’s industrial core must create incentives for the developing world to industrialize along an environmentally-friendly, C02- and CH4-light, path. Slow growth of greenhouse-gas emissions in rapidly-growing economies must be accompanied by credible promises to deliver massive amounts of assistance in the mighty tasks of industrialization, education, and urbanization that China, India, Mexico, Brazil, and many other developing countries face. Second, the world’s industrial core must create incentives for its energy industries to undertake the investments in new technologies that will move us by mid-century to an economic structure that is light on carbon emissions and heavy on carbon sequestration. Providing the proper incentives for effective research and development will not be easy. Public programs work less well when the best route to the goal – in this case, the most promising post-carbon energy technologies – is uncertain. Private R&D is difficult to encourage when investors suspect that success would lead the fruits of their work to be taken by some form of eminent domain and used throughout the world with little compensation. The world could continue to close its eyes to global warming and hope for the best: a slightly warmer climate that produces as many winners (on the Siberian, Northern European, and Canadian prairies) as losers (in already-hot regions that become hotter and dryer), and that the Gulf Stream continues warming Europe, the monsoons are not disrupted, and that the Ganges delta is not drowned by stronger typhoons. Or perhaps we are hoping that the “we” whose interests are taken into account when important decisions are made will not be the “we” who are among the big losers. Perhaps we will continue to close our eyes. But our chances of ensuring a more sustainable world would be higher if we had not allowed ourselves to be blinded for the past decade by the combination of the public-relations stunt known as the Kyoto Treaty and the idiocy-as-usual known as the Bush administration. J. Bradford DeLong, Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley, was Assistant US Treasury Secretary during the Clinton administration. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2005. www.project-syndicate.org

Subject: Malawi Is Burning From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:39:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/international/africa/01malawi.html?ex=1288501200&en=5e3dc2af954c8722&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 1, 2005 Malawi Is Burning, and Deforestation Erodes Economy By MICHAEL WINES MALOSA, Malawi - Lovely and lissome, the masuku tree rises maybe 35 feet at maturity, its wood the hue of a rare steak, its branches dotted with sweet golfball-size fruits that ferment into a tasty wine. Working just after sunrise atop a small mountain not far from here, Injes Juma and his nine friends needed less than five minutes to sever a masuku at its base and send it crashing to the ground. Another five minutes of furious hacking with axes and machetes reduced the tree to a stack of five-foot logs, ready to be carried down the steep grade to the highway below. Mr. Juma and his friends are loggers, members of a vast fraternity that has illegally laid waste to half this nation, mostly in the last 15 years, all to hawk firewood and charcoal at roadside stands. Because of them, experts say, Malawi loses nearly 200 square miles of its forests annually, a deforestation rate of 2.8 percent that the Southern Africa Development Community says is one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. The cutting blights a pastoral, sometimes breathtaking landscape. It dries up streams, pollutes the air, lowers the water table, erodes the soil and silts rivers so badly that, officials here say, hydroelectric plants are blacked out by the gunk. It is hard to think of many other things that Mr. Juma and his fellow loggers could do that would damage the nation more. The problem is that it is hard to think of many other ways that Mr. Juma and his fellow loggers could make a living, period. 'The problem is that we have nothing else to do,' said Mr. Juma, a wiry 33-year-old with a neon green shirt tied around his bare waist, standing over the remains of the chopped-up masuku. 'We have no money to raise our families. We have nowhere to run, nothing else to do. So we have to cut the trees to feed our families.' In few places do the dictates of modern environmentalism butt so painfully against economic reality as they do here in Malawi. Two-thirds of the nation's 12 million people earn less than a dollar a day, according to the United Nations Human Development report. Nine-tenths of those two-thirds live in rural areas where both jobs and the odds of escaping poverty are nonexistent. For hundreds of thousands of those rural dwellers, sales of firewood and charcoal provide virtually their only income. Wood and charcoal are the preferred cooking and heating fuels in Malawi, even in the poorer parts of cities, and the demand is huge: the World Bank estimated in 2001 that charcoal consumption alone was twice what the nation's woodlands could sustain without further deforestation. Indeed, loggers illegally clear 100 square miles of forest each year just to meet the demand for charcoal, the government says. Yet the income - less than $8 million a year nationwide, by official estimates - is pitifully meager, as Mr. Juma's band of loggers can testify. A single masuku tree, felled and cut into logs and branches, brings about 2,000 kwacha, or about $15 at current exchange rates, when all has been sold. A bundle of three or four branches sold by the roadside brings about 15 cents; a thick five-foot section of trunk, up to $1.50. Mr. Juma and his fellow loggers say they cut about 15 trees a year, the most the group can sell in a region where dozens of wood vendors line the main street of every town. That provides an income, on average, of about $20 a month. That $20 must support the 10 men, their 8 wives and 16 children - 34 people in all. Whatever else they have comes from casual labor as gardeners, for about 40 cents a day, or from the vegetable plots outside their one-room huts, just off the main road linking Blantyre and Lilongwe, Malawi's two main cities. 'Sometimes we just do without food because the money doesn't last a month,' said Kabaitha Langwan, a gray-stubbled, 52-year-old logger clad in a red T-shirt bearing the words 'surf extreme.' 'We lack money even for soap and bathing.' 'It's a lot of hard work for very little money,' said one forester, an expert who is working under a foreign government grant to reduce illegal logging. 'Nobody does it by choice. But they have very few options.' In theory, at least, Malawi's impoverished millions could benefit by saving the woods instead of clearing them. Some studies indicate that the income from forest beehives and their honey can exceed the profit from firewood sales. Practitioners of traditional medicine scrupulously tend their patches of wood to maintain supplies of forest mushrooms and exotic plants used in home remedies. More than that, simple math shows that Malawians could cook their food far more cheaply using electricity - if it were available - than by buying and burning wood or charcoal. But only 2 percent of Malawians are hooked to the electrical grid, and for the rest, merely the cost of plugging in - buying a meter, and buying a stove with which to cook - makes electricity a pipe dream. Only so many beehives can fit into a forest. And all the arguments about the long-term benefits of woodlands pale beside the relentless need to find the next day's meal. And so along the main road, almost all the hills have been shaved of their leafy canopies of trees, leaving behind a rocky bristle of scrub and dirt. Plumes of smoke curl skyward from behind the peaks, the signatures of charcoal makers at work. More than a fifth of Malawi's forests vanished between 1990 and 2000 alone, the World Bank says, and 23 species of trees are considered to be endangered. In many places, the biggest patches of untouched woods are the ones that protect community graveyards. Michael Pathungo, the assistant forestry officer in Malawi's southern region, said the nation's heavily populated southern half has now lost up to four-fifths of its tree cover. 'The rate of cutting is dwindling,' he said, grasping for a shred of good news, 'because there are no more forests.'

Subject: Drought Deepens Poverty From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:38:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/02/international/africa/02malawi.html?ex=1288587600&en=3156ac7c8bf4a226&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 2, 2005 Drought Deepens Poverty, Starving More Africans By MICHAEL WINES CHIKWAWA, Malawi - It has barely rained for a year, the scant corn harvest of six months ago is long exhausted and the regional hospital here is again filling with near-starving children - 18 admissions in August, 30 in September, 23 by mid-October. And what people here routinely call the hunger season - the season with no corn - has barely begun. 'We used to have six, seven children in the unit,' said Emily Sarina, the district nursing officer. 'We expect the number to increase by December, because that's when the hunger is critical.' Malawi is the epicenter of Africa's second hunger crisis in five months, and the second in which the developed world has responded with painful slowness. Drought is only the surface explanation for why millions of Malawians and other southern Africans are hungry. The real reason is poverty, aggravated by regional shortages and even Hurricane Katrina, which have helped drive up the price of corn, the regional staple, to more than double last year's. As a result, more than 4.6 million of Malawi's 12 million citizens need donated food to fend off malnutrition until the next harvest begins in April. In Zimbabwe, at least four million more need emergency food aid. Zambia's government has issued an urgent appeal for food, saying 1.7 million are hungry; 850,000 need food in Mozambique, 500,000 in Lesotho and at least 300,000 in Swaziland. The World Food Program, which will feed most of the needy, has asked the developed world for $400 million toward that goal. It remains $165 million short. The United States' contribution, $48 million worth of corn bought from American farmers, comes by ship and will not arrive until late this year at the earliest. Much like July's crisis on southern Niger's narrow band of grasslands, the food shortage in southern Africa is taking its toll. Growing malnutrition has led to scattered reports of disease-related deaths among young children weakened by hunger. That said, problems here are not yet as acute as they are in Niger, where thousands of malnourished children still flock to treatment centers, months after international aid began arriving. This region's emergency, however, is far larger - more than 12 million hungry people, versus 2.5 million in Niger. And if the death toll is likely not to be as high, the suffering here is no less real. 'I went to a village today in rural Zambia where there was a lady eating some kind of bark, in boiled water,' Michael Huggins, the World Food Program's regional spokesman, said in a telephone interview. 'In three years in southern Africa, I've heard a lot about that sort of thing. But I'd never seen it until today.' In Chikwawa, a district of about 400,000 in southern Malawi, half the population was already hungry in May, when the last harvest netted only about two-fifths of the nation's corn requirement. The British charity Oxfam estimated then that the district's needy were getting about 30 percent of their food requirements. Six months later, many are calling this Malawi's worst hunger crisis since 1993, when drought destroyed nearly half of the corn crop. 'At this point, most of the households in Malawi have run out of food, particularly in the south,' Schuyler Thorup, the Malawi representative for Catholic Relief Services, said in a telephone interview. 'They're having to rely exclusively on the market' for corn and other staple foods. But few can afford to pay market prices. Just 500 miles south of Malawi, South Africa is sitting atop a surplus of five million metric tons of corn from this year's bumper harvest. But it is mostly out of reach for both Malawi's government and its people, 60 percent of whom survive on a dollar a day or less. The same is true of most of Malawi's needy neighbors. War wrecked Mozambique's economy; socialism and plunging copper prices reduced Zambia to penury; Zimbabwe's economy collapsed after the government seized its richest farms, which were owned by whites. In Malawi, 20 years of shifting political rule and economic policies have turned an already poor nation into a basket case. The AIDS pandemic - the rate of infection is about 15 percent among all adults, but perhaps 25 percent in Chikwawa - has cut down family breadwinners and left 900,000 children without one or both parents. Most Malawians survive on plots of a couple of acres, often lacking even oxen for plowing. Irrigation is unheard of, leaving them dependent on good rains for survival. Lately, rains have been spotty. There were severe hunger crises in 2002 and 2003, and this year's disaster was brought on when good rains in late 2004 dried up in 2005, just as the corn crop was ripening. But even in good years, Malawians are incapable of feeding themselves. A recent report by the United States Agency for International Development said the nation 'is now in a near constant state of food shortage, with persistently high levels of nutritional deprivation.' Most Malawians cannot finance even a minimally adequate diet. Half of all children are stunted - and 40 percent of those are severely stunted, the marker of deep, prolonged malnutrition. Corn prices are at the root of this year's crisis. In the past, after most poor harvests, Malawians have bought cheap corn from traders in Mozambique, Zambia or Zimbabwe. This year's spotty rains caused a regional shortage, driving up prices in Malawi's markets. In mid-October last year, a kilogram of maize in Chikwawa, 2.2 pounds, cost about 13 cents. This year, it cost nearly 32 cents. Even Hurricane Katrina has worsened matters. When the storm closed New Orleans to shipping, depriving Japan of its normal source of corn, the Japanese turned to South Africa, and in weeks the price of South African corn in Malawi jumped nearly 20 percent. For months, the charities and international donor groups that effectively keep Malawi afloat operated on 'Scenario 1,' projecting that corn prices would remain affordable for most, and that the destitute would need only 272,000 metric tons of donated corn. Donors have pledged almost that much. But now, with prices skyrocketing, the number of Malawians who cannot afford food is rising as well. 'Scenario 2' calls for finding 413,000 metric tons of donated food, at considerably higher prices. Especially in the south, where harvests were the worst, high prices have brought growing malnutrition and sometimes unrest at sites where donors try to distribute too little food to too many desperate people. A recent visit to the rehabilitation center at the regional hospital in Chikwawa City, a hub of about 10,000 people, made it clear why. Camped on the sidewalk in the unit's square courtyard, 29-year-old Samson Hanock watched his 2-year-old son, Ben, while his wife, Ester, 20, cradled their newborn son, born at the unit in September. Ben was brought there from Mtobwe village, about two hours distant, with malnutrition and severe anemia. Mr. Hanock is a gardener. Working six days a week, four weeks a month, brings a salary of $6.65, from which his employer deducts $5.85 to buy the Hanocks a 110-pound bag of corn meal. Mr. Hanock spends the remaining 80 cents on sugar. 'I bake some sweets that I ask my wife to sell,' he said. 'And with that, we get some money to buy soap and other things.' Across the courtyard, Severia Karunga looked after Precia Yaka, a somber 9-year-old orphan from Badueza, 90 minutes away by car, who had come to the unit in July with malnutrition, malaria, edema and, it turned out, tuberculosis. Precia's father died four years ago. Her mother died at 21, a month after Precia arrived here. Ms. Karunga, Precia's aunt, now cares for Precia, her brother and her own seven children. She lives with her mother, who cares for two other orphaned children. 'My husband is divorcing me because he isn't happy that I am caring for this child,' she said, gesturing toward Precia. 'He left last month.' Mother, daughter and 11 children, ages 6 to 18, get by on less than $50 a month. Most comes from the $9 weekly salary the mother draws from a charity's self-help program. The family has an eight-acre garden, 'but this year,' Ms. Karunga said, 'I don't think I will be able to cultivate it, because I am spending all my time at this hospital.' Nationally, admissions of malnourished children to Malawi's 95 nutritional rehabilitation centers were up 15 percent in September from last year. Continuing increases are all but certain. Most children will spend a few weeks in rehabilitation, said Ms. Sarina, the district nursing officer. Then, healthy once more, they will be sent home. And the cycle will begin anew. 'The problem,' Ms. Sarina said, 'is that when they go back, there's nothing to depend on.'

Subject: Re: Drought Deepens Poverty From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 17:12:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: By definition Economics is: The study of how people best use their limited resources. We have an entire region with hungry people, yet one country that is 70% desert (South Africa) has a bumper surplus crop. This crop cannot be used to supply the hungry.... why? The answer cannot be: 'because of economics' simply read the definition again. We have to look else where for the reason of this stupidity. I'm out of angry statements and finger pointing. Can anyone give me an answer?

Subject: Prize in Indian Talent Search From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:36:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/technology/10soft.html?ex=1291870800&en=211670908c8db5b6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Prize in Indian Talent Search Is a Year on Bill Gates's Team By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India - Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, announced a contest Friday to identify promising software students in India, offering as top prize an internship with his technical team for a year. The contest comes amid another in India: the race between low-cost, open-source software and proprietary software, like Microsoft's Windows. The open-source movement, which promotes the Linux operating system, is finding increasing favor over proprietary systems among users and software developers in India. Addressing 5,000 developers gathered at the Palace Grounds here Friday, Mr. Gates said the nationwide talent hunt, called 'Code4Bill,' would offer the winner an opportunity to study Microsoft's product development and innovations. Mr. Gates said the contest would show the high quality of work being done in India. 'Some of the best commercial work is happening right here,' he said to cheers from the gathered crowd. Mr. Gates is something of a celebrity in India, where technology outsourcing has provided well-paid jobs and changed the fortunes of thousands of middle-class Indians. But companies like Microsoft worry that many developers are joining the open-source movement. Since Mr. Gates last visited India in 2002, Linux has found increasing favor not just among local governments like those in neighboring Maharashtra state, but also at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai and at Hindustan Lever, the country's biggest consumer products company, also based in Mumbai. India, with its one billion people, is a potentially huge market, but it needs inexpensive computers and software. Supporters of open-source software say Microsoft has made large donations of its software to Indian government offices to 'hook' them on its products. But at the Palace Grounds, most of the young developers gathered to see Mr. Gates were clearly in awe of him. 'I want to be like him. I am a huge admirer,' said 24-year old Naveen Rao, a development engineer with the outsourcing company Aditi Technologies. On his current visit, Mr. Gates has left no doubt of India's importance in Microsoft's business plans. He announced a $1.7 billion investment in India over the next four years. About half of that would go to Microsoft's research and development center in Hyderabad in southern India, its biggest outside its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. The investment will also help intensify Microsoft's research to create low-cost computing systems. The Code4Bill contest will begin in January and last eight months. Twenty finalists will receive internships with Microsoft India before a final winner is selected to join Mr. Gates's own team.

Subject: The Burden of Medicaid Cuts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 04:28:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/12/opinion/12mon1.html?ex=1292043600&en=82ade31c4900c859&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 12, 2005 The Burden of Medicaid Cuts House and Senate negotiators are beginning to grapple with the fateful issue of how best to restrain Medicaid spending. Their decisions will affect not only the ability of hard-pressed governors to rein in Medicaid costs that are eating up state budgets, but also the ability of some of the nation's poorest individuals to get medical care. The guiding principle should be to extract savings not from beneficiaries too poor to absorb the cost, but from industries and institutions better able to bear the burden. By those yardsticks the Senate's approach, which gets most of its savings from drug manufacturers, pharmacies and managed care plans, is far preferable to that of the House, which puts the burden on needy Medicaid beneficiaries. COST-SHARING The harshest measure in the House budget reconciliation bill would allow states to charge many beneficiaries premiums for the first time and would allow large increases in co-payments above the current nominal levels. The intent of this provision is to make people more aware of the costs of their health care and to create financial incentives for them to use the most cost-effective treatments - for example, health clinics instead of expensive emergency rooms. That sounds great in theory, but many studies have shown that even small increases in co-payments cause people who are barely scraping by to forgo medical care until they become so sick they end up in an emergency room anyway. The House bill compounds the problem by allowing health care providers to turn away people who say they can't make the payment. The savings that will be achieved through increased cost-sharing in Medicaid are not really savings in any meaningful sense. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fully 80 percent would come from a decrease in the use of Medicaid services. It seems unlikely that these services aren't needed, so either patients will go without care or someone other than Medicaid - in many places, publicly supported hospitals - will pick up the bill. PRESCRIPTION DRUGS This is the most fruitful area for savings, and the Senate has pursued it far more vigorously than the House. Auditors have repeatedly found that Medicaid pays pharmacies a lot more for drugs than the pharmacies pay to acquire them, so both houses would change the system to reflect costs more realistically. The Senate would also go after the manufacturers by significantly increasing the rebates that Medicaid collects from them, while the House bill makes only minor changes. No doubt many House members feel beholden to the pharmaceutical industry, which makes lavish campaign contributions, but it seems better to get savings from drug manufacturers and retailers than from needy beneficiaries. MEDICARE Before cutting Medicaid too deeply, Congress should seek some relatively painless cuts in the Medicare program that serves all elderly Americans. The House has refused to look in that direction, but the Senate quite sensibly chose to eliminate a $10 billion fund that was set up to provide extra payments to managed care plans as an incentive to participate in Medicare. The reason: so many private plans are rushing into the Medicare market in response to the new prescription drug coverage that the added subsidies now seem superfluous. The insurance industry is crying foul, and President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that eliminates the fund. But before imposing higher costs on Medicaid beneficiaries any compassionate Congress would take away payments to managed care plans that are no longer needed and unfair to boot.

Subject: Paul Krugman: Wal-Mart's Excuse From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 03:28:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/ December 12, 2005 Paul Krugman: Wal-Mart's Excuse By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman looks at Wal-Mart's attempts to improve its public image by claiming it is an engine of job growth and finds the arguments worthy of one of those end of year 'worst of' lists: Big Box Balderdash, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: I think I've just seen the worst economic argument of 2005. ... The argument came in the course of the latest exchange between Wal-Mart and its critics. A union-supported group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, has released a TV ad accusing Wal-Mart of violating religious values, backed by a letter from religious leaders attacking the retail giant for paying low wages and offering poor benefits. The letter declares that 'Jesus would not embrace Wal-Mart's values of greed and profits at any cost.' You may think that this particular campaign - which has, inevitably, been dubbed 'Where would Jesus shop?' - is a bit over the top. But it's clear why those concerned about the state of American workers focus their criticism on Wal-Mart. The company isn't just America's largest private employer. It's also a symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising G.D.P. but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans. ... So how did Wal-Mart respond to this latest critique? Wal-Mart can claim, with considerable justice, that its business practices make America as a whole richer. The fact is that ... its low prices aren't solely or even mainly the result of the low wages it pays. Wal-Mart has been able to reduce prices largely because it has brought genuine technological and organizational innovation to the retail business. It's harder for Wal-Mart to defend its pay and benefits policies. Still, the company could try to argue that ... it cannot defy the iron laws of supply and demand, which force it to pay low wages. (I disagree, but that's a subject for another column.) But instead of resting its case on these honest or at least defensible answers to criticism, Wal-Mart has decided to insult our intelligence by claiming to be, of all things, an engine of job creation. ...[T]he assertion that Wal-Mart 'creates 100,000 jobs a year' is now the core of the company's public relations strategy. ... But adding 100,000 people to Wal-Mart's work force doesn't mean adding 100,000 jobs to the economy. On the contrary, there's every reason to believe that as Wal-Mart expands, it destroys at least as many jobs as it creates, and drives down workers' wages in the process. Think about what happens when Wal-Mart opens a store ... The new store takes sales away from stores that are already in the area; these stores lay off workers or even go out of business. Because Wal-Mart's big-box stores employ fewer workers per dollar of sales than the smaller stores they replace, overall retail employment surely goes down, not up... And if the jobs lost come from employers who pay more generously than Wal-Mart does, overall wages will fall... This isn't just speculation on my part. A recent study by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and two associates at the Public Policy Institute of California, 'The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets,' uses sophisticated statistical analysis to estimate the effects on jobs and wages as Wal-Mart spread out from its original center in Arkansas. The authors find that retail employment did, indeed, fall when Wal-Mart arrived in a new county. It's not clear ... whether overall employment ... rose or fell ... But it's clear that average wages fell: 'residents of local labor markets,' the study reports, 'earn less following the opening of Wal-Mart stores.' So Wal-Mart has chosen to defend itself with a really poor argument. If that's the best the company can come up with, it's going to keep losing the public relations war with its critics. Maybe it should consider an alternative strategy, such as paying higher wages.

Subject: Paul Krugman: News Coverage From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 03:21:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 4, 2005 Paul Krugman: Is News Coverage of Iraq Undermining Bush? By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman was on CNN's Reliable Sources recently. The topic is whether the news coverage of Iraq is undermining Bush. The interview also recalls a key moment in the Vietnam war debate when Walter Cronkite had the courage to tell the nation that the war was not going well: November 27, 2005 KURTZ: Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES... I'm Howard Kurtz. ...[B]ack in 1968, nearly all editorial pages and most columnists supported the war in Vietnam, which made it all the more shocking when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a trip there and told the country that things were not going well. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WALTER CRONKITE, FMR. CBS ANCHOR: To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion. (END VIDEO CLIP) KURTZ: Even then it would take another year or two for elite media opinion to turn against the war, catching up with the growing public disillusionment over the rising death toll and lack of progress. Today, while plenty of editorial pages have criticized President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, only a handful have supported a U.S. pullout. But a majority of Americans now oppose the war. Are the media again lagging behind public opinion? ... Paul Krugman, could there be a Cronkite moment today with a leading journalist turning against the war and moving public opinion? PAUL KRUGMAN...: We are not Walter Cronkite's country anymore. We are a much more polarized nation. There is no political center. People get their news from opposing sources. You look at the polls, people who voted for Bush in the last election just live in a different reality from people who voted for Kerry. And ... we've seen repeatedly not so much media figures, but policy figures [who] turn against Bush on the war, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what... your record is. All of a sudden you're just another Michael Moore. So, no, I don't think we have a Walter Cronkite moment. KURTZ: I was going -- I was going to ask you about that, because you wrote recently about the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Now you happen to favor a U.S. pullout. Has anybody called you unpatriotic? KRUGMAN: Oh, I'm called unpatriotic all of the time on every issue. I've been called unpatriotic for ... criticizing our health care system. But no, ... this is a world in which -- a country in which -- look, I ... was the subject of a fairly major campaign calling me unpatriotic for criticizing Bush's handling of Katrina. So that's the kind of world we're in. If Walter Cronkite were ... on the news today, if a Walter Cronkite equivalent were on the news, he would -- immediately after that broadcast we just saw, he would have been called a traitor. ... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, what accounts for the following? Fifty-two percent in the latest CNN poll want a U.S. pullout either now or within a year. And yet almost every editorial page in the country still supports the war. KRUGMAN: Partly, it's that editorial pages are very much trying to be responsible. And there is this feeling that ... we can't be responsible for defeat. You know, Pottery Barn, we broke it, we own it. And part of it is, there has been a lot of ... intimidation of the media. People are really afraid of being accused of undermining the troops. And particularly, a lot of people remember what happened in Vietnam, which was the public turned against the war, the media turned against the war, and the Democrats and liberals have been paying the price for having been right ever since. So nobody wants to be out in front on this. KURTZ: So you're suggesting that there is a certain amount of timidity involved in continuing to support the U.S. forces there in what remains obviously a difficult situation? KRUGMAN: Well, there's been enormous timidity. ...[L]ook at the question of whether we were misled into war. The evidence -- basically, all the evidence you're now hearing about that was available by the summer of 2003. But you did not get extensive media coverage of the evidence about aluminum tubes and all that ... until after a majority of the public had decided we were misled into war. And the same thing is happening on withdrawal... KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, journalists, as you know, love to cover two sides: Republicans say this, Democrats say that. It's the fact that the Democratic Party has been -- has not staked out much of an alternative plan here. Even when Jack Murtha made his withdrawal argument, most of the party did not join in. Has that contributed to what some might call the one-sided coverage in the press about the political debate? KRUGMAN: Sure. I mean, I once said that if Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headline would read, 'Views Differ on Shape of Earth,' that you have this real, real reluctance to actually just state what the facts are. And here you can't even -- or until very recently you couldn't even do the he said-she said reporting. That's part of the reason why a lot of the coverage lagged behind public opinion. It was only when the public had turned against the war, when the public had decided we'd been misled into war, ... and then when some politicians began following the public lead, then we get the media coverage, which is not the way it ought to be. But that's the way it has actually turned out... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, you wrote recently -- I want to read this quote -- 'After 9/11, the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were. So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves, 'What did we know, when did we know it and why didn't we tell the public.'' Are you suggesting this was deliberate on the part of the press? KRUGMAN: I guess it depends on the meaning of the word 'deliberate.' Did people say, ooh, let's join in the vast right wing conspiracy? No. Did journalists say, you know, the public wants to hear good stuff about Bush, they want to hear that we have a great leader, they want to hear favorable things about the administration, and did they then hide what they knew was not favorable? Yes, there is a lot of that. I don't know how many times I've talked to ... professional journalists, major people, whose private views of what happened even ... beginning within days of 9/11, are completely at odds with what you could have read in a major newspaper or seen on TV until ... just about now. KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, I've got probably about half a minute. Do you see signs that the press coverage is starting to turn on Iraq and that we are moving away from this period that you referred to as the media kind of building up the Bush administration? In fact, some would say it's the other way, that now it's open season on the Bush administration. KRUGMAN: There's -- there's clearly a lot of -- there was a lot of pent-up frustration. I mean, people..., you knew, I knew that Bush was politicizing, was exploiting 9/11, within days. You have to have known that. I certainly did. And ... no one would dare say it for four years. And now, yes, there is a certain sense of payback. Now we can finally tell the truth. KURTZ: ...Well, some other people would say he was rallying the country. From that last coment, it sounds like Kurtz is still in denial.

Subject: Paul Krugman: News Coverage From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 03:20:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 4, 2005 Paul Krugman: Is News Coverage of Iraq Undermining Bush? By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman was on CNN's Reliable Sources recently. The topic is whether the news coverage of Iraq is undermining Bush. The interview also recalls a key moment in the Vietnam war debate when Walter Cronkite had the courage to tell the nation that the war was not going well: November 27, 2005 KURTZ: Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES... I'm Howard Kurtz. ...[B]ack in 1968, nearly all editorial pages and most columnists supported the war in Vietnam, which made it all the more shocking when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a trip there and told the country that things were not going well. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WALTER CRONKITE, FMR. CBS ANCHOR: To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion. (END VIDEO CLIP) KURTZ: Even then it would take another year or two for elite media opinion to turn against the war, catching up with the growing public disillusionment over the rising death toll and lack of progress. Today, while plenty of editorial pages have criticized President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, only a handful have supported a U.S. pullout. But a majority of Americans now oppose the war. Are the media again lagging behind public opinion? ... Paul Krugman, could there be a Cronkite moment today with a leading journalist turning against the war and moving public opinion? PAUL KRUGMAN...: We are not Walter Cronkite's country anymore. We are a much more polarized nation. There is no political center. People get their news from opposing sources. You look at the polls, people who voted for Bush in the last election just live in a different reality from people who voted for Kerry. And ... we've seen repeatedly not so much media figures, but policy figures [who] turn against Bush on the war, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what... your record is. All of a sudden you're just another Michael Moore. So, no, I don't think we have a Walter Cronkite moment. KURTZ: I was going -- I was going to ask you about that, because you wrote recently about the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Now you happen to favor a U.S. pullout. Has anybody called you unpatriotic? KRUGMAN: Oh, I'm called unpatriotic all of the time on every issue. I've been called unpatriotic for ... criticizing our health care system. But no, ... this is a world in which -- a country in which -- look, I ... was the subject of a fairly major campaign calling me unpatriotic for criticizing Bush's handling of Katrina. So that's the kind of world we're in. If Walter Cronkite were ... on the news today, if a Walter Cronkite equivalent were on the news, he would -- immediately after that broadcast we just saw, he would have been called a traitor. ... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, what accounts for the following? Fifty-two percent in the latest CNN poll want a U.S. pullout either now or within a year. And yet almost every editorial page in the country still supports the war. KRUGMAN: Partly, it's that editorial pages are very much trying to be responsible. And there is this feeling that ... we can't be responsible for defeat. You know, Pottery Barn, we broke it, we own it. And part of it is, there has been a lot of ... intimidation of the media. People are really afraid of being accused of undermining the troops. And particularly, a lot of people remember what happened in Vietnam, which was the public turned against the war, the media turned against the war, and the Democrats and liberals have been paying the price for having been right ever since. So nobody wants to be out in front on this. KURTZ: So you're suggesting that there is a certain amount of timidity involved in continuing to support the U.S. forces there in what remains obviously a difficult situation? KRUGMAN: Well, there's been enormous timidity. ...[L]ook at the question of whether we were misled into war. The evidence -- basically, all the evidence you're now hearing about that was available by the summer of 2003. But you did not get extensive media coverage of the evidence about aluminum tubes and all that ... until after a majority of the public had decided we were misled into war. And the same thing is happening on withdrawal... KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, journalists, as you know, love to cover two sides: Republicans say this, Democrats say that. It's the fact that the Democratic Party has been -- has not staked out much of an alternative plan here. Even when Jack Murtha made his withdrawal argument, most of the party did not join in. Has that contributed to what some might call the one-sided coverage in the press about the political debate? KRUGMAN: Sure. I mean, I once said that if Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headline would read, 'Views Differ on Shape of Earth,' that you have this real, real reluctance to actually just state what the facts are. And here you can't even -- or until very recently you couldn't even do the he said-she said reporting. That's part of the reason why a lot of the coverage lagged behind public opinion. It was only when the public had turned against the war, when the public had decided we'd been misled into war, ... and then when some politicians began following the public lead, then we get the media coverage, which is not the way it ought to be. But that's the way it has actually turned out... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, you wrote recently -- I want to read this quote -- 'After 9/11, the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were. So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves, 'What did we know, when did we know it and why didn't we tell the public.'' Are you suggesting this was deliberate on the part of the press? KRUGMAN: I guess it depends on the meaning of the word 'deliberate.' Did people say, ooh, let's join in the vast right wing conspiracy? No. Did journalists say, you know, the public wants to hear good stuff about Bush, they want to hear that we have a great leader, they want to hear favorable things about the administration, and did they then hide what they knew was not favorable? Yes, there is a lot of that. I don't know how many times I've talked to ... professional journalists, major people, whose private views of what happened even ... beginning within days of 9/11, are completely at odds with what you could have read in a major newspaper or seen on TV until ... just about now. KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, I've got probably about half a minute. Do you see signs that the press coverage is starting to turn on Iraq and that we are moving away from this period that you referred to as the media kind of building up the Bush administration? In fact, some would say it's the other way, that now it's open season on the Bush administration. KRUGMAN: There's -- there's clearly a lot of -- there was a lot of pent-up frustration. I mean, people..., you knew, I knew that Bush was politicizing, was exploiting 9/11, within days. You have to have known that. I certainly did. And ... no one would dare say it for four years. And now, yes, there is a certain sense of payback. Now we can finally tell the truth. KURTZ: ...Well, some other people would say he was rallying the country. From that last coment, it sounds like Kurtz is still in denial.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: News Coverage From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 17:03:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: A good reporter should leave the final comment to the person he is interviewing and not his own.

Subject: Please remove this double post. From: Bobby To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 03:27:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Bobby, please forgive and remove this double post.

Subject: Jared Diamond - Emma From: Mik To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 22:58:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma, I have been thinking about your previous posts on Jared Diamond and would like to ask if you would be willing to engage in some sharing of thoughts... perhaps tell me where I am totally wrong. 3 incidents have just happened in short sequence that have had me thinking: 1. I entertained a recent visit by senior government officials of Uganda. 2. Jared Diamond has a documentary on TV 3. I have been watching a movie on Christopher Columbus giving some background that leads up to his great voyage. As you will remember - I criticised quite bit of the reasoning of Jared Diamond, but in his documentary he makes a statement that I think holds the key to much information (yet the statement was not part of his hypothesis). You may also remember the article you posted on Malawi and how they are having a famine (an article that had me passionately enraged). I pointed to the fact that within 100 miles of the famine area is Lake Malawi, the world's second largest body of fresh water - why aren't these people building irrigation systems off this lake? Okay let me now go through my logic of tieing this all together: The Ugandans left me with two thoughts, firstly I was shocked to learn that one of the Ugandans has contracted Malaria almost every second month. His rescue has been modern medicine which still only provides a part remedy. How did his forefathers survive? (they did not have access to modern medicine). Two of the Ugandan officials often discussed politics in my presence and I must comment that their logic is simply sooo warped. I listened to some of the most outrageous levels of stupidity. From my time in Africa I now remember that I often came across this kind of outrageous stupidity. Stupidity that can be so dangerous that it even resulted in the massacres in Rwanda. Mysticism, vague theories passed off as fact leading to a final conclusion of some form of justification. Jared Diamond’s documentary talks about how the Europeans making their way north in Africa finally met a geographic barrier in that they reached the tropics. They were for the first time faced with Malaria. Their cattle couldn’t even survive, yet the local African cattle in the region survived and so too the Africans in the region thrived. In a short statement Jared brushed passed an incredible theory that I believe is so fundamental. Jared made the statement that Africans lived on top of hills away from the rivers and lakes in order to be away from the Mosquitoes that carried Malaria, where the Europeans did the exact opposite. STOP EVERYTHING !!!! This is so true. In all my studies of European transport systems (I’m a transport economics consultant) I learnt that European towns where built around rivers and river crossings. The rivers gave life to the size and complexity of European towns. This did not happen in Africa because rivers and lakes are the source of death from Malaria. It is amazing how many African towns I have studied and only now I realize that none of those towns were located anywhere near a river or body of water. The Africans know that during daylight hours the mosquitoes don’t bite, so it is safe to collect water from the rivers – during night time, they must be back on their dry hill. Hhhmm can this explain why the Malawians choose not to live near the banks of Lake Malawi? Or why their tradition passed down has taught them to live in dry areas away from moist areas? (no irrigation systems) So now we have a very interesting situation, Black tribes tended to live in smaller groups in dry more hostile areas and not have farm area right outside their huts. (This has changed in modern Africa – mosquito repellent, nets and medicine have brought a warped change to the tradition). Watching the movie Christopher Columbus we see that Christopher came into prominence at the end of an era that you and I know as the “Dark Ages”. These were called the dark ages because “people did not see the light”. An era full of religious mysticism, brutal burnings of women accused of witch craft and the suppression of full generations deprived of basic education such literacy. What a horrible time in our history, Europe had come such a long way in its development and could have continued developing better and faster, but instead for hundreds of years we stayed in a time warp. This is when I realized that stupidity is by no means unique to any group and can be so devastating for so many years. Leaders such as those in Myanmar, North Korea and Turkmenistan can be so detrimental to the development of their people. Why is it that after literally thousands of years, Europeans had reached the stage of building engineered infrastructure during the Roman empire, while Africans still lived in the stone age? Perhaps Africans were only now overcoming the wrath of Malaria? Or perhaps the mystic powers had a far longer and tighter grip. By the time the Europeans arrived in Africa, the Africans had reached the iron age and were already crafting different types of spears. The Zulus had made longer blades that had knife like qualities. Perhaps the Africans were about to move to the next level. But the immediate mix of two civilizations of vastly different technological development would guarantee that one would become subservient. And perhaps the chain of events would upset the ‘natural’ cause of events. But the themes are there: The Africans had a serious impediment in the way of Malaria that did not allow for the development of irrigation systems or water based transport. Malaria did not allow for the development of large towns where one would find sharing of thoughts, political systems or the requirement of necessary engineering. Instead Africans were secluded to small spread out villages with single leaders and probably encouraging a grip of mysticism deterring mental development. Alright the theory already falls short when I realize that Malaria is also found in China and India. Two regions that developed themselves in many ways during the same time as the Roman era. Both regions have developments along rivers and lakes. Can it be that the decision by Africans to combat Malaria by splitting up into small tribal groups and living as far away from water was the biggest mistake? I have just read an internet site that states that Malaria originates in Africa and was taken by Europeans to other parts of the world. (Now I don’t believe everything I read on the internet), but if this is true, can centuries of Malaria be the true reason that we have such great disparity in human development between Africans and Europeans? If so, then Jared Diamond may well be right and wrong. Right in that he hit on the correct statement, wrong in that each region of the world has a huge fundamental reason for developing at a different rate and that we cannot sum it down to the same basic set of reasons. Also overcoming mysticism and stupidity should be considered when evaluating human development. I think this is a very controversial issue as it may be fuel for racism or prejudice. But if we as Europeans realize that we have in our history also been overcome by mysticism and stupidity that held back our development for a good couple hundred years, it is not difficult to imagine that other regions may not have been lucky enough to have come out of their period of mysticism and stupidity sooner. Okay Emma – your turn…. Where am I flawed?

Subject: Re: Jared Diamond - Emma From: Emma To: Mik Date Posted: Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 05:33:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: There is no flaw that I can find in your superb comment, but there is much more to add as always with such topics. I am thinking and will respond, but the comment is superb.

Subject: Question From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 07:53:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: There as been a lot of talk about how strong the dollar has been against other currencies this past year. But is the strength of the US dollar vs other currencies as important to the US economy as how well the US dollar is doing with regard to its purchasing strength when it comes to the necessities of life? On what should we focus with regard to dollar strength?

Subject: Re: Question From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 08:23:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The bond market will always tell us what to think of the strength or weakness of the dollar, and the market has told us through strength and weakness and strength again, there is no problem. There may well be a problem in coming years, but the dollar buys much internationally, no matter the deficits, and domestically since there is little core inflation. Would I own long term bonds now? No. But, I am optimistic this Federal Reserve cycle will be successful in limiting inflation and allowing reasonable growth. There is the bond market message.

Subject: Re: Question From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 18:52:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'The bond market will always tell us what to think of the strength or weakness of the dollar...' Ultimately and eventually this may be a true statement. However, are bond investors, these days, anymore tuned into whether or not longer termed bonds are good investments than late 90's stock investors were with high tech stocks? And what of the motivations of Asian central banks - are they buying US bonds because they will bring a better return than other options they might have? In other words, are the motivations and sentiments of bond investors really telling us much about the strength of the dollar?

Subject: Re: Question From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 20:53:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The bond market has been far more accurate than the stock or currency markets in telling us about the strengths or weaknesses of the economy. There are fine economists who look for sharply higher long term interest rates and lower currency values, but there is no sign of either. Bond investors are generally professionals with a high degree of sophistication, but they too can collectively be mistaken. Again, I still find no sign of a mistake. I also have complete confidence in Ben Bernanke.

Subject: God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 06:17:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09scott.html October 9, 2005 God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut By A. O. SCOTT 'A New York friendship,' Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, 'is a friendship with a person you have met at least once. If you have met a person only once, and you are a New Yorker, you are entitled to say, whenever that person's name comes up in conversation, 'Yes - so-and-so is a friend of mine.' ' I am therefore proud to call Vonnegut my friend. Well, almost. One evening some years ago, at a literary party at an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I was sitting at one end of a living-room couch intently studying a bowl of mixed nuts when I became aware that someone had sat down on the other end. The walrus moustache, the curly salt-and-pepper hair, the crumpled pack of Pall Malls in the shirt pocket - I instantly recognized him from the line-drawn self-portraits that accompany some of his books. Not surprisingly, I found myself too star-struck to say a word. A while later, I was scolded for my timidity by a friend of mine who is also a friend of Vonnegut's, something I had just missed the chance at becoming. 'He was sitting right there next to you for 15 minutes and you completely ignored him,' she said. I stammered that I hadn't been able to think of anything to say. 'How about, 'I like your work'?' she wondered. Fair enough. Allow me, then, to make up for that lost opportunity and tell Mr. Vonnegut that I like his work. Sometimes more than he does, judging from a self-grading report card he published nearly 25 years ago, in which he gave 'Breakfast of Champions' a stingy C and 'Slapstick' an unwarrantedly severe D. (On the other hand, the A's he handed out to 'Jailbird' and 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater' seem to me a bit inflated. But friends can disagree.) I am reminded of my long affection for his writing by the arrival of his new book, 'A Man Without a Country' (Seven Stories, $23.95), a slim, grouchy collection of columns, many of them from the twice-monthly left-wing magazine In These Times, illustrated with sketches and aphorisms silk-screened by the Kentucky artist Joe Petro. But this book's publication also causes me to realize that, over the years, I've taken Vonnegut somewhat for granted, and perhaps not taken him as seriously as I should have. Which puts me, I'm sorry to say, in the company of a great many other critics. In the standard narratives of postwar American literary history, he is indeed a man without a country - or at least a writer who cannot easily be placed. And placing - sometimes at the expense of reading or liking - is an activity that preoccupies critics, perhaps to a morbid degree. Vonnegut started out selling stories to popular magazines after the Second World War. Then, like his hard-luck sometime alter ego Kilgore Trout, he gravitated toward science fiction, planting seeds of allegory in the pulpy loam of 50's genre publishing. A decade later he seemed to be a central figure in the wave of experimental literature that would eventually be called postmodern. A novel like 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' with its chronological displacements, its antirealistic flights, its bitter satiric energy, its digressions and self-explanations and refusals of narrative decorum, seemed to partake of the same zeitgeist that spawned Barth and Barthelme, Pynchon and Gaddis. But the younger novelists who nowadays claim those old masters of the avant-garde as their forebears don't usually include Vonnegut in their canon, and he never really belonged among the hothouse practitioners of what Gore Vidal used to call 'R & D' fiction. (He is, though, something of a grandfather figure for writers like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer, whose work sometimes echoes his way of mixing whimsy and earnestness.) For one thing, his work has always been accessible - funny, direct and pointed in its ethical and political intentions. There is no need for a scholarly concordance or an interpretive apparatus to figure out what Vonnegut means. He is happy to tell you so himself, with reference to such unimpeachable and equally plainspoken exemplars as Abraham Lincoln, Eugene V. Debs, Mark Twain and Jesus Christ. But this transparency, while it has made Vonnegut a perennial best seller - and a favorite with the young - has diminished his utility in the academy, where literary reputations are made and preserved. Occasionally he has seemed to mind being underestimated in this way: 'It has been my experience with literary critics and academics in this country,' he wrote in one of the essays collected in 'Palm Sunday,' 'that clarity looks a lot like laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness to them. Any idea which can be grasped immediately is for them, by definition, something they knew all the time.' No one, to my knowledge, has ever complained that Vonnegut is ambiguous or obscure. And no one is likely to be surprised by the views expressed in 'A Man Without a Country,' some of which have been expressed more or less verbatim in previous books. An avowed humanist - a creed he defines as trying 'to behave as decently, as fairly and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife' - he is perpetually out of sorts with the human race. In particular, our wanton disregard for the environment and for one another drives him crazy, even to the point of losing his sense of humor: 'The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not.' His liberalism grows out of some principles that can only be called conservative, like the belief in community and extended family that has become one of the big themes of his later work. He remains unimpressed by technology or the other trappings of progress, and he remains one of America's leading critics of evolution - not of the theory, mind you, but of the practice, which has left us far too clever and vain for our own good. It will hardly come as a shock that Vonnegut - who identifies himself as 'a lifelong Northern Democrat in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt tradition, a friend of the working stiffs,' and therefore unapologetically 'sappy' - has a low opinion of the current American administration and its policies, and 'Man Without a Country' has already joined the ranks of the Bush-bashing best sellers that compete with liberal-bashing best sellers for dominance in our overheated climate of opinion. But Vonnegut is much funnier, and much crabbier, than the cable-bred polemicists, and smarter too. At times, he may slide toward Andy Rooneyesque or Grandpa Simpsonesque crotchetiness, but mostly, like his literary ancestor Mark Twain, his crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted, and aimed at well-defended soft spots of hypocrisy and arrogance. On Nov. 11 he will turn 83, and since he has no expectation of a heavenly perch from which to look down and eavesdrop on his friends, it is best that we appreciate him while he's still around. 'A Man Without a Country' is a fine place to start, especially since it can lead us back to 'Mother Night' and 'Slaughterhouse-Five' and 'The Sirens of Titan' and the stories collected in 'Bagombo Snuff Box.' In other words, it's like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.

Subject: Courage to Hide Pain and Share Joy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 06:13:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/education/07education.html?ex=1291611600&en=a1dc96be89fdeab2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 Teenager With the Courage to Hide Pain and Share Joy SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN AS Sheena Georges took her place, a dimpled freshman standing before the judge in her first speech competition, she moved her palms in the motion of someone wiping a window. She had committed the gesture to memory long before this day last winter, just as she had learned the monologue from a one-act play entitled 'Glass Houses.' No sooner did she speak the opening line, though, than her brain went empty, all those practice sessions yielding nothing except silence, the evidence of her inadequacy. Sheena made her way somehow down the hallway and into the auditorium of Christ the King High School in Queens, the site of the contest. David Risley, her coach, got word that one of his girls was hiding in the theater, rocking relentlessly in a seat. He found Sheena and told her it was all right, speech team was about more than winning, there would be other times. Sheena didn't believe him. She would have to quit; there was no way she could bear this kind of humiliation again. So for the rest of that academic year, she never went back. She never went back to the after-school rehearsals at St. Joseph's High in Brooklyn, her school. She never went back to the Saturday sessions Mr. Risley held at the Starbucks on Court Street, where the cashiers would eavesdrop on the girls running through their soliloquies and call out over the hiss of steaming milk, 'Where do I get a ticket?' Deep down inside, in the most private core of a private person, Sheena knew her failure had come from more than stage fright. She had never confided to Mr. Risley and his assistant, Patricia Kane, that her mother, Ghislaine, had died of breast cancer at 41 barely a year earlier, when Sheena was 14. 'I thought if I told them, they'd have pity,' she recalled the other day. 'I didn't want them to look at me differently.' She had enrolled in the Catholic school in September 2004, less than a year after losing her mother, and had soon heard about its speech team. She joined it, asking to compete in the drama category, which required her to work without a script in hand. SENSING her maturity, yet not knowing its cause, Mr. Risley and Ms. Kane gave Sheena a passage from 'Glass Houses,' a passage all about the anguished bond between a mother and daughter. Until that day at Christ the King, Sheena said that every time she spoke those words, 'I tried not to exist in that moment. I tried not to be there at all.' What she did want was to be part of the unlikely powerhouse that is St. Joseph's speech team. Representing a school of just 325 girls, the speech team had won a New York State award in 2004. A year earlier, St. Joseph's had placed fifth out of nearly 500 schools in the nation. These girls of St. Joseph's in their braces and corn-rows - Latinas and African-Americans almost to the one, the working-class and working poor, some of them barely having ventured outside of Brooklyn in their lives - had done oratorical battle against the most eloquent and artistic progeny of Stuyvesant, Regis and Scarsdale. Of course, they wanted to win. Mr. Risley, a product of the speech team at Nazareth High School in Brooklyn, savored the combat and the triumph. Speech, though, was about so much more than first place. Speech team introduced the girls of St. Joseph's to the literature of August Wilson and Joyce Carol Oates; speech team took them to Albany and Washington and Milwaukee; speech team told them that to speak precisely and enunciate clearly was not to indulge in racial betrayal, to 'act white,' but to claim their rightful part of America and help St. Joseph's fulfill its mission. 'This school has a ministry,' said Sister Eugenia Calabrese, the principal. 'In these days, a religious community that is not committing its resources to the poor is not following the teachings of the Gospels.' Mr. Risley knew the more intimate aspects of transcendence full well. Born to a mother stricken with German measles while pregnant with him, he had grown up with hearing so damaged that he had to sit in the front row of every class and still ask, 'What? What?' On the day when he first inserted a hearing aid, he was astonished to realize that buses squeaked and creaked. He gained his own sense of worth assaying Robert Browning and Christopher Marlowe, a prelude to a career in theater. And he brought all that experience to St. Joseph's when he began volunteering as the speech coach 20 years ago. Still, he had not fathomed the depths of Sheena Georges, the hole in her soul. Only after her collapse at Christ the King did he and Ms. Kane learn about the mother who had died so young. Despite their entreaties that she try again, Sheena did not return to the chapel or to Starbucks. She threw herself into cheerleading, the track team; she drew illustrations in the Japanese anime style for the school yearbook. After all those achievements, she still told herself she was someone without pride. Then, this fall, her sophomore year, she presented herself once again to Mr. Risley and Ms. Kane. She thought about how beautiful the speech trophies were, all that gleaming brass arrayed in the school library. She thought about how she wished she could 'talk in front of people without feeling all shriveled and whatnot.' Now realizing the burden Sheena carried, the sorrow hidden by dimples, Mr. Risley and Ms. Kane steered her to an effervescent poem about Cinderella by Roald Dahl. They put her in the oral-interpretation category, which allows contestants to read from a script. They let her get her confidence on the junior varsity. Three weeks ago, Sheena stepped before a judge for the first competition of the season. She barely needed the text; she remembered nearly every word; she held the tone and controlled the pace, as her coaches had taught her. After three rounds of preliminaries, the chief judge called out the names of the finalists. 'What's that?' Sheena asked Mr. Risley when she heard her name called. 'You're getting a trophy,' he replied. Last Wednesday, Nov. 30, was Sheena's mother's birthday. Sheena was even quieter than usual in school that day, and typically she didn't offer explanations, just to make sure nobody would feel sorry for her. 'I make sure even if my days are bad, then everyone else's day is going all right,' she said. 'I try to smile, say hello to everyone. To give them a breeze of happiness.'

Subject: The Rise of Illiterate Democracy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 05:57:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/books/review/11wilentz.html December 11, 2005 The Rise of Illiterate Democracy By SEAN WILENTZ The nonfiction best-seller lists these days are often full of partisan screeds labeling Democrats as elitist traitors and Republicans as conniving plutocrats. But look over on the fiction side, and politics appears almost nowhere. Some critics read Philip Roth's 'Plot Against America' as an allegory of the current White House, and there have even been a few blunt and appalling political fantasies, like Nicholson Baker's 'Checkpoint,' a brief dialogue between a man who wants to assassinate George W. Bush and a friend who wants to talk him out of it. But unlike the ubiquitous nonfiction tub-thumpers, today's novels rarely take the grubby business of ordinary politics, past or present, as a subject, let alone an activity in which their authors might participate. Contemporary party politics, which once inspired writers as different as James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain and Robert Penn Warren, is terra incognita. The separation of church and state is hotly contested; the separation of literature and state seems to have become absolute. It was very different during the formative era of American democratic politics before the Civil War. Some observers of that time, it is true, claimed that American democracy would never encourage profound writing. 'The inhabitants of the United States have, then, at present, properly speaking, no literature,' Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in the second volume of 'Democracy in America,' published in 1840. Tocqueville thought democracy would some day produce 'vehement and bold' novelists, and poets who explored 'some of the obscurer recesses of the human heart.' But when that distant day arrived, he supposed it would have little to do with the frenzied moneymaking and party politics that dominated the New World. Tocqueville was wrong. By the late 1830's, a formidable, self-consciously American literature blossomed, sponsored in part, oddly enough, by the country's political parties, especially the Democrats. In 1837, a new monthly, The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, appeared, financially backed by Democratic Party leaders. (Former President Andrew Jackson took out the first subscription himself.) Alongside articles on partisan machinations, the first issue presented poems by John Greenleaf Whittier and William Cullen Bryant, and a fictional sketch by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Over the ensuing decade, The Democratic Review flourished as an excellent, up-to-date literary magazine as well as a political organ of the more radical currents within the Jacksonian coalition. In addition to stories by Hawthorne (who, in 1852, would write the official campaign biography of his old college friend Franklin Pierce), The Review's notable pieces included tales and poems by Walt Whitman, essays by and about the historian George Bancroft, and a handsome early review of the first novel by a promising newcomer whose name was memorably misrecorded as Sherman Melville. These contributions were not narrowly pro-Jacksonian or even overtly political (though in other venues their authors could be), but their direct style and commonplace subjects conveyed, The Review said, 'the terms of the democratic creed.' The Whigs, who commanded the high-toned periodicals like The North American Review, also had some impressive literary names in their own stable, including Longfellow and, later, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Before Stowe, however, the Jacksonians, including Bryant (who edited The New York Evening Post, a partisan Democratic paper) and Bancroft (who ran the party's machine in Massachusetts and would serve President James K. Polk as secretary of the Navy and minister to London) dominated the emerging political literary scene. Whig conservatives puzzled over why so many celebrated writers stood (as the Brahmin notable Edward Everett wrote of Hawthorne) 'on the side of barbarism & vandalism against order, law & constitutional liberty.' It remains striking that a generation of writers who devoted themselves to establishing a recognizably American voice should find such strong affinities with a political party - and, at that, the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson. 'The vital principle of an American national literature must be democracy,' the first issue of The Democratic Review proclaimed. And the Jacksonian Democrats, whose leader suffered ritualistic abuse from the opposition (as he has from later historians) as a backwoods barbarian, took pride in their writers. 'It is a fact well known,' one party newspaper bragged in 1838, 'that with few exceptions, our first literary men belong to the democratic party.' Until recently, this partisan world of letters had been forgotten. It came as a revelation to reviewers of Brenda Wineapple's 2003 biography of Hawthorne that her subject truly was as implicated in Democratic Party politics as he himself had said he was in the preface to 'The Scarlet Letter,' where he described his chagrin at losing a patronage job at the Salem custom house after the Whigs captured the White House in 1848. A few excellent books over the last several years, including David Reynolds's 'cultural biography' of Whitman, Edward L. Widmer's 'Young America' (a study of the Democratic Review circle), and Andrew Delbanco's just-published study of Melville, have also cast fresh light on their subjects' evolving political ties. But general awareness of the old connections between literature and party politics is still lacking. Not since Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s 'Age of Jackson,' now 60 years old, have major political histories of the era considered literature at all relevant to an understanding of the Democrats and Whigs. And our novelists, too, seem unaware of - or uninterested in - this aspect of our early literary history, and indeed in the Jacksonian period itself. The important contemporary writers who have engaged the Jacksonian and antebellum periods - from William Styron to Toni Morrison to Russell Banks - have dwelled on the subjects of slavery and race to the exclusion of almost everything else. When politicians of the Jacksonian era appear in these works, they seem either feckless or embarrassingly benighted. It is difficult to comprehend that some of the greatest writers of the time regarded the same men with admiration. (The 'leading spirits' of the Democratic Party, Whitman proclaimed in 1846, were 'always in advance of the age.') And it is nearly impossible to imagine a time when a partisan magazine like The Democratic Review could praise its favorite novelist for his political work as well as his fiction, saluting him as 'Nathaniel Hawthorne, politician.' Only a few prominent recent writers - from Gore Vidal in 'Burr' to John Updike in 'Memories of the Ford Administration,' which drew, in part, on his 1974 play, 'Buchanan Dying' - have shown any affinity for the high politics of the Jacksonian era. (Updike is especially acute on the Jacksonian sensibility, shaped by his preoccupation with Hawthorne and his family ties to Jackson's party and to what he has called 'the dark soil of old Pennsylvania politics.') The idea of today's Democrats or Republicans sponsoring a serious literary magazine boggles the mind. In a time of polarization as acute as in the 1830's, our writers make all sorts of political pronouncements, but it is hard to imagine any of them getting deeply involved in party politics per se, or even (maybe Updike aside) portraying the business of politics in a serious or sympathetic light. This disaffection from party politics is not, of course, limited to writers. But the collapse of the old alliance between politics and literature indicates how much American democracy has changed since the Jacksonian era, and not entirely for the better. Democracy has been broadened far beyond what Jackson himself could have imagined, but our politicians' prose is reduced to, at best, hollow sentimentalism and, at worst, a manipulative semi-literacy of a kind that would have made the supposed barbarian Andrew Jackson wince. The memory of a time when American party politics was worthy of a writer's respect, let alone professional involvement, has almost disappeared. American literature has distanced itself from an essential part of national life, and American politics has debased what was once an uplifting language of democracy. Sean Wilentz is a professor of history at Princeton.

Subject: Blacks Oppose Plans for Their Property From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 05:14:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/national/nationalspecial/10exile.html?ex=1291870800&en=6740d5cfeb528d30&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Wealthy Blacks Oppose Plans for Their Property By GARY RIVLIN BATON ROUGE, La. - True Light Baptist Church is located in a down-and-out part of town here, but on Monday nights its parking lot fills with BMW's, Mercedes-Benzes and other late-model sedans that shine with a new-car sparkle. Since September, hundreds of displaced residents from New Orleans East, the neighborhood that was home to the largest concentration of the city's black elite, gather there for a small taste of the camaraderie and community that they sorely miss. But the residents - whose ranks include lawyers, judges and a few elected officials - are also anxiously mobilizing to save their low-lying corner of the city, which some planners argue should revert to marshland. So far, the group has used its clout to extract a promise that electricity will be turned on in the neighborhood next month, instead of waiting until June. It has also speeded the return of water service. Without either, many residents say, they must wait in Baton Rouge longer even if their neighborhood is open. New Orleans's mayor, C. Ray Nagin, spent an evening at one of the group's meetings recently, hearing of the residents' longing to return home. But despite the group's considerable resources, the plan taking shape to remake the city lumps New Orleans East and its 90,000 residents with the Lower Ninth Ward and other deluged neighborhoods as the last priority of the city as it struggles to rebuild. The Urban Land Institute, a planning group advising the city, recommended that the city begin rebuilding less damaged neighborhoods first, provoking outrage from residents of the flood zones. 'It would kill the black psyche if New Orleans East wasn't rebuilt,' said Talmadge Wall, an interior designer who for 15 years has lived with her husband and children in New Orleans East. 'Think of what it would mean if the city successfully chased off so many African-Americans who had money, its doctors and successful businesspeople and lawyers and such. People who were aspiring to attain that kind of success would no longer feel like they have a chance.' At last Monday's meeting, organizers handed out black, white and green lawn signs that read, 'I am coming home! I will rebuild!' The meetings, which date to mid-September, have drawn upward of 1,000 people. Organizers say they have helped inspire the formation of similar support groups for displaced New Orleans residents in cities throughout the South. 'There's a real lonesomeness, a real yearning to connect with the familiar that I think everybody feels,' said Tangeyon Wall, who with her sister Talmadge and their two other sisters and a cousin formed this neighborhood organization in exile. Other, poorer neighborhoods have received more attention since the storm. The Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Wards, for example, have for decades been home to a majority of the city's blue-collar African-Americans: waiters, construction workers and custodians. New Orleans East, which barely existed in the 1970's, has been the site of most of the city's development over the past 30 years. It has become the next stop for children of blue-collar workers who moved up after securing better-paying professional jobs. That has been the trajectory of Alden J. McDonald Jr.'s life. Mr. McDonald, the chief executive of Liberty Bank and Trust, New Orleans's largest black-owned bank, is the son of a waiter and grew up in the Seventh Ward. In 1974, the younger Mr. McDonald was a trailblazer when he moved his family into New Orleans East. A dozen years later, he bought a larger home there, complete with a swimming pool and an exercise room. 'New Orleans East represents the first time in New Orleans history that the African-American community has seen significant wealth creation that they can hand down to the next generation,' said Mr. McDonald, who has attended several meetings at True Light. The Wall family took a path similar to the McDonalds'. The sisters' father was a contractor, and their mother was a schoolteacher. The first two Wall sisters moved to New Orleans East in the mid-1980's, the last at the start of the 90's. In the days after Hurricane Katrina, the Wall sisters hunkered down in a set of rooms at their temporary new home, a Microtel Inn and Suites along Interstate 12 on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, surfing television news in a vain search for information about New Orleans East. A predominantly black community that was also prosperous, it seemed, did not fit the broad-brush story as it played out on the television. 'Our neighborhood was never talked about,' Tangeyon Wall said. 'Never, ever, ever. We'd hear about the Ninth Ward, we'd hear about Algiers and the Quarter and Uptown, but it was as if our community didn't exist.' At the Wal-Mart, Walgreens and other stores around Baton Rouge, the sisters ran into neighbors who all expressed the same frustrations. That prompted them and their cousin Robyn Braggs to post fliers at local motels proposing a meeting for Sept. 20, an event that drew 700, they said. Most, but not all, were from New Orleans East. 'That first meeting was more like a reunion,' Tangeyon Wall said. The second meeting was more like a rallying cry. At that point, New Orleans East was still off limits even to residents. But a group of neighborhood residents decided to defy the restrictions, and shortly thereafter, in late September, they drove a caravan of 75 cars to their neighborhood. City officials allowed them to pass through police blockades. 'It was all very civil rights and spirit of the 60's-like,' said Ms. Braggs, prompting giggles among her four cousins. The five of them, along with Wayne Johnson and Mack Slan, two other longtime New Orleans East residents marooned in Baton Rouge, make up a seven-member steering committee that meets every Wednesday to set the next week's agenda. 'We didn't know what we were getting into when we started,' said Mr. Slan, a contractor with a barrel chest and preacher's voice who has emerged as the group's de facto master of ceremonies. 'But we're growing into it.' The focus each Monday shifts as new frustrations and worries take center stage in the lives of evacuees. Last Monday those included complaints about insurance adjusters and the foreclosure notices some are receiving three months after the storm. 'Let me encourage you not to panic,' said Patricia G. Woods, who runs a real estate and mortgage company in New Orleans East. Ms. Woods advised the people at the meeting to respond with a hardship letter spelling out the reasons they could not make their payments. 'Make them cry,' Ms. Woods told the group. Much of Monday's meeting focused on the Urban Land Institute's draft report, released on the Monday after Thanksgiving. 'It places less value on our neighborhood than other areas,' said Terrel J. Broussard, a lawyer who took a turn at the lectern to criticize the report. 'If we don't stand up to fight this, I don't know what we would stand up for.' Organizers passed out stacks of preprinted postcards that they hope homeowners in New Orleans East will send to the mayor, respectfully requesting that he reject the institute's recommendation. They also urged those in attendance to spread the word about a march on New Orleans City Hall scheduled for Saturday morning. 'We can't allow ourselves to be the last ones back in the city,' one resident, Margaret Richard, said.

Subject: Death of an American City From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 05:10:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun1.html December 11, 2005 Death of an American City We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum. We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, 'There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans.' But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles. There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city. At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words 'pending in Congress' are a death warrant requiring no signature. The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed. The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives. Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent? Losing a major American city. 'We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better,' President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too. Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable. The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met. Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment. If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities. Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

Subject: America's Jewish Founding Father From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 05:08:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/09/14/americas_jewish_founding_father?mode=PF September 14, 2004 America's Jewish Founding Father By James Carroll - Boston Globe THREE HUNDRED fifty years ago, Jews came to America. Beginning today, observances in New York mark the arrival in 'New Amsterdam' of 23 Iberian Jews in the year 1654. Noting the milestone in The New York Times last week, Jeremy Eichler celebrated 'a tale of the passage from the periphery to the center, from immigrant yearning to mainstream achievement.' The Jewish story in America is usually told that way. An alien people comes to an already established national culture, does very well by transforming and inventing aspects of it, from show business and movies to intellectual life and literature. Jews are honored by this story -- their creativity and diligence enable them to 'break in' -- and so is America -- the open society where outsiders are welcome. But the most basic assumption of that 'tale' is that, by the time Jews arrived, America was an already flowing 'mainstream,' marked by democracy, freedom, openness. The story as usually told does not credit Jews or the Jewish tradition, that is, with having centrally contributed to the invention of the national idea in the first place. I write from outside the Jewish experience, but what strikes me about that time when Jews first came to 'New Amsterdam' is how much the nascent American imagination was preparing to draw on the vital culture of the rabbis, going back centuries. The incubator for the new idea at that moment was, in fact, old Amsterdam, in Holland, where the great foreshadowing of what came to be called liberal democracy was embodied in a Jew. Benedict Spinoza (1632-77) was a bridge figure between the religious tradition of Rabbinic Judaism and the philosophy of the Enlightenment. In his political writings, one sees, for example, the clear influence of Lurianic Kabbalah, an established Jewish spirituality. It is a small step from the idea that 'emanations' of God inhabit the souls of all humans, to the idea that each person, taken individually, is as worthy as every other. That idea is the kernel of democracy. Political tolerance -- what we would call pluralism -- is rooted in this positive attribute. But Spinoza also saw up close the dark effects of the religious wars then wracking Europe, and so there was a negative source to his call for political tolerance as well. Spinoza was himself expelled from the Synagogue (1656), investigated by the Catholic Inquisition (1659), and banned by the Calvinist Synod (1670). This experience of omnidirectional religious intolerance underwrote his two-fold new idea -- that the state's first obligation is to protect the freedom of conscience of each citizen; to do so the state must not itself be religiously identified. The separation of church and state begins here. Spinoza is famous for proposing that all things be seen 'sub specie aeternitatis,' from the point of view of eternity. Nothing bound by time is absolute, which means no human institution is above criticism. Spinoza's political writing, especially his 'Theologico-Political Treatise,' imagines, therefore, social structures organized to support mutually critical give-and-take. Here is the seed of a constitutional polity, based on checks and balances. Spinoza did not exempt even the institutions of religion from this spirit of criticism -- which is why he was as suspect in his own Jewish community as he was denounced by Protestants and Catholics. To some, Spinoza was an irreverent atheist, to others, a mindless pantheist, seeing God everywhere. The point for us is that his fundamental (and, as this Christian sees it, fundamentally Jewish) idea that human beings participate in the divine, but are not themselves divine (Only God is God), spawns a political ideal of human rights, on one hand, and of limited government on the other. Amsterdam in Spinoza's day was alive with intellectual and political ferment: Dutch Calvinists struggling with republicanism, 'Puritan' nonconformists in flight from England, scarred veterans of religious wars, merchants and explorers looking west. John Locke, for one, would be immersed in these revolutionary currents, bringing their articulation to a next level, the place at which the American idea first becomes conscious of itself. But the author of what might be called the first draft of that idea, drawing on the positive riches of his own tradition, as well as reacting to the intolerance of which his people knew more than anyone, was Benedict Spinoza. When 23 Jews arrived in New Amsterdam in September of 1654, he was 22 years old. They and he together were just beginning, as was the great nation they then helped invent.

Subject: Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 05:07:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/18/books/review/18schlesinger.html?ex=1284696000&en=c7225b818a2f5ced&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss September 18, 2005 Forgetting Reinhold Niebuhr By ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR. THE recent outburst of popular religiosity in the United States is a most dramatic and unforeseen development in American life. As Europe grows more secular, America grows more devout. George W. Bush is the most aggressively religious president Americans have ever had. American conservatives applaud his 'faith-based' presidency, an office heretofore regarded as secular. The religious right has become a potent force in national politics. Evangelicals now outnumber mainline Protestants and crowd megachurches. Billy Graham attracts supplicants by the thousand in Sodom and Gomorrah, a k a New York City. The Supreme Court broods over the placement of the Ten Commandments. Evangelicals take over the Air Force Academy, a government institution maintained by taxpayers' dollars; the academy's former superintendent says it will be six years before religious tolerance is restored. Mel Gibson's movie 'Passion of the Christ' draws nearly $400 million at the domestic box office. In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr. It may be that most 'people of faith' belong to the religious right, and Niebuhr was on secular issues a determined liberal. But left evangelicals as well as their conservative brethren hardly ever invoke his name. Jim Wallis's best-selling 'God's Politics,' for example, is a liberal tract, but the author mentions Niebuhr only twice, and only in passing. Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a German-born minister of the German Evangelical Synod of North America. He was trained for the ministry at the Synod's Eden Theological Seminary and at the Yale Divinity School. In the 1920's he took a church in industrial Detroit, the scene of bitter labor-capital conflict. Niebuhr's sympathies lay with the unions, and he joined Norman Thomas's Socialist Party. Meanwhile, New York's Union Theological Seminary, impressed by the power of his preaching and his writing, recruited him in 1928 for its faculty. There he remained for the rest of his life. He died in 1971. Why, in an age of religiosity, has Niebuhr, the supreme American theologian of the 20th century, dropped out of 21st-century religious discourse? Maybe issues have taken more urgent forms since Niebuhr's death - terrorism, torture, abortion, same-sex marriage, Genesis versus Darwin, embryonic stem-cell research. But maybe Niebuhr has fallen out of fashion because 9/11 has revived the myth of our national innocence. Lamentations about 'the end of innocence' became favorite clichés at the time. Niebuhr was a critic of national innocence, which he regarded as a delusion. After all, whites coming to these shores were reared in the Calvinist doctrine of sinful humanity, and they killed red men, enslaved black men and later on imported yellow men for peon labor - not much of a background for national innocence. 'Nations, as individuals, who are completely innocent in their own esteem,' Niebuhr wrote, 'are insufferable in their human contacts.' The self-righteous delusion of innocence encouraged a kind of Manichaeism dividing the world between good (us) and evil (our critics). Niebuhr brilliantly applied the tragic insights of Augustine and Calvin to moral and political issues. He poured out his thoughts in a stream of powerful books, articles and sermons. His major theological work was his two-volume 'Nature and Destiny of Man' (1941, 1943). The evolution of his political thought can be traced in three influential books: 'Moral Man and Immoral Society' (1932); 'The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense' (1944); 'The Irony of American History' (1952). In these and other works, Niebuhr emphasized the mixed and ambivalent character of human nature - creative impulses matched by destructive impulses, regard for others overruled by excessive self-regard, the will to power, the individual under constant temptation to play God to history. This is what was known in the ancient vocabulary of Christianity as the doctrine of original sin. Niebuhr summed up his political argument in a single powerful sentence: 'Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.' (Niebuhr, in the fashion of the day, used 'man' not to exculpate women but as shorthand for 'human being.') The notion of sinful man was uncomfortable for my generation. We had been brought up to believe in human innocence and even in human perfectibility. This was less a liberal delusion than an expression of an all-American DNA. Andrew Carnegie had articulated the national faith when, after acclaiming the rise of man from lower to higher forms, he declared: 'Nor is there any conceivable end to his march to perfection.' In 1939, Charles E. Merriam of the University of Chicago, the dean of American political scientists, wrote in 'The New Democracy and the New Despotism': 'There is a constant trend in human affairs toward the perfectibility of mankind. This was plainly stated at the time of the French Revolution and has been reasserted ever since that time, and with increasing plausibility.' Human ignorance and unjust institutions remained the only obstacles to a more perfect world. If proper education of individuals and proper reform of institutions did their job, such obstacles would be removed. For the heart of man was O.K. The idea of original sin was a historical, indeed a hysterical, curiosity that should have evaporated with Jonathan Edwards's Calvinism. Still, Niebuhr's concept of original sin solved certain problems for my generation. The 20th century was, as Isaiah Berlin said, 'the most terrible century in Western history.' The belief in human perfectibility had not prepared us for Hitler and Stalin. The death camps and the gulags proved that men were capable of infinite depravity. The heart of man is obviously not O.K. Niebuhr's analysis of human nature and history came as a vast illumination. His argument had the double merit of accounting for Hitler and Stalin and for the necessity of standing up to them. Niebuhr himself had been a pacifist, but he was a realist and resigned from the antiwar Socialist Party in 1940. Many of us understood original sin as a metaphor. Niebuhr's distinction between taking the Bible seriously and taking it literally invited symbolic interpretation and made it easy for seculars to join the club. Morton White, the philosopher, spoke satirically of Atheists for Niebuhr. (Luis Buñuel, the Spanish film director, was asked about his religious views. 'I'm an atheist,' he replied. 'Thank God.') 'About the concept of 'original sin,' ' Niebuhr wrote in 1960, 'I now realize that I made a mistake in emphasizing it so much, though I still believe that it might be rescued from its primitive corruptions. But it is a red rag to most moderns. I find that even my realistic friends are inclined to be offended by it, though our interpretations of the human situation are identical.' The Second World War left America the most powerful nation in the world, and the cold war created a new model of international tension. Niebuhr was never more involved in politics. He helped found Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal organization opposed to the two Joes, Stalin and McCarthy. He was tireless (until strokes slowed him up) in cautioning Americans not to succumb to the self-righteous delusions of innocence and infallibility. 'From the earliest days of its history to the present moment,' Niebuhr wrote in 1952, 'there is a deep layer of messianic consciousness in the mind of America. We never dreamed that we would have as much political power as we possess today; nor for that matter did we anticipate that the most powerful nation on earth would suffer such an ironic refutation of its dreams of mastering history.' For messianism - carrying on one man's theory of God's work - threatened to abolish the unfathomable distance between the Almighty and human sinners. Niebuhr would have rejoiced at Mr. Dooley's definition of a fanatic. According to the Irish bartender created by Finley Peter Dunne, a fanatic 'does what he thinks th' Lord wud do if He only knew th' facts iv th' case.' There is no greater human presumption than to read the mind of the Almighty, and no more dangerous individual than the one who has convinced himself that he is executing the Almighty's will. 'A democracy,' Niebuhr said, 'cannot of course engage in an explicit preventive war,' and he lamented the 'inability to comprehend the depth of evil to which individuals and communities may sink, particularly when they try to play the role of God to history.' Original sin, by tainting all human perceptions, is the enemy of absolutes. Mortal man's apprehension of truth is fitful, shadowy and imperfect; he sees through the glass darkly. Against absolutism Niebuhr insisted on the 'relativity of all human perspectives,' as well as on the sinfulness of those who claimed divine sanction for their opinions. He declared himself 'in broad agreement with the relativist position in the matter of freedom, as upon every other social and political right or principle.' In pointing to the dangers of what Justice Robert H. Jackson called 'compulsory godliness,' Niebuhr argued that 'religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.' Religion, he warned, could be a source of error as well as wisdom and light. Its role should be to inculcate, not a sense of infallibility, but a sense of humility. Indeed, 'the worst corruption is a corrupt religion.' One imagines a meeting between two men - say, for example, the president of the United States and the last pope - who have private lines to the Almighty but discover fundamental disagreements over the message each receives. Thus Bush is the fervent champion of the war against Iraq; John Paul II stoutly opposed the war. Bush is the fervent champion of capital punishment; John Paul II stoutly opposed capital punishment. How do these two absolutists reconcile contradictory and incompatible communications from the Almighty? The Civil War, that savage, fraternal conflict, was the great national trauma, and Lincoln was for Reinhold Niebuhr the model statesman. Of all American presidents, Lincoln had the most acute religious insight. Though not enrolled in any denomination, he brooded over the infinite mystery of the Almighty. To claim knowledge of the divine will and purpose was for Lincoln the unpardonable sin. He summed up his religious sense in his second inaugural, delivered in the fifth year of the Civil War. Both warring halves of the Union, he said, read the same Bible and prayed to the same God. Each invoked God's aid against the other. Let us judge not that we be not judged. Let us fight on with 'firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.' But let us never forget, Lincoln reminded the nation in memorable words, 'The Almighty has His own purposes.' Thurlow Weed, the cynical and highly intelligent boss of New York, sent Lincoln congratulations on the inaugural address. 'I believe it is not immediately popular,' Lincoln replied. 'Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.' 'The combination of moral resoluteness about the immediate issues,' Niebuhr commented on Lincoln's second inaugural, 'with a religious awareness of another dimension of meaning and judgment must be regarded as almost a perfect model of the difficult but not impossible task of remaining loyal and responsible toward the moral treasures of a free society on the one hand while yet having some religious vantage point over the struggle.' Like all God-fearing men, Americans are never safe 'against the temptation of claiming God too simply as the sanctifier of whatever we most fervently desire.' This is vanity. To be effective in the world, we need 'a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us' and 'a sense of contrition about the common human frailties and foibles which lie at the foundation of both the enemy's demonry and our vanities.' None of the insights of religious faith contradict 'our purpose and duty of preserving our civilization. They are, in fact, prerequisites for saving it.' The last lines of 'The Irony of American History,' written in 1952, resound more than a half-century later. 'If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.'

Subject: Manipulating a Journal Article From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 11, 2005 at 04:59:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/opinion/11sun2.html December 11, 2005 Manipulating a Journal Article When a prominent medical journal accused Merck-sponsored researchers of excising data from a scientific paper to play down the heart risks of the painkiller Vioxx, it further tarnished the reputation of a company once revered for its corporate ethics. The accusation may well have an impact on the myriad lawsuits filed against Merck because it undermines Merck's contention that it disclosed all it knew about the risks of Vioxx. More broadly, the incident underscores the danger that industry-backed studies may not tell the whole truth about products vital to a company's bottom line. The paper in question was published in The New England Journal of Medicine five years ago. It found a small increase in heart attacks among patients taking Vioxx as compared to those taking another painkiller, naproxen, but explained the difference away by suggesting that naproxen actually protected people from heart attacks, rather than Vioxx causing them. What aroused the ire of the journal's editors was an internal company memo revealing that the researchers knowingly suppressed data on three additional heart attacks among Vioxx users that was available months before the paper was published. Had that data been included, Vioxx would have looked five times as risky as naproxen, not four times, and would have looked potentially dangerous even in patients deemed at low risk of heart attacks. The journal also complained that data on other adverse cardiovascular events, like strokes and serious vascular problems, had been deleted from the paper two days before it was submitted. Merck insists that all this data was submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, so the scientific paper may have had little impact on regulatory matters. But publication in a prestigious journal surely affected the attitudes of doctors and presumably helped Merck in its marketing efforts. Journals have only limited resources to look behind the data submitted to them, so doctors are on notice that they will need to take the findings of industry-backed studies with skeptical caution.

Subject: Ring-billed Gull (first winter) From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 16:08:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5894&u=4|28|... Ring-billed Gull (first winter) with Orange Markings New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Subject: Buffleheads (male) at Sunset From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 16:05:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5909&u=4|25|... Buffleheads (male) at Sunset New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Subject: Re: hello From: Pancho Villa To: usa Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 09:11:02 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: I say yes, you say no. I say stop and you say go go go, oh no. I say goodbye and you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello. You say high, I say low. I say why and you say you don't know, oh no. I say goodbye and you say hello (Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye) hello hello (Hello Goodbye) You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello (Hello Goodbye Hello Goodbye) hello hello (Hello Goodbye) You don't know why I say goodbye (Hello Goodbye) You say hello Why why why why why why do I say goodbye goodbye, oh no? I say goodbye and you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello. I say yes (you say 'yes') you say no (but you may mean no.) I say stop (you can stay) and you say go go go (till it's time to go ), oh no. I say goodbye and you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello Hello hello You don't know why I say goodbye, you say hello hello. Hela heba helloa CHA CHA, hela...

Subject: I say yes, you say no. From: I say yes, you say no. To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 09:14:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I say yes, you say no. We have a lunatic, dear Pancho.

Subject: Re: I say yes, you say no. From: Pancho Villa To: I say yes, you say no. Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 10:32:02 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: 'We have a lunatic' Well, not really yet: http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server.php?show=conWebDoc.19939&navId=00500300j002

Subject: Re: I say yes, you say no. From: Oh dear :( To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 11:05:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Oh dear :(

Subject: Strangers in the Dazzling Night From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:48:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/international/africa/09flames.html?ex=1291784400&en=5511b2d36afd4f08&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Strangers in the Dazzling Night: A Mix of Oil and Misery By LYDIA POLGREEN EBOCHA, Nigeria - The sun had almost set, and another glum happy hour arrived at One for the Road. Veronica, its proprietor, put out her white plastic chairs and tables, checked her stock of chilled beer and waited for paying customers. There was no need to switch on the lights. Across from her tavern, day and night, burns a ghastly, eternal flame. 'It is always like this,' Veronica said, gesturing at the columns more than 200 feet high, with flames that leap and roar from a tangle of pipelines across the road. 'Every day, every night. We no get darkness.' Across Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta, hellish towers of fire throw an auburn glow, scorching the communities that live under them and sending dark columns of smoke into the sky. They are fueled by natural gas, which is found along with the Bonny Light crude that makes Nigeria the second largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa, after South Africa. The gas is a highly valuable product used to fuel industry across the power-hungry globe, and Nigeria has more than 600 trillion cubic feet of it, one of the largest reserves in the world. If harnessed and put to use, experts say, Nigerian gas could light the whole continent for the better part of a millennium. But for decades there has been no way to capture it because oil companies and the Nigerian government, a majority partner in all oil operations here, had not built the infrastructure to make use of it. The market for natural gas inside Nigeria is tiny, and exporting it requires pipelines and other infrastructure that cost billions of dollars to build. And so for decades it has simply been burned off, or flared. In Ebocha, which is home to an oil plant run by the Italian oil company Agip, the flares have been ablaze since the early 1970's, residents said. Over the years flares have become a blazing symbol of how the Nigerian government and its partners in the oil business have sucked endless wealth from this region, leaving its residents to suffer the environmental consequences of oil extraction while reaping little economic benefit. That is supposed to change soon. In an effort to eliminate flaring - which environmental activists say takes a heavy toll on the health of people, crops and animals - and exploit this potentially lucrative resource, the Nigerian government is requiring that all flares be put out by 2008 and for gas exports to climb to 50 percent of current oil exports. Oil companies are furiously building facilities to collect and ship the gas in an effort that will cost $15 billion. Flaring is down to 40 percent of what it was at its peak and the country is exporting 500 billion cubic feet of gas, according to the Nigerian government. The World Bank is helping build a gas pipeline that will connect Nigeria to several of its coastal neighbors, creating a wider market in a power-hungry region. But the effort is behind schedule. Shell, Nigeria's biggest oil producer, has said it will not meet the 2008 deadline. Pressure from environmentalists to end the practice is high, and in November a Nigerian court ruled that flaring violated the human rights of people who live nearby. Just about everyone in Ebocha seems eager to see the flames snuffed, but many people find it hard to imagine this place without them. The flares quite literally define the place: its name means place of light. Businesses like One for the Road, with its cooler of beer and phalanx of prostitutes, depend on plant workers as customers. Children scamper beneath the fiery glow to collect crunchy beetles that are fried up and eaten as a local delicacy. Over time the town has stretched closer and closer to the plant, and many of the residents are people who came from all across Nigeria to open businesses here because it is the workers who have money to spend. Many young residents have lived their whole lives under the flares. At One for the Road, Lucky Ekberi and friends gathered around an empty table. Mr. Ekberi, 24, said he could not remember a time when his nights were not illuminated by the flares. 'It is always there,' he said, the orange glow reflected in his liquid eyes. 'It never goes out. It makes us sick, and many times my eyes are hurt. Crops don't grow well.' Like his friends, Mr. Ekberi describes himself as an 'applicant,' a euphemism for jobless, because in truth there are few jobs to apply for here. Despite its vast oil and gas reserves, the Niger Delta is perhaps the poorest part of a nation where most people live in extreme poverty. Mr. Ekberi and a half dozen friends could not afford soft drinks, much less beer, so they sat uneasily at the table, making small talk. Veronica, who declined to give her last name, cast suspicious glances their way, an unsubtle code to let them know they would have to clear out when paying customers from the Agip plant showed up. His goal, Mr. Ekberi said, despite the misery of living beneath the flames, is a job at the plant. 'Then I could have a good life,' he said. Another of the young men, Ajari Uchenna, a 26-year-old high school graduate, piped up. 'I want to be a lawyer,' Mr. Uchenna said. Veronica grunted a little laugh. 'A lawyer!' she exclaimed. 'Yes, a lawyer,' Mr. Uchenna responded loudly, glaring back at her. 'I want to go to university. But I have no money to pay the fees or for lodging,' he added softly. 'We live with this,' he said, gesturing at the flames, 'but we don't see any benefit. It is like we are strangers here.' No one else said anything for a while, and soon the Agip workers started arriving. The jobless young men slipped away, off into the bright, bright night.

Subject: Elections Could Tilt Latin America From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:39:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/international/americas/10bolivia.html?ex=1291870800&en=3a7e6489214e8172&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Elections Could Tilt Latin America Further to the Left By JUAN FORERO MOROCHATA, Bolivia - In perhaps the quirkiest, most colorful of the many presidential campaigns gathering momentum in Latin America, Evo Morales, the Aymara Indian leader turned congressman, arrived in this mountain hamlet on a recent day, got out of his car a mile up the road and strode in like a conquering hero. The town's fathers honored him Bolivian-style, placing a heavy wreath of potatoes, roses and green beans around his neck. Crowds of peasants amassed behind him, while a ceremonial escort of indigenous leaders led him across cobblestone streets to a field filled with thousands. There, Mr. Morales gave the kind of leftist speech that increasingly strikes a chord with Latin America's disenchanted voters, railing against privatization, liberalized trade and other economic prescriptions backed by the United States. 'If we win, not just Evo will be president, but the Quechua and Aymara will also be in the presidency,' Mr. Morales said, referring to Bolivia's two largest Indian communities. 'We are a danger for the rich people who sack our resources.' Mr. Morales, 46, a former llama herder and coca farmer who has a slight lead in the polls for the election on Dec. 18, offers what may be the most radical vision in Latin America, much to the dismay of the Bush administration. But the sentiment extends beyond Bolivia. Starting on Dec. 11 in Chile, voters in 11 countries will participate in a series of presidential elections over the next year that could take Latin America further to the left than it already is. Since a bombastic army colonel, Hugo Chávez, won office in Venezuela in 1998, three-quarters of South America has shifted to the left, though most countries are led by pragmatic presidents like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Néstor Kirchner in Argentina. That decisive shift has a good chance of spreading to Bolivia, Ecuador and, for the first time in recent years, north of the Panama Canal. In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas, led by Daniel Ortega, are positioning themselves to win back the presidency they lost in 1990. Farther north, in Mexico, polls show that Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a hard-charging leftist populist, may replace the business-friendly president, Vicente Fox, who is barred from another term. Traditional, market-friendly politicians can still win in all these countries. But polls show a general leftward drift that could bring policies sharply deviating from longstanding American economic remedies like unfettered trade and privatization, better known as the Washington Consensus. 'The left is contesting in a very practical way for political power,' said Jim Shultz, executive director of Democracy Center, a policy analysis group in Bolivia. 'There's a common thread that runs through Lula and Kirchner and Chávez and Evo, and the left in Chile to a certain degree, and that thread is a popular challenge to the market fundamentalism of the Washington Consensus.' The shift has not been as striking as might by preferred by leaders like Mr. Chávez, whose open antagonism toward the United States is rare. Presidents like Mr. da Silva and Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay practice the kind of fiscal restraints accepted by Wall Street. Still, the prospects for a further turn to the left could signal a broad, popular distancing from the Bush administration, whose focus on fighting drugs and advocating for regional free trade have failed to generate much backing. While the Bush administration may be pleased that its most trusted and important ally in Latin America, President Álvaro Uribe in Colombia, will probably win re-election in May, Washington's most fervent adversary, Mr. Chávez, is also expected to cruise to victory late next year. And the left may mount a strong challenge in market-friendly Peru. There, a fiery nationalistic cashiered army officer, Ollanta Humala, who compares himself to Mr. Chávez, is now second in the polls to a conservative congresswoman. No one, though, quite offers the up-by-the-bootstraps story that Mr. Morales does. He grew up poor in the frigid highlands. Four of his six siblings died young, he said. When the mining industry went bust, the family moved to Bolivia's coca-growing heartland, where Mr. Morales made his mark as a leader of the coca farmers, who cultivate a shiny green leaf that is the main component used to make cocaine. That made him a pariah to the United States, which has bankrolled the army's effort to eradicate the crop. But under Mr. Morales's leadership, the cocaleros have fought back, paralyzing the country with road blockades and playing a role in uprisings that toppled two presidents in 20 months. Now, Mr. Morales travels Bolivia's pockmarked mountain roads in a relentless campaign, blasting Andean music that heralds him ('We feel it, we feel it, Evo presidente,' goes a standard line). 'One thing few people realize is how good a politician this man is,' said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University in Miami. 'Evo has a tremendous political structure that he's built up over the last 20 years.' Mr. Morales vows to veer Bolivia away from liberalized trade and privatizations that have marked the country's economy for a generation, tapping into the discontent of voters upset that market reforms did little to improve their lives. Michael Shifter, who tracks Latin American campaigns for the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, said, 'Evo is the expression of that frustration, that resentment and the search for answers.' In interviews on the campaign trail, Mr. Morales complained that open borders had brought in cheap potatoes from Argentina. He offers a range of solutions, like loans to microbusinesses and the formation of more cooperatives. He also says his government will demand a bigger take from the foreign corporations developing Bolivia's large natural gas reserves. Mr. Morales seems to relish talking about the United States, noting that criticisms from American officials have helped his popularity in an increasingly nationalistic country. Mr. Morales, who is close to Mr. Chávez and has called Fidel Castro's Cuba a model, says he will reject American-imposed economic principles and policies like the eradication of coca. 'The policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, under the direction of the United States government, which concentrate capital in few hands, is not a solution,' he said. 'Western development is the development of death.' Such talk resonates with people like Herminio López, a leader in the hamlet of Piusilla. 'We are sure he will not defraud or fool us, like all the others,' he said. 'Eighty percent of us are poor, and for us to have someone like him makes us proud.' Mr. Morales knows well what appeals to his supporters. Aside from an economic transformation, he promises symbolic proposals like changing the Bolivian flag to include elements of the indigenous flag of the Andes. 'This moment is not just for Evo Morales,' Mr. Morales told the crowd here in Morochata. 'It is for all of us.'

Subject: Hugo Chávez and His Helpers From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:31:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/10/opinion/10sat2.html?ex=1291870800&en=eb1ffae3106662a4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 10, 2005 Hugo Chávez and His Helpers The kind of lucky breaks President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been getting lately could tempt even a modest man - and Mr. Chávez is no modest man - to dream grandiose dreams. High oil prices, a terminally inept opposition and the Bush administration's scandalous neglect of its Western Hemisphere neighbors have left the field wide open for Mr. Chávez to bully people at home, buy friends abroad and annoy Washington at every turn. Since first taking office in 1999, Mr. Chávez has pushed through a new Constitution that lets him rule as a quasi dictator. He has marginalized Congress, undermined judicial independence and prosecuted political opponents. By tightening control of the national oil company, he has been able to use high world oil prices to increase funds for popular social programs for the poor, making him electorally unassailable. That dangerous concentration of power will most likely worsen after last Sunday's Congressional election, in which parties allied to Mr. Chávez won every one of the 167 seats. The opposition can blame only itself because it boycotted the polls even after its demands for stricter ballot secrecy were met. That petulant idiocy frustrated regional diplomats who had pressed the secrecy demand on the opposition's behalf, and it mystified and disenfranchised Venezuelan voters who had wanted a choice at the polls. Even without the boycott, pro-Chávez parties would have won a majority. But now not a single opposition voice will be heard in Congress, and Mr. Chávez is free to do whatever he likes. A month earlier, at the Summit of the Americas in Argentina, Mr. Chávez cavorted before crowds of anti-Washington protesters and networked with his fellow Latin American presidents. He is hoping that either Argentina or Brazil will sell him a nuclear reactor, a step that would be a very bad idea considering Venezuela's burgeoning friendship with Iran and the excessive indulgence Caracas has shown toward Iranian nuclear ambitions. Meanwhile, Washington's hemispheric influence continues to dwindle, partly because President Bush has not been attentive enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt restructuring. The United States should not further feed Mr. Chávez's ego and give him more excuses for demagogy by treating him as clumsily as it has treated his hero and role model, Fidel Castro, for the past four and a half decades. Instead, Washington needs to compete more deftly and actively with Mr. Chávez for regional influence, and look for ways to work with the hemisphere's other democracies to revive the multiparty competitive democracy that has now just about ceased to exist in Venezuela.

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:21:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/9/05 Australia 15.4 Canada 28.2 Denmark 21.9 France 9.7 Germany 8.2 Hong Kong 7.4 Japan 19.0 Netherlands 13.1 Norway 28.2 Sweden 9.3 Switzerland 18.3 UK 7.7

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:21:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/9/05 Australia 20.3 Canada 24.0 Denmark 40.2 France 26.0 Germany 24.3 Hong Kong 7.2 Japan 40.0 Netherlands 29.9 Norway 41.8 Sweden 31.0 Switzerland 35.4 UK 17.8

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:05:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/9/05 S&P Index is 5.6 Large Cap Growth Index is 6.7 Large Cap Value Index is 7.1 Mid Cap Index is 14.2 Small Cap Index is 9.1 Small Cap Value Index is 7.8 Europe Index is 8.6 Pacific Index is 17.6 Energy is 46.3 Health Care is 14.1 Precious Metals 41.5 REIT Index is 12.6 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 2.0 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.6

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 07:04:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/9/05 Energy 43.1 Financials 6.3 Health Care 6.8 Info Tech 6.1 Materials 3.0 REITs 12.7 Telecoms 4.8 Utilities 15.8

Subject: On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:47:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/science/01prof.html?ex=1288501200&en=ed5ab9e60453cebb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 1, 2005 On Gravity, Oreos and a Theory of Everything By DENNIS OVERBYE The portal to the fifth dimension, sadly, is closed. There used to be an ice cream parlor in the student center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And it was there, in the summer of 1998, that Lisa Randall, now a professor of physics at Harvard and a bit of a chocoholic, and Raman Sundrum, a professor at Johns Hopkins, took an imaginary trip right out of this earthly plane into a science fiction realm of parallel universes, warped space and otherworldly laws of physics. They came back with a possible answer to a question that has tormented scientists for decades, namely why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature: in effect, we are borrowing it from another universe. In so doing, Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum helped foment a revolution in the way scientists think about string theory - the vaunted 'theory of everything' - raising a glimmer of hope that coming experiments may actually test some of its ineffable sounding concepts. Their work undermined well-worn concepts like the idea that we can even know how many dimensions of space we live in, or the reality of gravity, space and time. The work has also made a star and an icon of Dr. Randall. The attention has been increased by the recent publication to laudatory reviews of her new book, 'Warped Passages, Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions,' A debate broke out on the physics blog Cosmic Variance a few weeks ago about whether it was appropriate, as a commentator on NPR had said, to say she looked like Jodi Foster. 'How do we know we live in a four-dimensional universe?' she asked a crowd who filled the Hayden Planetarium on a stormy night last week. 'You think gravity is what you see. We're always just looking at the tail of things.' Although it is the unanswerable questions that most appeal to her now, it was the answerable ones that drew her to science, especially math, as a child, the middle of three daughters of a salesman for an engineering firm, and a teacher, in Fresh Meadows, Queens. 'I really liked the fact that it had definite answers,' Dr. Randall said. At Stuyvesant High School, where she was in the same class as Brian Greene, the future Columbia string theorist and best-selling author, she was the first girl to serve as captain of the school's math team, and she won the famous Westinghouse Science Talent Search competition with a project about complex numbers. She went on to Harvard where she stayed until 1987 when she emerged with a Ph.D. in physics. Those were heady times in physics. Fired by the dream of a unified theory of everything, theorists flocked to string theory, which envisioned the fundamental elements of nature as tiny wriggling strings. Dr. Randall, however, resisted this siren call, at least for a while. For one thing, physicists thought it would take a particle accelerator 10 million billion times as powerful as anything on earth to produce an actual string and test the theory. String theory also stubbornly requires space-time to have 10 dimensions, not the 4 (3 of space and 1 of time) that we experience. Preferring to stay closer to testable reality, Dr. Randall was drawn to a bottom-up approach to theoretical physics, trying to build models that explain observed phenomena and hoping to discover principles with wider application. But Dr. Randall and string theory had their own kismet. In the mid-90's, theorists discovered that the theory was even richer than its founders had thought, describing not just strings but so-called branes, as in membranes, of all dimensions. Our own universe could be such a brane, an island of three dimensions floating in a sea of higher dimension, like a bubble in the sea. But there could be membranes with five, six, seven or more dimensions coexisting and mingling like weird cosmic soap bubbles in what theorists sometimes call the multiverse. 'The stuff we're really famous for was really lucky in a way,' Dr. Randall said. In the summer of 1998, after postdoctoral stints at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley, she was a tenured M.I.T. professor ready to move to Princeton. She wondered then whether parallel universes could help solve a vexing problem with a favorite theories of particle physicists. That theory, known as supersymmetry, was invented in turn to solve another problem - the enormous gulf known as the hierarchy problem between gravity and the other forces. Naïve calculations from first principles suggest, Dr. Randall said, that gravity should be 10 million billion times as strong as it is. You might find it hard to imagine gravity as a weak force, but consider, says Dr. Randall, that a small magnet can hold up a paper clip, even though the entire earth is pulling down on it. But there was a hitch with the way the theory worked out in our universe. It predicted reactions that are not observed. Dr. Randall wondered if the missing reactions could be explained by positing that some aspects of the theory were quarantined in a separate universe. She called up Dr. Sundrum, who was then a fellow at Boston University and happy to collaborate, having worked with her before. A lot of physics is taste, he explained, discerning, for example, what is an important and a potentially soluble problem. Dr. Randall's biggest strength, he said, is a kind of 'unworldly' instinct. 'She has a great nose,' Dr. Sundrum said. 'It's a mystery to those of us - hard to understand, almost to the point of amusement - how she does it without any clear sign of what led her to that path,' he continued. 'She gives no sign of why she thinks what she thinks.' They began by drawing pictures and making crude estimates over ice cream and coffee in that ice cream parlor, which is now a taqueria. What they drew pictures of was a kind of Oreo cookie multiverse, an architecture similar to one first discovered as a solution of the string equations by Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study and Petr Horava, now at Berkeley. Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum's model consisted of a pair of universes, four-dimensional branes, thinly separated by a five-dimensional space poetically called the bulk. When they solved the equations for this setup, they discovered that the space between the branes would be warped. Objects, for example, would appear to grow larger or smaller and get less massive or more massive as they moved back and forth between the branes. Such a situation, they realized to their surprise, could provide a natural explanation for the hierarchy problem without invoking supersymmetry. Suppose, they said, that gravity is actually inherently as strong as the other forces, but because of the warping gravity is much much stronger on one of the branes than on the other one, where we happen to live. So we experience gravity as extremely weak. 'You can be only a modest distance away from the gravity brane,' Dr. Randall said, 'and gravity will be incredibly weak.' A result was a natural explanation for why atomic forces outgun gravity by 10 million billion to 1. Could this miracle be true? Crazy as it sounded, they soon discovered an even more bizarre possibility. The fifth dimension could actually be infinite and we would not have noticed it. In this case, there would be only one brane, ours, containing both gravity as we know it and the rest of nature. But it would warp space in the same way as in the first model, trapping gravity nearby so that we would experience space-time as four-dimensional. This new single brane model did not solve the weak gravity problem, Dr. Randall admitted, but it was a revelation, that an infinite ocean of space could be sitting next to us undetected. 'So when we wrote this paper, what we were concentrating on was this amazing fact that really had been overlooked for 100 years - well, years, whatever - that you can have this infinite extra dimension,' she said. 'I mean it was quite wild.' This was not the first time that theorists had tinkered with the extra dimensions of string theory, dimensions that had been presumed to be coiled out of sight of experiment, into tight loops so small that not even an electron could enter. In 1998, three theorists - Nima Arkani-Hamed of Harvard, Gia Dvali of New York University and Savas Dimopoulos of Stanford (a group known in physics as A.D.D.) - had surprised everybody by suggesting that if one or two of the curled-up extra dimensions had sizes as big as a tenth of millimeter or so (gigantic on particle physics scales), gravity would be similarly diluted and weakened. When Dr. Randall and Dr. Sundrum published their first paper, describing the two-brane scheme, in 1999, she said that many physicists did not recognize it as a new idea and not just an elaboration on the large extra dimensions of the A.D.D. group. In fact, she said, the extra dimensions don't have to be very large in the two-brane theory, less than a millionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of an inch. When they published their second paper, about the infinite dimension, she said, even some of their best friends, reserved judgment. But by the time a long-planned workshop on strings and particle physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara rolled around that fall, string theorists were excited about the Randall-Sundrum work and the earlier A.D.D. proposal. The reason was simple: If they were very lucky and one of these versions of string theory was the one that nature had adopted, it could actually be tested in the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator due to go into operation at CERN near Geneva in 2007. Colliding beams of protons with a combined energy of 14 trillion electron volts, the collider could produce particles like gravitons going off into the fifth dimension like billiard balls hopping off the table, black holes or even the illusive strings themselves. 'If this is the way gravity works in high-energy physics, we'll know about it,' Dr. Randall said. Although physicists agree that these theories are a long shot, the new work has captured their imaginations and encouraged them to take a fresh look at the possibilities for the universe and their new accelerator. Dr. Greene of Columbia said, 'Sometimes it takes an outsider to come into a field and see what is being missed, or taken for granted.' At first the idea that extra dimensions could be bigger than any of us had thought was shocking, he said. Andrew Strominger, a Harvard string theorist, said: 'Before A.D.D. we believed there was no hope of finding evidence for string theory at the Large Hadron Collider, an assumption that was wrong. It shows how unimaginative and narrow-minded we are. I see that as cause for optimism. Science and nature are full of surprises, we never see what's going to happen next.' It was shortly before a conference that Dr. Randall had organized during the Kavli workshop that she had her own experience with gravity: she fell while rock climbing in Yosemite, breaking several bones. Only a day before, she said, she had completed a climb of Half Dome and was feeling cocky. Another symptom of gravity's weakness is that a rope is sufficient to hold a human body up against earth's pull, but Dr. Randall was still on the first leg of her climb and hadn't yet attached it to the rock.. She woke up in a helicopter. For a long time, she said, new parts kept hurting as old ones healed. 'I was very much not myself. I didn't even like chocolate and coffee.' Since she was the conference organizer, her ordeal was more public than she would have liked. 'In some ways you sort of want to do this in private,' Dr. Randall said. 'On the other hand people were really nice.' After two years at Princeton, Dr. Randall returned to M.I.T. in 2000, but then a year later moved to Harvard, by then a powerhouse in string theory. She was the third woman to get tenure in physics there. Dr. Randall, 43 and single, prefers not to talk about 'the women in science thing,' as she calls it. That subject that gained notoriety earlier this year when Harvard's President Larry Summers famously ventured that a relative lack of women in the upper ranks of science might reflect innate deficiencies, but Dr. Randall said it had been beaten to death. Asked if she would rather be a woman in science than talk about women in science, Dr. Randall said, 'I'd rather be a scientist.' She did say that part of the reason she had written her book was to demonstrate that that there were women out there doing this kind of science. 'I did feel extra pressure to write a good book,' she said, adding that the response in reviews and emails from readers had been much greater than she had expected. She was particularly pleased that some of her readers were attentive and studious enough to catch on to various puns and games she had inserted in the book, like the frequent references to Alice in Wonderland, which, she said, is a pun on 'one-d-land.' Dr. Randall is intrigued by that fact that her results, as well as other results from string theory seem to paint a picture of the universe in which theories with different numbers of dimensions in them all give the same physics? She and Andreas Karch of the University of Washington have found, for example, that the fifth dimension could be so warped that the number of dimensions you see would depend on where you were. Our own universe might just be a three-dimensional 'sinkhole,' she says. 'It's not completely obvious what gravity is, fundamentally, or what dimensions are, fundamentally,' she said over lunch. 'One of these days we'll understand better what we mean, what is the fundamental thing that's given us space in the first place and dimensions of space in particular.' She held out less hope for time, saying, 'I just don't understand it. 'Space we can make progress with.' Is time an illusion? 'I wish time were an illusion,' she said as she carved up the last of her chocolate bread pudding, 'but unfortunately it seems all too real.'

Subject: 'Warped Passages': The Secret Universe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:46:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/books/review/23folger.html?ex=1134277200&en=eeb323325043598b&ei=5070 October 23, 2005 'Warped Passages': The Secret Universe By TIM FOLGER IN 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin assured a gathering of his colleagues, 'There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now.' What a difference a century makes. Physicists today are all too aware of the holes in their theories. Lordly smugness isn't an option, not when physicists readily concede that more than 95 percent of the mass of the universe apparently consists of an unknown substance that, lacking any better description, they simply call dark matter. And just a few years ago astronomers discovered that the expansion of the cosmos is accelerating, driven by who knows what. Most vexing of all, physicists know that the two masterpieces of their discipline, quantum mechanics and general relativity, are incompatible and cannot in themselves be the final word on the nature of reality. Lisa Randall's chronicle of physicists' latest efforts to make sense of a universe that gets stranger with every new discovery makes for mind-bending reading. In 'Warped Passages,' she gives an engaging and remarkably clear account of how the existence of dimensions beyond the familiar three (or four, if you include time) may resolve a host of cosmic quandaries. The discovery of extra dimensions - and Randall believes there's at least a fair chance that evidence for them might be found within the next few years - would utterly transform our view of the universe. Randall, a theoretical physicist at Harvard, writes from the trenches: she's been working on higher-dimensional models of the universe for several years now. Her work is a departure from mainstream physics, in particular from string theory, which has its own take on extra dimensions. According to string theory, the most fundamental constituents of matter and energy are not particles, but infinitesimally small strings and loops that vibrate in 10 dimensions. The extra dimensions, string theorists contend, are so small and tightly curled that they are beyond the reach of any conceivable particle accelerator. Many physicists are willing to overlook the lack of experimental evidence because they believe that string theory will eventually reconcile quantum mechanics, which governs atoms and all other particles, with general relativity, which describes how matter and gravity interact on the very largest scales. Randall, though, argues that without any experimental feedback, string theorists may never reach their goal. She prefers a different strategy, called model building. Rather than seeking to create an all-encompassing theory, she develops models - mini-theories that target specific testable problems and that might then point the way to a more general theory. The models that Randall and her collaborator Raman Sundrum have been building may explain one of the greatest mysteries in physics: why is gravity so weak compared with the other forces in the universe? Gravity's weakness may not seem obvious, but as Randall writes, 'A tiny magnet can lift a paper clip, even though all the mass of the earth is pulling it in the opposite direction.' The electromagnetic force is a trillion trillion trillion times as powerful as gravity. To account for gravity's feebleness, Randall and Sundrum borrow some ideas from string theory but add their own twist. What if, they ask, higher dimensions are not small and curled up but large, perhaps infinite in size? Would there be any observable consequences? So they build models of what the universe might look like if it consisted of objects called branes (short for 'membranes'). Branes, a creation of string theory, are surfaces that exist in higher-dimensional space. In Randall and Sundrum's various models, our universe is a four-dimensional brane (three dimensions of space and one of time) that exists on the surface of a five-dimensional space, much as a two-dimensional layer of water covers a three-dimensional sea. Their models, it turns out, produce a weakened gravitational force. But most important, they predict the existence of particles that may be detectable when a giant new particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider, under construction near Geneva, begins smashing protons together in 2007. The expectation is that the collider will discover a group of new particles, and perhaps even miniature black holes. If Randall and Sundrum's predictions pan out, and the existence of extra dimensions is confirmed, it would be one of the biggest advances in physics in decades. To set the stage for all this, Randall has to recap nearly a century of physics, which she accomplishes with extraordinary clarity. Her explanation of the uncertainty principle, a central tenet of quantum mechanics, is the best I have ever read. Along the way she includes some surprising historical sidelights. Dalí's 'Crucifixion,' she points out, depicts a four-dimensional cube. The full lyrics of 'As Time Goes By' include a reference to Einstein and the fourth dimension. Einstein's calculus teacher, Hermann Minkowski, called his most famous pupil a 'lazy dog.' And Randall's perspective as a woman in a field where men hold 90 percent of all faculty positions makes for some wry comments. I doubt it would occur to most physicists to observe, 'If, however, you lived inside a black hole, your travel opportunities would be far more severely constrained, more restricted even than those of women in Saudi Arabia.' Some of her devices are a bit silly - for example, she opens each chapter with the adventures of time-and-interbranal-traveling characters named Athena and Ike Rushmore. Perhaps it's an occupational hazard: physicists who write for the general public often seem not to trust their own material. But a little silliness in a book that's freighted with discussions of gauge bosons, supersymmetry and D-branes is not necessarily a bad thing. In any case, none of her words are sillier than Lord Kelvin's.

Subject: Job Satisfaction From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:33:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/business/08scene.html?ex=1291698000&en=0344b5da6973c2ca&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 8, 2005 Job Satisfaction Is Not Just a Matter of Dollars By ALAN B. KRUEGER EUROPEAN workers are united in at least one respect: they have reported declining levels of job satisfaction to pollsters over the last three decades. In Britain, for example, the proportion of workers who said they were completely satisfied with their jobs was down to 14 percent in 2001 from 23 percent in 1992. American workers, too, reported a drop in job satisfaction from the mid-1970's through the early 1990's, according to the General Social Survey by the University of Chicago. But the drop was mild, and since then, reported job satisfaction in the United States has inched up. In 1990, 48 percent of American workers said they were very satisfied with their work, and 51 percent said so in 2004. Of course, one could question whether asking workers how satisfied they are reveals their inner feelings, or whether changes in job satisfaction have significance for anything real in the economy or business world. International comparisons are particularly problematic because of cultural differences in the propensity to gripe or gloat. Yet there are reasons to pay attention to job satisfaction trends. If nothing else, a worker's job satisfaction rating is a strong predictor of the likelihood that he or she will quit or be absent from work. Decades of research by psychologists and organizational behaviorists suggest that self-reported job satisfaction reflects two main factors: the feelings workers experience while actually on the job and a judgment about their employment situation, which reflects, in part, their expectations and aspirations. While job satisfaction can change if work circumstances change, a large component of reported job satisfaction also appears to be tied to workers' personality traits. Job satisfaction is typically gauged by a general question that asks people how satisfied they are with their work on the whole. Feelings at work are assessed by asking workers while they are on the job about their mood at that specific moment or by asking them to record their feelings in a diary. Factors like job security, pay and benefits contribute more strongly to reported job satisfaction than to the feelings experienced at work, while day-to-day features of the work environment, like the closeness of supervision, pressures to work quickly and social isolation, have a more depressing effect on feelings than on reported job satisfaction. In his new book, 'Demanding Work: The Paradox of Job Quality in the Affluent Economy' (Princeton University Press), Francis Green, an economist at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, documents trends in job satisfaction around the world and tries to make sense of them. Professor Green points to a decline in discretion on the job as the main explanation for the drop in job satisfaction in Britain, although he suspects that other factors, like an increase in work intensity, also contributed. The reasons for the rosier trend in job satisfaction in the United States than in Europe are not entirely clear. Michael J. Handel, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, emphasizes that 'the main reason for stable perceptions in the 1990's is a general stability in objective conditions.' His analysis showed a slight decline in the degree of interest workers expressed in their jobs and a slight improvement in perceived relations with management and co-workers. One possibility is that American employers have sought to create conditions that enhance worker satisfaction and deter unionization. Dissatisfied workers are much more likely to say they would vote for a labor union. In Europe, union coverage is often set at the industrial or regional level, so individual employers have less incentive to foster social relations at work to discourage union organizing. Faced with changing technology, like the spread of computer-related monitoring, American employers might have strived to maintain good relations with workers and to keep them engaged in the company, factors that weigh heavily in job satisfaction, while European employers might have let worker satisfaction slip. Many American employers certainly act as if they care about worker satisfaction. Companies spend millions of dollars surveying their workers' job satisfaction each year. Emerging evidence suggests that satisfied and engaged workers are also more productive workers. A study by James K. Harter of the Gallup Organization, Frank Schmidt of the University of Iowa and Theodore L. Hayes of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 2002, provides extensive evidence, drawing on Gallup's client surveys, which covered 198,514 workers in 7,939 business units from 36 companies. For each company, they related each unit's profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, turnover and work accidents to its employees' ratings of job satisfaction and engagement. Engagement included factors like whether employees said they knew what was expected of them and whether they had received encouragement at work. Business units with more satisfied or engaged workers tended to perform better in all five areas. Acknowledging that cause and effect are difficult to establish, Mr. Harter said that from comparing the timing of changes in employee engagement and business unit performance, he suspected that higher engagement and worker satisfaction led to better business unit performance. Gallup is not an uninterested bystander - about a quarter of its revenue comes from advising management on employment issues - but scattered case studies also suggest that higher job satisfaction benefits productivity. Predictions of a joyless job market in the United States are not borne out by the available data in the last decade, despite the erosion of health benefits and sluggish pay growth. The reason is simple: worker satisfaction, as ordinarily measured, depends at least as much on social aspects of work, and having a sense of meaning and interest in work, as it does on material rewards. People appear to grow accustomed to changes in material rewards more easily than they do to the daily stresses of work. Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. Web site is www.krueger.princeton.edu.

Subject: Viewpoints on the War in Vietnam From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:31:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/arts/design/09viet.html?ex=1291784400&en=2f814658f3319fbb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Two Sides' Viewpoints on the War in Vietnam By HOLLAND COTTER 'There never was a war that was not inward,' the poet Marianne Moore wrote in the early 1940's. She could have been writing about the late 1960's. As the Vietnam war eviscerated Southeast Asia, it also tunneled into the American psyche like a devouring worm and made the country crazy with pain. The war, though not the craziness, ended 30 years ago. To a generation of young Americans it is ancient history, as distant as World War II was to their parents. 'Persistent Vestiges: Drawing from the American-Vietnam War' at the Drawing Center in SoHo revisits that history through art. It does so impressionistically, across decades and cultures, from opposite sides of the conflict, beginning with the responses of artists in the United States at the time. For some, like Nancy Spero and Martha Rosler, the reponse was intense and sustained. The explosive calligraphic paintings in Ms. Spero's 'War Series' (1966-70) are like notes jotted from nightmares. Helicopters swarm like stinging insects. Mushroom clouds sprout club-shaped heads and genitals, linking Vietnam to Hiroshima. The Drawing Center had planned to make the 'War Series' a centerpiece of the show, but Ms. Spero asked if she could create wall drawings instead. An activist who thinks of art as a dynamic instrument, she wanted her original concepts revivified and redirected to current political circumstances. But at 79, in poor health, and grieving the recent death of her husband, Leon Golub, she was taking on a heavy task. To some degree the effort shows in the results: two wide white walls, empty except for a few cinder-dark images of helicopters and piled-up bodies. Yet, with their desert-like blankness and downward gravitational pull, the wall pieces are moving in a way that the 'War Series' is not. The early work is ferocious, on fire. The wall pieces are severe and cold-eyed. They bring to mind the description of war by the French philosopher Simone Weil, in her 1940 essay on Homer's Iliad, as a killing machine with an unknowable force at the controls. Ms. Rosler, a generation younger than Ms. Spero, also developed a serial form of protest art in collages titled 'Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful' (1967-72). She made each from magazine photographs of model home interiors onto which she pasted news images of Vietnam combat. Wounded Vietnamese civilians hobble through suburban living rooms. Marines crouch in spotless kitchens. Picture windows look out onto battlefields. Ms. Rosler intended the collages for mass reproduction; she is exhibiting the originals here for the first time. But they have achieved something they never sought: the status of art historical classics. To unsettle such monumentalizing and keep the work current, Ms. Rosler recently added new collages, with 21st-century homes invaded by phantoms from Iraq. At exactly the time 'Bringing the War Home' was under way in the 1960's, artists in North Vietnam were reacting to the war around them with art of their own, examples of which are installed across the street from the Drawing Center in the smaller Drawing Room. The six artists included - Nguyen Cong Do, Nguyen Thu, Nguyen Van Da, Quang Tho, Truong Hieu and Vu Giang Huong - were either in, or associated with, the North Vietnamese Army, and they made sketches and painting while on active duty. Most of the pictures are unremarkably illustrational in style. What's striking is their tone. Although the reality of war is evident in images of soldiers cleaning guns, scenes of fighting are absent. Instead, troops engage in edifying group activities, from cooking to taking drawing classes in a jungle clearing. This is political art too, but the opposite of critical. Its purpose was morale-building and psychological cushioning under fire. The definition of 'political' is even more complex in recent work by two contemporary Vietnamese artists, Dinh Q. Le and Bihn Danh, back at the Drawing Center. Mr. Le, born near the Vietnamese-Cambodian border in 1968, came to the United States in 1975 to escape the Khmer Rouge. A decade ago he returned to Vietnam to live, and his art since has been about reimagining events in Southeast Asia that most of the world seems glad to forget. He is known internationally for his pictures woven from cutup strips of various photographs. And with this technique, used in Vietnam for making palm-leaf mats, he has produced several series of extraordinary composite images. In one, faces of Vietnamese citizens merge with stills from 'Apocalypse Now,' forcing reality and fantasy into a confrontation. Another series combines portraits of doomed prisoners in Khmer Rouge death camps with images of bellicose sculptures from 12th-century Angkor Wat temples, built as tributes to victorious kings. The message is clear: art has always been as much an accomplice as a deterrent to human brutality. A current solo show at the Asia Society gives a sense of the broad range of Mr. Le's art. At the Drawing Center he is paired with a younger contemporary, Bihn Danh. Born in Vietnam in 1977 and raised in the United States, Mr. Danh regularly visits his home country. On a recent trip, he collected large leaves from native plants which he uses as a ground for photographic portraits. The portraits are from the same terrible Khmer Rouge prison archive that Mr. Le drew on, though Mr. Danh contextualized them differently. He surrounds the faces of doomed men and women with the forms of butterflies, symbols of souls in transit. By imprinting the portraits on leaves he suggests that the memory of violence is now part of Southeast Asia's natural fabric. Mr. Danh's art is a retrospective act of witness. Can it, or any other kind of political art, effect change? And what would effective change be? Did the drawings by the North Vietnamese artist-soldiers do what they were meant to do? Are they art, reportage, propaganda, all three? Do artists from different cultures inevitably see different things when looking at the same political 'reality'? Such questions are raised in catalog essays by the show's curators, Catherine de Zegher and Katherine Carl, and with unusual grace, by the art historians Moira Roth and Boreth Ly. And the Drawing Center had its own reality check in a recent brush with the American culture wars, when conservative groups protested its relocation to the World Trade Center site because, the charge was, it had exhibited art critical of the war in Iraq. Now it is showing art critical of another war, two wars before Iraq. Does that mean that, as an institution, it is passing some ultimate judgment? War demands and dictates answers: right/wrong, win/lose. Art, including most political art, does something else. It collages and weaves together information, observation, memory, emotion to form bigger questions. Marianne Moore's words are from a poem about power titled 'In Distrust of Merits.' Simone Weil's Iliad essay, a staggeringly audacious study in moral ambiguity, is subtitled 'The Poem of Force.' Distrust. Force. Poetry. They can make changes unmeasurable by events or laws. Art, an inside job, uses them all.

Subject: Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:29:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/technology/09gaming.html?ex=1291784400&en=a723d0f8592dff2e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese By DAVID BARBOZA FUZHOU, China - One of China's newest factories operates here in the basement of an old warehouse. Posters of World of Warcraft and Magic Land hang above a corps of young people glued to their computer screens, pounding away at their keyboards in the latest hustle for money. The people working at this clandestine locale are 'gold farmers.' Every day, in 12-hour shifts, they 'play' computer games by killing onscreen monsters and winning battles, harvesting artificial gold coins and other virtual goods as rewards that, as it turns out, can be transformed into real cash. That is because, from Seoul to San Francisco, affluent online gamers who lack the time and patience to work their way up to the higher levels of gamedom are willing to pay the young Chinese here to play the early rounds for them. 'For 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, my colleagues and I are killing monsters,' said a 23-year-old gamer who works here in this makeshift factory and goes by the online code name Wandering. 'I make about $250 a month, which is pretty good compared with the other jobs I've had. And I can play games all day.' He and his comrades have created yet another new business out of cheap Chinese labor. They are tapping into the fast-growing world of 'massively multiplayer online games,' which involve role playing and often revolve around fantasy or warfare in medieval kingdoms or distant galaxies. With more than 100 million people worldwide logging on every month to play interactive computer games, game companies are already generating revenues of $3.6 billion a year from subscriptions, according to DFC Intelligence, which tracks the computer gaming market. For the Chinese in game-playing factories like these, though, it is not all fun and games. These workers have strict quotas and are supervised by bosses who equip them with computers, software and Internet connections to thrash online trolls, gnomes and ogres. As they grind through the games, they accumulate virtual currency that is valuable to game players around the world. The games allow players to trade currency to other players, who can then use it to buy better armor, amulets, magic spells and other accoutrements to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters. The Internet is now filled with classified advertisements from small companies - many of them here in China - auctioning for real money their powerful figures, called avatars. These ventures join individual gamers who started marketing such virtual weapons and wares a few years ago to help support their hobby. 'I'm selling an account with a level-60 Shaman,' says one ad from a player code-named Silver Fire, who uses QQ, the popular Chinese instant messaging service here in China. 'If you want to know more details, let's chat on QQ.' This virtual economy is blurring the line between fantasy and reality. A few years ago, online subscribers started competing with other players from around the world. And before long, many casual gamers started asking other people to baby-sit for their accounts, or play while they were away. That has spawned the creation of hundreds - perhaps thousands - of online gaming factories here in China. By some estimates, there are well over 100,000 young people working in China as full-time gamers, toiling away in dark Internet cafes, abandoned warehouses, small offices and private homes. Most of the players here actually make less than a quarter an hour, but they often get room, board and free computer game play in these 'virtual sweatshops.' 'It's unimaginable how big this is,' says Chen Yu, 27, who employs 20 full-time gamers here in Fuzhou. 'They say that in some of these popular games, 40 or 50 percent of the players are actually Chinese farmers.' For many online gamers, the point is no longer simply to play. Instead they hunt for the fanciest sword or the most potent charm, or seek a shortcut to the thrill of sparring at the highest level. And all of that is available - for a price. 'What we're seeing here is the emergence of virtual currencies and virtual economies,' says Peter Ludlow, a longtime gamer and a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 'People are making real money here, so these games are becoming like real economies.' The Chinese government estimates that there are 24 million online gamers in China, meaning that nearly one in four Internet users here play online games. And many online gaming factories have come to resemble the thousands of textile mills and toy factories that have moved here from Taiwan, Hong Kong and other parts of the world to take advantage of China's vast pool of cheap labor. 'They're exploiting the wage difference between the U.S. and China for unskilled labor,' says Edward Castronova, a professor of telecommunications at Indiana University and the author of 'Synthetic Worlds,' a study of the economy of online games. 'The cost of someone's time is much bigger in America than in China.' But gold farming is controversial. Many hard-core gamers say the factories are distorting the games. What is more, the big gaming companies say the factories are violating the terms of use of the games, which forbid players to sell their virtual goods for real money. They have vowed to crack down on those suspected of being small businesses rather than individual gamers. 'We know that such business exists, and we are against it,' says Guolong Jin, a spokesman for N-Sina, a Chinese joint venture with NC Soft, the Korean creator of Lineage, one of the most popular online games. 'Playing games should be fun and entertaining. It's not a way to trade and make money.' Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Universal and the creator of World of Warcraft, one of the world's most popular games with more than 4.5 million online subscribers, has also called the trading illegal. But little has been done to halt the mushrooming black market in virtual goods, many available for sale on eBay, Yahoo and other online sites. On eBay, for example, 100 grams of World of Warcraft gold is available for $9.99 or two über characters from EverQuest for $35.50. It costs $269 to be transported to Level 60 in Warcraft, and it typically takes 15 days to get the account back at the higher level. In fact, the trading of virtual property is so lucrative that some big online gaming companies have jumped into the business, creating their own online marketplaces. Sony Online Entertainment, the creator of EverQuest, a popular medieval war and fantasy game, recently created Station Exchange. Sony calls the site an alternative to 'crooked sellers in unsanctioned auctions.' Other start-up companies are also rushing in, acting as international brokers to match buyers and sellers in different countries, and contracting out business to Chinese gold-farming factories. 'We're like a stock exchange. You can buy and sell with us,' says Alan Qiu, a founder of the Shanghai-based Ucdao.com. 'We farm out the different jobs. Some people say, 'I want to get from Level 1 to 60,' so we find someone to do that.' Now there are factories all over China. In central Henan Province, one factory has 300 computers. At another factory in western Gansu Province, the workers log up to 18 hours a day. The operators are mostly young men like Luo Gang, a 28-year-old college graduate who borrowed $25,000 from his father to start an Internet cafe that morphed into a gold farm on the outskirts of Chongqing in central China. Mr. Luo has 23 workers, who each earn about $75 a month. 'If they didn't work here they'd probably be working as waiters in hot pot restaurants,' he said, 'or go back to help their parents farm the land - or more likely, hang out on the streets with no job at all.' Here in coastal Fujian Province, several gold farm operators offered access to their underground facilities recently, on the condition that their names not be disclosed because the legal and tax status of some of the operations is in question. One huge site here in Fuzhou has over 100 computers in a series of large, dark rooms. About 70 players could be seen playing quietly one weekday afternoon, while some players slept by the keyboard. 'We recruit through newspaper ads,' said the 30-something owner, whose workers range from 18 to 25 years old. 'They all know how to play online games, but they're not willing to do hard labor.' Another operation here has about 40 computers lined up in the basement of an old dilapidated building, all playing the same game. Upstairs were unkempt, closet-size dormitory rooms where several gamers slept on bunk beds; the floors were strewn with hot pots. The owners concede that the risks are enormous. The global gaming companies regularly shut accounts they suspect are engaged in farming. And the government here is cracking down on Internet addiction now, monitoring more closely how much time each player spends online. To survive, the factories employ sophisticated gaming strategies. They hide their identities online, hire hackers to seek out new strategies, and create automatic keys to bolster winnings. But at some point, says Mr. Yu, the Fuzhou factory operator who started out selling computer supplies and now has an army of gamers outside his office here, he knows he will have to move on. 'My ultimate goal is to do Internet-based foreign trade,' he says, sitting in a bare office with a solid steel safe under his desk. 'Online games are just my first step into the business.'

Subject: Depths of an Owlish Darkness From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:24:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/opinion/09fri4.html?ex=1291784400&en=efa7e0fbbd02d5c8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Driving From Ucross to Sheridan in the Depths of an Owlish Darkness By VERLYN KLINKENBORG I can never quite get over how different the world looks at 3 a.m. It's the same old world, a few degrees colder though no darker than it was when I went to bed. But a squall blew through while I was asleep, and now the ground is covered with dry new snow. The car starts sluggishly. I sweep it off with a broom from the porch, clumsily, as if I had forgotten overnight which-handed I am. The tires squeal on the snow - it is 3 degrees - and I turn onto Highway 14, which will take me northwest from Ucross into Sheridan, Wyo., and to the interstate. The highway is a smooth white plain. There is one set of car tracks on it, heading the other direction. Nearly everyone who drives this stretch of road keeps a watchful eye out for deer. The lower few miles are paved with red asphalt, and in daylight the ice patches on the highway look like pools of blood, reminders of how many deer die on this road. And in the miles into town I see dozens of deer tracks in the fresh snow, the traces of their crossings in just the past few hours. The tracks are all nearly perpendicular to the road. No dawdling for these deer, no deciding, like New Yorkers in a snowstorm, to wander down the middle of the road because there's snow on the ground. These deer know their business, whatever business it is that draws them across the highway. I had driven down from Billings, Mont., three days earlier, just in time to catch the midafternoon dusk of a cloudy day. The cattle stood out against the snow-blown hills like inkblots. I'd never realized how perfectly a flock of sheep is camouflaged against snowy rangeland with the brown grasses still poking through. Horses of every description, all of them looking strangely old and swaybacked in their winter coats, grazed in the brush. They are experts at finding that one break in the wind - a line of round bales, a billboard - and that one ray of sun. They stood there as if waiting for night to absorb them. Sometimes the clouds thinned just enough to throw their blue light onto the dark brow along the hills to the southeast, like stained glass letting the sun through. I thought again what I often think when I come west at this time of year: that winters in the East and West are really two different kinds of beasts. Winter where I live in New York seems to come out of the woods like a white wolverine, stealthy, barely visible till it is right upon you. But winter in Montana and Wyoming - especially on the Crow Reservation and the open ground east of Sheridan - is another creature altogether. It comes not on foot but on the wing, nothing as domestic as the wild turkeys in the stream bottoms or even the hawks along the telephone poles. It's something more feral still, able to set off a worry in you when you sense how limitless it is. I had to put aside that worry at 3 a.m., driving into Sheridan. I hit a blinding squall of snow, and it was enough work just to concentrate on keeping to the middle of the road. Every ranch light seemed like hospitality itself. After a while, I could make out the lights of Sheridan, like a false dawn beyond the hills. One car went by me, coming from the other direction. I stopped for coffee in town, where the stoplights were flashing, and then took to the interstate. The snow had let up, to just a fine drift of flakes out of the sky. And as I headed north, past Acme and Ranchester and Dayton, I kept seeing the same illusion. Every light in the distance - yard lights, headlights, the lights of the engine on a coal train coming my way - seemed to throw a focused reflection, a separate beam of light, straight up into the sky. Every pickup or semi seemed to be shining one headlight upward, and the farther away they were the clearer the illusion seemed. It was just light reflecting off the snowflakes, of course. But on this early winter morning, it seemed much stranger than that, as if I had blundered into a world where it made sense for traffic to trace its route along the underside of the clouds. You get up at 3 a.m., and it seems as if it's going to be 3 a.m. forever. But the minutes slip away with the miles, if slowly, and soon it was 4 and 5 and 6, and I was getting close to Billings. The darkness barely let up, but by the time I got within sight of the city its lights had mingled with true dawn: just the backlit gray of a snowy winter morning, but enough, at last, to show me the fence lines and the windblown grasses above the snow again. And there, too, were the horses, back from wherever they go when the night absorbs them.

Subject: A Camera That Has It All? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:23:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/technology/circuits/08pogue.ready.html?ex=1291698000&en=e152f5db9e076e1a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 8, 2005 A Camera That Has It All? Well, Almost By David Pogue AT a recent technology conference, an executive from an electronics company was waxing snarky about her rivals. 'And then there's Sony,' she said in a conversation cluster between seminars. 'Their approach is to bring to market every product they dream up and see what sticks.' That's supposed to be an insult? Some people might call Sony's approach a key to innovation - and a strategy far more likely to advance the industry than Ms. Snarky's. This month, for example, Sony has begun shipping a $1,000 digital camera, the R1, that shatters a longstanding law of digital photography. Understanding its significance requires reading four of the techiest paragraphs you'll read all day, but it's worth the slog. Until the R1 came along, digital cameras fell into two categories: compacts and digital S.L.R. (single-lens-reflex) models. Compacts are wonderful because they're cheap, convenient and pocketable. But digital S.L.R.'s, like the Canon Digital Rebel and the Nikon D50, take far superior pictures. The light sensor inside these bulkier models is gigantic - 10 times the size of a typical compact's sensors, for 10 times the light sensitivity. You get sharper detail, more accurate color and less grainy shots in low light. Unfortunately, that design also deprives you of a great joy and advantage of digital photography: framing your shots using the camera's screen. On a compact camera, this screen essentially displays the photo before you snap it. But on a digital S.L.R., you must hoist the camera up to your eye and peep through the little optical viewfinder. The screen remains dark while you're taking pictures. (In fact, you don't even use the screen except when playing back photos.) NOW, before the letter-writing campaign begins, it's important to acknowledge that many photographers actually prefer composing shots using the optical viewfinder. After all, pure glass offers a clearer view of the subject than any L.C.D. screen alive. But there are certain digital shutterbugs who have wondered about this law of digital photography. Why can't a camera with a big sensor also offer a live preview screen? That mammoth sensor is to blame. To supply a live video preview to the screen, the sensor would have to be turned on full time, wolfing down battery power, heating the camera interior and demanding high-horsepower circuitry. 'But we're the world's largest electronics company - heck, we design sensors for some of our rivals,' Sony must have said. 'Surely we can find a solution to this problem.' And Sony did. It redesigned the sensor from scratch, with power and heat considerations at the top of the priority list. This new component can remain powered up full time without ruining your day, because it consumes only one-tenth the electricity that would be required by a standard sensor at that size. The resulting camera, the R1, is a hybrid. Like a compact, its screen remains live while you're shooting. But like an S.L.R., it has a huge sensor inside, 21.5 x 14.4 mm. (For those scoring at home, a typical compact-camera sensor measures 5.7 by 4.2 mm.) The R1 captures 10.3-megapixel photos, easily good enough for poster-size prints at high resolution. The photos are spectacular. As you can see from the samples, the detail and color are breathtaking. You can easily pull off that professionals' trick of blurring the background (or foreground) while keeping the subject in sharp focus, something that's difficult to do with compact cameras. And except in low light, this camera is free of shutter lag, the annoying delay between the press of the shutter button and the snap of the picture. Now that you've practically earned a Ph.D. in camera design, you're ready to read about the next breakthrough: on a true S.L.R., peering through the viewfinder actually lets you see out through the lens, thanks to a mirror-and-prism contraption inside. When you take the photo, the mirror flips out of the way momentarily so that the light hits the sensor instead of your eye. But R1's screen always shows you what the lens is seeing - in fact, its display even incorporates the exposure, white balance and other characteristics of the finished photo - so none of that apparatus is necessary. By eliminating the mirror and prism, Sony was able to slide the lens barrel inward to within two millimeters of the light sensor. Why do you care? Because this positioning grants you a wider-angle slice of the horizon when you're zoomed out. The R1 offers something that's never before been possible on a large-sensor camera: a wide-angle (24-mm) equivalent on the basic lens, capable of recording bigger family groupings, wider room interiors or more of the Grand Canyon. Yet without switching lenses, the R1 also zooms in 5X (a 120-mm equivalent). Unlike the focal-length measurements of other digitals, these are true 35-mm camera equivalents that don't have to be multiplied by, say, 1.5. True to its S.L.R. heritage, the R1 is big, black and very heavy (two and a quarter pounds); makers of camera cases are already licking their chops. But it doesn't look much like its rivals. Instead, the hand grip is unusually widely separated from the body - a supremely comfortable arrangement, though weird looking. The screen is mounted on the top, not the back. To open it, you have to flip it upward and rotate it to face you, which is a drag. But the payoff is that you can fold or rotate the screen to almost any angle - even flat against the camera's top - making it easy to shoot over crowds (for parades) or at ground level (pets and babies). The huge body permits easy access to the buttons and controls, and provides room for a big battery (500 shots, complete with 'minutes remaining' display) and memory cards of two different formats: Memory Stick and Compact Flash. If that were the whole story, the R1 would be an important candidate for anyone considering a digital S.L.R. But as the saying goes, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs - and you can't whip up a new high-end camera design without sacrificing a few perks. Lost Perk No. 1 has to do with the lens: the R1's is permanently attached. It's a heck of a good lens, but you can't remove it and swap in a telephoto, macro or even wider-angle lens, as you can with a true S.L.R.. Lost Perk No. 2 has to do with that rotating screen; it's not Sony's best work. In this era of 2.5- and 3-inch digital camera screens, it somehow feels dinky (2 inches diagonal). Its clarity and motion smoothness are disappointing, too. And don't try to get smart by looking through the eyepiece viewfinder instead; on this camera, you'll see only a second electronic display, not a clear glass window to the front. Besides, you feel guilty peering through the viewfinder; isn't the live preview screen one of the main reasons you bought the R1 in the first place? You also sacrifice a movie-capture mode, which Sony omitted for no good reason, and a good close-up mode; the closest this camera can get to its subject is 13 inches. You'll also be crestfallen to learn that the R1's burst mode - where it keeps capturing shots at high speed for as long as you press the shutter, a useful trick for sports or uncooperative children - snaps a measly maximum of three shots in a burst. Finally, Sony was awfully miserly with its mode dial. It offers settings for advanced controls (aperture and shutter priority, for example), but few presets for common scenes like sports, landscape and macro. Yes, you could argue that anyone who'd spend $1,000 on a camera probably knows how to use the camera's beautifully designed manual controls, without requiring such presets. But then again, anyone who'd spend $1,000 probably expects a better burst mode and interchangeable lenses. In this regard, the R1 sends out mixed signals, as though it's not just a hybrid camera, but one designed for a hybrid photographer. But never mind that. Even if you don't buy the R1, you may well buy its grandchild in 2008 or 2010. For that reason, even Sony's sniping rivals should be grateful for Sony's 'see what sticks' philosophy. The core breakthrough of the R1 is a radically rethought, low-power chip that brings you truly brilliant photographs. And you know what? That'll stick.

Subject: Medical Journal Criticizes Merck From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:22:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/business/09vioxx.html?ex=1291784400&en=ff21715940095ef2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Medical Journal Criticizes Merck Over Vioxx Data By ALEX BERENSON An influential medical journal accused Merck yesterday of misrepresenting the results of a crucial clinical trial of the painkiller Vioxx to play down its heart risks. In a statement last evening, Merck denied that it had acted improperly. The New England Journal of Medicine's allegation could play a critical role in the thousands of lawsuits that Merck faces over Vioxx, an arthritis and pain drug. Vioxx was taken by an estimated 20 million Americans before the company withdrew it last year after a study linked it to heart attacks and strokes. In the three lawsuits that have reached trial so far, Merck has said that it promptly disclosed information about Vioxx's heart risks. But in an interview yesterday, Dr. Gregory D. Curfman, the journal's executive editor, sharply criticized Merck for the way it presented data from the clinical trial. The study, called Vigor, covered more than 8,000 patients and was published in the journal in November 2000, almost four years before Merck stopped selling the drug. 'They did not disclose all they knew,' Dr. Curfman said. 'There were serious negative consequences for the public health as a result of that.' In criticizing Merck and the study's authors at a time when the company's credibility is at issue in lawsuits, the journal is taking an extraordinary step. The publication is well respected and widely read by doctors and scientists, with a circulation of almost 200,000. Merck said in its statement that it had acted properly and promptly disclosed the results of the Vigor study, which found that the drug was more likely to cause heart problems than another pain drug. The November 2000 article 'fairly and accurately described the results of the study,' the company said. But Dr. Curfman said the study's authors had originally included some data unfavorable to Vioxx, then deleted it. Lawyers for plaintiffs said they believed that the journal's allegation would undercut the company's defense. Shares of Merck fell almost 5 percent yesterday after the journal published the editorial and a separate statement on its Web site (nejm.org) criticizing the company's behavior. In the editorial, 'Expression of Concern,' the journal said that the authors of the study had deleted some data about strokes and other vascular problems suffered by patients in the Vigor trial two days before it submitted the results to the publication. The authors, some of whom worked for Merck, also underreported the number of heart attacks suffered by patients taking Vioxx, claiming that there were 17 heart attacks when there were actually 20, the journal said. The authors have been asked to correct the study, the journal said. The authors of the Vigor study included independent researchers and Merck scientists, among them Dr. Alise Reicin, who has been a crucial figure in the company's courtroom defense. The study's results showed that patients taking Vioxx were four times as likely to suffer heart attacks as those taking naproxen, an older painkiller, which is known by the brand name Aleve. In fact, 20 patients taking Vioxx suffered heart attacks, compared with 4 taking naproxen, a ratio of five-to-one. Merck said at the time that the difference probably resulted from the fact that naproxen protected people from heart attacks, not because Vioxx caused them. Many independent scientists disputed the company's theory. If the authors had published the full data about strokes and other vascular problems, the company's theory would have been even harder to accept, Dr. Curfman said. 'The totality of the data didn't look good for Vioxx,' he said. Merck has said it had no clear evidence of Vioxx's cardiovascular dangers until a clinical trial last year indicated a heightened risk of heart attacks and strokes among patients taking the drug 18 months or longer. It was after those findings that Merck pulled Vioxx off the market in September 2004. Merck now faces more than 6,000 lawsuits from people who say they or their family members suffered heart attacks and strokes as a result of taking Vioxx, and tens of thousands more lawsuits are expected. The two cases that have been decided so far have resulted in one victory for Merck and one for a plaintiff. Jurors in Federal District Court in Houston yesterday began deliberations in the third case to reach trial. Christopher Seeger, who represented plaintiffs in the second trial - a victory for Merck in New Jersey state court in Atlantic City - said that he believed that the journal's allegations would make jurors less likely to trust the company. 'It's going to alter the landscape of the litigation,' Mr. Seeger said. 'They're accusing Merck of scientific misconduct.' Last month, a lawyer who represents people suing Merck showed Dr. Curfman a memo from July 2000 between Dr. Reicin and another Merck scientist, Dr. Deborah Shapiro. That memo showed that Dr. Reicin and Dr. Shapiro knew of the three additional heart attack deaths in the Vigor trial well before the journal published the results, Dr. Curfman said. Those heart attacks could and should have been included in the article, he said. In its statement, Merck said that three additional heart attacks 'did not materially change any of the conclusions in the article.' Merck shares, which traded around $30.20 before the journal posted its comments at 3:30 p.m., fell to $28.75 in extended after-hours trading. The stock has fallen almost 40 percent since Merck withdrew Vioxx. The memo also shows that Dr. Reicin and Dr. Shapiro knew of strokes and serious vascular problems suffered by patients taking Vioxx, Dr. Curfman said. Dr. Curfman said that, separately, he and other editors had examined the diskette on which the article was sent to the journal and found that the study's authors deliberately removed information about strokes and vascular problems two days before they submitted the study. 'There was some methodical editing of the manuscript to remove data,' he said. The information in the memo appears to contradict extensive testimony that Dr. Reicin gave in July in Angleton, Tex., in the first Vioxx suit to reach trial, said W. Mark Lanier, the plaintiff's lawyer in that case. Dr. Reicin should be investigated for perjury for her testimony, Mr. Lanier said. 'It totally destroys Reicin as a witness,' Mr. Lanier said. 'I think her testimony in the past is going to really come back and bite her.' Kent Jarrell, a spokesman for Merck, said the company could not comment on Mr. Lanier's allegations because of the Vioxx suit in Houston. The judge in that case has prohibited both sides from providing information to the press. Dr. Curfman said the journal had asked the independent authors on the Vigor article for a correction on Monday, but they had not responded. In its statement, Merck said it had learned 'only recently' of the journal's editorial and looked forward to offering a more complete response.

Subject: Señora Presidente? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 10, 2005 at 06:19:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/opinion/09gumucio.html?ex=1291784400&en=e37fd81b73b42bdf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 9, 2005 Señora Presidente? By RAFAEL GUMUCIO Santiago, Chile CHILE is one of the more conservative countries on a continent that is not especially renowned as tolerant, forward thinking or democratically minded. Divorce was legalized here just last year, and abortion continues to be a taboo subject even for the most progressive of politicians. Our social codes and racial prejudices are deeply engrained. We are an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a history that has been marked - and continues to be marked - by the power of its military. Given this context, it is nothing short of extraordinary - even revolutionary - that the clear front-runner in the presidential vote being held on Sunday is Michelle Bachelet, a divorced mother of three who is an atheist and a member of the Socialist Party. Polls show Ms. Bachelet, a former defense minister, far ahead of her rivals, Sebastián Piñera, one of Chile's wealthiest businessmen; Joaquín Lavín, the ultraconservative former mayor of Santiago; and Tomás Hirsch of the Communist Party. Although a runoff is likely, the prevailing opinion here is that Ms. Bachelet will be the ultimate winner. If she is, she will be the first woman in the Americas to be elected president not because she was a wife of a famous politician, but because of her own record. That this is a probability is even more astonishing when one considers that nothing like it has occurred in countries like the United States or France, where the democratic tradition is far more stable and feminism's impact presumably far greater. Curiously, American television is now running a series that revolves around the 'novel' idea of a female president. What is fiction in the United States may well become reality in Chile. The twist is that the Chilean candidate is a far more interesting character than the female president portrayed on American TV: as defense minister, Ms. Bachelet oversaw the successors and subordinates of the men who killed her father and tortured her and her mother during the darkest moments of the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. How has this happened? Chile, more than ever, is proving itself to be the polar opposite of Lampedusa's Sicily: in order for things to change, they have to stay the same - or rather, they have to look as if they are staying the same. That is the best way I can describe the spirit with which the country seems to be anticipating the elections: people are aware that no matter what the outcome an unprecedented cultural, political and social revolution is taking place. And at the same time, they seem surprisingly unfazed by it all, observing these sweeping changes with ease, aplomb, even delight. Perhaps this is because Chileans have by now grown accustomed to wild fluctuations in the country's political fortunes. This past year, the Chilean people saw rightist leaders - until recently General Pinochet's staunchest allies - renouncing all ties to him. General Pinochet is now under house arrest, held not only on human rights charges but also for his alleged role in a financial scandal involving millions of stolen dollars. In countless other ways, the Pandora's box of Chilean politics has been flung wide open: nowadays it isn't at all strange to see an ultraconservative Catholic candidate signing his name on a transvestite's legs as a publicity stunt, nor is it odd to hear Ms. Bachelet talk about how hard it is to find Mr. Right. For decades, even centuries, Chilean politics have largely been of the old-boy's-network variety, in which an all-male group of power brokers have run things on their own terms, within a select inner circle, forging alliances with one another and making deals with the press behind closed doors, far removed from the citizenry they represent. Change in Chile has come at a breakneck pace in recent years, as justice is finally being delivered to dozens of dictatorship-era cronies, and the pillars of the church and the political elite have been shaken to their foundations by a wave of pedophilia scandals involving both. The changes are abrupt and the contradictions are evident. Thanks to the country's growing economy, Chileans have access to more creature comforts than ever before, and yet prosperity somehow hasn't dulled their sensibilities: the populace that benefits from free-market economics also turned out in droves to pay tribute to Gladys Marín, the president of the Communist Party, when her coffin was carried through the streets of Santiago in March. People may be gulping down Starbucks and coveting iPods, but they are also devouring highly irreverent political magazines like The Clinic (for which I write) and flocking to politically oriented movies like 'Machuca,' which is about the 1973 coup led by General Pinochet. Some analysts think that the free-market economy is responsible for this unprecedented change in Chile's political and social landscape. But other countries that follow that economic model (Indonesia, Malaysia and the United States), seem to be slouching in the opposite direction toward a retrograde, hard-line conservatism. Economics, then, clearly do not tell the entire story. Other analysts attribute the change to the current president, Ricardo Lagos, who has concentrated on reconciling Chile with its tortured past. Even so the general consensus is that nobody - not Mr. Lagos, not the Chilean intelligentsia, and certainly not the power elite - was prepared for the seismic social and political shift represented by Ms. Bachelet's thriving candidacy. I don't think anyone would have predicted 10 years ago that we would ever arrive at this moment, but it seems that Chile is eager to usher it in. For us, political and economic stability - despite being so recent and so precious - is not enough. Just as in 1970, when they went to the polls and elected a Socialist president, and again in 1988, when they rejected their dictator, Chileans have proved themselves to be far more daring with their vote than their lifestyles. Perhaps this is because when they vote - in secret, where nobody can judge or criticize them - they reveal their truest colors, their passion for change, for improvisation and for leadership in a world that seems hell-bent on moving in the opposite direction.

Subject: Al-Jabr wa'l-Muqabala From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 19:36:58 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: FREEDOM AND REASON OFFER THE SOLUTION TO CULTURAL CONFUSION By AMARTYA SEN, Financial Times (London, England), November 29, 2005 The violent events and atrocities of the past few years have ushered in a period not only of dreadful conflicts but also of considerable confusion. The politics of global confrontation is frequently interpreted as a corollary of religious or cultural divisions in the world. Indeed, the world is increasingly seen as a federation of religions or of civilisations, ignoring all the other ways in which people understand themselves. Underlying this line of thinking is the belief that the people of the world can be categorised according to some singular and overarching system of partitioning. A single-focus approach is a good way of misunderstanding nearly everyone in the world. In our normal lives, we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups. The same person can be a British citizen, of West Indian origin, of African ancestry, a Muslim, a vegetarian, a socialist, a woman, a jazz lover, a teacher and a mathematician. Each of these categories gives her a particular identity. It is for her to decide what relative importance to attach to these affiliations, in any particular context. Central to human life are the responsibilities of reasoned choice. In contrast, violence is promoted by cultivating a sense of the priority ofsome allegedly unique identity. In enlisting Hutus for killing Tutsis, the potential recruits are told that they are just Hutus ('we hate Tutsis') and not also Kigalians, Rwandans, Africans and human beings (identities that a Tutsi may also share). The imposition of an allegedly unique identity is often a ­crucial component of sectarian confrontation, including religion-centred ­terrorism. Unfortunately, many organised attempts to stop violence and terrorism are handicapped also by a single-focus vision. Attempts to politicise Islam have come not only from terrorist recruiters but also from those opponents who take the Islamic identity to be a Muslim person's only identity. They seek, therefore, to enlist a 'properly defined' Islam in the 'right' cause, rather than trying to enhance the political and civic roles of people who happen to be Muslim. This has vastly magnified the power and voice of religious leaders, sometimes at the expense of civil society. These global problems have considerable bearing on internal policies in contemporary Britain. In many ways, Britain has been very successful in integrating people of diverse backgrounds and origins within society, compared with some other countries in Europe. The roots of integration can be traced to a variety of commitments to support the opportunities and freedoms of all legal residents - immigrant as well as native. Perhaps the most important contribution, the significance of which is often under-recognised, comes from giving immediate and full voting rights to all British residents from the Commonwealth, the origin of most non-European immigration here. This has been supplemented by largely non-­discriminatory treatment in healthcare, schooling and social security, which has also helped to integrate rather than divide. It is important to see that amalgamation, rather than isolation, has been the central feature of this constructive process. So far so good. But Britain, too, is increasingly affected by the dangers of a single-focus vision, in particular that of seeing people in terms of religions and communities. It is not surprising that religious warriors relish that view, but those divisions have gained some ground even in official policy. This is not a question of whether multi-­culturalism has gone 'too far' in Britain. It is a question of the direction in which multiculturalism should proceed, particularly one of focusing on freedom rather than isolation. Multiculturalism can be understood in terms of making it possible for people to have cultural choice and freedom, which is the very opposite of insisting that a person's basic identity must be simply defined by the religious community in which he or she is born, ignoring all other priorities and affiliations. The state policy of actively promoting new 'faith schools' - now for Muslim, Hindu and Sikh children as well as Christian - illustrates this approach. It is not only educationally problematic, it encourages a fragmentary perception of the demands of living in a desegregated Britain. Many of these new institutions are being created precisely at a time when religious prioritisation has been a major source of violence in the world. This adds to the history of such violence in Britain itself, including Catholic-Protestant divisions in Northern Ireland, which are themselves not unconnected to segmented schooling. Tony Blair, the prime minister, is certainly right to note that 'there is a very strong sense of ethos and values in those schools'. But education is not just about getting children, even very young ones, immersed in an old, inherited ethos. It is also about helping children to develop the ability to reason about new decisions any grown-up person will have to take. The important goal is not some formulaic parity in relation to old Brits, with their old faith schools, but what would best enhance the capability of the children to live 'examined lives' as they grow up in an integrated country. People's priorities and actions are influenced by many different affiliations and associations, not just by their religion. For example, the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan was connected with loyalty to Bengali language and literature, along with political - including secular - priorities, not with religion, which both wings of undivided Pakistan shared. Muslim Bangladeshis - in Britain or anywhere else - may indeed be proud of their Islamic faith, but that does not obliterate their other affiliations and capacious dignity. Multiculturalism with an emphasis on freedom and reasoning has to be distinguished from 'plural monoculturalism' with single-focus priorities and a rigid cementing of divisions. Multicultural education is certainly important, but it should not be about bundling children into preordained faith schools. Awareness of world civilisation and history is necessary. Religious madrasas may take little interest in the fact that when a modern mathematician invokes an 'algorithm' to solve a difficult computational problem, she helps to commemorate the secular contributions of Al-Khwarizmi, the great ninth-century Muslim mathematician, from whose name the term algorithm is derived ('algebra' comes from his book, Al Jabr wa-al-Muqabilah). There is no reason at all why old Brits as well as new Brits should not celebrate those grand connections. The world is not a federation of religious ethnicities. Nor, one hopes, is Britain. The writer, Lamont university professor at Harvard University, was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for economics. He will speak at the British Museum in London tomorrow on the theme of this article. His next book, Identity and Violence, will be published by WW Norton in March. http://sarid.net/religious-dimension/10-29-sen.htm

Subject: Amartya Sen From: Emma To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 19:57:20 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Amartya Sen is wonderful; as are you :)

Subject: Better Bananas, Nicer Mosquitoes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 10:47:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/health/06gates-all.html?ex=1291525200&en=c1dfe5ded36697d2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 Better Bananas, Nicer Mosquitoes By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. SEATTLE - Addressing 275 of the world's most brilliant scientists, Bill Gates cracked a joke: 'I've been applying my imagination to the synergies of this,' he said. 'We could have sorghum that cures latent tuberculosis. We could have mosquitoes that spread vitamin A. And most important, we could have bananas that never need to be kept cold.' They laughed. Perhaps that was to be expected when the world's richest man, who had just promised them $450 million, was delivering a punchline. But it was also germane, because they were gathered to celebrate some of the oddest-sounding projects in the history of science. Their deadly serious proposals - answers to the Grand Challenges in Global Health that Mr. Gates posed in a 2003 speech in Davos, Switzerland - sounded much like his spoofs: laboratories around the world, some of them led by Nobel Prize winners, proposing to invent bananas and sorghum that make their own vitamin A; chemicals that render mosquitoes unable to smell humans; drugs that hunt down tuberculosis germs in people who do not even know they are infected; and vaccines that are mixed into spores or plastics or sugars and can be delivered in glasses of orange juice or modified goose calls. What Mr. Gates had outlined at Davos were the greatest obstacles facing doctors in the tropics: Laboratories are few and far between. Vaccines spoil without refrigeration and require syringes, which can transmit AIDS. Mosquitoes develop resistance to all insecticides. Crops that survive in the jungle or desert often have little nutritive value. Infections outwit powerful drugs by lying dormant. His offer - originally $200 million, raised to $450 million after 1,600 proposals came in - 'was to make sure that innovation wasn't reserved just for big-ticket items like cancer and heart disease,' said Dr. Carol A. Dahl, the foundation's director of global health technologies, who ran the conference. The winning teams, which were named in June,came from as far away as Australia and China, withresearch partners all over Africa and Southeast Asia. Over three days in a Seattle hotel, the 43 team leaders delivered 10-minute summaries of their plans, quizzed foundation officials about details of the grants and discussed possible ethical quandaries with bioethicists from the University of Toronto. (The most common questions were about the one ironclad rule: grantees may patent anything they discover, but must make it available cheaply to poor countries. An ethical concern common to many projects is that they will eventually require clinical trials on impoverished Africans or Asians with little understanding of informed consent.) In the hallways and over cocktails and dinners - all paid for by the foundation - virologists and neurologists talked with plant biologists and nanoparticle physicists, sometimes finding ways to help one another. For example, a scientist with plans to improve vitamin-fortified 'golden rice' asked the designer of a hand-held laboratory to test blood for pathogens whether it could be modified to test blood for iron and vitamins. Mr. Gates, in an interview, sidestepped a request to name his favorite projects. 'Oh, I love all my children,' he said. But he remained brutally realistic about where his 'children' - and the money he lavishes on them - were likely to end up. 'Eighty percent of these are likely to be dead ends,' he said. 'But even if we have a 10 percent hit rate, it will all have been worthwhile.' What follows is a selection of the winning projects. Dried Vaccines The only scientist to emit a goose honk during his presentation was Robert E. Sievers, who was illustrating inexpensive straws with useful vibrations. Dr. Sievers, the chief executive of Aktiv-Dry, a Colorado company that turns liquids into superfine powders, is trying to develop a measles vaccine that can be stored dry and inhaled. He proposed turning it into glassy particles around a matrix of trehalose, the sugar that allows brine shrimp cysts to survive dried out for years but hatch into wriggling creatures in seawater. (The shrimp are perhaps better known as the 'amazing live sea monkeys' advertised in comic books.) For the powder to reach the lungs instead of sticking to the straw or the throat, the particles must be dispersed evenly in the airstream. Vibration helps, and he tested oboe reeds, New Year's noisemakers and goose calls, trying to find something disposable that needs no power, even from batteries. A longtime chemistry professor at the University of Colorado, Dr. Sievers, 70, had a second career running a company developing pollution-detection instruments when his son, a pediatrician, described how premature newborns were given surfactants to keep their lung sacs from sticking like Cling Wrap. 'They squirt a bolus of water down into the lungs, then they turn the baby over and pour it out,' the elder Dr. Sievers said, shaking his head in disbelief. 'There had to be a way to improve that.' In the 1990's, he turned his hand to inhalers for surfactants, then for asthma and now for vaccines. 'Measles kills 2,000 children a day,' he said, briefly tearing up, and then apologizing for it, as he described his new passion for the cause and what his $20 million grant will let him pursue. 'That's like a World Trade Center disaster every day. This is what I want to do with the last stretch of my life.' Abraham L. Sonenshein of Tufts University, who received $5 million, wants to use bacterial spores, another form of nature that can survive desert heat or Arctic cold. 'Our ideal vaccine would be a packet of spores that could be emptied into a glass of juice and drunk down,' he said His chosen vehicle, bacillus subtilis, is found all over the world in dirt. 'Safety is a nonissue,' he said. 'A large fraction of the Japanese population eats it every day for breakfast.' The bacteria are used to ferment soybeans for a dish called natto. But rather than simply drying an existing vaccine, he wants to splice into the subtilis bacterium's DNA the ability to make the fragments of viral protein that provoke the immune reaction. Dried bacterial spores could survive indefinitely - and then bloom in the gut and start assembling the proteins. He has already inserted the genes for diphtheria and tetanus vaccines, and is working on adding whooping cough and rotavirus. Ten years ago, he said, a Tufts colleague came back from a conference on children's diseases and excitedly described how hard it was to keep vaccines cold in villages without electricity. Dr. Sonenshein, a bacteria expert, said he replied: 'Why are you telling me this?' But as soon as his colleague asked whether spores could help, he understood. 'We worked on it for two years, and then gave it up, because the traditional funding agencies thought it was too speculative,' he said. 'The project lay fallow for eight years, so I'm very grateful for the grant.' Mosquito Time Bomb Scott L. O'Neill, a biologist at Australia's University of Queensland, had an inspiration based on two unrelated facts: mosquitoes must be 'middle-aged' - about 14 days old - before they can transmit the dengue virus, and wolbachia bacteria kill fruit flies in midlife. Since 1975, dengue fever has become a major cause of death for young children, especially in Southeast Asia, where Dr. O'Neill has done field work. 'The mosquitoes were controlled in the 1960's,' he said. 'But they're invading new areas.' Wolbachia, parasitic bacteria, live in many insects, eventually killing some of them. But, in what Dr. O'Neill called a 'sneaky and spiteful manipulation of their host,' they assure their survival into the next generation by infecting embryos as well, and by rendering infertile any embryos that do not come from infected parents. (They probably kill the hosts by growing prolifically on their nerve cells, and they may render embryos infertile by somehow preventing egg-sperm fusion, Dr. O'Neill said, but those mysteries are still unsolved.) Most mosquitoes live about a month, but it takes about 14 days for the dengue virus, which the female picks up by biting an infected human, to mature in her gut and reach her salivary glands, ready to be injected into the next human. Month-old females who have bitten several people are the most dangerous mosquitoes. Dr. O'Neill, who received $7 million, hopes to find a life-shortening wolbachia strain in fruit flies or to create one by gene modification, and use it to infect mosquitoes, which now harbor benign strains. If it works, a female will still live long enough to take a blood meal and lay one set of eggs, so there will be little evolutionary pressure on her to resist the bacteria. But she will die before she can transmit dengue. Prostitutes in Kenya Since 1981, when he was a junior researcher at the University of Manitoba, Dr. Francis A. Plummer has studied thousands of prostitutes in Nairobi, Kenya - initially looking for chancroid and gonorrhea, and then, for the AIDS virus, once it was discovered. Throughout that time, he said, about 5 percent of the women have remained uninfected by H.I.V., despite hundreds of exposures. That has been well known for years, and is also true of women in the business elsewhere, from Gambia to Thailand; what is not known is why. With colleagues from several Canadian universities and Nairobi University, Dr. Plummer - who now directs Canada's equivalent of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - has found that the women have protective immune responses both in their white blood cells and in their vaginal walls. Constant repeat exposures seem to boost those responses, but if the women stop working in the sex trade and then return, they often get infected, he said. Many mysteries remain to unravel, and Dr. Plummer was awarded $8 million, which triples his research budget. Resistance to H.I.V. clearly runs in families, he said, and he wants to analyze the genes of uninfected women and their relatives. Also, uninfected women seem to have unusually slow immune systems, and he wants to infect some with mild flus to see how they react. All attempts to make an AIDS vaccine have failed so far, and Dr. Plummer said his study might open up new approaches, like enhancing resistance genes or slowing immune responses. Improved Cassavas Cassava, a tuber practically unknown in the West, is the primary food for 250 million Africans - meaning that, in hard times, they eat nothing else for days. The tuber's strongest point: it can survive for months in the ground as long as it is attached to its leaves. But it has many weak ones. It turns to mush within 48 hours of picking. It has little protein. And it contains cyanide and slowly poisons those who eat it unless it is pounded and soaked repeatedly to leach the toxins out. Dr. Richard T. Sayre said he developed his specialty decades ago when a Nigerian student asked for a job in his lab at Ohio State. 'He had been let go by his government and his department, and I hired him as a dishwasher,' said Dr. Sayre, who was then studying photosynthesis. The student, who was from the Biafra region of Nigeria and had nearly starved during the civil war and famine of the 1960's, asked if he could work on detoxifying cassava. He remembered his grandmother throwing ash in her cooking pot to release the cyanide as a gas. The student later got a degree in soil science, but 'we've been doing cassava for 20 years,' Dr. Sayre said. Despite Rockefeller Foundation grants and some federal dollars, 'it's always been a struggle.' With $7.5 million from the foundation, he wants to genetically modify the tuber to store nitrogen as protein rather than as cyanogens, to produce more vitamin A and E and iron and zinc, and to better resist viral attacks. The foundation is backing three other projects to improve rice, sorghum and bananas, and the scientists shared ideas at the meeting, as well as their common lament: not being taken seriously. 'It's difficult to get funding for banana research,' said Dr. James Dale of the Queensland University of Technology, who is trying to improve Uganda's staple food. 'Everyone thinks it's dessert.' Lab in a Box 'When I was in high school, the computer was a large machine that users brought data to,' said Paul Yager, 51, a bioengineer from the University of Washington. 'Now we have more computing power on our belts - in our cellphones - than existed when I was in high school.' Diagnostic laboratories, he said, have missed that change. Data - blood or urine - must still be shipped to them, a serious impediment to third world care. Dr. Yager said he got interested in the field when he read about a mystery disease outbreak in a refugee camp that could not be treated correctly until blood samples reached Paris. Dr. Yager's team received $15 million to develop a palm-size battery-powered lab. His prototype, he said, will test a finger-stick drop of blood for flu, malaria, typhoid, dengue, measles, rickettsia, salmonella and other fever-causing infections - a tall order, because the infecting agents range from minuscule viruses to relatively immense parasites. Ideally, the blood will be dripped into a well in a 30-layered piece of disposable plastic the size of a thick credit card, divided and sucked down 16 hair-narrow channels, mixing with reagents stored dry in tiny pits on the cards. Enzymes will split the blood cells, discard the carbohydrates and leave only pathogen proteins or DNA, which will be amplified by the polymerase chain reaction. Fluorescent-tagged antibodies will be mixed in, and the fever diagnosed - all within 10 minutes. 'It's a stretch, but all the pieces are already done,' Dr. Yager said, explaining that he was miniaturizing standard lab tests, 'trying not to create any new science at all.' (A movie of an instant blood-typing card developed by one of his partners, Micronics Inc., can be seen at micronics.net/products/blood.php.) The biggest obstacles, he said, are keeping the blood cells from sticking in the microscopic channels and making sure there is enough pathogen to measure in each droplet. 'Engineers, being optimists, tell us that those are not drop-dead problems, but challenges,' Dr. Yager said. Legal challenges, he added, are another matter; many steps he must shrink are patented 'by some very large players.' Mosquito 'Olfacticides' Dr. Richard Axel of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Columbia University and Dr. Laurence J. Zwiebel of Vanderbilt University are both experts in insects' sense of smell. (Dr. Axel shared a 2004 Nobel Prize for working out how odors arouse the brain.) Their complementary projects - Dr. Axel received $5 million and Dr. Zwiebel $8.5 million - have identified the genes that produce 79 odor receptors in mosquitoes. Now they will seek to build what Dr. Zwiebel described as 'a stand-alone mosquito-nose platform' - essentially, an antenna fragment in a petri dish - and to implant mosquito odor-receptor genes into fruit flies, which are easier to study. Then they will test thousands of small molecules on these artificial or fly-borne 'noses' to find chemicals that either block or overwhelm them. Dr. Axel argued at the conference that blocking one receptor - the one that detects the carbon dioxide in human breath - might be enough to discourage biting. Dr. Zwiebel argued that, since human sweat contains 150 different compounds, a cocktail of several blockers would be needed, both to encourage mosquitoes to bite other carbon dioxide-exhaling animals, like cows, and to make it harder for mosquitoes to evolve resistance to a single blocker. One advantage of what Dr. Axel termed 'olfacticides,' which could be sprayed on the skin or soaked into mosquito nets, is that they are unlikely to be as toxic to humans as insecticides are. A potential disadvantage is that odor-blockers could, for example, render pollinating insects like bees unable to smell plants. It may also be possible, Dr. Zwiebel said, to find scents even more alluring than human sweat. 'Imagine,' he said, 'a village with a vat of DDT laced with compounds so attractive that it would become a mosquito motel: they'd check in, but they wouldn't check out.' Infecting Stem Cells The most contrarian approach was that announced by Dr. David Baltimore, who shared a 1975 Nobel Prize for his work on tumor viruses and said he had been thinking since the 1980's about the frustrations of fighting AIDS. Because the virus has thwarted every effort to make a vaccine, he said, 'I decided there was potential in modifying the immune system so it would do what you want it to do instead of what it wants to do.' His project, for which he received $14 million, will require many steps: First, designing antibodies with two different 'heads' that can bind the AIDS virus at two points. Second, genetically re-engineering a lentivirus to instruct white blood cells to produce those antibodies. Third, infecting stem cells with those lentiviruses, implanting them into patients and getting them to produce white blood cells that reproduce the antibodies. To test each step, his team must create a mouse with a human immune system, something that three other teams getting Gates grants are also trying. Although AIDS is his initial target, the approach, if it works, could theoretically be used against any infectious disease and someday render vaccination obsolete. However, he acknowledged that there were still large problems to be solved, like the possibility that H.I.V. could mutate out of reach of his designed antibodies, and the fact that lentiviruses can cause cancer and must be rendered harmless before they are injected into a human immune system for life. Vaginal Rings Because some immune response to AIDS is at the site of infection, Dr. Robin John Shattock of the University of London is trying to develop vaccines that can be delivered in gels or a silicone ring that a woman can insert in her vagina, without a doctor's help, to deliver tiny daily doses. The ring will be adapted from one already used for birth control and can adjust itself to menstrual cycles, which affect immune responses. Ideally, he said, women will also get microbicides - virus-killing chemicals applied just before sex - through the same rings or gels, so the virus will get a one-two punch. 'We're trying to look at vaccination from a completely new viewpoint and set the bar really, really low,' said Dr. Shattock, who received $20 million. While conventional vaccine engineers try to invent one huge dose that provokes a strong immune reaction and gives lifelong immunity, he explained, he wants to deliver tiny doses conferring brief immunity without inflaming the vaginal wall, because inflammation there raises a woman's risk of infection.

Subject: Trend of Investing Heavily in India From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 10:05:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/business/worldbusiness/08soft.html?ex=1291698000&en=dbaaa72c51caf26b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 8, 2005 Microsoft Joins Industry Trend of Investing Heavily in India By SARITHA RAI BANGALORE, India - Microsoft will invest $1.7 billion in India over the next four years and nearly double its employee ranks in the nation, its chairman, Bill Gates, said Wednesday. Mr. Gates's announcement was the third in a recent spate of $1 billion investments proposed by technology multinationals in India. About half of Microsoft's investment is to go toward expanding its existing research and development center, enlarging its global software delivery center and opening retail outlets in 33 Indian cities. 'We have about 4,000 people; we would be growing that by over 3,000 in the next several years,' Mr. Gates said in New Delhi at the start of a four-day visit to India. Western technology corporations have been aggressive in investing in India to tap its pool of technically skilled English-speaking workers, who earn about a fifth of the pay of comparable American workers. Earlier this week, Intel, the world's largest chip maker, announced that it would invest over $1 billion in India, mostly in research and development, and about $250 million in venture capital investments in Indian technology companies. In October, Cisco Systems, the networking equipment maker, said it would invest $1.1 billion and triple its Indian work force in three years. Following Intel's example, Mr. Gates said Microsoft would also make venture capital investments in technology start-ups in the country. Microsoft sends a variety of work to India, from call-center services offering technical support to advanced embedded software development. Its development center in the southern city of Hyderabad is its second-largest campus after its headquarters in Redmond, Wash. India, increasingly a research and development center for global corporations, is also a rapidly expanding market for technology products. Mr. Gates said Microsoft would focus on developing products for the Indian market, including products tailored to low-cost computing. The high cost of computers still puts products like those of Microsoft and Intel out of reach for most of India's one billion people. Microsoft nonetheless offers its operating software in several Indian languages.

Subject: Home Sweet Second Home (R.J. Shiller From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 07:58:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Home Sweet Second Home By Robert J. Shiller (Nov. 2005) (http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/shiller31/English) Whenever I speak at finance and economics conferences around the world, I find that a great conversation starter with the spouses of the middle-aged business people who attend is to inquire about their vacation home. I then find myself entertained by stories of gorgeous ocean sunsets seen from the porch, views onto expanses of colorful wildflowers on mountainsides, and happy family reunions in beautiful seclusion (as well as problems with the plumbing). Years ago, I never asked about vacation homes. They never seemed so much on people’s minds. Purchases of second homes for pleasure were confined to the rich, and thus did not seem quite so much of a conversation topic for the rank-and-file business people that I meet at such conferences. But now the world is undergoing a second-home boom: an increasing number of people are buying vacation homes in beautiful and fun places that are within a few hours’ flying time from their first homes and jobs. Their second homes are a retreat where they will spend only a fraction of the year, and recently pristine mountain ridges and ocean cliffs are being dotted with new homes to meet the demand. A study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) indicates that 13% of all homes purchased in the United States in 2004 were vacation homes. This does not include buyers who purchased homes as investment properties, mostly to rent out. According to the NAR, investment buyers account for another 23% of home sales, bringing second-home purchases to 36% of the total. Some of the US counties with a high proportion of vacation homes are seeing price increases that rival, if not outstrip, the booming metropolitan areas. For example, according to the Case-Shiller Indexes, home prices in the fashionable Cape Cod vacation area in Massachusetts soared 184% from 1997 to 2005, compared to the 131% increase in nearby Boston over the same period. America is not alone. Europeans are buying gemütliche Alpine ski chalets, glamorous condominiums with Mediterranean views in the South of Spain, and, increasingly, villas in picturesque sites in Turkey, Hungary, and Croatia. Australians are buying oceanfront properties at the Sunshine Coast and the Whitsundays. Japan’s vacation-home boom of the 1980’s has largely fizzled with its collapsing stock market and urban land market. But even there, the market for vacation homes remains hot in places like Karuizawa, Lake Kawaguchi, and Hakone. Being able to afford a vacation home in beautiful surroundings may mean a lot to some people. Indeed, sometimes the talk that I hear about these properties seems to integrate them into the true meaning of life. After all, where do we imagine that philosophers and poets and gurus live? In one of these captivatingly charming places, of course, and not as tourists in hotel rooms. Most people who couldn’t possibly afford such a vacation home probably don’t miss it. Craving one seems to be a desire, like fine wine, that one discovers only when one has substantial wealth. So, as global economic growth continues, and as household incomes rise in today’s most populous emerging countries, demand – and thus prices – for vacation homes in beautiful places, either at home or abroad, will most likely soar. There is reason to worry about this. Real GDP has been growing at around 3% a year in many advanced countries, and twice that or more in some emerging countries. Properties in beautiful places are likely to be what economists call “superior goods” – those goods that account for a higher proportion of consumption as incomes rise. With fixed supply, rents on these properties should increase at a rate equal to or above the rate of GDP growth. Prices could increase much faster at times. On the other hand, in some places, a speculative bubble is fueling today’s boom in vacation-home prices. The vacation-home boom appears psychologically tied to the urban home-price bubble in many of the world’s “glamour cities,” and prices of these vacation homes are similarly vulnerable to a significant drop in coming years. Moreover, there are plenty of ways for the construction industry to offer untold millions more people the opportunity to call some beautiful place home, simply by building more high-density and high-rise vacation apartment buildings there. Many of the single-family vacation mansions or low-density apartment buildings that are being built today will likely eventually be sold, torn down, and replaced with higher-density megastructures, boosting supply and thus easing pressure on prices of the remaining low-density vacation homes. Such higher-density construction must be the best possible outcome, for it will please the most people. Most vacationers seem to derive a sense of excitement from the presence of many other vacationers around them. Large numbers of people contribute to a holiday atmosphere and attract entertainment and sports industries. But, for many of those who imagine relaxing in a place that offers a quaint life of undisturbed beauty, there is a strong risk that prices will rise out of reach in future decades. No economic strategy can change that, even if it produces spectacular GDP growth. Robert J. Shiller is Professor of Economics at Yale University, Director at Macro Securities Research LLC, and author of Irrational Exuberance and The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2005.

Subject: Sometimes a Bumper Crop Is Too Much From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 07:10:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/business/worldbusiness/08farmers.html?ex=1291698000&en=33f980dea01adb9d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 8, 2005 Sometimes a Bumper Crop Is Too Much of a Good Thing By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO and KEITH BRADSHER WARSAW, Ill. - The first architects of agricultural subsidies aimed to bail out farmers during bad harvests so that they would not abandon the vital task of producing food for the nation. But these days, not only are farmers overcoming droughts and floods, agricultural technologies are ushering them into an era of surging production that is likely to outstrip global demand for years to come. This season's parched-earth conditions were supposed to spell doom here for the Illinois corn crop. Instead, the country's second-biggest corn-growing state harvested 16 percent more per acre than expected, helping the United States produce its second-largest crop ever. The bountiful harvest, much of it likely to end up on world markets, has only added to a fundamental problem facing the sector: too much success for its own good. Despite the worst Midwest drought in 17 years, seed technology allowed farmers to continue their relentless increase in production. That presages a challenge that will continue to dog farmers across the industrialized world and bureaucrats negotiating global trade agreements: how to sell ever-larger bumper crops, often increased by the latest genetic advancement, without causing too much economic pain in farm regions. Even as businesses have cut employee benefits and have limited job security in the face of more intense global competition, governments in rich countries have clung to one of the oldest forms of trade protectionism: farm subsidies. Manufacturers like Delphi and airlines like United and Northwest can and do file for bankruptcy and scale back their operations in a process that often enhances economic efficiency. But Washington, Tokyo and Brussels have spent heavily on subsidies for decades and have erected numerous other trade barriers to slow the demise of their farmers facing similar competitive pressures. Some of these farm subsidies have reached extraordinary levels. Mark Vaile, Australia's trade minister, recently calculated that European Union subsidies work out to $2.20 per cow per day; more than a billion people around the world live on less than that each day. The subsidies have not retarded the advance of farm productivity, but food prices in poor countries tend to be much lower than in affluent countries. That is because the United States and European Union keep large quantities of food off the market at home each year to support prices for their farmers and sell the food instead at subsidized prices overseas or donate it as foreign aid. These trade practices have prevented people in poor countries with rich soil from trying to export their way to prosperity with farm goods the way countries like South Korea and Japan have exported their way to prosperity with industrial goods. The current round of global trade talks, which will include a ministerial conference in Hong Kong from Dec. 13 to 18 is supposed to address the problem but has stalled, mainly over French opposition to sharper curbs on European Union subsidies. But the current system of subsidies faces another challenge: increasing yields from crop strains emerging from the laboratories at seed companies like Monsanto and the Pioneer Hi-Bred International unit of DuPont. New crops, some produced through the breeding and grafting of existing strains and others through genetic manipulation, are increasing corn production in the United States and Europe every year. This is adding to surpluses, depressing global prices and driving up the costs of subsidies, which have already hit $20 billion a year for trade-related subsidies alone in the United States, and almost $85 billion a year in the European Union. Individually, farmers welcome the new varieties of grain. 'As a grower I hate to admit it, but the people in the labs really helped us out this year,' said Joe Zumwalt, a third-generation farmer here in western Illinois, near the Mississippi River. 'If it weren't for the seed genetics they have been offering us the last few years, our yields and our outcome wouldn't have been nearly what they were.' But for farming communities as a whole, bumper crops can be bad news. 'Farmers really shoot themselves in the foot when they have a better crop,' said Neal E. Harle, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. 'An increase in yield rewards the producer with a disproportionate drop in price and profitability; farmers would be better off if the whole crop got a haircut of 15 percent or so.' The difficulty in trying to obtain a deal limiting agricultural subsidies at the World Trade Organization ministerial conference in January in Hong Kong is that countries as varied as Japan, Switzerland, France and even the United States are each worried that their farmers of certain crops would be among the first to fail if subsidies were reduced. Developing-country exporters of agricultural commodities like Brazil, Guatemala and Malaysia, meanwhile, are clamoring for the W.T.O. to halt moves by the United States and especially the European Union to limit the cost of their subsidies by dumping the excess food on world markets at low prices. Since 1996, American farmers have been encouraged by farm subsidy programs to produce flat out, knowing that government payments would cushion a severe drop in prices. But lately, with large increases in corn yields becoming the norm rather than an aberration, corn prices have dropped to their lowest level since the late 1990's. Low prices, tepid exports and ample subsidy protections for farmers mean this could end up being the most expensive harvest ever for American taxpayers. Groups like the National Corn Growers Association argue that the answer to overproduction lies in creating more demand through greater exports, which have proved elusive lately, and through building more plants that use corn to produce bio-diesel and ethanol fuels. 'We can provide this nation with a renewable source of energy all the time,' said Jonathan Hofmeister, 35, a corn and soybean farmer who lives a few miles from Mr. Zumwalt. But even as critics of the current system like Dr. Harle are pushing for limits on domestic subsidy payments to encourage farmers to curb their overproducing ways, they must contend with university researchers and big seed companies working feverishly to increase corn yields. The push the last 15 years has also been to make seeds able to retain more moisture so they can better withstand severe droughts. This past summer was the first real test of the newer drought-resistant seeds since the Midwest drought of 1988, seed company officials said. That the seeds passed with high marks - coming after the record 2004 American corn crop - shows that corn production may have entered an era of even higher production. As a result, the Green Revolution, including most recently the use of genetically engineered plants, is colliding with the international trade system. Rising crop yields in affluent countries, even in years with poor growing conditions, are producing more food than these countries' populations can eat. Rather than let the market sort out the winners from the losers, condemning some less-efficient farmers to go broke or forcing them to switch to other crops, governments continue to subsidize them heavily. And the cost of these subsidies has spiraled higher with increasing yields. Here in western Illinois, Mr. Zumwalt had expected corn yields of 120 to 130 bushels an acre because of the drought, but he ended up averaging 175 bushels. The cost to produce corn, meanwhile, has risen, he said, with fuel costs double what they were in 2004 and fertilizer 40 percent more expensive, in large part because of higher natural gas prices. While Mr. Zumwalt, 26, gives plenty of credit to advancements in seed genetics, he is a modern-day example of how farmers have also increased efficiency through use of better equipment and water-management practices. He uses combines that rely on a global-positioning system to map exactly how much corn each acre of land is yielding, giving him critical information on how much fertilizer, seed and chemicals are needed for the next harvest. Even with this year's Farm Belt drought, American corn yields have increased by 31 percent since 1995, and by 72 percent since 1975. In recent years, Europe, where much less corn is produced, has followed suit as the big companies have introduced newer seed varieties there as well. Lately the development of new seeds has accelerated considerably. After two severe droughts in the 1980's, companies began pouring billions of dollars into seed research, particularly in corn, with the goal of developing hybrids that could more effectively capture moisture from the root system. The challenge was to create that tolerance without sacrificing yield. In the 1990's corn breeders also began directing genetic technology developed in the human health industry into plant breeding. Breeders can now use DNA markers to study individual contributions from pieces of chromosome in the seed, allowing them to leverage multiple years of data. Monsanto, DuPont and the Swiss company Syngenta, three of the largest seed players, have established multiseason nurseries in places like Hawaii, Chile and Argentina, where they can test up to four generations of a seed variety in one year. 'We can work 365 days a year without having an off-season,' said William S. Niebur, DuPont's vice president for crop genetics research. Syngenta has recently reorganized its scientific teams to keep up with the advances in genomics and other disciplines, said Ray Riley, head of global corn and soybean product development for Syngenta. The result is that seed companies today are doubling the rate of genetic yield improvement in corn every year. Most recently, Monsanto, for example, claims its genetically modified seeds that limit the amount of corn root worm, a common problem in Illinois, have added at least nine bushels an acre. 'We don't see any signs that our ability to improve the yield of corn is diminishing,' said Marlin Edwards, global head of breeding technology for Monsanto. Those kinds of predictions make farmers like Mr. Zumwalt nervous about the prices their crops will fetch once conditions improve. 'We have just gotten too good at what we do, I guess,' he said.

Subject: Two Wars of Good and Evil From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 07:01:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/12/09/movies/09narn.html December 9, 2005 Two Wars of Good and Evil By A. O. SCOTT In the weeks leading up to the release of 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' the entertainment press has sometimes seemed so preoccupied with matters of allegory as to resemble an advanced seminar in Renaissance literature. It has never been a secret that C. S. Lewis, who taught that subject and others at Oxford for many years, composed his great cycle of seven children's fantasy novels with the New Testament in mind and with some of the literary traditions it inspired close at hand. To the millions since the 1950's for whom the books have been a source of childhood enchantment, Lewis's religious intentions have either been obvious, invisible or beside the point. Which is part of the appeal of allegory, as he well knew. It is a symbolic mode, not a literal one - there are, after all, no talking beavers in the Bible - and it constructs distinct levels of meaning among which readers travel of their own free will. An allegorical world is both a reflection of the real one and a reality unto itself, as Lewis's heroes, the four Pevensie children, come to discover. The story of Aslan's sacrifice and resurrection may remind some readers (and now viewers) of what they learned in Sunday school, but others, Christian or not, will be perfectly happy to let what happens in Narnia stay in Narnia. The supposed controversy over the religious content of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' may be overhyped, but a particular question of faith nonetheless hovers around the movie, which was produced by Walden Media and distributed by Disney. Anyone who grew up with the Narnia books is likely to be concerned less with Lewis's beliefs than with the filmmakers' fidelity to his work, which was idiosyncratic and imperfect in ways that may not easily lend themselves to appropriation by the shiny and hyperkinetic machinery of mass visual fantasy. But if a few liberties have been taken here and there, as is inevitable in the transition from page to screen, the spirit of the book is very much intact. The movie, directed by Andrew Adamson, does not achieve the sublimity of, say, Peter Jackson's 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy (which had the advantage of working from a richer allegory by an even more learned Oxford don), but it does use available technology to capture both the mythic power of Lewis's tale and, even better, its charm. Mr. Adamson, who directed the rambunctious 'Shrek' movies at DreamWorks, has nicely adjusted to the technical demands of mixing live action with computer-generated imagery. He also manages a less jokey, more earnest tone and temperament. Stocked with an estimable cast of actors - some doing voice-over, some appearing in wild costumes - 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' suggests that, at least in Hollywood, there is no such thing as too much Englishness. British children are especially prized, and little Georgie Henley, who plays Lucy, the youngest of the Pevensie children and the first to discover Narnia, is both winsome and indomitable, with a wide smile and a priceless accent (though not quite the same one as that of the actors playing her siblings). Lucy is sent off to the countryside to escape the Blitz, along with Peter (William Moseley), Susan (Anna Popplewell) and Edmund (Skandar Keynes), a fact mentioned in passing by Lewis and given more thorough treatment here. The opening sequence - German bombs falling on London neighborhoods, sowing panic and destruction - is a premonition of the climactic battle in Narnia, and also a reminder that the war between good and evil is not merely a metaphorical conceit. Exiled to the home of an eccentric scholar (Jim Broadbent) and his stern housekeeper (Elizabeth Hawthorne), the children spend their time playing and squabbling, during which the essential aspects of their characters emerge. Lucy and Peter, the eldest, are the more virtuous, while Edmund and Susan have darker, more complicated personalities (as well as fuller lips). Edmund has a penchant for dishonesty and a weakness for sweets, which both make him susceptible to the chilly lure of the White Witch (a terrifying Tilda Swinton), whose rule has turned Narnia into a land of perpetual winter, where fauns are tortured and turned to stone, and a secret police force of wolves harshly deals with rebels and traitors. Narnia's onscreen incarnation is credible enough. Talking-animal technology has made impressive strides lately, and most of the minotaurs, foxes and other creatures share the screen comfortably with the humans. Aslan, the noble lion who commands the fight against the White Witch, shows up late, looks fabulous and speaks in the mellow voice of Alfred Kinsey - that is, of Liam Neeson. The homey, chattering beavers, who provide comic byplay as well as a picture of shopkeeper steadfastness, are voiced by Ray Winstone and Dawn French. As the Pevensie children journey deeper into Narnia, the movie's scope widens and its dramatic intensity grows, a transition from intimacy to grandeur that is beautifully handled, without too many dead spots or digressions. Parents should take note: the battle scenes, though bloodless, are more brutal than a PG rating would usually permit, and the death of Aslan may prove overwhelming to younger children. But the somber, scary aspects of the story are inseparable from its magic, which in the end may work only indirectly on adults. For me, the best moments in the film take place in the wardrobe itself, which serves as a portal between England and Narnia. When the children pass through it for the first time, I felt a welcome tremor of apprehension and anticipation as the wooden floor turned into snowy ground and fur coats gave way to fir trees. The next two hours might not have quite delivered on that initial promise of wonder - we grown-ups, being heavy, are not so easily swept away by visual tricks - except when I looked away from the screen at the faces of breathless and wide-eyed children, my own among them, for whom the whole experience was new, strange, disturbing and delightful.

Subject: Movie Based on Children's Tale From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:52:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/national/03beliefs.html?ex=1291266000&en=d63d6e808df72218&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 3, 2005 Religious Questions Emerge Ahead of Movie Based on Children's Tale By PETER STEINFELS Should Aslan, the lion Christ-figure at the center of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' really be a donkey? That is one of the two serious religious questions that have emerged from all the cultural maneuvering in anticipation of next Friday's opening of the movie made from C. S. Lewis's children's tale about the land of Narnia. Narnia, it seems, is in danger of becoming a red state. Legions of evangelicals seem poised to make the new movie an adjunct to Sunday school, while critics uncomfortable about the religious subtext of Lewis's stories have been launching pre-emptive strikes to alert the susceptible. Stopping short of proposing a PG-13 label ('Parental guidance strongly advised - contains religious content and fleeting Christian imagery'), they have recognized the seven Narnia books as good escapist fantasy but please, please, don't pay any attention to the other stuff. 'The books are better when read without the subtext,' wrote Charles McGrath in The New York Times Magazine last month. 'Aslan, for example, is much more thrilling and mysterious if you think of him as a superhero lion, not as Jesus in a Bert Lahr suit.' So far, the best of these pre-emptive strikes was an essay on Lewis by Adam Gopnik that appeared in The New Yorker of Nov. 21. Midway, Mr. Gopnik tosses out the challenging notion that 'Aslan, the lion, the Christ symbol, who has exasperated generations of freethinking parents,' is 'in many ways an anti-Christian figure.' Aslan, of course, is the lion-king who can liberate Narnia from the wintry rule of a witch only after allowing himself to be sacrificially slain by her and then miraculously returning to life. 'Yet a central part of the Gospel story,' Mr. Gopnik objects, 'is that Jesus is not the lion of the faith but the lamb of God, while his other symbolic animal is, specifically, the lowly and bedraggled donkey. The moral force of the Christian story is that the lions are all on the other side.' 'If we had,' he continues, 'a donkey, a seemingly uninspiring animal from an obscure corner of Narnia, raised as an uncouth and low-caste beast of burden, rallying the mice and rats and weasels and vultures and all the other unclean animals, and then being killed by the lions in as humiliating a manner as possible - a donkey who re-emerges, to the shock even of his disciples and devotees, as the king of all creation - now, that would be a Christian allegory.' Now on one level this objection seems to contradict Mr. Gopnik's criticism of Lewis as a writer who kept squeezing his imagination into doctrinal allegories instead of letting 'the images just flow.' In Aslan's case, evidently, there was too much imaginative flowing and not enough strict Gospel allegory. Still, Mr. Gopnik's objection is provocative. Has he, however, entertained the possibility that his own 'Christian allegory' might be more than a little banal? It is a slightly mystical version of the secular underdog myth, the Robin Hood story, Spartacus, the ugly duckling and any number of other worthy tales that, in fact, owe something to the Gospels as well as to David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh and other stories of the Israelites. What distinguishes the Christian story, conveyed more in the Gospel of John and the letters of Paul than in the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, is that Jesus, the bedraggled donkey or helpless lamb, was also the all-powerful Godhead who had emptied and humbled himself to the point of death (Philippians 2:7-8). Does the powerful lion submitting to the witch's blade convey this better than could a donkey torn by lions' claws? There is room for debate and taste here. But whatever the allegorical logic, the 'Triumph of the Witch' chapter and Aslan's return to life that follows it in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' are among the most disturbing and memorable sections in the Narnia books, far beyond the boy's adventures of 'The Horse and His Boy' or the landscape descriptions that Mr. Gopnik commends. And the other serious religious question? Mr. Gopnik has posed that, too. For him, 'whatever we think of the allegories it contains, the imaginary world that Lewis created is what matters.' The believer and the atheist can meet 'in the realm of made-up magic,' he says, because they both need to register 'their understanding that a narrow material world, unlit by imagination, is inadequate to our experience, much less to our hopes.' But does that material world, once lit by imagination, become adequate to our experience and hopes? Mr. Gopnik doesn't explicitly say, but unlike Lewis he clearly does not think there is any further possibility. 'The experience of magic conveyed by poetry, landscape, light, and ritual, is,' he makes clear, only 'an experience of magic conveyed by poetry, landscape, light, and ritual.' Lewis believed otherwise. Alan Jacobs closes his recently published study of Lewis, 'The Narnian' (HarperSanFrancisco), with a passage that Kenneth Tynan, the theater critic, had asked to be read at his burial. A person as unlike Lewis as could be imagined, Tynan was nonetheless devoted to Lewis, his former Oxford tutor. The passage he chose, from a sermon Lewis delivered, warned that beauty was not ultimately in the books or music where it was thought to be found. 'It was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing,' Lewis said. 'For they are not the thing itself,' he went on; 'they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.' This is where the serious religious question lies. It is not a question about Lewis's eccentricities nor about some evangelicals' weakness for preachiness or hero-worship. It is a question about reality.

Subject: Wal-Mart Unit Hears Gay Wedding Bells From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:50:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/business/07asda.html?ex=1291611600&en=78dc0dc526f60395&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 Wal-Mart Unit Hears Gay Wedding Bells By HEATHER TIMMONS LONDON - Asda, Wal-Mart's British subsidiary, has introduced a line of wedding cards and 'commitment rings' this week - just in time for the country's legalization of gay civil partnerships. 'Wedding day wishes, Mrs. & Mrs.,' reads a pink-toned greeting card. A blue card decorated with two top hats says, 'Congratulations, Mr. & Mr.' The company will also sell a line of matching gold rings with diamond insets starting at £60 each ($104). Monday was the first day that same-sex couples were able to apply for a civil partnership. The first gay and lesbian marriages in England will take place on Dec. 21, and a long line of well-known Britons have already said they plan to pledge their troth, including the singers Sir Elton John and George Michael. 'Ever since gay weddings were given the official go-ahead, we've had a number of customers asking if we could introduce gay cards,' Ed Watson, an Asda spokesman, said. 'With the launch of our new range, we can ensure that our customers can celebrate every marriage - whether it is between him and her, him and him, or her and her,' he said. Critics of Wal-Mart, however, accused the company of hypocrisy, contrasting its marketing of gay wedding cards in Britain with its stricter controls in the United States. Wal-Mart has pulled some mainstream magazines from its shelves and refuses to carry some popular books because of their content, among them 'America (The Book)' by Jon Stewart and 'When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?' by George Carlin. 'They want to be all things to all people anywhere but in the United States,' said Tracy Sefl, research director for Wal-Mart Watch, an advocacy group based in Washington. 'In the United States, they have a conservative, right-leaning business model.' No one from Wal-Mart was available to comment on the issue, Jami Arms, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, said, speaking from Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. Asda, Britain's third-largest retailer, was purchased by Wal-Mart in 1999. Since then, however, it has carefully maintained its independence from its parent, London analysts say. Asda 'is a lot more comfortable selling music or books or magazines that Wal-Mart might consider risqué,' said Bryan Roberts, an analyst with the London consulting group Planet Retail. 'It would be foolish for Asda to exclude any of its customer groups for the sake of a political and moral stance on any issue.' Richard Perks, an analyst with the Mintel International Group, a London research firm, said, 'I would like to think that Wal-Mart would recognize that what may be suitable in some countries would not be suitable in others, and that any subsidiary would be allowed to market' as it saw fit. Some Asda campaigns might seem shocking to Wal-Mart shoppers in the United States. Last year, for example, Asda announced it was 'rolling back' the price of condoms in time for the Christmas party season. 'We are trying to illustrate that protection against sexually transmitted infection is easy, even more affordable and accessible,' Tony Page, Asda's non-food director, said in a statement at the time. The company's stores will be open late, Mr. Page's statement said, in case customers 'unexpectedly get lucky.' It also listed stores by condom sales per square foot. Asda's store in Chesser, a section of Edinburgh, took the top spot. This October, Asda cut prices on liquor and beer as part of a pre-Christmas promotion. 'Our latest round of price cuts will ensure our shoppers don't pay any more than they have to when it comes to stocking up on booze this Christmas,' said Mike Regnier, general manager for Asda beer, wines and spirits, in a news release. The company also added that it has retrained employees to ensure that customers who look younger than 21 are asked for identification. (The legal drinking age in Britain is 18.) The cultures of Asda and Wal-Mart are 'very different,' Mr. Watson, the Asda spokesman, said. Then again, he added, the cultures of America and Britain are very different.

Subject: Geese Flying From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:47:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/magazine/04lives.html?ex=1291352400&en=607022d4afb8089b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 4, 2005 Geese Flying By SUSAN YORK I first saw the artist Agnes Martin lecture in 1982 in Albuquerque. She said: 'My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind.' I thought she was speaking directly to me. It took me a year to find the courage to call her. I wrote out a script of what I would say and laid my yellow legal pad with the dialogue printed in blue ink in front of me. 'Hello,' answered the plain, flat voice. I couldn't think of what to say. My heart began beating faster; the silence continued. Finally, I read from my paper: 'Hello, Ms. Martin, this is Susan York.' 'Oh, yes, hello.' 'I sent you a postcard for a show I'm in,' I said, following my lines. 'Yes, I got it,' she said. 'And I can't decide.' Can't decide? I frantically scanned the yellow paper, looking futilely for the right words. 'Can't decide?' 'No. Can't decide if you're ready to be internationally recognized or not. Won't be able to tell that until I see the work.' I kept searching my page. 'Well, uh, would you like to come see the show?' 'No, never do that.' I was trying to come up with a reply when she finally spoke. 'You can come for tea,' she said. 'At 3.' The next thing I heard was the dial tone. The road to Galisteo cut across a wide mesa. In the distance, layers of blue mountain ranges rested behind clouds, trees and ancient petroglyphs. Agnes, in her early 70's on that afternoon in 1983, stood in the doorway of her house. Her short salt-and-pepper hair framed red cheeks and blue eyes that sometimes seemed to be on the earth and other times beyond it. The small home resembled a New Mexico tract house with a white generic interior. Everything was spare and tidy; three rocking chairs in the living room and one picture that looked like a Georgia O'Keeffe print. As in her books, she spoke in absolutes. 'Never have children. Do not live the middle-class life. Never do anything that will take away from your work.' Opening the door to her studio, she said, 'Never let anyone in your studio.' It was a long, simple adobe building that Agnes had built by hand. She had no electricity in there and worked only from the morning until 3 p.m. I was struck silent by a 6-by-6-foot painting composed of horizontal lines and washes of gray. Did she tell me it was geese flying, or did I dream it that night? Infinite washes of gray paint held by graphite lines, the painting made me think of the almost steady line of a child's pencil meeting watery Japanese calligraphy. She told me she wanted to preserve the work of the Abstract Expressionists. She asked me about the Zen center where I lived and had a studio. I had no way of knowing it then, but for the next several years I would meet her nearly every month for tea or dinner. I learned about the artist's life from her, long before I had found my own. I was just a few years out of college, but I thought time was running out. 'I didn't get my first show until I was 45,' she said, fixing her penetrating gaze on me. 'If I could tell you anything, I would tell you that you have time.' Over the next decade, I continued making my art, but as Agnes often told me, I was frustrated. Something was missing in my work that I still hadn't been able to grasp. She told me she had once worked as a dishwasher, saving enough money to spend an entire year solely in her studio. She thought I should do the same; instead, I entered graduate school. In my work there, I sieved powdered pigment onto the floor, filling rooms with giant arcs and rectangles. Afterward I was pleased to have nothing left but a bag of swept-up pigment. When I met Agnes the following summer, she thought the new work was ridiculous. 'How are you going to sell it if it ends up in a garbage bag?' she asked in that flat voice that sounded like the truth. And in fact, it was the truth. But I knew this work held the missing piece: I realized that I wanted to distill thousands of miles into a single inch. Today, I cover whole rooms in graphite, rubbing the walls with my hand until the flat black carbon turns infinitely silver. My hand was covered in graphite when I heard that Agnes had died. It was around this time last December, and I remember the world became quiet. Susan York teaches at the College of Santa Fe.

Subject: Latin America Is Growing Impatient From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:42:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/international/americas/24PERU.html?ex=1403409600&en=a25ff61dd25812bf&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND June 24, 2004 Latin America Is Growing Impatient With Democracy By JUAN FORERO ILAVE, Peru — On a morning in April, people in this normally placid spot in Peru's southeastern highlands burst into a town council meeting, grabbed their mayor, dragged him through the streets and lynched him. The killers, convinced the mayor was on the take and angry that he had neglected promises to pave a highway and build a market for vendors, also badly beat four councilmen. The beating death of the mayor may seem like an isolated incident in an isolated Peruvian town but it is in fact a specter haunting elected officials across Latin America. A kind of toxic impatience with the democratic process has seeped into the region's political discourse, even a thirst for mob rule that has put leaders on notice. In the last few years, six elected heads of state have been ousted in the face of violent unrest, something nearly unheard of in the previous decade. A widely noted United Nations survey of 19,000 Latin Americans in 18 countries in April produced a startling result: a majority would choose a dictator over an elected leader if that provided economic benefits. Analysts say that the main source of the discontent is corruption and the widespread feeling that elected governments have done little or nothing to help the 220 million people in the region who still live in poverty, about 43 percent of the population. 'Latin America is paying the price for centuries of inequality and injustice, and the United States really doesn't have a clue about what is happening in the region,' said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. 'These are very, very fragile regimes,' he added. 'Increasingly, there's frustration and resentment. The rate of voting is going down. Blank ballots are increasing. The average Latin American would prefer a very strong government that produces a physical security and economic security, and no government has been able to do that.' These at-risk governments stretch thousands of miles from the Caribbean and Central America through the spine of the Andes to the continent's southern cone, and increasingly the problems associated with weak governments are spilling beyond Latin America and affecting United States interests in the region. 'We're confronted with large increase in illegal migration,' Mr. Roett said, 'more drugs pouring into the American market to meet an insatiable demand, and the potential for regime failure that could spread in the region and bring serious threats to our security position in the hemisphere.' Among the weakest states is Guatemala, which struggles with paramilitary groups, youth gangs and judicial impunity and has become a crossroads for the smuggling of people and drugs to the United States. Several other governments are fragile at best and susceptible to popular unrest that could further weaken and topple them. These include the interim administration of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue in Haiti, which took power after a popular revolt this year, and President Carlos Mesa in Bolivia, who took power after such a revolt last year. The most unpredictable and volatile region is the Andes. Venezuela remains deeply polarized, as foes of President Hugo Chávez plot to oust him while he continues with what he has called a 'peaceful revolution' that includes a radical redistribution of the nation's oil wealth. Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia are buffeted by nearly continuous protests from indigenous groups and other once-forgotten classes that are demanding to be heard. Their struggles vividly demonstrate an issue that animates strife in nearly all Latin America — the gap between the haves and have-nots of money and power that makes the region the world's most inequitable, and increasingly the most politically polarized. Even in Argentina, once Latin America's most developed country, President Néstor Kirchner has warned of threats against his government and his life as he struggles to root out corruption, repair democratic institutions and lift the country out of an economic implosion in 2001 that prompted the fall of four presidents in two weeks. In Argentina and elsewhere, the most immediate cause for alarm is the short-lived nature of individual governments and the havoc it can create. But the larger concern is that roiling instability is eroding the foundations of democracy. In this climate, even competence has become cause for concern — the popular impulse being to find something that works and to stick with it, whether arrived at democratically or not. In Colombia, where a stable and popular government has made new strides in beating back a 40-year-old Marxist insurgency and reviving the economy, the temptation has been to extend extrajudicial authority to President Álvaro Uribe's government and even change the constitution to permit his re-election. But, then, the pool of competent leaders from which to chose has proved limited. Having lost faith in President Alejandro Toldeo, Peruvians, opinion polls show, look to a return of Alberto K. Fujimori, the elected authoritarian who fled after corruption charges and lives in Japan, or to Alan García, another former president, who was exiled in disgrace after a tenure considered one of the most corrupt and incompetent in Peru's recent history. Their fortunes are being revived with the feeling, increasingly common in Peru and elsewhere, that only a caudillo, the classic Latin strongman, can solve the longstanding problems that plague the region. The United Nations report, also drawn from interviews with current and former presidents, political analysts and cultural and economic figures, showed that 56 percent of those asked said economic progress was more important than democracy. 'Democracy today is broad, but it's not deep,' said Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington-based policy group. 'It's broad in that the leadership talks about it, it's a buzzword. But the danger is that the more they talk about it the more skeptical the population becomes because they see a great deal of rhetoric but the standard of living of the impoverished hasn't improved.' The view is common among the common man, particularly in poverty-stricken corners. 'I believe in an authoritarian government, if it works,' said Daniel Vargas, 24, a university student from Ilave whose father was accused with six others of having orchestrated the lynching of the mayor, Fernando Cirilo Robles. 'They do this in other countries and it works. Look at Cuba, that works. Look at Pinochet in Chile, that worked.' The United Nations report noted that the promise of prosperity offered by democracy has gone unfulfilled. Economic growth per capita, it said, 'did not vary in a significant manner' in Latin America in the last 20 years, even though analysts had predicted that growth would pick up as governments flung open the doors to free-market changes prescribed by Washington and the International Monetary Fund. That institution has instead come to be considered a bête noire in this and many other developing parts of the world. A slump in local economies that has lasted years has only deepened the discontent with governments already widely scorned as corrupt and overly bureaucratic. Predictions that economic growth is on the way — economists say Latin America will record a 4 percent growth rate this year after a long slump — have done little to quell the dissatisfaction. The main reason: recent growth has not been widely shared, but concentrated in isolated pockets, usually attached to multinational investments that employ few people. Peru is a good example. It has the region's most impressive economic growth, on paper, with the economy expanding about 4 percent a year since Mr. Toledo was elected in 2001. But that growth has not filtered down, and the deep disillusionment that failure has inspired is not lost on Mr. Toledo, whose approval rating is mired below 10 percent. 'What good is an impressive growth rate?' he said in a speech in May. 'Wall Street applauds us, but in the streets, no. So what good is it?' The poverty and inequality that breed unrest are never more apparent than in this desolate region, 13,000 feet above sea level, that hugs Lake Titicaca and the Bolivian border. Unlike Lima, prosperous and modern, the hamlets and farms here provide a meager life. 'What we have here is a subhuman life,' said Teófilo Challo, 27, a farmer. 'We try to make it and work from sunrise to sundown just to survive. But we win nothing. No services, no health care, nothing.' Like many in Latin America who feel a disconnect from their government, the people here are Aymará Indians. They form part of Latin America's forgotten classes, often indigenous or otherwise nonwhite, who increasingly promise political upheaval. 'The government only pays attention to those who have power,' said Néstor Chambi, an indigenous leader and agronomist. 'Rights are not for the poor. They are for the rich, by the rich, and so the people here have gotten tired.' The popular discontent with a central government seen as aloof, unresponsive and subservient to powerful interests was only amplified as Ilave's political, business and church leaders raised concerns about suspected corruption and incompetence by Mayor Robles, to no effect. That Mr. Robles is Aymara himself, like practically all the townspeople here, did not matter. People here and throughout the region charge that politicians are corrupted by power and a long tradition in which politics is used as a spoils system for personal enrichment. Elected officials do not remember their people or keep their promises, people here complained. Gregorio Ticona, the first Aymará elected to Congress, faces corruption charges. The president of the regional government, David Jiménez, was also charged in May with corruption. 'Institutions have no more credibility,' said Percy Flórez, a municipal official in Ilave. Mr. Robles, a university-educated social scientist who belonged to a far-left fringe party, had political adversaries who agitated for his resignation, namely the lieutenant mayor, Alberto Sandoval, who has also been charged in Mr. Robles' death. But the political campaigning, mounting protests and hyperbolic reports in local radio stations, which fomented the unrest, did little to attract attention outside Ilave. Protests reached a fever pitch after an April 2 meeting where residents demanded to know details of the town's finances, only to be shouted down by Mr. Robles's lieutenants. 'People wanted to ask where the money was, but they did not let them speak,' said Mr. Flórez. The mayor tried to diffuse tensions by leaving town. But when he returned on April 26 for a town council meeting at his house a mob awaited. Mr. Robles fled with four councilmen, who sought refuge in an adjacent house, but were hunted down and dragged out into the dusty street. 'They threw rocks at the windows and we were so afraid,' said Arnaldo Chambilla, a councilman, from his hospital bed. 'They pulled me out, they beat me. I do not remember after that.' Another councilman, Edgar Lope, recalled begging his attackers. 'I kneeled and said, `Please forgive me,' ' he said. 'At that point, I had given myself to the Lord.'

Subject: Latin America Fails to Deliver From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:38:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/international/americas/22bolivia.html?ex=1266814800&en=f39f4fe7c1ec29cf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland February 22, 2005 Latin America Fails to Deliver on Basic Needs By JUAN FORERO EL ALTO, Bolivia - Piped water, like the runoff from the glaciers above this city, runs tantalizingly close to Remedios Cuyuña's home. But with no way to pay the $450 hookup fee charged by the French-run waterworks, she washes her clothes and bathes her three children in frigid well water beside a fetid creek. So in January, when legions of angry residents rose up against the company, she eagerly joined in. The fragile government of President Carlos Mesa, hoping to avert the same kind of uprising that toppled his predecessor in 2003, then took a step that proved popular but shook foreign investors to their core. It canceled the contract of Aguas del Illimani, a subsidiary of the $53 billion French giant Suez, effectively tossing it out of the country and leaving the state responsible. 'For us, this is good,' Ms. Cuyuña said, voicing the sentiment in much of El Alto. 'Maybe now, they will charge us less.' That is far from certain. Even less certain is how she and 130 million other Latin Americans will get clean water anytime soon in a region where providing basic services remains among the most pressing public health and political issues. Governments like Bolivia's tried the task themselves before, abandoned it as too costly, and turned to private companies in the 1990's. Today as privatization is rejected, foreign investment is plummeting across the region and the challenge is being returned to states perhaps less equipped than a decade ago. The trend is not unique to Bolivia, where a lack of clean water contributes to the death of every tenth child before the age of 5, and it has presented Latin American leaders with a nettlesome question: what now? 'The decisions that have to be made are stark and difficult,' said Riordan Roett, director of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University. 'They're going to have to make some sort of compromise, and that compromise often means buying back and taking over those services - and then, of course, making them efficient in the hands of the state. Their track record doing this in the past was miserable.' Indeed, the heated backlash against free-market changes - fueled by the sense that they promised more than they delivered while offering overpriced, often flawed services - has at once left governments vulnerable to volatile protests and forced foreign companies to retreat. No companies have been more buffeted than those running public utilities offering water, electrical and telephone services, or those that extract minerals and hydrocarbons, which, like water, are seen as part of a nation's patrimony. In Peru, despite major economic growth, foreign investment fell to $1.3 billion last year from $2.1 billion in 2002. Ecuador has also seen investments sag, as oil companies that once saw the country as a rosy destination have faced the increasingly determined opposition of Indian tribes and environmental groups. Argentina, which has taken a decidedly leftist path in the economic recovery following its 2001 collapse, has recouped only a fraction of the investments it attracted just a few years ago. Across the region, companies are more than ever weighing political risks when considering expansion plans. Political leaders, meanwhile, are having to weigh the need for foreign investment against the demands of citizens who are increasingly quick to hit the streets. 'In the last decade, non-economic factors have become even more important in affecting investments,' said César Gaviria, former secretary general of the Organization of American States. 'Political risks have grown to a great degree,' added Mr. Gaviria, now chairman of Hemispheric Partners, a firm based in the United States that provides political and economic risk analysis to investors. 'There's no doubt about it.' The fall in foreign investment is perhaps most pronounced in Bolivia, where in 1999 it totaled $1 billion as gas companies flocked here to mine newly discovered fields. Last year, it fell to $134 million, as companies proved skittish after President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was ousted in uprisings set off by his plans to permit multinational companies to export Bolivia's natural gas. Those who resist the trends of globalization have been emboldened by what they see as the success of local people in asserting their control over resources. 'It has been phenomenal to see a movement largely made up of the indigenous and peasant farmers fight and win,' said Deborah James, who directs campaigns against American-led globalization efforts at Global Exchange, a San Francisco group. 'What you see is a massive popular rejection of transnational companies owning essential services.' Others, less enthusiastic, see a troubling degree of political instability and a perfect storm of uncertainty on the horizon. 'You see, in country after country, that the battle lines are being drawn over utility questions,' said Michael Shifter, a senior fellow who closely tracks the Andes for the Washington policy group Inter-American Dialogue. 'It builds a great resentment and rage that things so essential to people, like water, like electricity, are not being delivered in a fair and equitable way. That's a formula for rage that leads to mobilization, and that's why we're seeing a convulsed region.' In Uruguay, a referendum in October guaranteed public control over water resources, enshrining water as a 'basic human right.' In Chile's central valley region, 99.2 percent of voters in a plebiscite in 2000 rejected privatization of the state-run water company. (The government privatized anyway.) In Argentina, another French water provider was tossed out in 1998, while Ecuador's government has repeatedly failed to privatize telecommunications and electricity generating companies. In Peru, protests against plans to privatize electric utilities have been persistent, while as far north as Nicaragua and Mexico, activists have fought efforts to battle privatization plans for water systems. The battle surrounding Aguas del Illimani, which provided water for El Alto, is revealing of the anger over privatizations that many here say they were never consulted about and never asked for, but were put in place as a condition for loans from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Indeed, Aguas del Illimani was not the first company to get a taste of Bolivians' fury. In 2000, in the midst of angry demonstrations, the state annulled a contract with Bechtel, a multinational based in San Francisco that had doubled fees on being granted the concession in Cochabamba. In 2003, in the face of protests and instability, a consortium of companies signaled that it had all but called off a $5 billion pipeline project to transport natural gas to the Pacific, from where it would have been shipped to the United States. Under continuing pressure, the government of President Mesa is now moving forward with legislation that would raise taxes and increase government control of energy projects in Bolivia. So the stage was set for the outburst against Aguas, which grew out of a decision by Mr. Mesa to raise subsidized fuel prices on Dec. 30, even though the company did not seem a likely target before now. The Bolivian government had in fact welcomed Aguas in 1997 to turn around an inefficient public system that provided water to El Alto and the adjacent capital, La Paz. After it arrived, Aguas says it met its contractual obligations and expanded services, and even government officials concede that the company did an admirable job at first. Potable water, offered by the state water company to 152,812 households in the two cities in 1997, rose by 81,180 households in seven years. Sewage service was expanded to more than 160,000 households by last year from 95,995. But eight years into its contract, Aguas ran into problems. Profits were never as high as the company would have liked, since the former country people who flocked to El Alto, a mostly indigenous city of 750,000, were used to conserving and never consumed much water. When company officials asked state regulators for permission to increase monthly fees, their request was rejected. But the company won permission to increase the hookup fees, to $450 from just over $300. It was a fee most people here - where the average monthly wage is about $55 - could never hope to pay. 'It was contractual, so I cannot blame Aguas del Illimani,' said José Barragán, the government's vice minister of basic services, in charge of water service. 'But a prudent administrator would not have taken that road.' Mr. Barragán says that the government 'is not accusing Aguas for not complying with the contract.' Instead, he said, the company avoided government efforts to renegotiate so that service could be expanded, a contention the company denies. The lack of a resolution effectively left 200,000 people without any real chance of obtaining water service, Mr. Barragán said. 'That's completely false,' said Alberto Chávez, Aguas's general manager, emphasizing that the company had shown a willingness to meet with both the government and the leaders of Fejuve, an El Alto group that organized protests. Still, Mr. Chávez conceded that 70,000 people in Aguas's concession area in El Alto still had no water. Now, with Aguas's contract canceled, the question in El Alto remains how to expand and improve service. No one believes that the state or the city of El Alto, both cash poor, will be able to do so. 'Ultimately, if Bolivians are going to get real access for water it's going to have to be subsidized,' said Jim Shultz, director of the Democracy Center, a policy group in Cochabamba, Bolivia's third-largest city, that studies the effects of free market reforms. 'And it's going to have to be subsidized in some form of foreign assistance.' That, he noted, is not a realistic proposition, because Bolivia cannot afford to seek more loans and foreign governments are not so willing to make big cash outlays to a state they view as increasingly erratic. Many residents, like Franz Choque, 31, a construction worker, are worried. He said that he was not philosophically opposed to a private company running the water system. He only wanted the costs to be just and the service to be effective. 'It is O.K. for a foreign company to be here, but they should charge the Bolivian rate, not like in the country where they come from,' said Mr. Choque, as he worked on a new school that will have running water only because residents have pooled resources to pay for the hookup. 'Not everything can be free. We can pay a little. But we just want a fair price.'

Subject: Paul Krugman: The Promiser in Chief From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:38:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 9, 2005 Paul Krugman: The Promiser in Chief By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman looks at the promises President Bush made to rebuild Iraq and New Orleans, and the large costs of failing to deliver: The Promiser in Chief, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Sometimes reconstruction delayed is reconstruction denied. A few months after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush promised to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy. He - or, at any rate, his speechwriters - understood that reconstruction was important not just for its own sake, but as a way to deprive the growing insurgency of support. ... But for a long time, Iraqi reconstruction was more of a public relations exercise than a real effort. ... Both supporters and opponents of the war now argue that ... the Bush administration missed a crucial window of opportunity. By the time reconstruction spending began in earnest, it was in a losing race with a deteriorating security situation. As a result, the electricity and jobs that were supposed to make the killers desperate never arrived. ... Now we're losing another window of opportunity for reconstruction. ... Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush made an elaborately staged appearance in New Orleans, where he promised big things. ... But Mr. Bush seems to have forgotten about his promise. More than three months after Katrina, a major reconstruction effort isn't even in the planning stage... 'To an extent almost inconceivable a few months ago,' a Los Angeles Times report ... says, 'the only real actors in the rebuilding drama at the moment are the city's homeowners and business owners.' It's worth noting in passing that Mr. Bush hasn't even appointed a new team to fix the dysfunctional Federal Emergency Management Agency. .... One FEMA program has, however, been revamped. The Recovery Channel is a satellite and Internet network that used to provide practical information to disaster victims. Now it features public relations segments telling viewers what a great job FEMA and the Bush administration are doing. ... By letting the gulf region languish, Mr. Bush is allowing a window of opportunity to close, just as he did in Iraq. ... The ... private sector can't rebuild the region on its own. The reason goes beyond the need for flood protection and basic infrastructure, which only the government can provide. Rebuilding is also blocked by a vicious circle of uncertainty. Business owners are reluctant to return to the gulf region because they aren't sure whether their customers and workers will return, too. And families are reluctant to return because they aren't sure whether businesses will be there to provide jobs and basic amenities. A credible reconstruction plan could turn that vicious circle into a virtuous circle, in which everyone expects a regional recovery and, by acting on that expectation, helps that recovery come to pass. But as the months go by with no plan and no money, businesses and families will make permanent decisions to relocate elsewhere, and the loss of faith in a gulf region recovery will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Funny, isn't it? Back during the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush promised to avoid 'nation building.' And so he has. He failed to rebuild Iraq because he waited too long to get started. And now he's doing the same thing here at home.

Subject: Paul Krugman: The Promiser in Chief From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:36:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 9, 2005 Paul Krugman: The Promiser in Chief By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman looks at the promises President Bush made to rebuild Iraq and New Orleans, and the large costs of failing to deliver: The Promiser in Chief, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Sometimes reconstruction delayed is reconstruction denied. A few months after the invasion of Iraq, President Bush promised to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and economy. He - or, at any rate, his speechwriters - understood that reconstruction was important not just for its own sake, but as a way to deprive the growing insurgency of support. ... But for a long time, Iraqi reconstruction was more of a public relations exercise than a real effort. ... Both supporters and opponents of the war now argue that ... the Bush administration missed a crucial window of opportunity. By the time reconstruction spending began in earnest, it was in a losing race with a deteriorating security situation. As a result, the electricity and jobs that were supposed to make the killers desperate never arrived. ... Now we're losing another window of opportunity for reconstruction. ... Two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush made an elaborately staged appearance in New Orleans, where he promised big things. ... But Mr. Bush seems to have forgotten about his promise. More than three months after Katrina, a major reconstruction effort isn't even in the planning stage... 'To an extent almost inconceivable a few months ago,' a Los Angeles Times report ... says, 'the only real actors in the rebuilding drama at the moment are the city's homeowners and business owners.' It's worth noting in passing that Mr. Bush hasn't even appointed a new team to fix the dysfunctional Federal Emergency Management Agency. .... One FEMA program has, however, been revamped. The Recovery Channel is a satellite and Internet network that used to provide practical information to disaster victims. Now it features public relations segments telling viewers what a great job FEMA and the Bush administration are doing. ... By letting the gulf region languish, Mr. Bush is allowing a window of opportunity to close, just as he did in Iraq. ... The ... private sector can't rebuild the region on its own. The reason goes beyond the need for flood protection and basic infrastructure, which only the government can provide. Rebuilding is also blocked by a vicious circle of uncertainty. Business owners are reluctant to return to the gulf region because they aren't sure whether their customers and workers will return, too. And families are reluctant to return because they aren't sure whether businesses will be there to provide jobs and basic amenities. A credible reconstruction plan could turn that vicious circle into a virtuous circle, in which everyone expects a regional recovery and, by acting on that expectation, helps that recovery come to pass. But as the months go by with no plan and no money, businesses and families will make permanent decisions to relocate elsewhere, and the loss of faith in a gulf region recovery will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Funny, isn't it? Back during the 2000 campaign Mr. Bush promised to avoid 'nation building.' And so he has. He failed to rebuild Iraq because he waited too long to get started. And now he's doing the same thing here at home.

Subject: Please remove. From: Double Post To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:51:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Sorry about the double post. I do not know how it happened. Please remove.

Subject: Thanks Bobby! From: Thanks Bobby! To: Double Post Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 14:26:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I only pressed once :) Sorry.

Subject: At Google, Cube Culture Has New Rules From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 10:03:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/technology/05google.html?ex=1291438800&en=21f8f8d15e5f5f38&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 5, 2005 At Google, Cube Culture Has New Rules By STEVE LOHR Google, like I.B.M., says that it is forging a corporate culture in which success depends on performance. But while I.B.M. is an old company that has revamped the social contract with its workers, Google is writing a new one from scratch. Some of Google's benefit and compensation practices resemble I.B.M.'s. The retirement plan is a tax-deferred 401(k) program with employee savings matched by company contributions, as it is for new employees at I.B.M. starting this year. Annual bonuses at Google range up to 25 or 30 percent, as they do at I.B.M. Yet Google portrays itself as a special place, starting with its company motto, 'Don't Be Evil.' And its programs and perks for employees are unusual, even by the often-generous standards of young Silicon Valley companies in good times. Meals of all kinds, painstakingly prepared by company chefs, are free at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., a modern corporate campus known as the Googleplex. Other amenities there include children's day care, doctors, dry cleaning, laundry, a gym, and basketball and volleyball courts. Maternity or paternity leave is 12 weeks at 75 percent of full pay. There is also up to $500 available for takeout meals for the entire family after a newborn arrives, courtesy of Google. Shuttle buses (with wireless Internet access for working while commuting) ferry employees to the Googleplex from throughout the Bay area. And the big perk: the company's engineers are given 20 percent of their time to pursue their own ideas instead of company assignments. The company is currently hiring about 10 people a day, adding to a workforce of more than 5,000. The essence of the Google pitch, said Shona L. Brown, vice president of operations, is: 'Hey, come join us doing really exciting things. We're trying to change the world.' That prospect proved appealing to Paul Rademacher, 31, who came to Google in September from DreamWorks, where he worked on the software behind movies like 'Shrek 2' and 'Madagascar.' Mr. Rademacher caught the attention of Google executives with a Web site he built on his own, www.housingmaps.com, which links Google's mapping software with property listings on Craigslist, the online bulletin board, to display houses and neighborhoods. After talking to Google engineers and executives, Mr. Rademacher came away impressed that the company was a place that gave people 'room to do great things.' At Google, he is working on new products that remain secret. In previous jobs, Mr. Rademacher rarely thought beyond a year or two, but he said he could see himself staying at Google for a long time. 'If you really feel that you're part of the larger effort, that you have both opportunity and ownership, loyalty does follow,' he said. To encourage a sense of ownership, all Google employees receive stock grants or options. With revenues growing at nearly 100 percent and profit rising faster, Google's stock price has more than doubled so far this year. So there are a lot of happy owners these days. The company also doles out cash payments, including Founders' Awards of millions of dollars, for innovations that add value to the Google franchise. But what happens to all this corporate largesse when, someday, the laws of economic gravity are felt at Google and growth slows sharply or worse? The thinking seems to be that any slowdown will be a soft landing that can be managed by easing the pace of hiring. Real belt-tightening, apparently, is unimaginable. 'We will not pull back on our commitments to employees,' Ms. Brown said. 'The last thing we would do is take it out of the hide of our employees. That is a path to a downward spiral.'

Subject: Blue Jay Taking a Drink From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 10:00:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=3761&u=18759|60|... Blue Jay Taking a Drink New York City--Central Park, Conservatory Garden.

Subject: In Mongolia, an 'Extinction Crisis' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:31:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/science/06WILD.html?ex=1291525200&en=44e5ecaeee21d22a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 In Mongolia, an 'Extinction Crisis' Looms By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD ULAN BATOR, Mongolia - On a highway west of this capital, roadside signs advertise marmot, fox and other wildlife, and stacks of skins stand on display. In open markets, traders conduct a gritty commerce in furs and hides, much of it illegal. Similar markets flourish elsewhere in Mongolia, especially along the border with China. If the good news in Mongolia is the gradual comeback of the Przewalski wild horses, the disturbing news is the diminishing numbers of other wildlife, under relentless siege by overhunting and excessive trade in skins and other animal products. A new study of wildlife, one of the country's most distinctive resources, has revealed alarming declines in most species, especially in the last 15 years. By some estimates, the populations of endangered species - marmots, argali sheep, antelope, red deer, bears, Asiatic wild asses - have plummeted by 50 to 90 percent. The only other possible exception to the woeful trend, conservation experts say, is the apparent increase in wolves. That is hardly welcomed by herders. If the animals wolves prey on become scarce, these predators can be expected to become a greater menace to livestock, and there is reported evidence that this is already happening. 'The country is facing a quite extraordinary and unnoticed extinction crisis, or at least the threat of one,' said Peter Zahler, assistant director for Asia at the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. The conservation society, with financing from the World Bank, conducted the comprehensive study of Mongolia's wildlife and concluded, 'There is near unanimous agreement among hunters, traders and biologists in Mongolia that continued wildlife trade at the volumes reported is unsustainable.' In August, biologists, international conservation specialists and Mongolian government officials met here to review the study's findings. Participants, the conservation society reported, cited numerous shortcomings in the laws and the management and enforcement practices that contribute to the problem. They also said that corruption existed 'at all management levels.' Even though the Mongolian Constitution declares wildlife to be a common resource of the people, the society's investigators found that the government had made only feeble efforts to regulate trade and control hunting. A draft report of the study, 'The Silent Steppe: The Illegal Wildlife Trade Crisis in Mongolia,' was circulated recently. It noted that the country's independence from the Soviet Union, in 1990, 'was the undoing of Mongolia's century-long effort to control wildlife trade.' Once on its own, the country's 'economy halved, inflation skyrocketed, incomes fell to near zero and store shelves emptied.' Under the circumstances, the report continued, 'virtually everyone was looking for a way out of this sudden poverty and, for many, wildlife, now unprotected, provided the answer.' Hunting for subsistence and income increased. Illegal trade in meat and other animal products proliferated. 'Neighboring countries, especially China, have been the happy recipients of this new stream of wildlife product, consuming millions of animals every year and generating uncounted profits,' the report said. The investigators determined that more than 250,000 Mongolians, out of a population of 2.6 million, are active hunters. The wildlife trade is conservatively estimated to exceed $100 million a year, which does not include sales of game meat and traditional medicinal products derived from animals. Nearly all the trade is illegal. James R. Wingard, a Montana lawyer who specializes in conservation law, spent much of this year directing the study. He and students at the National University of Mongolia conducted more than 3,000 interviews with hunters, biologists, government officials and wildlife traders, known here as 'changers.' With Dr. Zahler and other experts, he also examined the available research reports on animal populations, their reproduction and growth rates and the environment's carrying capacities for the individual species. One morning, Mr. Wingard stopped at several roadside trading establishments outside Ulan Bator. They had large warehouses behind high wooden or concrete fences, but they did not conceal the nature of their business. At one place, a sign with bold black words read like a menu: marmot, goat, cow, horse, deer and fox. 'They know about our project,' Mr. Wingard said as he walked over to speak with one trader. 'They are very, very open in talking with us. The animals may be illegal to hunt, but once the animal enters the market, there's virtually no control.' Last year, for example, the government imposed a ban on hunting marmot, a rodent with behavior similar to that of prairie dogs and once plentiful in burrows everywhere on the plains and in the hills. Yet marmot fur still shows up on the market, fetching $10 each. The Chinese, Mr. Wingard said, stitch marmot fur in with sable in making what they sell as sable coats. A marmot census cited in the report showed that the animals, which once numbered 40 million, had dropped to 20 million in 1990 and fewer than 5 million in 2002, a decline of 75 percent in only 12 years. 'If this trend continues, soon you're going to see an ecological crash,' Mr. Wingard said. The prospects are even more alarming for other species. In the last five years, the saiga antelope has declined from more than 5,000 to fewer than 800; the saiga horn is prized in China as a traditional remedy. The red deer population has fallen 92 percent in 18 years, and the argali, the wild mountain sheep with handsome spiraling horns, are down 75 percent in 16 years. One of the rarest animals in the Mongolian mountains is the snow leopard, and its survival is endangered. Though the trade is difficult to track, investigators said they found 17 fresh leopard skins in a small border town in China, apparently poached in Mongolia. Last summer, Russian border guards confiscated 13 Mongolian skins. The Gobi bear, a small animal related to the brown bear and known to exist only in a corner of the desert here, may be beyond saving. Dr. Zahler, of the conservation society, said that as few as 25 were left. 'The bears appear to face numerous potential threats, ranging from lack of food and water to inbreeding and fragmentation of the few remaining breeding adults,' Dr. Zahler wrote in an earlier research report. At the International Asiatic Wild Ass Conference, held in August at Hustai National Park in Mongolia, biologists and conservation experts expressed concern over the diminishing numbers of the animal known here as the khulan. It is one of only three species of ass left in the wild; the others are in Africa and different parts of Asia. The khulan, smaller than a horse but larger than a donkey, used to be a familiar sight even in the Gobi Desert. No one knows how plentiful they were, but a 2003 census numbers them at 20,000. Scientists at the conference said that overhunting and recent bitter winters are probably causing a net loss of khulan population of 10 percent a year. Petra Kaczensky, a wildlife biologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany, said, 'We see signs of poaching throughout the national parks,' which are supposedly protected lands closed to hunters. Christian Walzer, a biologist at the veterinary college of the University of Vienna, said the attitude of the Mongolian people, though understandable, was an impediment to regulating khulan hunting. 'They don't want there to be more khulan and don't want them to disappear,' Dr. Walzer said. 'They worry about the grazing competition they give their livestock. If my livelihood depended on my sheep and their pastures, I wouldn't look with favor on a thousand wild ass showing up at my door.' The herders also hunt the khulan for meat, either to eat or to sell in town. Mr. Wingard said meat processors in Ulan Bator were doing a thriving business making sausage out of wild ass meat. Over dinner in Ulan Bator - hold the sausage, please - Mr. Wingard assessed the situation: 'This is the least populated large country in the world. So it's not habitat loss or fragmentation that is the big problem. It's unregulated wildlife trade.' He said the sheer size of the country made it unrealistic to police hunting strictly, and some of the rangers also are involved in poaching. He suggested that local communities must be given clear incentives to support enforcement of hunting laws and bans. Of greatest importance, he said, the government must enact and enforce tougher legislation intended to curb demand by controlling trade in animal products. 'There seems to be a growing political will to do something about it,' Mr. Wingard said. 'If you could control the trade, you could have the Africa of Asia here, as far as wildlife is concerned, and then the tourism associated with wildlife, as in Africa.' And the problem is not confined to Mongolia. In 'The Silent Steppe,' Elizabeth L. Bennett, director of the conservation society's hunting and wildlife program, wrote, 'The single greatest threat facing many species of wildlife across the world today is hunting for commercial wildlife trade.'

Subject: Profiles in Pusillanimity From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:29:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/opinion/06tue3.html?ex=1291525200&en=fd2410cb88b7c49f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 Profiles in Pusillanimity Q. When is a self-proclaimed moderate Republican lawmaker just another malleable vote? A. When House G.O.P. leaders hold a budget-cutting showdown open after midnight for extended arm-twisting on the eve of their long holiday break. Back home on that Thanksgiving break, spineless lawmakers were unlikely to share with their well-fed constituents the shameful result: for the lack of just two votes from the majority's vaunted 'moderate' coalition, more than 200,000 poor Americans each face the loss of food stamps worth $140 a month in nourishment. For weeks before the vote, coalition members won national praise and hometown headlines as they held their leaders at bay, vowing unity and demanding that the poor not be punished just as another tax-cut package for the affluent was being greased for passage. Then they buckled, after winning only cosmetic changes in what remains a truly draconian package to slash beyond food stamps to Medicaid, child care and other safety-net programs for the poor. A dozen supposedly moderate lawmakers turned tail as aptly named floor whips tested the rebels' steel. They feared embarrassing the G.O.P. in its shabby attempts to make the debt- and deficit-crazed Congress seem fiscally responsible. The vote was an appalling display of budget theatrics over responsible lawmaking. A number of the midnight retreaters apparently forgot that they had previously co-sponsored something called the Hunger-Free Communities Act of 2005. More of this sham can be expected as Congress returns and the majority Republicans resume fighting among themselves while the Democrats hold fast against safety-net cuts. The moderates will stage new public 'revolts,' then fall in line to create more conservative victories in the final secret deal-making between the two houses. It doesn't have to be this way. Poverty has risen across the past four years to 37 million and counting, by the government's own measure, while the number of homeless children in public schools is at 600,000 and up. In 2004, some 38 million Americans - including nearly one in five children - lived in households that found it difficult to afford food, 6 million more than in 1999. These are the numbers that should be driving the nation's lawmakers, not the cynical desire to carry rebellion only to the brink of victory, followed by still another last-minute cave-in by the misnamed moderates.

Subject: With Oil Prices Off Their Peak From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:27:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/business/05oil.html?ex=1291438800&en=8f2bd210f5a2209f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 5, 2005 With Oil Prices Off Their Peak, Are Supplies Assured? By JAD MOUAWAD Hold on to your gas guzzlers - cheap oil may once again be just around the corner. Even as consumers worry about high gasoline prices and rising heating bills, oil executives in London, Texas and Saudi Arabia seem to be concerned about a prospect of falling oil prices. In a recent speech in Singapore, Lord Browne, BP's chief executive, spoke of a possible sharp drop in prices and called current levels 'unsustainably high.' John Hofmeister, head of the Shell Oil Company in the United States, said in an interview, 'This high price cycle is artificially inflated.' The notion of a steep fall-off in energy prices may seem far-fetched. After all, in the last year, the market has experienced crude oil that touched nearly $70 a barrel; huge disruptions in the Gulf of Mexico; strong demand from the United States and from the world's fastest-growing market, China; continuing problems in producing Iraqi oil for export; and mounting tensions with Iran, a large OPEC exporter. If anything, most of those situations would point to a sustained period of high energy prices. Indeed, most analysts expect crude oil prices to remain above $40 a barrel for the foreseeable future. But throughout its history - ever since Edwin L. Drake discovered oil near Titusville, Pa., in 1859 - the business has witnessed a succession of booms and busts, and oil companies have found it impossible to balance their future production with the world's need for oil. Too much capacity, and prices fall; too little, and they rise. Today, oil producers are again under pressure to increase production and refining, and to increase investments to bring more oil to the markets quickly. But oil executives and government ministers are concerned that if demand were to slow down, even a little bit, these investments might create a large oversupply of oil in two to three years, pushing prices down again. Only a few years ago, the industry had a glut in production capacity, sluggish demand and a financial crisis in Asia that led to an oil-price collapse in 1998 with next-month futures contracts falling to about $10 a barrel. Prices eventually rose, but the experience left a deep and lasting impression among producers. Indeed, Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said recently at a news conference in Riyadh, 'As producers, we don't want to build capacity without demand.' This recurring debate in the industry may now seem odd. Recently, the theme has been about the end of 'cheap oil,' prompted by a surge in Chinese demand and a lack of spare production capacity. Traders' concerns that producers would struggle to catch up with consumer demand pushed prices from $30 to $60 in less than two years. Doomsayers saw a sign that the world was running out of oil. But there are indications that high oil prices may be coming to an end. After approaching $70 a barrel after Hurricane Katrina interrupted supplies from the Gulf of Mexico, crude oil has fallen by more than $10 a barrel, settling in New York on Friday at $59.32. Analysts at Citibank said the price might fall to $50 - and possibly less in coming months. 'The big issue is what demand is going to be next year,' David J. O'Reilly, the chief executive of Chevron, said in a telephone interview. 'High prices tend to attract higher production and higher supplies. The question then is, What will happen to the demand side? The fact is we rarely know what is going to happen.' Mr. Naimi said Saudi Arabia had 'expressed a concern with consuming countries that it would be helpful for producing countries to have a better forecast and a more reliable projection of what demand is.' But even as he calls for better data, Mr. Naimi and most oil experts know that predicting the future is more art than science, especially when it comes to oil. In November, the International Energy Agency, an adviser to industrial nations, pared its growth forecast for 2006 for the fourth consecutive month. It now expects demand to grow to 85 million barrels a day next year, up 2 percent, or 1.7 million barrels from this year. Demand for all of 2005 is expected to be up 1.5 percent. Part of the uncertainty lies in what will happen in the Chinese economy. In 2004, global oil consumption rose 3.7 percent, to 83 million barrels, more than twice the average annual growth in the last decade, a pace that surprised analysts and oil executives. China alone accounted for a third of that growth, its demand for oil up 15 percent. This year, Chinese growth is expected to subside somewhat, expanding 3.3 percent, according to the International Energy Agency. It is expected to pick up in 2006, to 6 percent, as a result of strong worldwide car sales and electricity generating. Such wide swings have led some analysts to express doubt on the reliability of information from China. The reality is that it will take some time before anyone knows for sure what Chinese demand is this year. There are other clouds on the horizon - among them fears of an American economic slowdown, last week's strong economic data notwithstanding, or an outbreak of avian flu, potentially reducing international air travel and hurting regional economies. 'The biggest worry I have for next year is geopolitical,' Mr. Hofmeister of Royal Dutch/Shell's American unit said. These, he said, included 'disruption in supplies, greater distress in the Middle East, a slowdown in China, a collapse of Iraq.' Mr. Hofmeister continued: 'My other worry is a slowdown in the U.S. economy. When you combine the high energy prices, the difficulties with vehicle sales, the backup in the supply chain, the problems with the retail chain, you could end up with a slowdown in demand.' In addition to these questions about where consumption may be headed, there are also uncertainties over how quickly oil companies are adding supplies. In a much-discussed report, a prominent consultant, Cambridge Energy Research Associates of Cambridge, Mass., estimated that global production would rise by 16 million barrels - or nearly 20 percent - by 2010, far outstripping the estimated growth in demand over that period. Some analysts fault the report, saying it is far too optimistic. And oil companies have been criticized lately for investing too little in exploration and refining capacity. A few weeks ago, the Senate held hearings and summoned the heads of the top oil companies to testify about their record profits and to justify their investment decisions. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest producer, has been assailed for investing too little in new capacity. One of the problems, the industry argues, is that forecasting the level of supplies needed to keep up with long-term demand can be tricky. The International Energy Agency, in its recent global outlook, laid out diverging visions of where energy demand might be headed over the next quarter-century, and it found that the difference between them was nearly 20 million barrels a day by 2030, or twice the current Saudi production. 'This is a new era,' said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the energy agency, which is based in Paris. 'The risk is less of a drop than higher prices in the future.' But not everyone is persuaded. Shell, for example, assumes the opposite, lower prices, when it looks at future projects. 'We've very conservative,' Mr. Hofmeister said, adding that projects he considers must be profitable at $25 a barrel. Some analysts argue that the break-even point on oil is unreasonably low and that it shuts the door to additional, if more costly, supplies. But for oil executives, their experiences of the 1985 and 1998 price collapses remain a stronger influence than their belief that the world has entered a period of more expensive energy. 'If demand slowed, we'd be in a world of cheap supplies again,' Mr. Hofmeister said. 'But decisions I make today must still make sense in 25 years.' As Lee R. Raymond, Exxon Mobil's chairman, said in his recent testimony to Senate committees, 'In the energy industry, time is measured in decades.' He said Exxon was involved in a $13 billion project in eastern Siberia that began 10 years ago and was expected to produce for 40 years. 'All told, that's more than 50 years for one project,' he said. To drive home his argument, he added, 'Fifty years ago, Dwight Eisenhower was president.' He might have added that this was before the nation's Interstate System of highways was completed and before S.U.V.'s became Americans' vehicles of choice.

Subject: God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:19:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/09/books/review/09scott.html October 9, 2005 God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut By A. O. SCOTT 'A New York friendship,' Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, 'is a friendship with a person you have met at least once. If you have met a person only once, and you are a New Yorker, you are entitled to say, whenever that person's name comes up in conversation, 'Yes - so-and-so is a friend of mine.' ' I am therefore proud to call Vonnegut my friend. Well, almost. One evening some years ago, at a literary party at an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I was sitting at one end of a living-room couch intently studying a bowl of mixed nuts when I became aware that someone had sat down on the other end. The walrus moustache, the curly salt-and-pepper hair, the crumpled pack of Pall Malls in the shirt pocket - I instantly recognized him from the line-drawn self-portraits that accompany some of his books. Not surprisingly, I found myself too star-struck to say a word. A while later, I was scolded for my timidity by a friend of mine who is also a friend of Vonnegut's, something I had just missed the chance at becoming. 'He was sitting right there next to you for 15 minutes and you completely ignored him,' she said. I stammered that I hadn't been able to think of anything to say. 'How about, 'I like your work'?' she wondered. Fair enough. Allow me, then, to make up for that lost opportunity and tell Mr. Vonnegut that I like his work. Sometimes more than he does, judging from a self-grading report card he published nearly 25 years ago, in which he gave 'Breakfast of Champions' a stingy C and 'Slapstick' an unwarrantedly severe D. (On the other hand, the A's he handed out to 'Jailbird' and 'God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater' seem to me a bit inflated. But friends can disagree.) I am reminded of my long affection for his writing by the arrival of his new book, 'A Man Without a Country' (Seven Stories, $23.95), a slim, grouchy collection of columns, many of them from the twice-monthly left-wing magazine In These Times, illustrated with sketches and aphorisms silk-screened by the Kentucky artist Joe Petro. But this book's publication also causes me to realize that, over the years, I've taken Vonnegut somewhat for granted, and perhaps not taken him as seriously as I should have. Which puts me, I'm sorry to say, in the company of a great many other critics. In the standard narratives of postwar American literary history, he is indeed a man without a country - or at least a writer who cannot easily be placed. And placing - sometimes at the expense of reading or liking - is an activity that preoccupies critics, perhaps to a morbid degree. Vonnegut started out selling stories to popular magazines after the Second World War. Then, like his hard-luck sometime alter ego Kilgore Trout, he gravitated toward science fiction, planting seeds of allegory in the pulpy loam of 50's genre publishing. A decade later he seemed to be a central figure in the wave of experimental literature that would eventually be called postmodern. A novel like 'Slaughterhouse-Five,' with its chronological displacements, its antirealistic flights, its bitter satiric energy, its digressions and self-explanations and refusals of narrative decorum, seemed to partake of the same zeitgeist that spawned Barth and Barthelme, Pynchon and Gaddis. But the younger novelists who nowadays claim those old masters of the avant-garde as their forebears don't usually include Vonnegut in their canon, and he never really belonged among the hothouse practitioners of what Gore Vidal used to call 'R & D' fiction. (He is, though, something of a grandfather figure for writers like Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer, whose work sometimes echoes his way of mixing whimsy and earnestness.) For one thing, his work has always been accessible - funny, direct and pointed in its ethical and political intentions. There is no need for a scholarly concordance or an interpretive apparatus to figure out what Vonnegut means. He is happy to tell you so himself, with reference to such unimpeachable and equally plainspoken exemplars as Abraham Lincoln, Eugene V. Debs, Mark Twain and Jesus Christ. But this transparency, while it has made Vonnegut a perennial best seller - and a favorite with the young - has diminished his utility in the academy, where literary reputations are made and preserved. Occasionally he has seemed to mind being underestimated in this way: 'It has been my experience with literary critics and academics in this country,' he wrote in one of the essays collected in 'Palm Sunday,' 'that clarity looks a lot like laziness and ignorance and childishness and cheapness to them. Any idea which can be grasped immediately is for them, by definition, something they knew all the time.' No one, to my knowledge, has ever complained that Vonnegut is ambiguous or obscure. And no one is likely to be surprised by the views expressed in 'A Man Without a Country,' some of which have been expressed more or less verbatim in previous books. An avowed humanist - a creed he defines as trying 'to behave as decently, as fairly and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife' - he is perpetually out of sorts with the human race. In particular, our wanton disregard for the environment and for one another drives him crazy, even to the point of losing his sense of humor: 'The biggest truth to face now - what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life - is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes on or not.' His liberalism grows out of some principles that can only be called conservative, like the belief in community and extended family that has become one of the big themes of his later work. He remains unimpressed by technology or the other trappings of progress, and he remains one of America's leading critics of evolution - not of the theory, mind you, but of the practice, which has left us far too clever and vain for our own good. It will hardly come as a shock that Vonnegut - who identifies himself as 'a lifelong Northern Democrat in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt tradition, a friend of the working stiffs,' and therefore unapologetically 'sappy' - has a low opinion of the current American administration and its policies, and 'Man Without a Country' has already joined the ranks of the Bush-bashing best sellers that compete with liberal-bashing best sellers for dominance in our overheated climate of opinion. But Vonnegut is much funnier, and much crabbier, than the cable-bred polemicists, and smarter too. At times, he may slide toward Andy Rooneyesque or Grandpa Simpsonesque crotchetiness, but mostly, like his literary ancestor Mark Twain, his crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted, and aimed at well-defended soft spots of hypocrisy and arrogance. On Nov. 11 he will turn 83, and since he has no expectation of a heavenly perch from which to look down and eavesdrop on his friends, it is best that we appreciate him while he's still around. 'A Man Without a Country' is a fine place to start, especially since it can lead us back to 'Mother Night' and 'Slaughterhouse-Five' and 'The Sirens of Titan' and the stories collected in 'Bagombo Snuff Box.' In other words, it's like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.

Subject: Transforming India From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 06:00:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/international/asia/07highway.html?ex=1291611600&en=dfc796600f94f9db&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 All Roads Lead to Cities, Transforming India By AMY WALDMAN SURAT, India - This western city has at least 300 slum pockets, grimy industry, factory-fouled air and a spiraling crime rate. A 1994 epidemic - reported as pneumonic plague - that originated here caused national panic. It is the kind of place where the body of a woman killed by a passing truck is left in the street because no one knows her. The city hardly seems like a beacon, yet for young men across India it shines like one. In his central Indian village, B. P. Pandey heard that Surat was a 'big industrial town' and made his way here to work. Rinku Gupta, 18, one of Mr. Pandey's five roommates, came from the north. Hundreds of thousands more have traveled from Orissa, in the east, and from Maharashtra, to the south. In the rural mind, Surat, in Gujarat state, looms with outsized allure, and its girth is growing to match. In less than 15 years, its population has more than doubled, to an estimated 3.5 million, making it India's ninth largest city. A majority of Surat's residents are migrants, drawn by its two main industries, diamonds and textiles. Surat's growth spurt is being replicated across India. At least 28 percent of its population now lives in cities and many more of its citizens move in and out of them for temporary work. In some southern states, nearly half the population is in cities. In 1991, India had 23 cities with one million or more people. A decade later it had 35. As the people shift, so does the very nature of India. This is a nation of 600,000 villages, each of them a unit that has ordered life for centuries, from the strata of caste to the cycles of harvest. In this century, cities' pull and influence - not only financial but also psychic - are remaking society. Less visible than the heated consumerism or western sexual habits changing India, this slow churning may be more profound and, for a country weaned on the virtues of village life, more wrenching. 'From all over India, they are coming,' said Kailash Pandey, a milk seller, of the migrants pouring into Kanpur, one of the million-plus cities. Kanpur, Surat and 17 of the other biggest cities sit along the so-called Golden Quadrilateral - 3,625 miles of national highways that circle the country and are being modernized in an epic infrastructure project. Earlier this year, a New York Times reporter and photographer drove that route, looping through India's megalopolises - New Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, formerly Madras, and Mumbai. The highway brings in and out almost everything cities need, including much of the cheap labor that men like B. P. Pandey supply. So with the road's improvement, Surat and other cities are surging anew, spreading toward the highway as if toward their life source. The redone highway is also shrinking the distance between villages and cities. In the countryside through which the route passed, the buzz was about places like Surat, and the sense of a nation on the move. 'This is rural India - people don't stay,' said Anil Kumar, a shopkeeper in the village of Kaushambi. 'The highway has made it easier.' Compared with China, whose rural population is also moving, India's urbanization has been a saunter, not a sprint - slower, looser and more haphazard. That is partly because some of India's economic policies have served to constrict its cities' possibilities. Decisions made during and even after four decades of quasi socialism have crimped the kind of manufacturing that has spurred China's urban growth. Good jobs or not, India's migrants still come. Their presence is creating new challenges: battles for land, competition for jobs, strained resources and religious and political tensions. So diverse is Surat's population that the municipal corporation now runs schools in eight languages. And when the migrants return home, they bring new views and aspirations with them. Their perspectives are combining with the improved highways to open up, and out, the closed worlds of India's villages. Waiting for a bus at the station in Jaipur, Surender Yadav offered his own village as an example. Bypassed by development, it sat down a wretched road off the highway between Jaipur and New Delhi. There was no medical dispensary, and perhaps more galling to Mr. Yadav, a 26-year-old doctoral candidate in Hindi, no newspaper delivery. But the highway's widening and resurfacing meant villagers were no longer waiting for development to come to them. Every morning, Mr. Yadav said, 20 or so people rode their motorbikes to the highway, parked and hopped on a bus. They went to New Delhi, two and a half hours away, or Gurgaon, even closer, and worked as police officers, low-level clerks or customer care representatives in call centers. India, ever absorptive, had absorbed the highway, and turned out something new: the commuter village. The village is becoming less a way of life than a place to live, a stop on the journey to the metropolis. Brighter Prospects During religious holidays, 200 to 300 buses a day pull out of Surat and head north for 10 hours on the national highway. Their destination: the rural region of Saurashtra. Their cargo: diamond cutters and polishers visiting the drought-parched villages they left to work in the city. By the hundreds of thousands, the young men of Saurashtra have found good livings in Surat, even though most lack good educations. They earn about $2,400 a year - nearly five times the average per capita income - in diamond work, and sometimes significantly more. Rajesh Kumar Raghavji Santoki, 28, had tried farming for a year at home, and given up in the face of a water shortage. After just three years in Surat, he was earning in a month more than the $500 his farmer father earned in a year. He owned a house, a motorcycle and a van. India found its niche in the cutting and polishing of low-cost diamonds for the global middle class, and today more than 7 of 10 diamonds in the world are polished in Surat. It has created close to 500,000 jobs here alone. That is nearly half as many jobs as India's entire information technology industry. Bangalore, the symbol of India's knowledge economy, may be a global buzzword, but the fate of India's rural poor depends more on industrial cities like Surat. Together, the cities' dominance means that India will never return to a farming-based economy. The urban portion of the gross domestic product is roughly double the urban population, a fact not lost on Mr. Santoki or his boss, Savji Dholakia. Nearly 30 years ago, Mr. Dholakia was an impoverished farmer's son, who at age 14 came by bus down the highway from Saurashtra to Surat. Today, he runs a family-owned diamond business, Hari Krishna Exports, that did $103 million in exports last year. He speeds back to his home village on the revamped highway in a silver Mercedes E220. His example spurs more young men to follow him back. In a fine white shirt and gold chain, Mr. Dholakia sat in his round white office, its sterile modishness far from his dusty youth, and analyzed his ascent. In today's India, he said, migrating from country to city was the only way. He was rich enough now to buy his entire village many times over. 'If you want to play international cricket, you need a proper playground; you cannot play in a field,' he said, with six television screens to monitor his workers before him. 'If you want to grow internationally, you have to leave your place.' Dreams to Chase In the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, B. P. Pandey intuited as much, although his dreams were more prosaic than a multi-continental business empire. He came to Surat, he said, 'to earn and enjoy.' Rough nubs, not polished facets, had brought him from the rural hinterland. Surat, once famed for its silks and brocades, has become a synthetic textile hub. The clacking of 600,000 hidden power looms fills its streets. Its factories texturize yarn, produce embroidery thread, weave saris and ship all of it along the highways to Punjab, Tamil Nadu and elsewhere. Mr. Pandey had come to be a cog in this enterprise. Farming back home was dying, and his aspirations rising. He did not want to work in his home area, he said. He wanted what the city offered - energy, opportunity, the rewards of globalization. Those rewards were not yet in reach. Mr. Pandey, 30, working in a yarn texturizing factory, earned only 2,100 rupees, or $46 a month. It was more than he could earn at home, but hardly enough to lift him from poverty. Yet he counted himself lucky to have a job. India's relatively low exports and underdeveloped manufacturing sector - only 25 percent of its economy - meant the demand for factory jobs in the city far outstripped the supply. Many migrants eked out work as street vendors or day laborers. The expanded highway was already giving Surat's textile industry a boost, cutting the time to move goods to ports, and to cities around the country. It had also cut the travel time to Mumbai, formerly Bombay: the 155 miles separating the two cities now could be driven in just over three hours, and Mumbaikars were coming to Surat to invest. But fixing the roads would not be enough to make India competitive. Ports and airports also need work. Inflexible labor laws, excessive bureaucracy and indifference to quality by industries long sheltered from competition have undermined India's race for a larger piece of the global economy. Even Surat's two main industries were vulnerable to these handicaps, and China was hungrily eyeing them both. Rigid and strike-happy labor unions, meanwhile, have cramped growth, and prompted industry to migrate toward cities without them. One result was that workers like Mr. Pandey had no union, and thus no benefits, no contract, no job security. He worked six and a half days a week, his only shift off stemming from a mandatory power cut, when he rested in his room. He lived in a barren tenement above the factory where he worked, in an overcrowded, underserviced industrial estate. Mr. Pandey had come to enjoy, but the city had no real entertainment, and only 774 women for every 1,000 men. For many migrants, alcohol - brought down the highway like everything else here - filled the gaps. Money and Motivation If cities' conditions were grim, and the earnings meager, their fruits still tasted sweet in the village. To the rural poor in India's eastern and northern states, Surat and other cities to the south and west offered the best hope for a decent job. The men in the state of Orissa, on India's eastern coast, had long ago concluded that literally crossing their country to work beat farming the fields next door. In Surat, they had cornered some of the more lucrative textile jobs, and shoehorned relatives and friends from Orissa into them as well. The money-order economy they had created was reconfiguring life back home. Sushant Mohanti and two dozen other men from his village, which sat next to the highway in Orissa, regularly went to work in Surat's textile factories, about 870 miles away. He sent to his family at least one-third of the $150 or more he earned each month, as did the others. For many rural families, having a member working in a city protected against vagaries of weather or crops. But it could also mean enough money for a substantially better life. Mr. Mohanti swept his hand grandly across the product of the migrants' labors: a row of solid, or 'pukka,' houses that had replaced the village's thatched huts. But migrants were bringing home more than money. Five hundred to 700 people from the village of Golantara in Orissa had gone to Surat to work, said Bibuti Jena, a former village head. They came back with new drive, haranguing less motivated peers who used caste barriers, unemployment or a lack of land to justify their inertia. 'I go out and work, why don't you?' the returnees said, and their words resonated. 'People are less lazy,' Mr. Jena said of the village that spread behind him. 'The work culture is changing.' So were desires. A bit north on the highway in Orissa, Nila Madhav, 21, stood on the median, next to fellow villagers selling watermelons to passing cars. After four years of traveling to Bangalore to do embroidery work for $90 a month, he said, he could no longer see himself cultivating watermelon, or farming at all. It wasn't only the money: he had adapted to the city's ways, and south India's gentler climate, in the process rejecting the life of his parents. 'It's very hot here,' he said of the spot his family had farmed for generations, 'and I don't like to work in the heat.' Mr. Madhav had returned from the city with not only a new attitude, but also with a new language. His native language was Oriya, but he was holding forth on the median in Hindi. In cities like Bangalore and Surat, far from the Hindi-speaking north, Hindi had become the migrant lingua franca, the vernacular of a new pan-Indian culture. Urban work was creating new identities. And in a country where caste has determined fates from birth, it also offered something subversive: freedom. The Power of Labor Given that they were sleeping at a highway crossroads in the city of Udaipur, 315 miles north of Surat, Shankar Lal Rawat and his fellow pavement dwellers did not look like liberated men. They had come from a village to the north, and were living day and night on their patch of cement, where they waited for contractors to hire them as porters or construction workers for less than $2 a day. They were farmers, but the dynamics of their village had made farming unprofitable. As Adivasis, members of India's indigenous tribes, their status matched that of the lowest castes. The power in their village, much of the land, the money-lending monopoly and access to the water supply all belonged to a Rajput, or upper-caste, landlord named Jaswant Singh. He paid just over a dollar a day for the men to labor in his fields. He charged prohibitive rates for the water they needed to work their own land, and for the loans they took to pay him for it. In their village, as in much of India, the caste system had conflated ritual status and economic power. So they had chosen to travel down the new highway to the city and its thriving construction industry. The men's migration had deprived Jaswant Singh of his labor supply - a problem emerging for upper-caste landlords across India as lower castes leave - and asserted their financial independence. Gandhi idealized villages as the way to return Indians to their precolonial state. B. K. Ambedkar, the Dalit, or untouchable, leader who helped write India's Constitution, saw it differently: he called villages a cesspool, 'a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism,' and urged untouchables to flee them for urban anonymity. In a modernizing India, Ambedkar's words are being heeded as never before for economic, not social reasons. Over time, the results may be the same. Mr. Rawat, 30, and the other laborers living by the highway had traded rural poverty for urban, and left their families behind. The city's daily wages amounted to only slightly more than they would have earned tilling Jaswant Singh's fields. But in the choice of where to struggle, or whom to owe, was power - hardly a revolution, but a start.

Subject: Aid Army Marches to No Drum at All From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 05:57:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/international/07letter.html?ex=1291611600&en=001f2b4f8918010c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 Amid Squalor, an Aid Army Marches to No Drum at All By MICHAEL WINES BLANTYRE, Malawi - Here in Malawi's second city and in the capital, Lilongwe, it is hard to find an office building without some benevolent organization come to help Malawi's throngs of poor. The United Nations is here in force. The British are omnipresent in this, their former colony. Some major charities occupy two floors in Lilongwe office blocks. Malawi may be destitute - in 2001, the average earnings were less than 50 cents a day - but commercial real estate is thriving. It makes one wonder why, with so many experts here to do good, the rest of the country not only isn't thriving, but is slipping backward. Since 1981, the United States Agency for International Development said in a troubling report in September, outsiders have sought to fix Malawi's ills through more than 20 economic adjustment programs devised by the World Bank and eight related loans from the International Monetary Fund. International charities poured in countless private dollars. Overseas development assistance - foreign aid - totals about $35 per person, and makes up $8 of every $10 spent on economic development. Yet despite that, the report states, only Yemen, Ethiopia and Burundi have worse rates of chronic malnutrition than does Malawi, where 49 percent of all children are stunted. Moreover, that rate has not improved for 15 years. Malawi is now suffering through one of the worst hunger emergencies in Africa. The ostensible cause is drought. The real reason, however, is worsening poverty. Many of the 12 million or so people are now so poor that they have nothing to fall back on in good times, much less bad ones. By most appearances, neither legions of charity workers nor phalanxes of money-toting economic structural adjusters have done much except, perhaps, to prevent stunting among even more malnourished children. Why? Malawi's decline is a long and tangled story. The British set up tea and tobacco plantations in what was then called Nyasaland, taking peasants off their own land to grow more profitable crops. After the British left in 1964, an avaricious dictatorship expanded the plantations, leaving farmers with ever-smaller plots. By 1988, 8 in 10 farmers cultivated less than three acres of land - hardly enough to live on, much less make a profit. A major drought ravaged those small farmers in 1992, and every effort to revive them has failed or, often, backfired. Families have increasingly resorted to casual labor to survive, further reducing the time they have to tend their own tiny fields, forcing them to sell off crucial assets like cattle to buy food. In theory, all this is reversible. 'Technically, we know what to do,' Suresh Babu, a senior researcher at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said in an interview. 'We know how to prevent this crisis, to put them on a long-term path of development.' Mr. Babu knows: from 1989 to 1994, he advised Malawi's government and the United Nations on food issues. But practically, Mr. Babu says, Malawi's problems are intractable. International organizations and Malawi leaders disagree over anti-poverty strategies. Government corruption siphons money and will. Global charities compete for their own pet projects, rather than cooperating on an integrated plan. Malawi hasn't the money or political consensus to do what is needed on its own. Take irrigation: Amid drought, a gigantic freshwater lake runs virtually the entire length of eastern Malawi, enough water to saturate millions of now-parched acres. Yet only 2 percent of Malawi's arable land is irrigated. Virtually all of that grows cash crops like tobacco and sugar cane, not the corn that all Malawians eat. The government wants to extend water to small farmers, but lacks money. So charities build local irrigation projects, but when they finish and leave, the projects fall apart for lack of maintenance and expertise. Why doesn't Malawi train its own experts to improve agriculture? It did: Mr. Babu says he trained 450 experts in food policy and nutrition during his five years there. But 'when I go back, I don't see them,' he says: about 150 have died, many victims of AIDS. Others left the government for better-paying jobs in global charities or the United Nations. That, say Mr. Babu and others, is central to the problem. Malawi and its kin lack the capacity - skilled managers and policy makers, good roads and machinery, investors and entrepreneurs - to sustain any effort to climb out of poverty. So outsiders take up the task, often with conflicting aims and shortterm success, often to the government's dismay. Such examples barely describe the difficulties attending African poverty. Books have been written on this topic. Many, with titles like 'The Road to Hell' and 'Lords of Poverty,' lay the blame for third-world squalor at the feet of foreigners who want to end it. There is even a hilarious poem demonizing 'the development set': We bring in consultants whose circumlocution Raises difficulties for every solution Thus guaranteeing continued good eating By showing the need for another meeting. If only the solution to Malawi's agony were as simple as punishing craven charities, however. Most people here want to do good, and succeed in the short run. But to many, this is a Salvation Army without a general, marching in different directions while poverty and pestilence pillage the civilians. Seed is available, but without irrigation. Irrigation ditches are dug, but without fertilizer. Water, seed and fertilizer are donated, but the farmer is dying of AIDS. A healthy farmer raises a crop, but government grain policies make him sell his corn for a pittance. A farmer sells his crop, but thousands in this densely populated country face similar hurdles, and stumble. 'The money being poured into Malawi is huge,' said Sylvester Kalonge, the Malawi coordinator for food security and emergencies for CARE International. 'But it's not holistic. CARE has holistic programs, but how much geographic coverage can they have? So the impact is localized, and maybe the impact will be washed away in a few years' time, and things will be worse.' And so Mr. Kalonge and his fellow saviors in the global aid network labor against the latest hunger crisis. 'That's what we do,' he said. 'We keep people alive.'

Subject: Flight From Job Force Questioned From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 05:52:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/business/02women.html?ex=1291179600&en=1eea6d93fa188cd9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 2, 2005 Mothers' Flight From Job Force Questioned By EDUARDO PORTER Working mothers may be stressed by the double job of caring for their careers and their families, but they are not leaving the work force because of it, a report has found. While the percentage of mothers in the labor force has declined since its peak in 2000, the participation rate of women without children declined by a similar rate over the same period, according to the study by Heather Boushey of the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington. Rather than indicating that women are opting out of employment to have children, Ms. Boushey said, the decline underscores how weak the labor market has been for all workers since the recession of 2001. 'There is no trend of mothers dropping out of the labor force,' Ms. Boushey said. 'It just looks like they are because the economy has been so hard on working moms.' Ms. Boushey's study was, in part, a response to a recent article in The New York Times that found that many young women at elite colleges said they intended to put aside their careers, at least temporarily, when they start raising children. For decades after the end of World War II, women joined the labor force in sharply increasing numbers. From 1948 to 2000, the labor participation rate of women ages 25 to 54 rose from just over 30 percent to a peak of more than 77 percent. The trend varied in intensity by age and education. Mothers worked outside the home at lower rates than women without children, and the rate for mothers with preschool children was less than that for those with older children. But the steadily increasing work force participation by women held broadly across the spectrum. Starting in the 1990's, however, the growth rate slowed. And five years ago, the tide turned. By October 2005, the participation rate of women 25 to 54 had dropped more than two percentage points. The downturn prompted some scholars to speculate that women's long march into work might be tapering off. Maybe the pressures of family life - particularly taking care of children - were persuading more women to reconsider their careers and drop out of the labor force. Francine D. Blau, a professor of labor economics at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, doubts that the decline in working women denotes an opt-out revolution by mothers. But the data are hard to sort out. 'It's credible,' Ms. Blau said, that the participation of women in the work force is 'entering into a period of slower growth, which might reflect the very high rates that we've attained. But it's also possible that it is due to general economic conditions.' Ms. Boushey's study attributed the recent decline to a weak job market. Adjusting the data to take into account differences in labor participation among women of different ages, ethnic and racial groups, and education, as well as the impact of the economic cycle, Ms. Boushey concluded that from 2000 to 2004, the 'child penalty' - the impact of having children on women's labor supply - continued to diminish. All things considered, the labor force participation rate of mothers aged 25 to 54 with children was 8.2 percentage points lower in 2004 than the rate for all women in the age group, narrower than the 9.9 percentage point gap in 2000 and smaller still than the 14.4-point difference in 1993. For women with a college degree, the child penalty declined to 3.8 percentage points in 2004 from 7.9 percentage points in 2000, also continuing the trend. In other words, Ms. Boushey concluded, mothers are not dropping out of the job market faster than other women. Part of the challenge in understanding what is going on is that recessions in the 1980's and 1990's did not reverse the trend toward more women in the work force. But the 2001 recession did, Ms. Boushey acknowledged. She attributed the decline to women's success in expanding the kinds of jobs and places where they work. Women used to concentrate in relatively recession-proof occupations like education or nursing. But now, many more women are found in nearly all economic sectors, including industries whose workers, particularly newly hired women, are much more vulnerable to job losses during recessions.

Subject: Warping Light From Distant Galaxies From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 05:50:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/science/space/06ring.html?ex=1291525200&en=82fcfec61b7f0de2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 Warping Light From Distant Galaxies Is More Than a Pretty Halo By DENNIS OVERBYE Just in time for the end of the Einstein year, astronomers have fetched from the sky a gallery of baubles: galaxies with pretty blue halos around them. The halos, known as Einstein rings, are mirages. In each case, astronomers say, they are a result of light rays from a distant galaxy being bent around an intervening galaxy as in a lens. They are among the most elegant manifestations of gravity's ability to bend light, as decreed by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. But they are not only pretty. They are also useful, allowing astronomers to weigh entire galaxies, said Adam Bolton, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He is the leader of an international team that recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover and photograph eight of these rare mirages. Dr. Bolton said he and his colleagues hoped to use the rings to study the distribution of mass in galaxies, including dark matter, which cannot be seen but is thought to comprise 90 percent of the universe. Combining the ring data with other observations, he said, would allow astronomers to decompose the luminous and dark matter components of the galaxy. 'We can pick these galaxies apart really well,' Dr. Bolton said. Einstein's theory describes gravity as the bending of space-time away from Euclidean 'flatness,' by matter and energy. It was the measurement of stars displaced outward from the Sun because of the bending of starlight around it during a solar eclipse in 1919 that ensconced Einstein and his theory in the world's consciousness. A hundred or so gravitational lenses are now known in which a galaxy or cluster of them produces arcs or multiple images of a distant quasar. But for a perfect bull's-eye one galaxy must be lined up behind another at the right distance. This geometry is so rare that until last week only three complete Einstein rings were known. To look for more, Dr. Bolton and his colleagues combed through data from 200,000 galaxies obtained in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an effort to measure colors and distances of about 100 million objects, including a million galaxies. They used the Hubble to examine 28 candidates. They found 19 gravitational lenses, including 8 rings. 'We went through hundreds of thousands of galaxies to find a 1-in-1,000 phenomenon,' Dr. Bolton said, adding that they expected to find about 50 by the time the current Hubble observing cycle was complete. The astronomers were looking for background galaxies with young blue stars haloing bright reddish elliptical galaxies. In the image at left, a foreground galaxy 2.8 billion light-years distant is ringed by light from a blue background galaxy 6.4 billion light-years away. The ring size is a measure of the amount of space-warping mass inside. The uniformity of the sample, Dr. Bolton said, will allow the astronomers to address such questions as whether the relative amounts of dark and luminous matter are the same for galaxies of different size or whether the mix changes over cosmic time. 'It shows what's possible with the combination of a massive ground-based survey and the imaging capability of the Hubble,' Dr. Bolton said. 'Our fondest hope is that this is a poster child for why we need something like the Hubble.' The full power of the Sloan survey, which began in 1998, is just being realized, he said. 'For follow-up, we need the Hubble.'

Subject: Mexican Immigrants in New Study From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 05:48:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/national/07immig.html?ex=1291611600&en=06dac808ba63834d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 7, 2005 Most Mexican Immigrants in New Study Gave Up Jobs to Take Their Chances in U.S. By NINA BERNSTEIN A report about the work lives of recent Mexican immigrants in seven cities across the United States suggests that they typically traded jobs in Mexico for the prospect of work here, despite serious bouts of unemployment, job instability and poor wages. The report, released Tuesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, was based on surveys of nearly 5,000 Mexicans, most of them here illegally. Those surveyed were seeking identity documents at Mexican consulates in New York, Atlanta and Raleigh, N.C., where recent arrivals have gravitated toward construction, hotel and restaurant jobs, and in Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Fresno, Calif., where they have been more likely to work in agriculture and manufacturing. Unlike the stereotype of jobless Mexicans heading north, most of the immigrants had been employed in Mexico, the report found. Once in the United States, they soon found that their illegal status was no barrier to being hired here. And though the jobs they landed, typically with help from relatives, were often unstable and their median earnings only $300 a week, that was enough to keep drawing newcomers because wages here far exceeded those in Mexico. 'We're getting a peek at a segment of the U.S. labor force that is large, that is growing by illegal migration, and that is bringing an entirely new set of issues into the U.S. labor market,' said Rakesh Kochhar, associate director for research at the Pew Hispanic Center and author of the study. The report suggested that policies intended to reduce migration pressures by improving the Mexican economy would have to look beyond employment to wages and perceptions of opportunity. The survey found that the most recent to arrive were more likely to have worked in construction or commerce, rather than agriculture, in Mexico. Only 5 percent had been unemployed there; they were 'drawn not from the fringes, but from the heart of Mexico's labor force,' the report said. After a difficult transition in their first six months in the United States - about 15 percent of the respondents said they did not work during that time - the rate of unemployment plummeted, to an average of 5 percent. But in one of the most striking findings, 38 percent reported an unemployment spell lasting a month or more in the previous year, regardless of their location, legal status or length of time in the United States. 'These are workers with no safety net,' Mr. Kochhar said. 'The long-run implication is a generation of workers without health or pension benefits, without any meaningful asset accumulation.' On the other hand, Mr. Kochhar and Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said the flexibility of this work force was a boon to certain industries like home construction, an important part of the nation's economic growth since the last recession. Among respondents to the survey, those who settled in Atlanta and Dallas were the best off, with 56 percent in each city receiving a weekly wage higher than the $300-a-week median. The worst off were in Fresno, where more than half of the survey respondents worked in agriculture and 60 percent reported earning less than $300 a week. The lowest wages were reported by women, people who spoke little or no English, and those without identification. To some scholars of immigration, the report underlines the lack of incentives for employers to turn to a guest worker program like the one proposed by President Bush because their needs are met cheaply by illegal workers - and all without paperwork or long-term commitment. Guest workers might instead appeal to corporations like Wal-Mart, the scholars said, where service jobs are now the target of union organizing drives. 'You can't plausibly argue that immigrant-dominated sectors have a labor shortage,' said Robert Courtney Smith, a sociologist and author of 'Mexican New York: Transnational Lives of New Immigrants.' Instead, he said, the report and evidence of falling wages among Mexican immigrants over time point to an oversupply of vulnerable workers competing with each other. But Brendan Flanagan, a spokesman for the National Restaurant Association, which supports a guest worker program, disagreed. 'In many places it is difficult to fill jobs with domestic workers,' Mr. Flanagan said. 'We've seen a simple lack of applicants, regardless of what wage is offered.' Although the survey, conducted from July 2004 to January 2005, was not random or weighted to represent all Mexican immigrants, it offers a close look at a usually elusive population. Those surveyed were not questioned directly about their immigration status, but they were asked whether they had any photo identification issued by a government agency in the United States. Slightly more than half over all, and 75 percent in New York, said they did not. The migration is part of a historic restructuring of the Mexican economy comparable to America's industrial revolution, said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, a research organization based in Washington. The institute released its own report on Tuesday, arguing that border enforcement efforts have failed. Workplace enforcement, which has been neglected, would be a crucial part of making a guest worker program successful. For now, Mexicans keep arriving illegally. 'It doesn't matter if it's winter,' said Ricardo Cortes, 23, a construction worker waiting for a friend outside the Mexican consulate in New York on Tuesday. 'People are still coming because there's no money over there.'

Subject: Paul Muni - Scarface - Bordertown From: Johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 07:50:17 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: ...the flexibility of this work force was a boon to certain industries like home construction.... Pete says this is very bad no? Too much of our economy based on home building. ...all without paperwork or long-term commitment..... No long term commitment - this can't be good for our communities or country? ...Guest workers might instead appeal to corporations like Wal-Mart... How does this help the little guy - mexican or otherwise? Paul Muni did the original Scarface back in the 30's - the immigrants couldn't find a lot of work back then either so crime was the only option left to some to survive. If the housing bubble collapses what are all these immigrant housing workers to do to be able to eat? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026129/ Paul Muni did another film - BORDERTOWN - part of one of the comments: Archie Mayo's 'Bordertown' is a film that by today's standards would be deemed politically incorrect. The idea of the poor Mexican immigrant that wants to better himself, only to see people step all over him, is at the center of this tale.

Subject: Development From: Emma To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 10:45:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The issue in Mexico is not work, but the quality of work from agriculture to service to manufacturing to construction. Mexico, glaringly compared with China, asked almost nothing in the way of technology transfer for companies investing in Mexico. Education in Mexico could be vastly expanded and improved. When gauged against China, I fear we find a failed development model used in Mexico.

Subject: We Should be Worried About Mexico From: Emma To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 08, 2005 at 10:47:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: We should be worried about Mexico, for my sense is that there has been minimal meaningful growth these last 5 years even through the years of rising oil and gas prices, even with important immigrant remittances, even through the development of American housing enclaves along with robust tourism.

Subject: Re: We Should be Worried About Mexico From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:15:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: After having lived 5 years in Mexico, I can say with all honesty this is a perfect example of why trickle down economics does not work. It is also a story of how society's that do not go through a social revolution will never progress. Mexican society is one of the most unjust, hypocritical and marginalized I have ever seen. Even more so than its peers in Latin America. There has never been an investment in social infrastructure. Even the revolution, which was supposed to be a socialist movement, morphed into nothing more than an oligarchy. I have never, in my life, met people with so much apathy towards the plight of their fellow citizens as the rich in Mexico (oh sorry, Miami also ranks up there). Immigration from Mexico represents a huge problem for the American economy. It keeps unemployment high and acts as a downward pressure on wages.

Subject: Re: We Should be Worried About Mexico From: Emma To: Poyetas Date Posted: Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 05:53:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I understand and agree, and am so sorry. Please add more or you fine insights.

Subject: Yellow-rumped Warbler From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 18:59:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5929&exhibition=7&u=99|0|... Yellow-rumped Warbler New York City--Central Park, Triplets Bridge.

Subject: Grounded in the Dust of Rural India From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 10:35:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/25/international/asia/25kumar.html?ex=1277352000&en=eaaf73c44c99cc50&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss June 25, 2005 A Vision of Stars, Grounded in the Dust of Rural India By SOMINI SENGUPTA PATNA, India ANUPAM KUMAR, 17, is the eldest son of a scooter-rickshaw driver. He lives in a three-room house made of bricks and mortar and a hot tin roof, where water rarely comes out of the tap and the electricity is off more than on, along a narrow unpaved alley here in one of India's most destitute corners. Anupam is good at math. He has taught himself practically everything he knows, and when he grows up he wants to investigate whether there is life in outer space. He wants to work at NASA. 'It's becoming very important to explore other planets because this planet is becoming too polluted,' he said with deadly seriousness. Next door to his house, pigs rifled through a pile of garbage on an empty lot. His mother, Sudha Devi, a savvy woman with a 6th-grade education, cooled him with a palm-frond fan. His father, Srikrishna Jaiswal, who made it through 10th grade, flashed a bemused smile. 'He has high-level aims,' he said. 'I'm not so concerned about reaching the peak,' Anupam clarified. 'I'm more interested in doing something good for the world.' For now, Anupam's sole obsession is to gain admission to the Indian Institutes of Technology, or I.I.T., a network of seven elite colleges established shortly after Indian independence in 1947 that produces an annual crop of tech wizards and corporate titans. It is difficult to overstate the difficulty of getting in. Of 198,059 Indians who took the rigorous admissions tests in 2005, 3,890 got in, an acceptance rate of under 2 percent. (Harvard accepts 10 percent.) Anupam does not know anyone who has attended the institutes, nor do his parents. But they all know this: If he makes it, it would change his family's fortunes forever. 'I feel a lot of pressure,' he said. 'It's from inside.' A VOICE in his head, he says, tells him he must do something to rescue his family from want, and that he must do it very soon. No wonder, then, that Anupam's mother forces him to wash his hair with henna, a traditional Indian hair-dying technique: At 17, Anupam is going gray. In Anupam's story lies a glimpse of the aspirations of boys and girls in India today, a country that arguably offers greater opportunities than it did for their parents, but one that is also more competitive and a great deal more stressful. More than half of India's one billion people are under 25, and for all but the most privileged, adolescence in this country can be a Darwinian juggernaut. To be average, or even slightly above average, is to be left behind. Nowhere is that more true than here in Bihar, India's iconic left-behind state, making the drive to get out all the more fierce. 'For average students, they have no scope,' said Anand Kumar, 33, who runs a one-man I.I.T.-preparatory academy here. 'The new generation feels more pressure than my generation.' At 7 on a recent morning, with the sun already blistering, Mr. Kumar, drenched in sweat, drilled a gaggle of nearly 600 students, almost all boys, in calculus. 'Find the domain of the following function,' he repeated into a scratchy microphone. His young charges, packed tightly under a tin-roofed compound, furiously scribbled in their notebooks. He resembled a revival tent preacher in a small American town. Every week Mr. Kumar, who is not related to Anupam, tutors more than 2,000 youngsters, each paying just under $100 for a yearlong math session. Thirty others, the most gifted and neediest, he teaches free in an intensive seven-month course that includes room and board. He has received death threats - he suspects from competitors who resent his low fees - and on a recent day two policemen and two private guards stood sentry. The intensity of competition can reveal itself in extreme ways. Mr. Kumar recalls how a neighbor, under enormous pressure from his family, failed the entrance exam and took his own life; he was 18. A former student, the son of a poor peasant, sank into a crippling depression after failing the exam last year. Moni Kumari Gupta, 17, is one of the rare girls in Mr. Kumar's program. She, too, wants to do space research, also at NASA. The I.I.T. exam that Moni plans to take is still 10 months away, and yet she rises at 4:30 a.m. and studies 13 hours a day, seven days a week, with short breaks only for meals and a brisk morning walk. Her father, Sunil Kumar, gives her pep talks: 'Face the competition,' he tells her. 'Don't be demoralized.' Disappointment stems from the depth of desire, piled on this generation by those with even fewer opportunities in the past. Before Anupam was born, his father had wanted to teach. His mother had wanted her husband to do anything other than ply a rickshaw, become a rickshaw-wallah. But Patna offered few options, and the children came quickly, two boys and a girl. Sudha Devi told her husband, ' 'At least our children will do something big.' ' At home, the television could be blaring, the music could be on, the lights could have gone out, but Anupam would be studying, his father said. 'How he concentrates, how he focuses his mind, I really don't know,' Mr. Jaiswal mused. At family parties, Anupam would be found in a quiet corner, his head in a book. Relatives warned Sudha Devi, 'He will go mad.' Anupam's education has been spotty, as it is for many in a country where public education is often in disarray. He enrolled in a small neighborhood private school, then a government school in ninth grade. But most days, like many children, he skipped school and studied at home because he figured it would be more rigorous. Every now and then, a math tutor, impressed by his gumption, gave him tips. Anupam says he was first drawn to the mysteries of space at 9 because of a television serial, 'Captain Vyom,' in which an astronaut ranges across outer space in pursuit of bad guys. He recalls telling his mother about his interest in life in outer space, and he remembers her matter-of-fact encouragement: They haven't discovered it yet, he recalls her saying, but you can explore. 'He says there's something called research,' is how his mother describes it today. 'He wants to be a research-wallah.' IN the spring of 2004, studying by himself, Anupam failed the I.I.T. entrance exam; it is virtually unheard of for anyone to make it on his own. Then, under Mr. Kumar's tutelage, he devoted himself with the intensity of a monk. On May 22, Anupam took the exam again, a grueling six hours of math, chemistry, and physics. He was not nervous either before or after, his mother said. The week before results were published, Anupam bubbled with optimism. He was sure he would be among the top scorers, he said. His mother beamed at this. To a visitor, she referred to her son as Anupam-ji, an honorific usually reserved for elders. Buoyed by his optimism, Anupam said that after graduation, he would install a proper roof, then dig a borehole so water could be drawn right at home. As soon as possible, he would like his father to stop driving a rickshaw. [On June 16, sitting at his tutor's house, Anupam learned the results. He made it into the institutes, with a rank of 2,299. Classes start in mid-July.]

Subject: India's Boom Spreads From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 09:11:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/business/worldbusiness/04yum.html?pagewanted=all&position= January 4, 2005 India's Boom Spreads to Smaller Cities By SARITHA RAI COIMBATORE, India - When the first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet opened in India, in the technology hub of Bangalore in 1995, the welcoming committee was largely absent. It was just four years after India opened its economy to outsiders, and the outlet quickly became a target of irate farmers, Hindu nationalists and others decrying what they saw as the encroachment of the corrupt, and corruptive, West. KFC's parent, Yum Brands, now has 100 KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants in India, 30 opened in 2004, and a goal of 1,000 by 2014. To realize such growth, the chains have begun a seemingly inexorable march into the country's smaller boomtowns, cities like Coimbatore and Cochin in the south, and Jaipur and Meerut in the north, where middle-class Indians - who increasingly crave localized Western foods, regional flavors and ingredients infused into the pizza, pasta or poultry - have hailed their arrival. The tsunamis that hit on Dec. 26 devastated the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal and coastal villages in the southeastern state of Tamil Nadu, leaving 11,000 deaths in their wake. The country's cities were untouched, and despite the huge loss of life, little overall economic fallout is expected. As India's galloping economy has extended to its smaller cities, a younger population with expendable income is finding many Western and upmarket domestic products, brands and services increasingly accessible. Nearly 35 Indian cities have a population exceeding a million, and proliferating shopping malls cater to the rapidly growing consumer class. 'A swelling base of affluent, upwardly mobile consumers with the same needs, wants and desires as the residents of bigger cities is seeking gratification,' said Vatsala Misra, a consultant with the retail research firm KSA Technopak. With satellite television and the Internet now ubiquitous in smaller cities, she said, 'People are increasingly exposed to how the other half lives, and the aspirational distinctions are blurring.' Among the companies seeking customers in these second-tier cities are the athletic-shoe makers Reebok International and Adidas-Salomon, and the cellphone maker Nokia. Bacardi Martini India, a unit of Bacardi Ltd., distributes its alcoholic beverages in 50 Indian cities. Ford's Indian unit said most of its sales growth was coming from outside the primary cities. 'When we came in 1996, we set up with 12 dealer facilities in 8 cities; today, we have 90 facilities in 70 cities,' said Vinay Piparsania, vice president for sales and marketing at Ford India. 'People are finding cars more affordable, with banks chasing customers in smaller cities to offer loans.' Here in Coimbatore, population 1.25 million, a manufacturing center close to the garment hub of Tiruppur, people crowded into the Pizza Hut recently, a day after a festival. 'Traditional festival cuisine is vegetarian and we were surprised when 500 customers showed up, a lot of them ordering pizzas with nonvegetarian toppings,' said Vineet Sharma, area manager of Pizzeria Fast Foods Restaurants (Madras), the franchisee that runs the Coimbatore outlet. A local tea factory owner, P. S. Mahendran, 39; his wife, Jayanthi, 30; and their 11-year-old daughter, Arthi, are regulars there. 'We are no less conventional than we were five years ago, but, more and more, we splurge on imported cosmetics, Western brands and international foods,' Mrs. Mahendran said. Mr. Mahendran, who drives a Mercedes, ordered tandoori chicken pizzas. India's demographics support the expansion. According to a report by the National Council for Applied Economic Research, which is based in New Delhi and partly government financed, half of India's 10.7 million households with an income of up to a million rupees ($23,000) are in smaller cities. The report recorded a big rise in the number of rich households, those with incomes of 1 million rupees to 5 million rupees, in smaller cities like Vadodara, Nagpur, Ahmedabad and Vijayawada. And while in 1995 just 2.8 percent of households were counted as middle class, with income of 200,000 rupees to a million rupees, the report projected that 12.8 percent would be counted as such by 2009. With a manufacturing boom as well as an expansion of back-office outsourcing into the second-tier cities, 'wealth and purchasing power are no longer a big-city syndrome,' said the research group's senior fellow and economist, Rajesh Kumar Shukla. 'The urban market is more or less saturated for a lot of products, but in smaller cities consumers are hungry.' When the Bangalore-based Air Deccan added 22 flights in mid-December, most connected smaller cities like Kanpur, Surat and Jaipur. 'Doing the New Delhi-Mumbai route is a no-brainer,' said Air Deccan's managing director, G. R. Gopinath. 'The adrenaline rush is in connecting the smaller cities, where life is changing dramatically.' Bharti Tele-Ventures, the country's second-largest cellular services company after Reliance Infocomm, rolled out its service in five smaller cities, including Lucknow and Kanpur, in mid-October. By the end of November, it had signed on 100,000 new customers, helped by the fact that at about 2 cents a minute, India has one of the lowest telecommunications costs in the world. Contrary to expectations, even premium brands are doing well in second-tier cities. For Bacardi Martini India, the top six Indian cities now account for only 45 percent of sales, compared with 70 percent in 2001. 'We are going in and cashing on the demand that mass media has built up for upscale brands and products,' said Jayant Kapur, the unit's chairman and managing director. When the country's first lifestyle television channel, Zoom, began broadcasting in late 2004, its promoter, India's largest newspaper publisher, Bennett, Coleman & Company, ensured that its reach extended beyond the biggest cities. People in cities like Ludhiana and Chandigarh, said Arun Arora, president of the company, 'are just as likely to be the first to drive the latest-model foreign cars and gear up in the most expensive clothes and accessories.' The growth in smaller cities is not without its challenges, including bad infrastructure and difficult supply logistics. And the purchasing boom in cities, both big and not so big, is in sharp contrast to life in villages, where two-thirds of the country's one billion people live and the price of, say, a bottle of Bacardi Rum - around $10 for 750 milliliters - equals a farm laborer's weekly earnings. But among those newly able to partake, a good many seem eager to do so. Of course, there are still many Indians who spurn Coca-Cola and Pepsi for a glass of nimbu paani (freshly squeezed lemonade). But back at the Coimbatore Pizza Hut, the owner of a spinning mill, Ram Kumar, and his wife, Suhasini, both 29 and dressed in jeans and T-shirts, munch on pizza and rue that the city is changing too slowly. There are no pubs, discos or multiplex cinemas. 'Night life is nonexistent,' lamented Ms. Kumar, who said that Coimbatore could do with 'a lot more brands and entertainment options.' Such attitudes are making Pizza Hut project a 40 percent growth rate over the next several years. 'While they hold on to their rich traditions and very strong cultural heritage,' said Graham Allan, president of Yum Restaurants International, 'small-city consumers are open to new concepts and want to embrace brands openly, making them a very attractive market.'

Subject: In Today's India, Status From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 08:51:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/international/asia/05highway.html?ex=1291438800&en=5361526dacb544cd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 5, 2005 In Today's India, Status Comes With Four Wheels By AMY WALDMAN VISHAKHAPATNAM, India - On the dark highway, the car showroom glowed in the night like an American drive-in. Inside, it looked more like a game-show set: bright lights, white floors, huge windows, high ceilings and ad posters of beaming consumers far paler than most Indians. For 36-year-old Ram Reddy, the price was right enough to make a down payment on his fifth family car. He and his brother already had one car 'for the children,' two 'for the ladies,' and so on. Now they were buying the Toyota Innova, a big-as-a-boat luxury van that retails for a minimum of $23,000, 46 times India's per capita income of about $500. The Innova is a new plaything of the moneyed here, one being peddled, like so many products in India today, by a Bollywood star. It is yet another symbol of the kid-in-a-candy-store psyche that has seized India's growing consuming class, once denied capitalism's choices and now flooded with them. Fifteen years after India began its transition from a state-run to a free-market economy, a new culture of money - making it, and even more, spending it - is afoot. This domestic hunger for goods has become an important engine for an economy that still lags in exports. So intense is the advertising onslaught, so giddy the media coverage of the new affluence, that it is almost easy to forget that India remains home to the world's largest number of poor people, according to the World Bank. Still, India's middle class has grown to an estimated 250 million in the past decade, and the number of super-rich has grown sharply as well. And, after more decades of socialist deprivation, when consumer goods were so limited that refrigerators were given pride of place in living rooms, they have ever more wares to spend it on: cellphones, air-conditioners and washing machines; Botox, sushi and Louis Vuitton bags; and, perhaps the biggest status symbol of all, cars. India has become one of the world's fastest-growing car markets, with about a million being sold each year. It once had only two kinds, Fiats and Ambassadors. Now dozens of models ride the roads, from the humble, Indian-made Maruti to the Rolls-Royce, which has re-entered India's market some 50 years after leaving in the British wake. Indians are discovering in cars everything Americans did: control and freedom, privacy and privilege, speed and status. Car showrooms, the bigger the better, are the new temples here, and cars the icons of a new individualism taking root. Foreign car companies, meanwhile, have discovered the Indian consumer - not to mention the country's engineering brain power - and are setting up plants across India. The growing lust for cars also reflects India finally having roads decent enough to drive them on. It is making a historic effort to upgrade its dismal, mostly two-lane national highway system into four- or six-lane interstates, its largest infrastructure project since independence in 1947. A New York Times reporter and a photographer drove one portion of the project, the so-called Golden Quadrilateral, which passes through New Delhi, Calcutta, Madras, officially known as Chennai, and Mumbai, formerly Bombay, earlier this year. The revamped highways mean that, for the first time in India, cars can go fast; thus the new appetite for fast cars. The middle and upper classes, already being lured by one of the world's fastest-growing domestic airline industries, are discovering driving for pleasure as much as need. 'This is the American 1950's happening in India now,' said Padma Chandrasekaran, a Madras resident marveling at the new ease of driving the 205 miles to Bangalore. The new highways have seduced well-off consumers like Mr. Reddy, who plans to use the Innova for family road trips to places like the temple at Tirupati, about 400 miles south of here, a trip he would previously have made by train. The highway's smoother surfaces and additional lanes have also enriched him, by reducing fuel and maintenance costs for his trucking company. 'If the roads were not good, we would not have this many cars,' said the bearded Mr. Reddy, whose 9-year-old son already knows how to steer an automobile. Consumers' Appetites Grow The 8,300-square-foot Toyota showroom had been open only a few months, and its location just outside town on the silky new highway had already turned out to be a prime sales aid. The general manager chuckled, saying that if he gave a test drive on the road, it would be 'a happy ride.' That many of the city's one million residents are what Sastry V. Prakky, the dealership's senior sales and marketing manager, calls 'filthy rich' also does not hurt. Named for Visakha, the god of valor, Vishakhapatnam faces the Bay of Bengal, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The city is home to one of India's largest ports and the country's oldest shipyard. It is also squarely in India's booming south. Some residents have prospered by going to work in the United States in information technology, others by opening 'business process outsourcing' centers. Many work in pharmaceutical production, or export carpets or shellfish. Pricy hotels line the beachfront, and driving schools the side streets, although Indian driving habits raise questions about the quality of their instruction. Almost every beauty salon also has a 'body weight reduction' center, reflecting the upper-middle-class's new obsession, and plumpness: people are still starving in India, but people are overeating, too. In a historical blink, capitalism, which postcolonial analysis once labeled poverty's cause, is now seen as its solution. Debt, once anathema for the middle class, is now an acceptable means to an end. For a sliver of Indians, the go-go years are here. The same sentiment has permeated the countryside, where young men drive bright yellow motorbikes with names like Ambition and dream of becoming crorepatis, or multimillionaires. America, of course, went through a similar evolution: the making of a postwar consumerist economy; the introduction of credit cards and growing comfort with, and dependence on, debt; the rise of an advertising culture. India today offers the chance to watch it in real time, at a hyper, almost-out-of-control, pace. 'Now the people want to spend and enjoy,' Mr. Prakky said. 'Everyone wants upgradation': the scooter owner wants a motorbike, the motorbike owner a car, the car owner a more expensive one. He was checking the paperwork on another new purchase, including a deposit of 180,000 rupees, or about $4,000. He took it upstairs to the general manager, C. Sudhaker, whose glass-walled office overlooked the showroom floor. In modern times, as Mr. Sudhaker put it, a good car was a business necessity, not just about showing off, although he conceded an appetite for 'recognition in society.' That appetite was on display in other showrooms along the highway. 'Life is short, madam,' said Sanganagouda Patil, a politician and landowner, explaining why he had to buy a new car model every two years. He was at another Toyota showroom, about 600 miles away in the state of Karnataka, inspecting the Innova even though he already owned four cars. Proper vehicles were expected of V.I.P.'s, he said, even if the roads near his home district were not yet good enough to drive them. He wore gold jewelry, Ray-Ban sunglasses and an expensive-looking white kurta of the hand-woven fabric that Mohandas K. Gandhi popularized as a symbol of swadeshi, or homegrown, in an era when all things foreign were mistrusted. Many Indian politicians today see the state merely as an object of plunder, and they are not shy about displaying their spoils. Car salesmen say that when a new model comes in, politicians call and demand to have the first vehicle delivered to them, with a discount. A Shifting Value System India's state-run rail network may have been built by the British, but it came to represent a certain egalitarianism. Powerful and voiceless, rich and poor - all navigated the same chaotic, crowded stations and rode the same jam-packed trains, if not in the same class. Cars, in contrast, reflect the atomization prosperity brings. This is a far bigger change for Indian society than it was for America, which in many ways was founded around the notion of the individual. Indian society has always been more about duty, or dharma, than drive, more about responsibility to others than the realization of individual desire. That ethos is changing. 'Twenty years back one car was an achievement,' said Maj. Gen. B. C. Khanduri, who as minister of roads from 2000 to 2004 helped shepherd the new highway into being. 'Now every child needs their own car.' To him and others who grew up in a different society, that change bespeaks a larger, and troubling, shift. 'The value system is finishing now,' he said. 'We are gradually increasing everyone for himself.' Luxuries are now necessities, he said, and children are focused more on earning for themselves than on caring for their parents. Indians have always been critical of what they see as American selfishness, the way children relegate parents to retirement homes so they can pursue their own lives. Now, suddenly, they are hearing such stories among themselves. Spreading affluence also has brought new competitive anxiety. Where once everyone in a neighborhood had an Ambassador or a Fiat, the hierarchy of livelihoods, of success, now can be parsed easily through cars. P. V. J. Mohanrao, 48, an assistant college professor, who came to the Toyota showroom to look at the Innova, could afford only cheaper cars: the Indian-made Maruti and Tata Sumo. A neighbor who was with him, P. Srinivas, 41, a businessman dealing in glass, could afford larger monthly installments, and thus the more luxurious Chevrolet Tavera. Another neighbor, a software entrepreneur who, Mr. Mohanrao pointed out, had 'spent time in the United States,' outclassed them both: at any given time, he had three or four cars, none of them cheap. 'He has booked this car, I heard,' Mr. Mohanrao said of his neighbor and the Innova. The car fever here is in part a triumph of marketing to people who did not grow up being marketed to. Advertising in India has succeeded in making, as Mr. Khanduri said, luxuries into necessities, in portraying persuasion as knowledge. The Toyota salesmen here market aggressively, singling out beach walkers and mall shoppers. They aim at people who bought cars in 2002 and convince them they already need an upgrade. Helped by record-low car-loan rates, they have learned to manufacture desire. 'If that fellow has a burning zeal we will add to the fire, we will tempt him,' said Mr. Prakky, the sales manager. The Dangers of the Boom 'Please do not drive in the wrong direction,' a flashing sign implores over the redone highway. The feeble exhortation underscores one of the many downsides of India's auto boom. The country already has one of the world's highest accident rates, with more than 80,000 traffic-related deaths a year. Few police officers patrol its roads, which ensures that pretty much anything goes, even at times on the fancy new highway. With India reveling in its rising global profile, there has been little planning for the traffic, environmental or economic consequences of millions more Indians acquiring new cars. India's economic boom has outpaced any planning for the resources, like oil for auto fuel, it will demand. Urban planning is so poor that in Bangalore and other cities traffic congestion is threatening investment and business expansion. At the same time, the focus on cars threatens to obscure the needs of the many more without them. There are still only about eight million passenger vehicles on Indian roads, in a country of more than one billion people. By the late 1920's, in comparison, the United States had 23 million registered car owners. Poor Indians rely, in addition to their feet, on an extraordinary array of contraptions for transport. They pile on top of buses in the Indian version of the double-decker. They ride tractors and bullock carts and pack 13 strong into Tempo taxis made for 6. What they cannot regularly rely on is public transport. While New Delhi and Calcutta have built subways, most cities have not, and they face severe bus shortages as well. Cars speed by waiting bus riders, who stand like spectators. The rise of the auto, and the investment in highways, dovetails with a larger trend of privatization in Indian life, in which the 'haves' are those who can afford to pay for services the government does not provide: efficient transport, clean water, good schools, decent health care. Most Indians cannot afford the tolls along the Golden Quadrilateral, let alone the cars to drive on it. Gandhi, whose foot marches for social justice defined an era of Indian history, now has an expressway named for him. Its toll of $1.33 is more than about 300 million Indians earn in a day. India's growing material hunger has another downside: it is largely being sated by credit and debt. With borrowing comes the danger of overstretching, and pricy cars purchased in Vishakhapatnam's Toyota showroom can always be taken back. That is where the repo man comes in. He waits at a tollbooth in Rajasthan, cater-corner from Vishakhapatnam on the Quadrilateral, armed with a long list of deadbeats' license plate numbers. In a beat-up Maruti van, with a stick inside, Anil Kumar Vyas, 34, was chasing down Toyota owners behind in their payments. Befitting his upper-caste Brahmin status, he was also a local village head, but that brought more prestige than profit. His may be one of the few lines of work that has benefited from traffic jams and potholes. Bad roads made for easy captures, since no one could drive over 22 miles an hour. On the new, smooth four-lane highway, he has already given chase at more than 60 miles an hour. 'It is harder for us to catch them,' he said. 'We're still working it out.'

Subject: India Paves a Smoother Road From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 07:20:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/international/asia/04highway.html?ex=1291352400&en=d77dd2ca4f760ef0&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 4, 2005 Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future By AMY WALDMAN NEW DELHI, India - In the middle of the old Grand Trunk Road a temple sits under a peepul tree. The surrounding highway is being widened to four lanes, and vehicles barrel along either side. But the temple and tree thwart even greater speed, and a passing contractor says they soon will be removed. Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree's dappled shade. As evidence, they point to one woman's newly pockmarked face and other mysterious ailments recently visited on their nearby village, Jagdishrai. They have tried to convince Kali that the tree and temple devoted to her must go, but they have failed. Now they have no choice but to oppose the removal, too, even if they must block the road to do it. Goddess versus man, superstition versus progress, the people versus the state - mile by mile, India is struggling to modernize its national highway system, and in the process, itself. The Indian government has begun a 15-year project to widen and pave some 40,000 miles of narrow, decrepit national highways, with the first leg, budgeted at $6.25 billion, to be largely complete by next year. It amounts to the most ambitious infrastructure project since independence in 1947 and the British building of the subcontinent's railway network the century before. The effort echoes the United States' construction of its national highway system in the 1920's and 1950's. The arteries paved across America fueled commerce and development, fed a nation's auto obsession and created suburbs. They also displaced communities and helped sap mass transit and deplete inner cities. For India, already one of the world's fastest-growing economies and most rapidly evolving societies, the results may be as radical. At its heart, the redone highway is about grafting Western notions of speed and efficiency onto a civilization that has always taken the long view. Aryan migration, Mogul conquest, British colonialism - all shaped India's civilization over centuries. Now, in a span of less than 15 years, capitalism and globalization have convulsed India at an unprecedented rate of change. The real start came in 1991, when India began dismantling its state-run economy and opening its markets to foreign imports and investment. While that reform process has been fitful, leaving the country trailing its neighbor and rival, China, India has turned a corner. Its economy grew 6.9 percent in the fiscal year ending in March. India has a new identity, thanks to outsourcing, as back office to the world. The new highway is certain to jump-start India's competitiveness, given that its dismal infrastructure helped keep it behind the economic success stories of the Asian Tigers. 'The perception of India earlier was that it cannot be in the rank of other fast-growing nations,' said Sudheendra Kulkarni, who was an aide to Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former prime minister who championed the project. With the highway, Mr. Kulkarni said, 'People began to see that India is transforming.' To grasp that transformation, and India's transition, a New York Times reporter and photographer spent a month this year driving the first stage of the highway project, which has been dubbed, in awkward but bullish coinage, the Golden Quadrilateral. More jagged than geometric, the four- and six-lane quadrilateral's 3,625 miles run through 13 states and India's four largest cities: New Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, formerly Madras, and Mumbai, formerly Bombay. The journey along the highway offered a before-and-after snapshot of India, of the challenges of developing the world's largest democracy, and of how westernization is reshaping Indian society. To drive east from New Delhi to Calcutta is to travel through flat fields, almost primeval forests, lush rice paddies - and some of India's poorest, roughest states, where contractors have battled violence and corruption to get the road built. To move south from Calcutta, alongside the Bay of Bengal, through palm-covered hills, then up the west into Rajasthan's desert, is to see the highway as a conduit for the forces molding the new India. Ever-flashier cars, evidence of a frenzied new consumerism, leave bullock carts in the dust. Truckers slow at night for roadside sex workers, each of them potential carriers of H.I.V. Farmers' sons make a beeline for swelling cities that are challenging the village as the center of Indian life. The highway itself brings change. For a nation inured to inefficiency, the improved interstate saves time - for Kailash Pandey, a milk-seller, one-third off a 90-minute commute to market; for Imtiaz Ali, 15, half off the bike ride to school; and half off the travel time for Sarjeet Singh, a trucker. These micro gains make for macro benefit: some $1.5 billion a year in savings, by one World Bank estimate, on everything from fuel costs to faster freight delivery. More intangibly, the highway may turn India into a society in a hurry, enslaving it to the Western notion that time equals money. Nationalists also hope the highway will further unite a country that is home to 22 official languages, the world's major religions, a host of separatist movements, and 35 union territories and states, many more populous than European nations. But coherence may bring collision. Since 1991, India's population of poor has dropped to 26 percent from 36 percent, yet the poor seem poorer than ever. India now juxtaposes pre- and postindustrial societies: citizens who live on dirt floors without electricity and others who live like 21st-century Americans, only with more servants. The highway throws these two Indias into jarring proximity. Outside Jaipur, young men virtually bonded into labor hack with primitive tools at old tires. They work in an archaic assembly line beside the highway, chopping the tires into pieces and loading them onto trucks so they can be burned as toxic fuel at a brick kiln. The tent camp they call home splays out in dirty disarray behind them. A brutish overseer verbally whips them to work faster. 'Please take me out of here,' Rafiq Ahmed, 21, whispered as he bent in the darkness to lift another load. 'My back hurts.' On the revamped road next to him, the darkness has been banished by electric lights overhead. Auto-borne commuters race along six silky lanes toward the Golden Heritage Apartments, the Vishal Mini-Mart, the Bajaj Showroom featuring the New Pulsar 2005 with Alloy Wheels, all the while burning rubber that will eventually fall to the young men, hidden by night, obscured by speed, forgotten by progress, to dispose. Empires and Engines On the highway from New Delhi to Agra, where the Taj Mahal floats over a grimy city, homelier but no less enduring relics line the route. Kos minars - massive pillars that once served as markers - invoke India's last great road-building effort. It was five centuries ago. The Moguls, whose empire stretched into central Asia, understood the importance of transport links for solidifying empire. Most famously, Sher Shah Suri, who ruled in the 16th century, commissioned the Grand Trunk Road along ancient trade routes. The British who began colonizing India a century later also understood that imperial rule required physical connection, not least for moving the raw materials, like cotton, that made empire profitable. But they cemented their rule in the age of the steam engine, laying railways rather than roads across the subcontinent. For decades afterward, India's roads remained better suited to bullock carts than motor cars. In the 50 years after independence, the government built just 334 miles of four-lane roads. The romance of India's railroad, meanwhile, could not obscure the reality of a badly aging system, with state funds bolstering patronage more than service or safety. Over time, more and more traffic shifted to the roads, despite their choked, potholed state. Driving in India has meant more stops than starts, necessitating braking for sacred cows, camel carts, conversational knots, tractors and women balancing bundles of wood on their heads. The new highway, then, is nothing short of radical, which becomes clear after Agra, where large stretches are already complete. An American-style interstate unfurls through villages where mud-brick buildings rarely rise above two stories and women still cook with buffalo dung. The highway is smooth, wide, flat and incongruous: an ambitious road amid still-humble architecture, a thoroughfare from this century amid scenery from a previous one. To drive it is to gain momentum, to not want to stop, and not have to. Drivers no longer pass through towns, but by them, or where the highway soars into the air, over them. The rural landscape, formerly painted in pointillist detail, becomes a blur, an abstraction - a vanishing trick that may portend things to come. Bridging Distances The highway's nerve center sits on the outskirts of the Delhi metropolis, a sleek, six-story building with automatic doors and functioning elevators that radiates immaculacy and efficiency. Most Indian government buildings sit in the British-built heart of the city. They wear a decrepit air, reflecting a fusty bureaucracy hidebound by red tape. The distance, in geography and mien, between the highway headquarters and the rest of India's government is no accident. The highway was conceived in 1998, soon after a Hindu nationalist-led government took power. The prime minister at the time, Mr. Vajpayee, quickly ordered a series of nuclear tests, and later that year announced the highway project. Former aides say that both moves were essential to Mr. Vajpayee's nationalist vision of a secure, competitive India. To circumvent India's entrenched bureaucracy, Mr. Vajpayee empowered an autonomous authority to oversee the highways, streamline the contracting process and privilege the private sector. He allowed foreign companies in to do much of the work, ending four decades of postcolonial self-sufficiency, and imposed taxes and tolls, challenging a political culture engorged with government subsidies. The man responsible for executing these shifts was Maj. Gen. B. C. Khanduri, who had been India's minister of roads. A year after he left the post, he still kept a map of the Golden Quadrilateral on his wall. Political pressures, rushed planning and mixed performance by contractors have led to uneven results along the route. But Mr. Khanduri, a retired army engineer who cites Rudolph W. Giuliani as a role model, did imbue the project with both military discipline and a patriotic ethos. He told contractors, 'You are not only making money, you are building a nation.' But that nation's people had their own opinions, plenty of them. India's democracy may have been imposed by a nationalist elite, but the idea had taken root and was bubbling up from below. Truckers went on strike against the taxes and tolls. Citizens blocked the highway, stopped construction and staged hunger strikes to demand underpasses, overpasses and cattle crossings. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost, but their point was made. Highway officials say future projects are being designed with far more local input - an accountability that may give India a long-term edge over authoritarian China. Still, Mr. Khanduri is wistful about China, where officials can literally pave over objections. On every infrastructure front, India has fallen well behind China, although debate over whether the blame for that lies with democracy or just with India's short practice of it is an enduring Indian pastime. Having invested more than 10 times as much as India since the mid-1990's, China now has 15 times the expressway length. Mr. Khanduri conceded that China's system has its own price, but concluded of India's experience, 'So many constraints are there in a democratic society.' Clearing a Path The air in Rashidpur village, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, smelled of betel juice and excrement, and festered with raw feelings. The authorities had come and 'done the needful,' to use a favorite Indian saying, smashing houses into piles of bricks to clear a path for the highway. Dust from the demolitions still seemed to hover in the village. Resentment certainly did. Building a highway is by nature a violent act, since everything in its path must yield. So the project has cut a swath of destruction, swallowing thousands of acres of farmland, shearing off the fronts of thousands of homes. Smashed walls and piles of bricks line the route like broken teeth. The process of acquiring the land along the highway - 20,574 acres - has delayed the project more than anything else. Once scheduled to be finished in December 2003, the highway is some three years behind. The government has the power of eminent domain, but it must compensate for land taken, relying on cumbersome regulations and a revolving door of local officials. Land prices recorded on paper routinely bear no relation to actual market value. Often, people have refused to vacate until they received satisfactory payment. Even where the price was right, the emotional toll was heavy. Land and home here are primal possessions - a tie to ancestral roots that extend back centuries, a legacy to children, a link to rural life in an urbanizing society. The process has left bruised feelings, reflecting the distance between impoverished, often illiterate citizens and an administration whose structure and attitude can seem frozen in colonial amber. 'They spoke what you call police language, I can say it was indecent,' an indignant 68-year-old named R. S. Dubey said of the officials who had come to oversee the destruction of his family home. Navigating Religion Neem. Mango. Sisam. Most delicate of all, holy peepul, the Indian fig, which could not be cut without prime ministerial dispensation. In work contracts several phone books thick, every tree that would be felled for the highway's construction was documented before its demise. This reflected not only the bureaucracy that had slowed the project, despite the efforts of Mr. Khanduri, the former roads minister. For Hindus, trees are sacred; one highway official said Muslims were sometimes hired to cut them down at night. Then there were the hundreds, or thousands, of religious institutions that lined the highway. Contractors were required to move or rebuild every one. On some stretches, contractors said they suspected that new religious structures had been hastily nailed together to extract compensation for their moving. Hindu contractors and officials whispered about the 'sensitivities' of moving mosques for fear of offending India's Muslim minority. The process was careful, but imperfect. In the south the earth movers preparing the way for the highway churned up the bones of the dead next to a Shiite Muslim shrine. Muhammad Shah, 74, tender of the shrine, gathered and reburied them. 'They could have been anyone's ancestors,' he said in the purpling dusk, a long beard lengthening an already sorrowful face. 'They could have been mine.' Roadside Attractions In October 2003, Yogendra Singh, a hotel manager, bought a plot of land from a farmer in the village of Raipur. Mr. Singh, from the nearby city of Kanpur, had no interest in agriculture, but every interest in what he saw supplanting it. The land was next to the highway, on which construction was well under way. Mr. Singh foresaw that a steady increase in traffic would follow its completion. He imagined, among other things, tourists driving from the Taj Mahal to Varanasi, an unthinkable passage on the extant roads. He opened Shiv Restaurant, where the chickens are killed in the basement and served on the ground floor, and he planted a garden out back and planned a hotel. America's early interstate years had their own such visionaries, like the men who built an empire of Holiday Inns. Mr. Singh's dreams may not be on that scale, but these are early days, and he is not alone. Land prices along the highway have shot up, as farmers who see little future in farming have cashed out, and entrepreneurs who see gold in asphalt have bought in. 'The entire stretch has been sold off,' Mr. Singh, 40, said of the land along the highway. With construction nearly done in Raipur, Mr. Singh's place was already a popular way station, and his land had almost doubled in value. It was not hard to imagine how different life along the highway could look in a few years. The newly rich farmer who sold his land to Mr. Singh, meanwhile, had moved to the city of Kanpur. Picking Up Speed In the village of Kaushambi, in Uttar Pradesh, Anil Kumar, a 34-year-old shopkeeper, watched truck traffic speed by on the widened highway and explained how the artery's revamping had reconfigured long-held local geography. Because vehicles rarely traveled at more than 25 miles an hour, village life had always happened on both sides of the road. The two-lane highway inhabited space, but did not define it. The railway station and village hand pump were on one side, the school and fields on the other. Women roamed across the land, indifferent to whether soil or asphalt was beneath their feet, gathering wood, water, the harvest. In India roads have been public spaces, home to the logical chaos that governs so much of life. They have been commas, not periods, pauses, not breaks. The redone highway has challenged that, trying to impose borders and linearity, sometimes controlling pedestrian (and bovine) access to ensure drivers' speed. In Kaushambi, the highway planners put concrete walls on both sides to ensure that neither crossing pedestrians nor trucks stopping to shop would slow traffic. There were cuts every 380 yards or so, requiring detours for crossing. Cars and trucks sped along at 70 or 80 miles an hour. The women with bundles atop their heads now had to walk to a cut in the wall, and then sprint across. Even that had not saved Parwathi Devi, 70, from a cut lip and head from a speeding car as she ran across with dried plant stalks on her head. For many rural Indians, insulated from the westernizing of urban India, the highway is the most dramatic change in their lifetimes. All along the route, the disorientation showed in the faces of uncomprehending pedestrians who darted out in front of cars coming fast enough to kill. The highway was bifurcating Kaushambi, too. Villagers had begun pressing district officials for a second hand-pump so women wouldn't have to keep crossing for water. 'It is almost like two villages now,' Mr. Kumar said. Service With a Smile In a perky blue uniform, 34-year-old Pradeep Kumar stepped forward to pump gas with a smile. He had reason to: he had been coached on American-style, customer-comes-first service, and in an area of north India with rampant unemployment, he was thrilled just to have a job. That it made little use of his bachelor's degree in political science was of secondary concern. Where crops once grew along the Golden Quadrilateral, gas stations are sprouting. Mr. Kumar's employer near Allahabad - Reliance Industries Ltd., one of India's largest private conglomerates and a petroleum giant - is planning 5,000 stations. Perhaps more than any company, it has grasped the highway's commercial potential. Commerce along the American interstate system began with quirky roadside establishments. Over time it evolved toward deliberately homogenized chains - McDonald's, Motel 6 - whose signs meant familiarity in unfamiliar terrain. Reliance has leapfrogged that process, making itself the Golden Arches of the Golden Quadrilateral. Its British-designed gas stations are identically bright and streamlined, with computerized billing and clean, airy dhabas, or restaurants. That the stations feel American is not accidental: Reliance had hired as a consultant the Flying J Company of Ogden, Utah, which runs diesel stations and travel plazas across the United States. The growth of gas stations suggested the way India's agricultural society is yielding not to an industrial economy, but a service one. Fifty percent of India's gross domestic product is now in the service sector, compared with 25 percent apiece for manufacturing and agriculture. In 21st-century India, the $50 a month that Mr. Kumar, the attendant, was earning was still more than farming would pay. An Easier Journey Nathu Yadav was burning, his body morphing into a plume of smoke and ash that moved out over the sacred water of the Ganges. His soul, Hindus believe, was being liberated in the process. Mr. Yadav was 95 when he died, the oldest man in his village. His family rode 14 hours in a bus - the body stored on top - to reach Varanasi, Hinduism's holiest city. The river was, in essence, India's first highway, and the bodies were once brought down it. Now they come by train, or the Grand Trunk Road, which had brought Mr. Yadav's body and family from Bihar state. 'God bless Sher Shah Suri for making this road!' his son, Adya Prasad, exclaimed. The road's condition has long been less of a blessing, a state the new highway project is changing. That is welcome news to the family that runs the Harishchandra ghat, where Mr. Prasad's father was burning. Members of the Dom caste have manned this ghat, named for a legendary king, since ancient times. The ritual is essential, but the act of touching the dead is reviled by upper castes. It is a job of smoke-in-the-face indignities consigned to untouchables. The new highway will ease one unpleasant aspect. 'In summer, the bodies start to smell,' said Matru Choudhary, a 47-year-old Dom with a morose mien. 'The faster they can come, the better.' Bureaucracy and Bandits In the shade of a makeshift shelter at the border crossing between Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, two truckers were killing time on string cots. They wanted to move from one state to another, but given India's cumbersome, often corrupt interstate bureaucracy, they might as well have been trying to pass to Pakistan. It was noon, and they had been waiting five hours, their trucks among hundreds parked in endless lines. They figured they would pass by nightfall, after paying a bribe on top of the interstate tax. The improved highway was already easing their passage and saving them time, the truckers said, cutting their drive from New Delhi to Calcutta to three days from five. They relished the new ease of the ride. But the improvements had not addressed other obstacles. Petty extortion by officials was common at many border posts. In the north, bandits, or dacoits, robbed truckers on the highway. 'In Bihar, they'll cut off your neck and leave you six inches shorter,' said Rajesh Sham Singh, 30. Kamludeen Khan, 38, said, 'The police don't do anything,' except join in the extortion, stopping trucks at night to demand bribes. At least with the bandits, there was a chance of escape. Feats of Engineering At night on a floodlit bridge in Bihar, a chain of women moved in graceful tandem, hoisting buckets of cement onto their head and hurrying to pour before it hardened. Imported from southern India, they were living in a meager shanty camp next to the highway, earning less than $40 a month. Such mingling of primitive methods with the mechanization mostly being used to construct the Quadrilateral fascinated the Korean engineers ensconced 12 miles down the road, in a camp near the town of Aurangabad. Employed by Ssangyong, a construction giant in South Korea, they came to the state of Bihar to work on the highway with an Indian company, Oriental Structural Engineers Pvt. Ltd. 'We in Korea have never seen people putting cement on their heads,' said M. S. Won, a planning engineer. 'We only use machines.' His boss, Noh Sung Hwan, was a cheery man who spoke a smattering of Hindi and had taught his Indian cook to make kimchi. Having arrived with an appreciation of India's rich engineering history, he was soon well versed in its current challenges. They had far less to do with building the highway than with the forces circling it. This stretch of Bihar was home to often violent local mafias, some tied to a Maoist insurgency that has spread through at least 11 states. Some three years ago the Maoists attacked a construction plant for the highway, and fractured the bones of a project manager with rifle butts and sticks. The Maoists occupied the plant for months while negotiations dragged on over how much it would cost to buy their cooperation. 'India is very fantastic,' Mr. Noh said. 'Just a little bit risky.' A Study in Limits For four years, the Indian project managers and engineers of Oriental Structural had been living in enclosed camps next to the highway, serenaded nonstop by truck horns. In the camp near Aurangabad, Bihar, 18 families and some 30 single men found their entertainment in a volleyball and badminton court, television and cold beer. Most of them were from Punjab or southern India. Bihar was as much of a foreign country to them as it was to their Korean counterparts, a country they could not wait to leave. The sociologist Yogendra Yadav calls Bihar a metaphor: for the rest of India, it represents being poor. Bihar offers a reflection at which ascendant India recoils. Bihar is home to more than 82 million people and some of India's most storied history. Bodhgaya, where Buddha achieved enlightenment, is only a few miles off the highway. The area was once a center of democracy and learning, and of India's freedom struggle against the British. Today, Bihar is a study in democracy's limits. Villagers depend on doctors who are quacks, schoolteachers who siphon government grain meant for children, policemen who charge businesses to provide security. Bihar, by most measures, is India's poorest state. Migration to other states for work is epidemic. Only 5 percent of rural households have electricity. J. P. Gupta, the jovial Punjabi project manager at the Aurangabad camp, spent his mornings appeasing the gods, praying first in his car, then in his office, then much of the rest of his days appeasing local politicians. Politics was a business here, he said. Biharis did not want the road, one engineer asserted, because they preferred a potholed one that would make it easier to rob passing trucks. Farther east along the highway, near the town of Mahapur, dozens of armed guards patrolled another camp where more Oriental Structural employees had bunkered down. Its chief project manager, P. Nageswara Rao, gray-haired, and on this project, usually grim-faced, never left camp without an armed escort. Buddha preached ahimsa, or nonviolence, in the area, 'but the most crime is here,' he said. 'For nothing they will kill the people.' His camp, to the east of Mr. Gupta's, operated under an even greater threat of violence. What appeared to be an armed robbery nearby took the life of a government engineer working on the project; it took seven months to fill his shoes. Mr. Rao had no pesky politicians to deal with, but only because even they feared the Maoists. Government had all but melted away here. From the highway, the Maoists extorted money and, for followers, jobs. The Maoist movement had begun with a 1968 agrarian peasant uprising in West Bengal. In the years since, Naxalites, as the rebels are known, have flourished, penetrating, with arms and ideology, the many corners where prosperity has yet to reach. Mahapur, Bihar, is one such corner. Poverty and Promise In a gilding morning light on the margins of the Grand Trunk Road, a fight broke out over wet concrete. A hailstorm the night before soaked the ground before the concrete could finish drying. So scarecrow-like scavengers had come out to scrounge the wet muck. An emaciated Bishnuji Bagwan, at least 90 and wearing little more than rags, had brought his wife, children and grandchildren to collect enough of it to shore up his dilapidated house. Malti Devi, mother of four, married to a man she called useless, wanted to smooth her floor. One family accused another of greed, and the fight began. Ms. Devi shrugged off the finger-pointing, hoisted a load atop her head, and headed across the highway. 'It's my share of concrete,' she said. 'If someone takes it, won't I fight?' She called the highway a 'blessing,' and said she had never seen anything like it. And it holds promise for Indians like her, with data showing that proximity to a real highway could alleviate poverty. For now, the villagers living along the route rarely had bus fare to reach nearby Mahapur. For them, the highway was more spectacle than utility. An American Dream As Ms. Devi was lugging wet concrete into her mud house, Mr. Rao, the project manager, was counting the days until he could take highway, train and plane, and escape for a holiday in America. He had three daughters living there, one a computer engineer, the other two married to computer engineers. Most of his engineers - almost all, like him, from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh - had relatives in America, too. If Bihar was enemy territory for the professionals roosting in rugged camps to build India's dream highway, America was the promised land. India's traffic with America has never been higher; sending a child there had become a middle-class 'craze,' in one engineer's word. The founding elites of India were British-educated. Today, the ambitious young pursue degrees from Wharton and Stanford, with some 80,000 Indian students in the United States. Two million Indians live there, working as doctors, software engineers, and motel owners along America's highways. No surprise, then, that America has shaped the ideas of what India's highway can be. Mr. Rao's deputy, B. K. Rami Reddy, also with a daughter in America, was nearly breathless as he described one stretch of finished roadway in southern India: 'You really feel like you are in the U.S., it is so nice. When you go on that road, you feel you are somewhere else.' The implicit effort to make India 'somewhere else,' more like America, more of the first world and less of the third, girds this entire project. With the highway and India's accompanying rise, Mr. Rao predicted that by 2010 or 2020, 'Indians may not feel the need to go abroad.' 'This highway will really change the face of India,' he said. Time Travel The face of West Bengal, home to 28 years of Communist rule and acres of green rice paddies, was already changing. Three satellite townships were being built near the town of Bardwan, which would be only an hour from Calcutta when the new highway was complete. Residents would commute, as they did from suburbs across America. If the highway was enabling the middle class to migrate out of cities, it was also encouraging the poor to migrate in. Beneath a crosshatch of elevated highways on the edge of Calcutta, thousands of rural Indians had burrowed in, constructing homes, creating businesses. Dung patties dried on the highway's underpinnings. Yellow taxis sat in rows. A whole civilization within, or beneath, a civilization, had hatched. Dal bubbled over a wood fire in the single room, constructed from wood and jute bags, that eight men shared. Bal Dev Rai, a 40-year-old from the state of Jharkhand, had called the room home for five years. He drove a bicycle handcart, sending money to his wife and daughters, returning to his village at harvest time. For him and his fellow bottom-dwellers, the improved highway meant a nicer roof over their heads. Each year the permanent residents were joined by temporary migrants, idol-makers who came from their villages to work their craft for Calcutta's festival for the 10-armed goddess, Durga, the invincible killer of demons. Statues of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, lay cast off under the highway overpass, waiting to be resurrected. From above came the sound of speeding cars.

Subject: On India's Roads From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 07:18:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/international/asia/06highway.html?ex=1291525200&en=99e7beb7b6a59b4d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger By AMY WALDMAN NELAMANGALA, India - Hot water: 10 rupees. Cold water: 8 rupees. Toilet: 5 rupees. Sex: no price specified on the bathhouse wall, but, as the condom painted there suggests, safe. Sangeetha Hamam, a bathhouse, sits on the national highway near this gritty truck stop about nine miles north of Bangalore. Its mistress is Ranjeetha, a 28-year-old eunuch who lives as a woman. Her lipstick and black dress provide a touch of glamour in the small dark shack. Her clients are not only truckers, but also Bangalore college students and other city residents. They know to look for sex at highway establishments geared toward truckers. Her customers - as many as 100 on Sundays for her and five other eunuchs - come for a 'massage' and the anal sex that follows, but also for the anonymity the location confers. Ranjeetha knows men will pay more for unprotected sex, but she calculates that the extra money is not worth the risk to her livelihood and life. She knows they can go elsewhere; there are some 45 bathhouses doubling as brothels near this truck stop. She also knows several eunuchs who have died of AIDS. India has at least 5.1 million people living with H.I.V., the second highest number after South Africa. It is, by all accounts, at a critical stage: it can either prevent the further spread of infection, or watch a more generalized epidemic take hold. Global experts worry that India is both underspending on AIDS and undercounting its H.I.V. cases. Its national highways are a conduit for the virus, passed by prostitutes and the truckers, migrants and locals who pay them, and brought home to unsuspecting wives in towns or villages. In its largest infrastructure project since independence, India is in the process of widening and upgrading those highways into a true interstate system. The effort will allow the roads to carry more traffic and freight than ever before. But some things are better left uncarried. The national highways between New Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai, formerly Madras, and Mumbai run through at least six districts where H.I.V. prevalence is above 2.5 percent. Earlier this year, a New York Times reporter and a photographer drove the route, which has been nicknamed the Golden Quadrilateral. To drive it is to peel back a nation's secret, or not so secret, sex life, and the potent mix of desire, denial and stigma that is helping spread the disease. India's entry into the global economy over the past 15 years may also be furthering the spread of AIDS. With rising incomes, men have more money for sex; poor women see selling sex as their only access to the new prosperity. Cities are drawing more migrants and prostitutes, and Western influences are liberalizing Indian sexual mores. In response, cultural protectionists are refusing to allow even the national conversation about AIDS to reflect this changing reality. The notion of a sexually chaste India is a 'complete myth,' said Ashok Alexander, the director of Avahan, the India AIDS Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Its preservation hurts prevention: 'You say it's not a big problem, only 'those people' are doing that.' Driving the highway also shows the complications in reaching the various constituencies along it. India's AIDS epidemic is as variegated as the country itself, with a multiplicity of high-risk groups. Intravenous drug users concentrate in northeastern states. Devadasis - poor, lower-caste women consecrated to gods as young girls and then consigned to prostitution - live in the south. Many of the groups are deeply fragmented and in perpetual motion, making them difficult for educators to reach: the man who owns a single truck; the woman who works at night out of a thatched hut; the lone migrant who shuttles back and forth between his village and urban work. But a number of AIDS prevention groups have come to see working along the highway as the best hope for targeted interventions. Avahan is pouring much of its $200 million into efforts along the highway. Another group, Project Concern International, sent young men to walk the Golden Quadrilateral - 3,625 miles long - over the course of a year to raise awareness about AIDS. They met truckers, villagers, road workers and migrants, and in some places were cheered as heroes. In others, they were chased out for daring to discuss condoms and H.I.V., accused of spreading promiscuity and disease. Sometimes, construction on the highway blocked the workers' way. But the deeper obstacles were culture, politics and history. The puritanical values of British colonialists repressed sexual expression in this country - essentially criminalizing homosexuality - and stigmatized it in many Indians' eyes as well. Some of the socially conservative Hindu nationalists who governed until 2004 tried to pretend no one was having sex, at least outside marriage. In truth, sex work has flourished in independent India. Red-light districts operate openly in cities like Mumbai, formerly Bombay, and in its new suburbs and industrial areas. Hundreds of girls and women parade the streets at night near 'pharmacies' where quacks peddle fake AIDS remedies. And advocates battling the spread of AIDS say they have learned that men having sex with men, then with their wives, is surprisingly common, but veiled by stigma. Ranjeetha, the bathhouse mistress, believes the real danger is not open eunuchs like her, but the men in denial, who work in offices by day and dress in saris at night. 'People who lead double lives don't use condoms,' she said. Awareness and Denial At least 1,000 trucks a day pass through Nelamangala's trans-shipment point, often waiting hours or days for a new load. In the interim, drivers and their helpers patronize bathhouses like Sangeetha, although many of the sex establishments do not paint condoms on the outside, and use none inside. There are three million to four million trucks on India's roads, at least one million of them traveling long distances. If truckers cannot find sex at trans-shipment points, they can buy it on the roadside, where women signal potential clients with flashlights. As many as 11 percent of truckers may be H.I.V. positive. In some parts of the country, like Tamil Nadu, the stigma around truckers has grown so strong that fathers forbid their daughters to marry them. Yet no one has figured out a comprehensive system for education or testing. There are perhaps 3,000 to 4,000 regional transport companies, but most trucks are owner-driven or run by small companies. The major stopping points, or trans-shipment yards, see so many truckers each day that even if truckers take an AIDS test, there is no way to follow up - an 'amnesiac system' in one advocate's words. In a dusty parking lot at this truck trans-shipment point, an AIDS educator wielded a black dildo and a condom, encircled by truckers who stifled mirth and curiosity. 'Why are you targeting us?' a trucker asked the educator. Truckers asked if AIDS could be transmitted by mosquito bites. They made ribald jokes about their sex lives, and boasted about not using condoms. One trucker interrupted to say he knew people who used condoms and still got AIDS. 'Check the expiration date,' the educator said. 'We are illiterate, we can't read,' the trucker replied. In the country's north, some drivers say they have never heard of AIDS, although their facial expressions may suggest otherwise. In the south, where AIDS is much more common, denial is trickier. Truckers have heard of AIDS, and often know someone who died from it, and word is starting to travel along with the virus. But awareness does not always translate to protection. Bhagwan Singh, 47, a trucker who was halting at the Gujarat-Rajasthan border, said he did not use condoms, because he had paid for sex only a few times. 'What happens if I just go once, twice, thrice?' he said. 'Only if I'm a regular fellow I might contract such things.' Bringing H.I.V. Home Once, twice, thrice or more often, whatever the truckers do on the road, or migrants do in cities, is coming home to oblivious wives. Here, the danger of a culture that is simultaneously licentious and conservative, of seasoned husbands and sheltered wives, becomes clear. This has become especially apparent in India's southern states, which are prospering economically, but have been hit the hardest by AIDS, along with pockets of the isolated northeast. The states the highway runs through in the south all have H.I.V. infection rates of 1 percent or higher. In the government hospital in Guntur, a district with a 2.5 percent H.I.V. infection rate, Sambra Ja Lakshmi, 27, a mother of two, was being counseled. Her husband, a 33-year-old trucker, had done 'thousands of kilometers on the national highway,' as she put it. Where he got H.I.V. is unknown, but he was so sick he could no longer move. She, a homemaker and mother who barely left her village about 15 miles off the highway, was H.I.V. positive, too. The counselor, Sunita Murugudu, had heard it before, and knew she would hear it again. Some 80 percent of truckers' wives who came in for voluntary testing and counseling tested positive, she said, usually because by the time they came in their husbands were on their deathbeds, and denial could no longer be sustained. G. Karuna, 24, was another woman who fell prey to the peregrinations of her husband, a long-distance driver from a family of truckers. When they both sought treatment for tuberculosis or opportunistic infections at hospitals, they hid his occupation, since many private hospitals now turn truckers away. After her husband died, his family blamed her, a cruel vengeance some in-laws inflict on the widows. They have made treatment and prevention that much harder. She was forced to sleep on the path outside; the family refused to share even a loaf of bread that she had touched. Soon their whole village had ostracized her. Ms. Karuna cried as she told her story, but that story also conveyed an uncommon strength. She had left her husband's family and her village to start a new life on her own. She became an activist with the Social Educational and Economic Development Society, an advocacy group in Guntur, trying to save other truckers' wives. She showed women pictures of her handsome husband before he sickened, and after. She told the wives to know what their husbands were doing outside the home, to negotiate the use of condoms with them, to get treated for sexually transmitted diseases. Her husband's relatives still teased her: 'Why are you working so hard? You also will die.' Morality and Stigma In the town of Nippani, outside Lafayette Hospital, a sign warned against unprotected sex, showing a blue demon on a horse slaying a healthy man. But those who fell prey to that demon were not welcomed, explained a doctor, Sunil Sase. AIDS carried a stigma like leprosy, he said, 'so we are not exactly treating the AIDS cases.' They were sent to another hospital 50 miles away. A group working to raise AIDS awareness among prostitutes had been chased from Nippani after being accused of promoting sex. Most of the devadasis and prostitutes, who had been working in the town on the highway for 50 years, had been chased out in a morality crusade. Now they were scattered along the road, impossible to reach with education or condoms. A mob had pulled one prostitute, Reshma Sheikh, and her 7-year-old son out of her house to try to force them from town. 'We have a right to live and work there, we never hurt the sentiments of the people around,' she said. She had stayed, only because she had nowhere else to go. The main group leading the crusade was the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist political party. Sunil Sadashir Dalavi, 32, the local leader, boasted about their success. But he said the women were not the only cause for the spread of AIDS. 'Educated boys don't get jobs, they have extra time, they don't know what to do,' he said. 'They can't marry till they get a job, they have very strong desires, so they go to these women.' Once the men were married they would not do 'these things,' he insisted, despite government surveys showing otherwise. The answer to controlling sex was controlling the culture, he said. A lot of local men went to two nearby cinemas that screened sex movies, he said, and then to brothels. 'We want to close the 'talkies' down,' he said, 'so people will not do this.' A Fragmented Industry In almost every doorway in the red-light district of Chilakaluripet, in Andhra Pradesh, women drape, wearing bright clothes, garish makeup and come-hither expressions that have served to lure both men and disease. For half a century, the town has been a center of sex work, combining its location on the national highway with women from its Domara community, which has come to specialize in prostitution. Truckers passing through know where to stop; if they do not, there are hotel boys, rickshaw pullers and others willing to guide them. In recent years, the town and surrounding area have also become a center of H.I.V. infection, and, given the number of long-distance truckers tarrying here, a likely source for its spread elsewhere. The sex industry has been organized in some cities, like Calcutta, but mostly it is as fragmented as the trucking industry. Chilakaluripet features brothel-based and home-based prostitutes, secret prostitutes and women who sell sex along the highway. A police crackdown on brothels in recent years has further dispersed the women. Venkaimah, a 25-year-old widow, is part of a 'highway brothel' - a small moving coterie of women who work in bushes or fields or restaurants along the road. Her workday starts when the light is gone and the truck traffic heavy. She leaves her two daughters, 10 and 2, behind, and on a good night may get 8 to 10 customers who pay 50 cents to a dollar each. Some prostitutes now use condoms, but the disease continues to spread. One local organization, Needs Serving Society, estimated that 1,000 people had tested positive for H.I.V. in the town and nearby villages, most of them not prostitutes, but locals who may have patronized them. No one, though, had any real idea of the true number. On one narrow lane alone, 20 prostitutes were infected, said one of them, Konda, 38. Venkaimah's children motivated her to use condoms - if she did not, she knew that sooner or later they would be orphaned. But loneliness can loosen defenses: like many prostitutes, she had 'temporary husbands' - longtime boyfriends - with whom she did not use a condom at all. Chilakaluripet, known for sex, was now marked by death. In a courtyard, Venkateswarmma, a mother of two, as thin and brittle as a doll, sat on a cot, unable to move. Her husband, a brothel owner's son, had died 10 days before, infected after sleeping with its employees. She was near death herself, unable to walk for her husband's death ceremony. Her 2-year-old son had already died from AIDS; she would leave behind an 11-year-old boy. A Mobile Society For 15 years, Vilas Jaganath Kamkar had been taking the bus from his village in Maharashtra state to Mumbai, its capital, where he worked as a taxicab driver. In 1994, he had taken a wife, Manisha, but he kept working in Mumbai, with monthly visits home. In this migrant nation, his life was not unique. Nor, in this age of AIDS, was his fate. Migrants may be the hardest group for AIDS educators to reach. As Indian society becomes more mobile, people are leaving villages for urban work at increasing rates. In Maharashtra, new plants and factories are springing up along the revamped highway. As rural migrants come to work in the factories, poor women follow to sexually service the men. Newly rich locals patronize the abundant supply of women, spawning H.I.V. 'hot spots' along the highways. In cities, the migrants live in slums, three or more to a room, and may move often. Away from their families for months at a time, they seek the companionship not just of prostitutes but of girlfriends, with whom safe sex is often ignored. Migrants leave home to work, but go home to die. At the hospital in Satara, a prospering city on the highway south of Mumbai, Mr. Kamkar, the taxi driver, now 32, lay breathless on a hospital bed. His luck had run out, and not just because he had contracted H.I.V. Only 25 hospitals and health centers were prescribing antiretroviral drugs. They were available in Guntur, but not 12 miles south in Chilakaluripet. They could be had in Mumbai - but not in Satara. All Mrs. Kamkar, 25, a mother of two, could do was take her husband back to their village, try to ease his pain and nurse him until the end. 'It's a matter of his destiny,' she said.

Subject: Optimism About the Japanese Economy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 06:52:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/07/business/07recover.html December 7, 2005 New Optimism About the Japanese Economy After a Bleak Decade By MARTIN FACKLER TOKYO - College graduates face the best job market in a decade, and wages are rising again. The lead stock market index has doubled in value in two years. Corporate profits are the highest in recent memory. And for the first time since 1990, land prices in Tokyo are up. Could it be that Japan, long the sick man among major global economies, has finally recovered? This is, after all, the country where the words 'gloom' and 'malaise' have been used for so long that many Japanese have come to view them as facts of life. Even the upturns, such as they were, proved to be short-lived as Japan was unable to shake off the doldrums it fell into in the early 1990's, when its stock and real estate bubbles burst. But this time, most economists and analysts agree, the recovery seems to be real, its roots extending through the Japanese economy. After more than a decade of working off excessive debt, bloated payrolls and overbuilt factory capacity, Japan seems to have addressed its bubble-era problems and emerged leaner and more competitive, the economists say. In fact, the economy here is projected to be growing at a faster rate than Europe's this year. That is good news both for Japan, which even in its weakest years in the 90's had the world's second-largest output, and for the global economy, which has depended on growth in the United States and China. A healthy Japan would be a bigger consumer and could invest more overseas, helping to pick up the slack if the American economy slows or China's falters. It would also provide a broader underpinning to Asian regional economies. In Tokyo, Japan's commercial heart, a growing feeling of prosperity is palpable. Restaurants are full, empty taxis can be scarce and a construction boom is filling the long-drab skyline with new skyscrapers. 'The economy has finally crawled out of its 1990's misery,' said Richard Jerram, chief economist in Tokyo for Macquarie Securities. 'This is the first time since the late 1980's that I've seen signs of a broad domestic revival.' No one factor is behind the new mood. Analysts point to a gradual peeling away of layers of regulations that choked new businesses and growth. They credit Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi with restoring banks to health over the four years since he took office, forcing them to cut in half the amount of bad debt left on their books from the 1980's. In 2002, that debt totaled $440 billion. Even more important, they say, has been a slow but steady revolution in Japan's clubby business culture, as hard times forced companies to become leaner and more aggressive. Japanese managers have been discarding their traditional distaste for confrontation and ending lifetime job guarantees. And the companies are investing heavily in new technology. Nowhere are the reasons for this economic rebound more apparent than at NKK, a once-downtrodden steel maker that in the 1990's struggled to stay afloat, cutting payrolls, closing furnaces and merging with a rival. But it also kept doing something else: spending on new research to find cheaper and better ways to make its products. Now, the merged company, JFE Holdings, is one of the most profitable steel makers in the world, forecasting a $2.6 billion net profit this fiscal year. Its sprawling Keihin Works, on a man-made island in Kawasaki, an industrial city next to Tokyo, has a highly productive new $200 million furnace that makes up to 12,500 tons of steel a day. The furnace, a 12-story-tall caldron that turns black iron ore into orange molten steel, achieves its productivity with a novel method of speeding combustion: adding natural gas, coal dust and even scraps of plastic to the traditional fuel, coke. Elsewhere in the plant, JFE has introduced a method for rapidly cooling red-hot steel plates that makes them harder and less likely to crack - desirable qualities for shipbuilders and other manufacturers. The improvements have helped JFE stay ahead of rivals in South Korea and China, where labor costs are cheaper. In fact, China is one of JFE's fastest-growing markets, buying about 8 percent of its steel. 'During the darkest years, we focused on raising the level of our technology,' said Kazuo Omata, the plant's assistant superintendent. 'That is now paying off.' Other Japanese companies never stopped investing money in research into new products and greater efficiency, even as they were cutting back elsewhere. For the last 12 years, Japan has spent more on research and development as a percentage of the economy than any other major industrial nation, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, a grouping of 30 of the world's relatively prosperous countries. Analysts call this a major reason for the rebound in corporate profit. In the fiscal year that ended in March, the combined operating profit of the 1,689 companies on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, which includes Japan's largest corporations, reached a record $270 billion, according to Merrill Lynch. That was almost double its highest level in the late 1980's. This stepped-up investment has contributed to turnarounds at many companies. The best known is Nissan Motor, which faced bankruptcy before the French carmaker Renault turned it into one of the world's most profitable auto companies, with innovative designs and technology. 'The private sector is innovating like crazy,' said Atsushi Nakajima, chief economist at the research arm of Mizuho Financial Group. 'Japan is back to healthy growth.' To be sure, not all economists are convinced that Japan is out of the woods. Some warn of huge problems the country has yet to fix, like soaring public debt and an underfinanced pension system to care for a rapidly aging population. Such concerns could make consumers reluctant to keep spending, they say. 'Japan will eventually hit a speed limit,' said Anil Kashyap, an economics professor at the University of Chicago. Even the optimists do not see a return to the late 1980's, when Japan appeared ready to eclipse the economic dominance of the United States. They say Japan will look much like other healthy developed economies, posting solid but not red-hot growth rates. Last week, the O.E.C.D. released a new forecast, predicting that Japan's $4.5 trillion economy would grow 2.4 percent this year, below the 3.6 percent seen in the United States but almost twice the rate for Europe. Other figures are also pointing up. In September, the government reported that commercial land prices in Tokyo rose 0.6 percent in the 12 months ended in June, the first gain since 1990. Prices elsewhere, though, are still falling. Companies are more optimistic, as is evident from a surge in spending on factories and equipment. According to a survey published last week by Japan's largest business daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, such spending will rise 15.2 percent this year, the first double-digit gain since 1991. There is also increased enthusiasm for Japan among American and other overseas investors. In mid-November, Goldman Sachs held a hedge fund conference in Tokyo; 700 fund managers attended, mostly from the United States and Europe. That was seven times the turnout at the first such conference six years ago, participants said. Foreigners now account for almost half of all trading on Japanese equity markets, according to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. They have helped spur a rally in the benchmark index, the Nikkei 225, which touched a two-decade low of 7,607.88 in April 2003. On Monday, it reached a five-year high; most of the gains have come since July. The changes in corporate Japan have also transformed other parts of the economy. With the decline in old-school corporate attitudes, there has been a rise in hostile-takeover attempts in recent years. Another is in the labor market, where unemployment has fallen to 4.2 percent in September from 5.5 percent in 2003. Around the same time, average monthly wages rose 0.5 percent in October from a year earlier, the seventh consecutive monthly gain. Specialists say the job market has become dynamic here as cost-conscious companies end job guarantees. That has allowed talented, somewhat younger employees to start changing companies, and to move more quickly upward. One is Koichi Maruyama, who is 47. In September, he left a comfortable spot as a department head at Japan Telecom, the established long-distance phone company, to take the No. 2 job at IP Mobile, a three-year-old start-up with just 20 employees and hopes of blanketing the country with wireless Internet access. He admits that joining IP Mobile was a risk, but calls the job more exciting, and potentially more lucrative if the company takes off. 'Ten years ago, someone like me wouldn't have imagined doing this,' Mr. Maruyama said. 'This is not the Japan of 10 years ago.'

Subject: China Orders 150 Airbus Jets From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 05:56:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/05/business/05cnd-airbus.html?ex=1291438800&en=987a54abef934c17&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 5, 2005 China Orders 150 Airbus Jets By DON PHILLIPS and DAVID LAGUE - International Herald Tribune PARIS - Airbus and China announced a $9 billion order for 150 narrow-body A320 aircraft today and said they would study building a final assembly line for the aircraft in China. The long-expected order allows Airbus to surpass Boeing's recent China orders and puts the company ahead of Boeing for aircraft orders taken this year. Aircraft manufacturers see China and India as the two top markets for aircraft sales in the next decade as travel expands in their growing economies. Final assembly in China would give Airbus an important advantage, perhaps similar to the advantage that Boeing has gained in Japan by having Japanese companies build a significant number of components for the new Boeing 787. The 787 will not undergo final assembly in Japan, however. Airbus signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday with the National Development and Reform Commission of China to enhance cooperation. That could lead to the establishment of a final assembly line in China. China made virtually the same arrangement years ago with McDonnell Douglas, now part of Boeing, to build new twin-engine narrow-body MD-80's in China. In that case, the new aircraft could not be sold outside China. Airbus said the new arrangement committed the company to buying at least $60 million a year in parts from China by 2007, rising to $120 million a year by 2010. In July, Airbus set up the Airbus Engineering Center in Beijing and recruited 54 of a planned 200 Chinese engineers. Boeing signed a 70-plane order during a visit to Beijing last month by President Bush. Boeing has since said it was in negotiations with the Chinese for an additional 80 planes. The company won an agreement in January from six Chinese airlines for the purchase of 60 of its 787 Dreamliners, which are to enter service in 2008. Among the many questions that cannot yet be answered is what parts for the new A320 order would be manufactured in China. The agreement for a minimum of $60 million in Chinese expenditures initially is quite small compared with the overall cost of the order. These decisions are likely to be tied up in future negotiations between Airbus and China. Aircraft production has become one of the most globalized of all manufacturing industries. Plants in dozens of countries, including the United States, contribute parts and structural components for every Airbus aircraft. Often Airbus or Boeing will agree to have some parts manufactured in a given country as part of negotiations on selling aircraft to that country. For instance, Airbus has already said it would manufacture new American military refueling tankers in the United States if an eventual order is big enough. China has emerged as a major battleground for Airbus and Boeing. So far this year, Boeing has won orders for 122 aircraft from China valued at $11.7 billion. Before today's announcement, Airbus had secured orders for 66 aircraft worth $8.3 billion. Boeing, based in Chicago, predicts that Chinese airlines will order as many as 2,300 aircraft worth about $183 billion over the next two decades. By 2023, the company expects Chinese carriers to be flying more than 2,800 aircraft, making China the biggest commercial aviation market outside the United States. China often tries to maximize the diplomatic advantage of major commercial aircraft orders by timing the announcement of them to coincide with top-level official visits. Industry analysts had expected that China would sign a big contract with Airbus while Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was visiting France. 'The numerous accords that we signed amply reflect the common understanding that I found with the French government during this visit,' Mr. Wen said at a news conference today with his French counterpart, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. Mr. Villepin said France wanted a 'long-term industrial and technological partnership' with China. China Daily, an official newspaper, reported today that the memorandum of understanding between the National Development and Reform Commission and Airbus signed Sunday meant that China was likely to become only the third country where Airbus aircraft are assembled, after France and Germany. The paper said a highlight of the memorandum, 'aimed at strengthening industrial cooperation between China and the aircraft giant, is to study the possibility of establishing an assembly line for Airbus single-aisle aircraft in China.' While China has clearly become a huge market for Airbus and Boeing, some analysts warned that China's airlines and civil aviation infrastructure were now struggling to keep pace with the growth in demand. Unless China can sharply increase the number of air crews it trains, a serious shortage of pilots is likely to hamper the airlines' efforts to make full use of the new aircraft they have ordered.

Subject: Productivity Rise Is Fastest From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 05:55:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/06/business/06cnd-econ.html?ex=1291525200&en=3af552fbb3df9738&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 6, 2005 Productivity Rise Is Fastest in Two Years By VIKAS BAJAJ Productivity rose at its fastest pace in two years in the third quarter, far more quickly than earlier predicted, as output rose and labor costs fell, the government reported today. As a measure of how much the economy produced per hour of work, productivity rose by 4.7 percent in the non-farm business sector of the economy from July to September, compared with an earlier reading of 4.1 percent, the Labor Department reported. Real hourly compensation, which adjusts wages and other benefits for inflation, fell 1.4 percent, unchanged from previous estimates. The report indicates that the productivity boom of the last several years may have more steam left in it than Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, and other economists had believed. Typically, productivity tends to slow in the latter parts of an economic expansion because businesses have wrung out most of the efficiencies from their operations and have to compete more aggressively for a thinning supply of employees. For workers, however, the data shows that the rise in energy costs wiped away any advantage they received in the form of higher wages, at least for a time. Before adjusting for inflation, hourly compensation rose 3.7 percent. Unit labor costs, which gauge how much compensation it takes to produce one unit of output, fell 1 percent in the quarter, twice as much as previously expected. From 2000 to 2004, productivity gains averaged 3.28 percent a year, far higher than the average of 2.14 percent for the last 45 years. Those gains are one of the mains reasons cited by Mr. Greenspan and other policy makers for the ability of the United States economy to achieve long periods of growth in recent years without sparking inflation. Compared with the same period a year ago, productivity in the third quarter grew at a rate of 3.1 percent, real hourly compensation rose 1.2 percent and unit labor costs were up 1.8 percent, much closer to the recent trend. Some economists noted that the report allays concerns about broader inflation outside of the recent spike in energy prices, which in the case of gasoline prices have already fallen back down. 'This is great news on the inflation front,' David Greenlaw, an economist at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a research note. 'It will be very difficult for the economy to generate any sustained rise in core inflation with unit labor costs showing such a high degree of restraint.'

Subject: Spam From: Bobby To: All Date Posted: Tues, Dec 06, 2005 at 14:54:23 (EST) Email Address: robert@pkarchive.org Message: Okay, I think I cleared all the spam off. I'll be on the lookout in case this jerk posts more of it.

Subject: Thank you.... From: Emma To: Bobby Date Posted: Tues, Dec 06, 2005 at 16:32:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thank you for being such a treasure. There are always such problems on the Internet.

Subject: Joyless Economy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 16:28:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120505K.shtml December 5, 2005 The Joyless Economy By PAUL KRUGMAN - New York Times Falling gasoline prices have led to some improvement in consumer confidence over the past few weeks. But the public remains deeply unhappy about the state of the economy. According to the latest Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans rate the economy as only fair or poor, and by 58 to 36 percent people say economic conditions are getting worse, not better. Yet by some measures, the economy is doing reasonably well. In particular, gross domestic product is rising at a pretty fast clip. So why aren't people pleased with the economy's performance? Like everything these days, this is a political as well as factual question. The Bush administration seems genuinely puzzled that it isn't getting more credit for what it thinks is a booming economy. So let me be helpful here and explain what's going on. I could point out that the economic numbers, especially the job numbers, aren't as good as the Bush people imagine. President Bush made an appearance in the Rose Garden to hail the latest jobs report, yet a gain of 215,000 jobs would have been considered nothing special - in fact, a bit subpar - during the Clinton years. And because the average workweek shrank a bit, the total number of hours worked actually fell last month. But the main explanation for economic discontent is that it's hard to convince people that the economy is booming when they themselves have yet to see any benefits from the supposed boom. Over the last few years G.D.P. growth has been reasonably good, and corporate profits have soared. But that growth has failed to trickle down to most Americans. Back in August the Census bureau released family income data for 2004. The report, which was overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, showed a remarkable disconnect between overall economic growth and the economic fortunes of most American families. It should have been a good year for American families: the economy grew 4.2 percent, its best performance since 1999. Yet most families actually lost economic ground. Real median household income - the income of households in the middle of the income distribution, adjusted for inflation - fell for the fifth year in a row. And one key source of economic insecurity got worse, as the number of Americans without health insurance continued to rise. We don't have comparable data for 2005 yet, but it's pretty clear that the results will be similar. G.D.P. growth has remained solid, but most families are probably losing ground as their earnings fail to keep up with inflation. Behind the disconnect between economic growth and family incomes lies the extremely lopsided nature of the economic recovery that officially began in late 2001. The growth in corporate profits has, as I said, been spectacular. Even after adjusting for inflation, profits have risen more than 50 percent since the last quarter of 2001. But real wage and salary income is up less than 7 percent. There are some wealthy Americans who derive a large share of their income from dividends and capital gains on stocks, and therefore benefit more or less directly from soaring profits. But these people constitute a small minority. For everyone else the sluggish growth in wages is the real story. And much of the wage and salary growth that did take place happened at the high end, in the form of rising payments to executives and other elite employees. Average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, are lower now than when the recovery began. So there you have it. Americans don't feel good about the economy because it hasn't been good for them. Never mind the G.D.P. numbers: most people are falling behind. It's much harder to explain why. The disconnect between G.D.P. growth and the economic fortunes of most American families can't be dismissed as a normal occurrence. Wages and median family income often lag behind profits in the early stages of an economic expansion, but not this far behind, and not for so long. Nor, I should say, is there any easy way to place more than a small fraction of the blame on Bush administration policies. At this point the joylessness of the economic expansion for most Americans is a mystery. What's clear, however, is that advisers who believe that Mr. Bush can repair his political standing by making speeches telling the public how well the economy is doing have misunderstood the situation. The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

Subject: Saw-whet Owl with Mouse From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 15:57:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5822&exhibition=7&u=99|6|... Northern Saw-whet Owl with Mouse New York City--Central Park, The Ramble.

Subject: Eastern Screech-owl Fledglings From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 15:56:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5214&exhibition=7&u=16|117|... Two Eastern Screech-owl Fledglings in Late Afternoon Sunlight New York City--Central Park, North Woods.

Subject: Lofty Promise of Saturn Plant From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 07:50:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/business/02saturn.html?ex=1291179600&en=dc12d57efa9bd32f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 2, 2005 Lofty Promise of Saturn Plant Runs Into G.M.'s Fiscal Reality By JEREMY W. PETERS and MICHELINE MAYNARD SPRING HILL, Tenn. - This was the factory that was going to revive the American automobile industry, proving that Detroit could build quality cars and win back buyers who had defected to the Japanese. Opened when auto companies were closing plants and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs, General Motors' Saturn plant here was a rare opportunity for the company and its workers to literally leave the industry's old ways behind and embrace some of the lessons that Japan was teaching, with an American twist. Now, Saturn is in danger of falling victim to the fate this plant was intended to avoid. The plant, the only one exclusively devoted to building Saturn vehicles, is among 12 factories that G.M. plans to shut or partly close, eliminating 30,000 jobs in North America as it tries to recover from one of the worst slumps in its history. Next year, in a move that presages the end to G.M.'s grand Saturn experiment in Spring Hill, the company will shut one of two assembly lines at one of the most famous factories in the country. While workers are hoping that G.M. will invest here to modernize the plant, the troubled auto company has made no commitment that would guarantee Spring Hill's future. Nestled in rolling farm country 30 miles south of Nashville, workers and managers at the sprawling complex started out making decisions together and customers prized the vehicles because they came from 'a different kind of car company,' as the Saturn tagline went. The Saturn plant, like other efforts at G.M. to battle foreign competition, became a victim of the company's short attention span. At a critical time when the plant needed to grow, G.M instead poured money into sport utility vehicles and pickups, hoping to outwit the Japanese - only to see them invade those markets, too. And workers here are paying the price. 'Workers have got to be asking themselves, What do we have to do?' said Gary N. Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. 'The social contract was that if we build a quality product, we're going to have jobs, our kids are going to have jobs, and the plant will still be in town,' Professor Chaison said. 'Now, that idea is gone.' It certainly looks that way to Michael O'Rourke, who uprooted his wife and three children from Wisconsin to come south. Saturn was the promise of a future he could not find at his old plant. 'I still remember the day I gave away my snow blower, I was so happy,' Mr. O'Rourke, the president of the United Automobile Workers local here, said this week. These days, Mr. O'Rourke, who sits in an office with file cabinets plastered with bumper stickers reading 'I {sheart} My Saturn' and 'Buy American, Buy Union,' faces an uncertain future along with his co-workers. About 1,500 workers at the plant are set to lose jobs that G.M. originally assured them were guaranteed. Another 4,000 jobs at Spring Hill, the second-youngest plant in G.M.'s American network, may hinge on whether the auto company gives this factory new models to build. Even if G.M. does allot new work, the vehicles are likely to be other G.M. cars. These Saturn workers have learned the harsh reality that building quality cars and cooperating with management are not enough to save their jobs. As in the past, their futures now depend primarily on whether their plants build vehicles that sell, which they cannot control, rather than how well they are built, which they can. Saturn workers are not the only ones getting this message. G.M. also plans to close its well-regarded plants in Oklahoma City and Oshawa, Ontario. Both have won the title of the best plant in North America by J. D. Power & Associates, which publishes an annual ranking according to efficiency and quality. G.M.'s chief executive, Rick Wagoner, said last week that he regretted having to shut such heralded plants. 'It's not an easy decision,' Mr. Wagoner said. 'We don't have many plants that aren't high quality and very productive.' But the heartbreak is especially deep at Saturn, where the original promises that G.M. made its workers when the first cars were built there in 1990 have been steadily slipping away as sales have faltered by 25 percent from their 1994 peak, to about 221,000 last year, and its buzz has faded. Yet for a time, the Saturn approach worked to extraordinary acclaim. Owners of Toyotas and Hondas were buying Saturn's small cars on the belief that G.M. had matched their vehicles in quality. In truth, Saturns never consistently beat their Japanese rivals in surveys performed by J. D. Power or Consumer Reports, but Saturn's consumer-friendly image and the almost cult-like following among Saturn owners made it seem as though they did. Now, perception is not enough. The best foreign manufacturers can build a half dozen or more different kinds of cars and trucks at their assembly plants in the United States and Canada, and this allows them to quickly shift production when buyers' tastes change. And with its market share eroding, and with $4 billion in North American losses just this year, G.M. is on a mission to do the same. ' Toyota and Honda really have a remarkable capacity to put more than one vehicle in a plant,' John Paul MacDuffie, an associate professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said last week. 'G.M. just can't do that,' except at a few factories. Workers in Spring Hill, where cows graze across railroad tracks from a plant that once became iconic in quirky television commercials, said they came here believing that they could help G.M. rebound and give the U.A.W. a stronger voice. Saturn was 'an opportunity to show everyone the worker had some influence in the making and building of a car, that we weren't just line rats,' said Mark Wunderlin, 49, who moved here from Oklahoma City in 1990. Saturn workers took part in brainstorming sessions, sharing ideas with management that they might have never mentioned at a conventional plant. Leaders of the U.A.W. served alongside G.M. executives on an advisory council, sharing decisions affecting Saturn. Saturn had its own purchasing department, buying parts separately from G.M. - and sometimes getting a better deal. (G.M. does not break down its results by line, so it is unclear how much profit or loss Saturn has generated.) Thousands of visitors and hundreds of corporate managers flocked here to get a glimpse of the Saturn 'secret,' which the company happily displayed, with tours of the plant and seminars in classrooms just a few feet away from the factory floor. Spring Hill - which had only 1,500 residents when G.M. selected the hamlet after a lively competition among politicians vying for the plant - swelled to 17,000 people. Despite the risk of leaving their old jobs behind, workers were eager to come because there were to be no layoffs under the union contract at Saturn. (The contract was changed last year after G.M. persuaded workers that it stood in the way of introducing new models to the plant.) When production slowed, workers were assigned to sweep the floors or paint white fences that stretched several miles around the plant. But the Saturn dream died well before the plant. In the mid-1990's, when Saturn reached its peak sales of just under 300,000 cars a year, plant and union officials were campaigning hard for an expansion so that the factory could build half a million vehicles a year. They had a good argument. Buyers were outgrowing their small Saturns, and with the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord regaining some of Saturn's converts, Saturn's partisans pleaded with G.M. for bigger cars. G.M. executives, facing a hot market for S.U.V.'s and pickups, and having already spent $5 billion at that point on Saturn, decided, however, to pour money into developing trucks instead. Thus, there were no new Saturn cars for four years. And when G.M. finally decided to build a midsize Saturn, the production went to Wilmington, Del., instead of Spring Hill. By the time the Spring Hill plant got new vehicles to build, including a small S.U.V. called the Vue, Saturn's buzz was long gone and so was its status as a separate part of G.M. 'It's been a slow process, but little bites have been taken away,' said Darryl Kilburn, 41, an electrician whose wife, Marlene, 50, also works at Spring Hill. They met here after coming to Tennessee from other G.M. plants in Michigan: he from Flint, she from Lansing. Both were eager for a chance to start over. But now, as back in Michigan, 'you just do your job and go home,' Mr. Kilburn said. G.M. officials say there is still an opportunity for Saturn to win new business. It plans four new vehicles for the Saturn lineup, although none yet are earmarked for Spring Hill and may be built elsewhere. 'The big issue for Saturn is a simple one, and it's basically product,' said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. 'Saturn hasn't had the array of products it needed.' G.M. is expected to send production of small Saturn cars, built on the assembly line now planned to be shut, to another factory, perhaps at Lordstown, Ohio, where it recently expanded. Sylvia Johnson, 54, said she wondered if Saturn could survive. Sitting in the gymnasium of the union hall, Ms. Johnson recalled her excitement when she arrived in 1996, after working for 20 years at an Indiana parts plant that closed. 'Everyone had that gung-ho feeling,' Ms. Johnson said. 'I thought we would still be doing the same thing for the next 30, 40 years.' Leo Jones, 47, shares her sense of disappointment. Ten years after he arrived from a G.M. plant in Lansing, Mich., where he had worked for a decade, Mr. Jones has been laid off most of this year. Lately, he wishes he had stayed up north. 'If I had to do it again, ' he said, 'I wouldn't come down here.'

Subject: The Manager Is in a Slump From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:59:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/business/yourmoney/20stra.html?ex=1290142800&en=569683e01661e461&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 The Manager Is in a Slump (or Maybe It's Just a Phase) By MARK HULBERT FEW mutual fund managers beat the stock market over the long term. That sad truth is widely understood, and it helps to account for the vast popularity of index funds, which aspire only to match the returns of a particular market. But a new study suggests that it may be too soon to give up on actively managed mutual funds. While few managers can outpace the market as it moves up and down, year in and year out, substantial numbers can predictably outperform it during parts of the economic cycle, the study has found. And investors who are willing and able to make frequent switches among top funds may be able to make some money from this insight. The study, called 'Investing in Mutual Funds When Returns Are Predictable,' is forthcoming in the Journal of Financial Economics. Its authors are Doron Avramov and Russ Wermers, finance professors at the University of Maryland; a copy is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=555462. In the past, the professors say, most mutual fund research assumed that managers' ability or inability to outperform the market was constant, regardless of the waxing and waning of the market cycle. But the professors made a different assumption: that significant numbers of managers may have market-beating ability at some stages of the economic cycle but not at others. A manager who can beat the market during a recession, for example, or in periods of high inflation, may well lag behind it in periods of robust economic growth or low inflation. These managers will never be found by comparing their long-term performances with a market average, the professors said. The managers' stellar gains in parts of a cycle will tend to be offset by poor performance at other times. As a result, their long-term records will be unexceptional. The professors designed complex tests, hoping to find managers with such part-time promise. Specifically, they correlated funds' returns with four macroeconomic variables that previous studies found to be good leading indicators: the 90-day Treasury bill rate, the stock market's dividend yield, the difference between the interest rates of junk bonds and higher-quality issues (the so-called default spread) and the rate difference between longer-term Treasuries and 90-day Treasury bills (the term spread). As they expected, the professors found that the typical manager's likelihood of beating the market was strongly related to these four variables. Professor Wermers estimates that as many as a third of the fund managers in the study showed market-beating ability during at least some phase of the market cycle. That compares with just 10 percent of managers who, he said, were able to beat the market's overall return over the last two decades. How can this help investors beat the market? To find out, the professors built a hypothetical portfolio that invested each month in the no-load funds that historically performed the best when the four macroeconomic variables were similar to that month's readings. They back-tested the portfolio from 1980 through 2002, being careful to use only the information that was publicly available going into each month. The professors say they were startled by this model portfolio's large and consistent returns over the 23 years. Not only did the model outperform the overall market by eight percentage points a year, on average, but it also handily beat a benchmark portfolio of funds that was similar to it in three ways: in its risk level, in the market capitalization of its holdings and in its place on the growth-to-value spectrum. The professors also compared their portfolio's gain with that of several strategies that previous research had found to have market-beating potential. None of those others came close. THE professors' strategy does come with significant caveats about its real-world profitability. Because the portfolio is rebalanced monthly, it can require frequent switching among funds. According to Professor Wermers, the average holding period of funds in the portfolio was only about four months, so almost all the capital gains would be taxed at the higher short-term rate. That means the strategy works better in tax-deferred accounts. And what happens if a fund under consideration imposes huge fees or other restrictions on frequent short-term trading, as some funds have started to do? In such a case, the professors would simply avoid the fund. After all, Professor Wermers says, there are still plenty of funds that don't have such restrictions but do have managers that can beat the market during part of a cycle. The professors concede that their strategy is probably more appropriate for institutions than for individual investors, because it requires the application of complex statistics to a large database of fund returns. Still, the research can teach us not to be too quick to conclude from the fund industry's dismal long-term record that virtually no managers have market-beating ability - or that it never makes sense to invest in an actively managed fund.

Subject: 1 1 1 1 Can Equal Less Than 4 From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:57:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/business/yourmoney/06stra.html?ex=1288933200&en=49c17e154fd74c18&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 6, 2005 How 1 1 1 1 Can Equal Less Than 4 By MARK HULBERT THE recent decision of the Cendant Corporation to break itself into four companies reflects an underlying truth about wide-ranging conglomerates: they are sometimes fashionable on Wall Street, but they rarely make much investment sense over the long term. In most cases, in fact, a widely diversified company would be worth more if its distinct units operated as separate publicly traded companies. Last month, Cendant's directors bet that this would the case for their conglomerate. They announced that they would break it into four publicly traded companies - each a pure play on just one type of business: real estate brokerage, online travel services, lodging and car rentals. The board said the break-up was needed in order to unlock the four units' inherent value. This reasoning is in line with that of numerous studies, which have concluded that conglomerates are worth less than the sum of their parts. Many of the studies trace back to the work of the late James Tobin, the 1981 Nobel laureate in economics, and particularly to Tobin's Q ratio, the valuation measure he made famous. A company's Q ratio is its total market capitalization divided by the replacement cost of its total assets. Companies with relatively high Q ratios are those that investors see as poised for faster growth. While a high ratio is often regarded as an investor vote of confidence in management, a low ratio is seen as a thumbs down. Widely diversified companies, on average, have lower Q ratios than those of more narrowly focused businesses - a phenomenon called the diversification discount. Although the long-term overall odds may be against conglomerates, some can be worth more than the sum of their parts. That is almost certainly the case for Berkshire Hathaway, run by Warren E. Buffett. Furthermore, there have been periods in history when investors have reacted more favorably to the combination of vastly different businesses under a single corporate umbrella. During those times, the shares of even run-of the-mill conglomerates have appeared to glitter. But over the long haul, conglomerates, on average, perform worse in the stock market than the typical focused company. One likely cause is that they tend to do a poor job of allocating capital among their various divisions. Of course, if those units were separate publicly traded companies, the market itself would be making the allocation decisions. And it stands to reason that the overall market is a better administrator in this regard than the average corporate manager. A study conducted by David S. Scharfstein, a finance professor at the Harvard Business School, offers evidence of inefficient capital allocation among widely diversified companies. Professor Scharfstein found that managers of conglomerates generally felt compelled to invest something in all of their divisions, regardless of the divisions' growth potential - a phenomenon that he calls intrafirm 'socialism.' Because of it, conglomerates tend to invest too much in divisions with low growth potential and too little in those with high potential. Professor Scharfstein's research was conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research; a copy of his study is at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=226103. His findings help to explain why conglomerates can unlock value by breaking into component parts. Once those parts are separate, publicly traded companies, the businesses with the highest growth potential should attract capital more easily than the slowest-growth units. WHILE the decision by Cendant thus makes good investment sense, why did it - or any other conglomerate, for that matter - decide to become so widely diversified in the first place? A possible answer is suggested in research by the finance professors Owen Lamont of Yale and Christopher Polk of Northwestern. Writing in the January 2002 issue of the Journal of Financial Economics, they said companies with the lowest growth prospects tended to be the most likely to diversify. That is probably because such companies see greater growth opportunities in businesses unrelated to their own. Of course, once a slow-growth company becomes part of a group of unrelated businesses, Professor Scharfstein's intrafirm socialism kicks in, moving capital out of the fast-growing divisions. If the conglomerate remains intact for a long time, the results may leave investors lamenting its very creation.

Subject: Aging Brings Wisdom From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:55:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/business/yourmoney/04stra.html?ex=1291352400&en=f910080c3851036a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 4, 2005 Aging Brings Wisdom, but Not on Investing By MARK HULBERT DO people generally become better investors as they age? Unfortunately, new research has found that the answer is no. The picture isn't entirely bleak. People do seem to learn some important truths about the ups and downs of the market. As they age, they tend to have more diversified portfolios, which gives them some protection from sharp declines in individual holdings. But there's a catch, and it's a nasty one. As people grow older, their cognitive ability tends to diminish - a gradual decline that presumably affects decision-making in all facets of life. In investing, the researchers concluded, it makes older people less capable of picking market-beating stocks. The net result - at least for those who trade individual stocks of their own choosing - is that overall investment performance declines steadily with age. The study - 'Does Investment Skill Decline Due to Cognitive Aging or Improve With Experience?' - has been circulating this summer as an academic working paper. Its authors are two finance professors at the University of Notre Dame, George M. Korniotis and Alok Kumar. A copy is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=767125. For their study, the professors obtained access to an extensive database at a major discount brokerage firm containing the stock holdings and trades in more than 75,000 accounts between 1991 and 1996. The researchers agreed not to divulge the identity of the firm and were not given the names of any account owners, just some demographic characteristics, including age, income, wealth, occupation, marital status and gender. The brokerage accounts were self-directed, so the professors said they believed it was safe to assume that each account's holdings and transactions reflected its owner's decision-making. Furthermore, after examining other aspects of the database, the researchers said they became 'reasonably confident' that these accounts represented the bulk of their owners' assets available for investment. First, the good news about the research. The professors did find evidence that most investors learn as they age. Older investors were less likely to make all-or-nothing bets on a single stock or sector, for example; their portfolios tended to hold significantly more stocks than those of younger investors. Older investors were also less likely to reflexively sell winning stocks and hold losing ones, regardless of the stocks' prospects; this tendency is a common one and it can be very costly. On both of these particular scores, aging turned out to improve returns, adding about 0.7 percent a year to the performance of the average 65-year-old's portfolio, according to the researchers, relative to the average 30-year-old's. Now the bad news. As far as stock-picking goes, investors seem to get worse as they grow older. To be sure, no age group was able to consistently pick market-beating stocks. But investors' stock picks tended to lag the market by ever-increasing amounts as they grew older. The researchers concluded that it was most likely caused by the cognitive decline associated with growing older. 'The evidence from cognitive aging research suggests that decision-making ability is likely to deteriorate with age due to a decline in general intelligence and information processing ability,' according to the professors. 'Effective and timely reaction to new information is one of the key defining characteristics of investment skill.' In terms of portfolio performance, the negative effects of impaired stock-picking ability outweighed older investors' other advantages, according to calculations by the professors. They found that the average 65-year-old investor's stock picks lagged behind those of the average 30-year-old investor's by 1.8 percent a year. The overall effect of the aging process was for 65-year-olds to have an average annual return about 1.1 percent lower than the typical 30-year-old's. Because every age group in their study trailed the market, the researchers believe that all investors should favor index funds, which mirror the performance of the market and don't attempt to beat it. This advice becomes increasingly important as investors grow older. If older people nevertheless want to invest in individual stocks, they shouldn't try to pick them themselves, the professors said. 'Our hope,' they said, 'is that older people would recognize the adverse effects of cognitive aging and would try to compensate for those effects by seeking advice from a financial adviser or some other qualified investment professional.' The professors' study does contain a silver lining: the stock market may actually perform better as the population gets older. This tantalizing prospect depends on a number of assumptions. Fundamentally, they said, if older investors are aware of their declining investment skill, they may demand a higher premium for investing in the stock market. Consequently, stock market returns may increase as the population ages. They concede that this particular consequence of their study is tentative, and they are working on further research to test it. But it at least holds out the prospect that the aging of the enormous baby boom generation won't be entirely bearish for the stock market.

Subject: Paul Krugman: The Joyless Economy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 02:26:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 05, 2005 Paul Krugman: The Joyless Economy By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman looks at why there is so much discontent over economic conditions even though the numbers indicate the economy is doing fairly well: The Joyless Economy, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Falling gasoline prices have led to some improvement in consumer confidence ... But the public remains deeply unhappy about the state of the economy. ... Yet by some measures, the economy is doing reasonably well. In particular, gross domestic product is rising at a pretty fast clip. So why aren't people pleased with the economy's performance? ... The Bush administration seems genuinely puzzled that it isn't getting more credit for what it thinks is a booming economy. So let me be helpful here and explain what's going on. I could point out that the economic numbers, especially the job numbers, aren't as good as the Bush people imagine. ... But the main explanation for economic discontent is that it's hard to convince people that the economy is booming when they themselves have yet to see any benefits... Back in August the Census bureau released family income data for 2004. The report, which was overshadowed by Hurricane Katrina, showed a remarkable disconnect between overall economic growth and the economic fortunes of most American families. It should have been a good year for American families: the economy grew 4.2 percent ... Yet most families actually lost economic ground. Real median household income ... fell for the fifth year in a row. And one key source of economic insecurity got worse, as the number of Americans without health insurance continued to rise. ... Behind the disconnect ... lies the extremely lopsided nature of the economic recovery... The growth in corporate profits has ... been spectacular. Even after adjusting for inflation, profits have risen more than 50 percent since the last quarter of 2001. But real wage and salary income is up less than 7 percent. There are some wealthy Americans who derive a large share of their income from dividends and capital gains on stocks... But ... the sluggish growth in wages is the real story. ... Average hourly earnings of nonsupervisory workers, adjusted for inflation, are lower now than when the recovery began. So there you have it. Americans don't feel good about the economy because it hasn't been good for them. Never mind the G.D.P. numbers: most people are falling behind. It's much harder to explain why. The disconnect between G.D.P. growth and the economic fortunes of most American families can't be dismissed as a normal occurrence. Wages and median family income often lag behind profits in the early stages of an economic expansion, but not this far behind, and not for so long. Nor, I should say, is there any easy way to place more than a small fraction of the blame on Bush administration policies. At this point the joylessness of the economic expansion for most Americans is a mystery. What's clear, however, is that advisers who believe that Mr. Bush can repair his political standing by making speeches telling the public how well the economy is doing have misunderstood the situation. The problem isn't that people don't understand how good things are. It's that they know, from personal experience, that things really aren't that good.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: The Joyless Economy From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 14:35:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Hmmmmmm, It appears to me that the trickle down theory has just been disproved! In my experience, GDP growth numbers are, at most, only slightly telling. Using growth rates is a 'rule of thumb' approach to things. Expressing situations in pure numbers make analysis much easier.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: The Joyless Economy From: Emma To: Poyetas Date Posted: Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 15:58:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Nice comment; agreed.

Subject: Engines Go Back to the Future From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 04, 2005 at 15:53:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/04/automobiles/04CHEVY.html December 4, 2005 Engines Go Back to the Future By CHERYL JENSEN GERMAN automakers gave up pushrod engines long ago, in favor of more complex overhead-cam power plants. The Japanese have essentially quit making the old-design engines. Ford is down to just a couple. But Chrysler, with seven, and especially General Motors, with about a dozen in 21 different forms, remain bastions of the pushrod engine, also known as an overhead-valve design. Not only has G.M. continued to carry forward older engine designs, like the famous 'small block V-8' in your grandfather's 1955 Bel Air (and your son's 2005 Corvette), it has been designing new ones. The Chevy Impala offers two pushrod V-6's that are new for 2006. G.M. says the new engines share almost nothing with the old ones. The Impala's base engine, a 3.5-liter V-6, was actually developed from the more powerful 3.9 V-6; the two share more than 80 percent of their parts. While the Impala's powertrains may seem caught in a piston-pushing time warp, the new-old engines were designed with innovations like variable valve timing, which provides a broader power range and produces lower emissions. Further, G.M. and Chrysler say that pushrod engines lend themselves better than overhead-cam engines - the two companies make plenty of those, too - to another bit of fuel-saving technology that is becoming popular: deactivation of half the cylinders at cruising speed. But money is a big factor in G.M.'s back-to-the-future powertrains. Brett Smith, director of product and technology forecasting for the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., said the company saved an estimated $800 a vehicle by sticking with pushrod motors, which cost less to make largely because they contain fewer parts. Dollars saved on the engines can be used to add other features to the cars. Some enthusiasts defend pushrod engines, which usually have two valves per cylinder (rather than the three or more valves common among overhead-cam designs) for their strong low-end thrust. A potentially bigger deficiency of the new Impala is its four-speed automatic transmission; competitors have five or six speeds. Additional gears can improve acceleration and fuel economy. G.M. is working on six-speed automatics for front- and all-wheel-drive cars, but they were not available in time for the 2006 Impala.

Subject: Paul Krugman Transcript From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Dec 04, 2005 at 08:21:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 4, 2005 Paul Krugman Transcript from CNN's Reliable Sources By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman was on CNN's Reliable Sources recently. The topic is whether the news coverage of Iraq is undermining Bush. The interview also recalls a key moment in the Vietnam war debate when Walter Cronkite had the courage to tell the nation that the war was not going well: Is News Coverage of Iraq Undermining Bush?; Aired November 27, 2005 - 10:00, CNN's Reliable Sources: THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. ... KURTZ: Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES... I'm Howard Kurtz. ...[B]ack in 1968, nearly all editorial pages and most columnists supported the war in Vietnam, which made it all the more shocking when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite returned from a trip there and told the country that things were not going well. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) WALTER CRONKITE, FMR. CBS ANCHOR: To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion. (END VIDEO CLIP) KURTZ: Even then it would take another year or two for elite media opinion to turn against the war, catching up with the growing public disillusionment over the rising death toll and lack of progress. Today, while plenty of editorial pages have criticized President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, only a handful have supported a U.S. pullout. But a majority of Americans now oppose the war. Are the media again lagging behind public opinion? ... Paul Krugman, could there be a Cronkite moment today with a leading journalist turning against the war and moving public opinion? PAUL KRUGMAN...: We are not Walter Cronkite's country anymore. We are a much more polarized nation. There is no political center. People get their news from opposing sources. You look at the polls, people who voted for Bush in the last election just live in a different reality from people who voted for Kerry. And ... we've seen repeatedly not so much media figures, but policy figures [who] turn against Bush on the war, it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what... your record is. All of a sudden you're just another Michael Moore. So, no, I don't think we have a Walter Cronkite moment. KURTZ: I was going -- I was going to ask you about that, because you wrote recently about the ugly myth that the administration is patriotic while its critics are not. Now you happen to favor a U.S. pullout. Has anybody called you unpatriotic? KRUGMAN: Oh, I'm called unpatriotic all of the time on every issue. I've been called unpatriotic for ... criticizing our health care system. But no, ... this is a world in which -- a country in which -- look, I ... was the subject of a fairly major campaign calling me unpatriotic for criticizing Bush's handling of Katrina. So that's the kind of world we're in. If Walter Cronkite were ... on the news today, if a Walter Cronkite equivalent were on the news, he would -- immediately after that broadcast we just saw, he would have been called a traitor. ... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, what accounts for the following? Fifty-two percent in the latest CNN poll want a U.S. pullout either now or within a year. And yet almost every editorial page in the country still supports the war. KRUGMAN: Partly, it's that editorial pages are very much trying to be responsible. And there is this feeling that ... we can't be responsible for defeat. You know, Pottery Barn, we broke it, we own it. And part of it is, there has been a lot of ... intimidation of the media. People are really afraid of being accused of undermining the troops. And particularly, a lot of people remember what happened in Vietnam, which was the public turned against the war, the media turned against the war, and the Democrats and liberals have been paying the price for having been right ever since. So nobody wants to be out in front on this. KURTZ: So you're suggesting that there is a certain amount of timidity involved in continuing to support the U.S. forces there in what remains obviously a difficult situation? KRUGMAN: Well, there's been enormous timidity. ...[L]ook at the question of whether we were misled into war. The evidence -- basically, all the evidence you're now hearing about that was available by the summer of 2003. But you did not get extensive media coverage of the evidence about aluminum tubes and all that ... until after a majority of the public had decided we were misled into war. And the same thing is happening on withdrawal... KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, journalists, as you know, love to cover two sides: Republicans say this, Democrats say that. It's the fact that the Democratic Party has been -- has not staked out much of an alternative plan here. Even when Jack Murtha made his withdrawal argument, most of the party did not join in. Has that contributed to what some might call the one-sided coverage in the press about the political debate? KRUGMAN: Sure. I mean, I once said that if Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headline would read, 'Views Differ on Shape of Earth,' that you have this real, real reluctance to actually just state what the facts are. And here you can't even -- or until very recently you couldn't even do the he said-she said reporting. That's part of the reason why a lot of the coverage lagged behind public opinion. It was only when the public had turned against the war, when the public had decided we'd been misled into war, ... and then when some politicians began following the public lead, then we get the media coverage, which is not the way it ought to be. But that's the way it has actually turned out... KURTZ: Paul Krugman, you wrote recently -- I want to read this quote -- 'After 9/11, the media eagerly helped our political leaders build up a completely false picture of who they were. So the long nightmare won't really be over until journalists ask themselves, 'What did we know, when did we know it and why didn't we tell the public.'' Are you suggesting this was deliberate on the part of the press? KRUGMAN: I guess it depends on the meaning of the word 'deliberate.' Did people say, ooh, let's join in the vast right wing conspiracy? No. Did journalists say, you know, the public wants to hear good stuff about Bush, they want to hear that we have a great leader, they want to hear favorable things about the administration, and did they then hide what they knew was not favorable? Yes, there is a lot of that. I don't know how many times I've talked to ... professional journalists, major people, whose private views of what happened even ... beginning within days of 9/11, are completely at odds with what you could have read in a major newspaper or seen on TV until ... just about now. KURTZ: ...Paul Krugman, I've got probably about half a minute. Do you see signs that the press coverage is starting to turn on Iraq and that we are moving away from this period that you referred to as the media kind of building up the Bush administration? In fact, some would say it's the other way, that now it's open season on the Bush administration. KRUGMAN: There's -- there's clearly a lot of -- there was a lot of pent-up frustration. I mean, people..., you knew, I knew that Bush was politicizing, was exploiting 9/11, within days. You have to have known that. I certainly did. And ... no one would dare say it for four years. And now, yes, there is a certain sense of payback. Now we can finally tell the truth. KURTZ: ...Well, some other people would say he was rallying the country. From that last coment, it sounds like Kurtz is still in denial.

Subject: A Scare for Investors? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 11:09:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://select.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/business/02norris.html December 2, 2005 Pension Truths: A Scare for Investors? By FLOYD NORRIS ...This decade may be remembered as a time when better accounting changed reality in ways that were not always pleasant. There are two areas where that will be clear. The first is in stock options; the second in pensions. Better accounting is likely to mean fewer options and fewer pensions. Those who opposed good accounting for options warned of all kinds of negative results for the American economy and stock market. Investors who could see the cost of options would no longer invest in companies that issued them, thus damaging America's competitive position and halting the flow of innovation. Stock prices would crumble. That has not happened, of course. What has happened is that companies have become more stingy in handing out options and are actively searching for ways to minimize the reported expense. But it is in pensions that the most far-reaching effects will be felt, in part because they reach so many more people. The unfortunate fact is that companies have made promises they have not paid for, particularly in health benefits for retirees but also in pensions. Now accounting rule makers want to fix that. The first change, which could hit balance sheets at the end of 2006, would simply put the value of pension obligations and post-employee health care obligations on the balance sheet as a liability, offset by the value of pension fund assets. That will cut shareholder equity at more than a few companies. Jack T. Ciesielski, writing in The Analyst's Accounting Observer, estimates that companies in the S.&P. 500 index had combined unfunded pension and post-retirement health benefit obligations of $473 billion at the end of last year. Only a part of that shows up on balance sheets now. If that happens, expect more companies to cut back on pensions if they can and to reduce promises of retiree health care. The second part of the accounting change will not hit until late in the decade. Now companies get to include in earnings what they expect pension fund assets to earn, whether or not they actually do that well. That encourages companies to have lots of stock in pension funds, since no one can prove that stocks won't go up. A new rule would probably force companies to report actual results in profits. That would mean more reported earnings volatility, something managements hate....

Subject: 'Style' Gets New Elements From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 10:03:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/arts/19styl.html?ex=1287374400&en=bfcb84882fb928e6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss October 19, 2005 'Style' Gets New Elements By JEREMY EICHLER Rulebooks of English grammar are not generally known for their longevity, or for their ability to implant themselves in the broader cultural imagination. But as even William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White conceded, every rule has its exceptions. Strunk and White's legendary 'Elements of Style' was first published in 1959, and in the intervening decades, this little book on language and its proper usage has been force-fed to countless high school English students, who have read it zealously, dog-eared key pages, showered it in graphite love or else completely disregarded and forgotten it, usually at their own risk. Beyond its sage advice on matters of style, it is filled with the Solomonic rules and injunctions - 'Make every word tell'; 'Use the active voice'; 'Be obscure clearly' - that have served as a lifeboat to both professional and amateur writers adrift on the perilous seas of split infinitives, dangling participles and weak or flabby prose. But while 'The Elements of Style' has never lacked fans or dutiful adherents, appreciation for this slim volume takes a turn toward the whimsical and even surreal this week, as the Penguin Press publishes the first illustrated edition, featuring artwork by Maira Kalman, and the young composer Nico Muhly offers a finely wrought 'Elements of Style' song cycle, to be given its premiere tonight at 8 in a highly unusual, if oddly appropriate, concert setting: the Rose Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. Ms. Kalman, an artist, children's book author, designer and illustrator whose credits include the popular 'Newyorkistan' cover of The New Yorker, says she had never used Strunk and White as a student but discovered it only four years ago at a yard sale and was immediately struck by its vividness and charm. 'Each sentence was so full of incredible visual reference,' she recently recalled. 'I said to myself, how could anyone not have illustrated this before?' In the new clothbound edition, Ms. Kalman's whimsical paintings are sprinkled through the text, often responding to the wry or quirky examples the authors chose to enliven what might otherwise have been a dry discussion of grammatical rules. On the topic of pronoun cases, they offer: 'Polly loves cake more than she loves me.' On the uses of the dash: 'His first thought on getting out of bed - if he had any thought at all - was to get back in again.' Ms. Kalman had no shortage of material. She explained that while she was painting her illustrations, she found herself singing the words and dreaming of a Strunk and White opera, or even a ballet. She turned to Mr. Muhly, whom she had known for more than a decade as a family friend and co-conspirator in various neo-Dadaist adventures. (Ms. Kalman once ran a Rubber Band Society - for people who love rubber bands, naturally - and invited Mr. Muhly to compose a work scored for rubber bands, which he did.) 'I knew that Nico and I would have an immediate conversation in shorthand about humor and imagination, and that he'd completely get it,' Ms. Kalman said. Mr. Muhly, 24, is a talented and audacious graduate of the Juilliard School who has worked with Philip Glass and Bjork. His Strunk and White songs are eloquently scored for soprano, tenor, viola, banjo and percussion. They also include parts for Ms. Kalman's friends and family, who will make 'little gentle noises' through amplified kitchen utensils (vintage eggbeaters and meat grinders) and a set of dice shaken in a bowl. But even with this lineup, the humor of the piece lies more in its straight-faced seriousness. The vocal writing is cast in a distinctly early-music style, the textures as pure and pared down as Strunk and White liked their sentences. There are frequent moments of disarming beauty, as if Mr. Muhly were tempting the listener to forget the jokes and simply listen. At a rehearsal last week, the tenor Matt Hensrud stood on the elevated catwalk of the library's reading room and sang mellifluously of punctuation and orthography. 'Do not use a hyphen between words that can better be written as one word: 'water-fowl, waterfowl,' ' he intoned, his voice echoing in the churchlike acoustics. He was joined by the soprano Abby Fischer for some tenderly turned philology: 'The steady evolution of the language seems to favor union: two words eventually become one.' The word 'eventually' in this line soared with a long, attractive melisma of the sort Mr. Muhly grew to love during his years singing in a boys' choir in Providence, R.I. His devotion to the Anglican choral tradition is everywhere apparent in these settings, but so is his fondness for American Minimalism, as churning viola figures cushion many of the passages, often bringing a somber, plaintive tone to the music. 'I decided early on that there was going to be this melancholy,' he said. 'It's already so absurdist, I didn't want too much laughing during the music.' So would Strunk and White have approved? There is little doubt, in Ms. Kalman's eyes. 'They both had a great sense of humor and were very irreverent,' she said. 'It wasn't about being prim and proper.' White's granddaughter Martha White, who granted permission for the illustrations, seems to agree. 'He loved a spoof and, of course, produced some classics himself,' she wrote of White in an e-mail message, adding that a similar issue had come up before. She quoted from a letter White wrote in 1981: 'You might be amused to know that Strunk and White was adapted for a ballet production recently. I didn't get to the show, but I'm sure Will Strunk, had he been alive, would have lost no time in reaching the scene, to watch dancers move gracefully to his rules of grammar.'

Subject: The Trumpet of the Swan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 09:36:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/lifetimes/white-swan.html June 28, 1970 The Trumpet of the Swan By JOHN UPDIKE E.B. White's third novel for children joins the two others on the shelf of classics. While not quite so sprightly as Stuart Little, and less rich in personalities and incident than 'Charlotte's Web' -- that paean to barnyard life by a city humorist turned farmer -- 'The Trumpet of the Swan' has superior qualities of its own; it is the most spacious and serene of the three, the one most imbued with the author's sense of the precious instinctual heritage represented by wild nature. Its story most persuasively offers itself to children as a parable of growing, yet does not lack the inimitable tone of the two earlier works -- the simplicity that never condescends, the straight and earnest telling that happens upon, rather than veers into, comedy, the 'grace and humor and praise of life and the good backbone of succinctness' that Eudora Welty noted nearly 20 years ago, reviewing 'Charlotte's Web' in these pages. At first glance, one's heart a little falls to see that wash drawing by Edward Frascino have replaced Garth William's finely furry pen-and-ink illustrations, which are wedded to White's other children's texts as well as Tenniel's to 'Alice' and Shepard's to the Pooh books. From the jacket flap we learn that the tale, daring the obvious, tells of a Trumpeter Swan that learns to play the trumpet. More daringly still, he is called Louis. And in the first chapter we meet Sam Beaver, an 1-year-old boy who, but for the dark touch of Indian about him, is too reminiscent of the many other bland, 'interested' boy-heroes of books that bid us crouch behind the tall grass and spy out the wonder in a swan's nest. But soon White's transparent love of natural detail lifts the prose into felicity, and the father and mother swan begin to talk to each with a surprising animation, and the reader settles to a joy-ride through the gentle terrain of the highly unlikely. We see that drawings less vague than Frascino's might mar more illusions than they abet. Louis discovers himself to be mute, an inconvenience during childhood but downright agony during the mating season. Louis's father, a bombastic old cob, gets him a trumpet, and to pay for it Louis turns professional. How does Louis's father acquire the trumpet? Why, by diving through the display window of a music store in Billings, Montana, and carrying the instrument off through a hail of shards and buckshot. How does Louis pack his trumpet, and the slate upon which he learns to write, and the life-saving medal he wins, and the purse of money he makes? All are attached by strings around his neck, flapping and clanking together whenever he flies. How does he carve out his career? First, as a bugler in a boys' camp; next, as accompanist, swimming one-footed, to the swan- boats in the Boston Public Garden; last, as a nightclub performer in Philadelphia, operating out of a pond in the city zoo. If the author once winked during this accumulation of preposterous particulars, it would all turn flimsy and come tumbling down. But White never forgets that he is telling about serious matters;: the overcoming of a handicap, and the joys of music, and the need for creatures to find a mate, and the survival of a beautiful species of swan. When Louis realizes that he must graduate from the bugle to the trumpet with its three finger-operated valves, he unflinchingly asks Sam Beaver to slit the webbing of his right foot. The boy does, not omitting to point out that henceforth the swan will tend to swim in circles. What other writer, in such a work of fancy, would not have contrived to omit this homely, even repellent, bit of surgery? White's concreteness holds the door open for unpleasantness, and also engenders textures of small surprise and delightful rightness. In one chapter Louis spends the night at the Ritz in Boston. He orders a dozen watercress sandwiches for dinner and then puts himself to bed in the bathtub. 'Then he turned out the lights, climbed into the tub, curved his long neck around to the right, rested his head on his back, tucked his bill under his wing, and lay there, floating on the water, his head cradled softly in his feathers.' The large bird's calm and successful attempt to cope with an unfamiliar environment has a penetrating charm. This is how an intelligent swan of good will behaves in a hotel room; it is also how a child feels, and indeed how we all feel, enchanted out of our ordinary selves by rented solitude. The world of E.B. White's children's books is eminently a reasonable one. Nature serves as a reservoir of common sense. Nobody panics, and catastrophes are taken in stride. When Mr. Brickle, the director of Camp Kookooskoos, is sprayed by a skunk, he does not do the slow or fast burn a meaner comic spirit would conjure up; he announces that the camp has been given 'a delicious dash of wild perfume' and that 'A swim will clear the air.' Similarly, in 'Stuart Little,' when a mouse instead of a baby is born to human parents, they promptly improvise for him a 'tiny bed out of four clothespins and a cigarette box.' Not birth, nor death, are meant to dismay us. When, in 'Charlotte's Web,' the pig squeals 'I don't want to die!' the spider says, 'I can't stand hysterics,' and eschews hysteria when her own death draws near. Her death-web speech is memorable: 'After all, what's life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a mess, with all this trapping and eating flies.' Near the end of 'The Trumpet of the Swan,' Louis's father faces death with a grandiloquent soliloquy: '. . . Man, in his folly, has given me a mortal wound. The red blood flows in a steady trickle from my veins. My strength fails . . . Good-bye, life! Good-bye, beautiful world! Good-bye little lakes in the north! Farewell, springtimes I have known, with their passion and ardor!' The rhetoric is comic, but the tribute is sincere. 'The Trumpet of the Swan' glows with the primal ecstasies of space and flight, of night and day, of nurturing and maturing, of courtship and art. On the last page Louis thinks of 'how lucky he was to inhabit such a beautiful earth, how lucky he had been to solve his problems with music.' How rare that word 'lucky' has become! The universe remains chancy, but no one admits to having good luck. We, and our children, are lucky to have this book.

Subject: Charlotte's Web From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 09:32:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/08/03/lifetimes/white-web.html October 19, 1952 Charlotte's Web By EUDORA WELTY E. B. White has written his book for children, which is nice for us older ones as it calls for big type. Most of the story takes place in the Zuckerman barn through the passing of the four seasons. 'Life in the barn was very good--night and day, winter and summer, spring and fall, dull days and bright days * * * with the garrulous geese, the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, the passage of swallows, the nearness of rats, the sameness of sheep, the love of spiders, the smell of manure, and the glory of everything.' This book has liveliness and felicity, tenderness and unexpectedness, grace and humor and praise of life, and the good backbone of succinctness that only the most highly imaginative stories seem to grow. The characters are varied--good and bad, human and animal, talented and untalented, warm and cold, ignorant and intelligent, vegetarian and blood-drinking--varied but not simple or opposites. They are the real thing. Wilbur is a of a sweet nature--he is a spring pig--affectionate, responsive to moods of the weather and the song of the crickets, has long eyelashes, is hopeful, partially willing to try anything, brave, subject to faints from bashfulness, is loyal to friends, enjoys a good appetite and a soft bed, and is a little likely to be overwhelmed by the sudden chance for complete freedom. He changes the subject when the conversation gets painful, and a buttermilk bath brings out his beauty. When he was a baby he was a runt, but the sun shone pink through his ears, endearing him to a little girl named Fern. She is his protector, and he is the hero. Charlotte A. Cavitica ('but just call me Charlotte') is the heroine, a large gray spider 'about the size of a gumdrop.' She has eight legs and can wave them in friendly greeting. When her friends wake up in the morning she says 'Salutations!'--in spite of sometimes having been up all night herself, working. She tells Wilbur right away that she drinks blood, and Wilbur on first acquaintance begs her not to say that. Another good character is Templeton, the rat. 'The rat had no morals, no conscience, no scruples, no consideration, no decency, no milk of rodent kindness, no compunctions, no higher feeling, no friendliness, no anything.' 'Talking with Templeton was not the most interesting occupation in the world,' Wilbur finds, 'but it was better than nothing.' Templeton grudges his help to others, then brags about it, can fold his hands behind his head, and sometimes acts like a spoiled child. There is the goose, who can't be surprised by barnyard ways. 'It's the old pail-trick, Wilbur * * *. He's trying to lure you into captivity-ivity. He's appealing to your stomach.' The goose always repeats everything. 'It is my idio-idio-idiosyncrasy.' What the book is about is friendship on earth, affection and protection, adventure and miracle, life and death, trust and treachery, pleasure and pain, and the passing of time. As a piece of work it is just about perfect, and just about magical in the way it is done. What it all proves--in the words of the minister in the story which he hands down to his congregation after Charlotte writes 'Some Pig' in her web--is 'that human beings must always be on the watch for the coming of wonders.' Dr. Dorian says in another place, 'Oh, no, I don't understand it. But for that matter I don't understand how a spider learned to spin a web in the first place. When the words appeared, everyone said they were a miracle. But nobody pointed out that the web itself is a miracle.' The author will only say, 'Charlotte was in a class by herself.' 'At-at-at, at the risk of repeating myself,' as the goose says, 'Charlotte's Web' is an adorable book.

Subject: REITS From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 09:17:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Price earning ratios are little considered at present by analysts in valuing real estates investment trusts. Funds from operations is important to consider, though the earnings growth rates of the REIT index has declined remarkably over what will soon be 5 years. Also a company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, Ebitda, a common measure of cash flow, is considered. Ebitda has risen significantly, but the rationale given is debt is relatively cheap. Well, the Vanguard REIT index has returned 19.9% over the last 5 years and 14.5% for almost 10 years or the life of the actual fund. No matter how I look at the REIT index it does seem pricey from an historical perspective. However, the index has been an attractive investment in returns and stability for 30 years and continues to be robust. What noticeable volatility the index has generally comes from anticipated changes in long term interest rates.

Subject: Blocking Reform at the U.N. From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 07:30:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/02/opinion/02fri1.html December 2, 2005 Blocking Reform at the U.N. Muscular diplomacy is one thing. But John Bolton has been all muscle and no diplomacy as the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Now he's threatening to hold up its entire two-year operating budget unless his demands for major reforms are met almost immediately. As it happens, the American reform agenda contains many good elements. No one can seriously argue that the U.N. is a rationally structured, efficiently managed body. And letting countries like Cuba, Libya and Sudan sit on a human rights commission that judges the records of other countries diminishes the U.N.'s most important authority, its moral authority. But just as the Senate feared when it declined to confirm Mr. Bolton in the job, his blustering unilateral style is turning him into one of the biggest obstacles to achieving changes that had been within reach before he appeared on the scene. Two basic changes are needed to repair the U.N.'s tarnished reputation. First, significant authority over appointments and management needs to be shifted from the General Assembly, which has 191 members, to the secretary general's office. Just as important, the secretary general (a new one will be chosen next year) must exercise this new authority wisely, boldly and effectively. The most important specific reforms include establishing a permanent human rights council made up of countries that respect human rights, creating a commission to oversee the reconstruction of societies devastated by armed conflict, and giving the secretary general the authority to recommend ending missions that have outlived their usefulness and to make senior appointments based on merit, not regional quotas. Doing these things will require a close alliance between reformers and the secretary general's office and the ability to convince General Assembly members that a more credible and effective U.N. is in their interests. Those are exactly the areas where Mr. Bolton has done the most damage. His demands and his threats to bypass the U.N. if it doesn't bow to them have fed the impression that the whole reform agenda is a power grab by Washington. Hard as it is for Americans to believe, much of the world now suspects Secretary General Kofi Annan of being Washington's lackey. Mr. Annan made a promising start earlier this year at building a consensus for reform, only to have it derailed by Mr. Bolton. Soon after taking over the American mission this summer, he issued a long list of last-minute demands. As a result, a special international summit meeting that had been organized to adopt real reforms ended up endorsing a document that was mostly fudge and mush. Mr. Bolton's latest threat, to block the next U.N. budget, is likely to be equally counterproductive. America's most successful U.N. ambassadors, whether they served Republican or Democratic presidents, have known how to harness American power to patient, skillful diplomacy. Regrettably, Mr. Bolton has failed to profit from their example.

Subject: Iraq Fixer, No Exp. Needed, $1B-up From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Dec 03, 2005 at 07:20:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/03/opinion/03sat2.html December 3, 2005 Iraq Fixer, No Exp. Needed, $1B-up Anyone who caught a glimpse of President Bush's speech on Iraq this week - delivered from an elaborately decorated stage confidently plastered with 'Plan for Victory' placards - may have thought the administration believes that a detailed victory plan is in place. But there's still work to be done, especially if you're in the business of blue-sky consulting. As the president's speech was being headlined, a far quieter government announcement from the Agency for International Development, the main pipeline for Iraq reconstruction, was offering a $1-billion-plus opportunity for interested parties to dream up 'design and implementation' plans for stabilizing 10 'Strategic Cities' considered 'critical to the defeat of the Insurgency in Iraq.' Talk about outsourcing: here comes the government's open invitation, for all 'qualified sources' out there, to come up with $1.02 billion worth of fresh imaginings, even as the 'Plan for Victory' is ballyhooed as a fully credible agenda in hand for fixing - perchance exiting - Iraq. Veterans of the think-tank consultancy complex in Washington are rating such an ultralucrative offer - an average of $100 million per city across two years - as eye-popping by the usual scale of Usaid grants. It's even more so when such a sweet deal comes, at least initially, with no specific strings attached. 'The assignment calls for the design and implementation of a social and economic stabilization program,' the agency says in its brief proffer, adding, 'Invitation is open to any type of entity.' If so, we hope Iraqi urbanites get wind of this thought-provoking windfall. Who knows? They may have a helpful idea or two, once the 10 cities are identified. Then again, the Usaid invitation cautions, 'The number of Strategic Cities may expand or contract over time.' Hmm. Let's all think about that.

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 14:51:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 12/1/05 Australia 20.3 Canada 22.3 Denmark 37.7 France 25.1 Germany 24.1 Hong Kong 7.7 Japan 37.2 Netherlands 28.4 Norway 37.6 Sweden 28.7 Switzerland 34.8 UK 17.1

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 14:52:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 12/1/05 Australia 13.7 Canada 25.3 Denmark 18.4 France 7.8 Germany 6.9 Hong Kong 8.0 Japan 16.7 Netherlands 10.7 Norway 22.6 Sweden 5.5 Switzerland 16.0 UK 5.6

Subject: Market Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 13:31:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: As I have repeatedly written here for years, we have just passed through the strongest relative bond market period since the Depression. This holds for 1981 to 2005 or 2000 to 2005. However bond returns will be limited from here for long term rates are so low. As for stocks, I only consider actual returns. Real returns strike me as deceptive.

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 07:25:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 12/1/05 S&P Index is 6.0 Large Cap Growth Index is 6.9 Large Cap Value Index is 7.6 Mid Cap Index is 14.2 Small Cap Index is 9.2 Small Cap Value Index is 8.3 Europe Index is 6.8 Pacific Index is 16.1 Emerging Market Index is 26.2 Energy is 43.8 Health Care is 13.1 Precious Metals 36.6 REIT Index is 13.3 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 1.9 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 13:36:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 12/1/05 Energy 41.1 Financials 7.0 Health Care 6.4 Info Tech 6.9 Materials 3.3 REITs 13.4 Telecoms 5.9 Utilities 14.7

Subject: Investing From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 06:47:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The international bull market in stocks may be less noticed beyond investors, because the gains are being made in domestic currencies and against a strong dollar. However a year in which the Europe index is up above 22% while the Pacific index is above 31% in domestic currencies should be well noted. There is no developed country market that is not positive, this while short term interest rates have risen, housing markets have slowed, and oil and gas prices have risen. Nonetheless economic growth is at least fair in every developed country. Also, American long term interest rates have stayed remarkably low all these months of Federal Reserve tightening.

Subject: Stocks and Bonds From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 06:47:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Notice that this has been among the finest of finest years for international stock markets even though the Federal Reserve has been raising short term interest rates for almost a year and a half, and a number of international central banks have also raised interest rates. International stock markets are showing every sign of fair economic growth in coming months.

Subject: Bankers Oppose Wal-Mart as Rival From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 05:58:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/15/business/15walmart.html?ex=1287028800&en=81696a55f02681ef&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss October 15, 2005 Bankers Oppose Wal-Mart as Rival By MICHAEL BARBARO The letters to federal banking regulators, which poured in at a rate of 20 a day, are a catalogue of fear. The chief executive of a bank in North Dakota predicted a 'dangerous and unprecedented concentration of economic power.' The president of a bank in Colorado foresaw 'unacceptable risk to the banking system.' The head of a California bank anticipated 'long-term community disinvestment.' Wal-Mart's proposal to open a bank has sent a wave of concern through community bankers, who view the move as the first of several maneuvers that will turn the company into a financial services behemoth and drive them out of business. In July, Wal-Mart filed an application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for an industrial bank in Utah that would process credit and debit card transactions for its 3,500 United States stores, saving the retailer the fraction of a penny it now pays to national banks every time a shopper pays with plastic. It is Wal-Mart's fourth effort to enter the banking industry. A public comment period for the F.D.I.C. application, which concluded on Sept. 23, produced a flood of letters from community banks and activists and yet another public relations problem for Wal-Mart, which is trying to burnish its image. The number of letters - more than 1,100 - broke a record at the F.D.I.C., which usually receives no more than six comments on an application. To accommodate the response, it extended the public comment period to two months, from one. Jane Thompson, president of Wal-Mart Financial Services, defended the company's proposal, saying, 'This will not be a bank that a consumer ever sees. It's only customer is Wal-Mart.' But community bankers fear that could change and Wal-Mart would open retail branches. Many bankers say Wal-Mart's move into their cities has hurt the smaller businesses that compete with the store's supercenters, including groceries, auto repair centers and photo processing labs. A coalition has formed to keep Wal-Mart out of banking and includes the Independent Community Bankers of America (which provided a sample letter for its members to send to the F.D.I.C.), the National Grocers Association, the National Association of Convenience Stores and the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is trying unionize Wal-Mart workers. A coalition of community groups called Wal-Mart Watch has sent a petition to the F.D.I.C. with 11,000 signatures opposing Wal-Mart's application. The debate has even reached Capitol Hill, where Representatives Paul Gillmor of Ohio and Barney Frank of Massachusetts, both members of the House Financial Services Committee, have asked the F.D.I.C. to hold hearings. 'This is a very controversial application filed by the company that is the largest retailer in the world,' they wrote. David Barr, an F.D.I.C. spokesman, said that if such a hearing was held, it would be the first in 20 years. The F.D.I.C. is expected to rule on the Wal-Mart application by July 2006. Rejections are rare. Wal-Mart is also awaiting approval from Utah, one of the few states that allows retailers to open industrial banks. The chain plans to locate the bank's headquarters in Salt Lake City. Wal-Mart has made no secret of its banking ambitions. In 1999, the company tried to buy an Oklahoma thrift, prompting federal legislation that banned commercial companies from buying thrifts and unraveled the deal. In 2001, it attempted to strike a partnership with a Toronto bank to establish branches inside its stores, a plan blocked by the United States government. And in 2002, it tried to buy a bank in California, a transaction thwarted when the state banned such arrangements. This time, Wal-Mart is trying to avoid those pitfalls by creating an industrial bank with the narrow aim of eliminating the payments it makes to third parties for the roughly 2.4 billion electronic payment transactions it handles every year. The bank will, however, accept limited deposits from nonprofit groups. 'Wal-Mart will not have its own bank branches inside our stores or outside of them,' said Ms. Thompson of Wal-Mart. As evidence of the bank's limited scope, Ms. Thompson pointed to the 300 different community banks that already operate in more than 1,000 Wal-Mart stores. 'We have long-term arrangements with these banks,' she said. But if the letters to the F.D.I.C. are any indication, community banks still believe Wal-Mart poses a direct threat. 'Wal-Mart is well known for entering a community' and 'driving out the local competition,' wrote Martin J. Schmitz, president of Citywide Banks of Colorado. The bank proposal, he added, would 'pose unacceptable risk to the banking system and its regulatory safety net.'

Subject: Job Hopping Contributes to Innovation From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 05:56:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/business/01scene.html?ex=1291093200&en=5d5bdeaf9a291559&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 1, 2005 In Silicon Valley, Job Hopping Contributes to Innovation By VIRGINIA POSTREL FOR four decades, through booms, busts and bubbles, Silicon Valley has maintained an amazingly innovative business environment. Companies and technologies rise and fall. Hot start-ups morph into giant corporations. Cutting-edge products become mature commodities. Business models change. Through it all, the area remains creative and resilient - and more successful than other technology centers, notably the Route 128 area around Boston. What makes Silicon Valley special? Thanks to some new data, economists have finally been able to test statistically some popular explanations. In her influential 1994 book 'Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128' (Harvard University Press), AnnaLee Saxenian, an economic development scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, argued that Silicon Valley's innovative edge comes from two unusual characteristics. First, talented employees move easily and often to new employers, far more so than people elsewhere. 'The joke is that you can change jobs and not change parking lots,' one of her interview subjects said. Second, instead of vertically integrating, Silicon Valley computer makers rely on networks of suppliers. They also design open systems that can flexibly accommodate all sorts of new components. 'The system's decentralization encourages the pursuit of multiple technical opportunities through spontaneous regroupings of skill, technology and capital,' she wrote. Many people, especially in Silicon Valley, found Professor Saxenian's argument convincing. But while her research was careful, it depended on interviews and had no large-scale statistical backing. Perhaps her subjects' impressions were unreliable. After all, the argument that Silicon Valley's job hopping fosters innovation contradicts economists' common assumptions. 'It didn't feel right to me,' James B. Rebitzer, an economist at Case Western Reserve University, said in an interview. When employees jump from company to company, they take their knowledge with them. 'The innovation from one firm will tend to bleed over into other firms,' Professor Rebitzer explained. For a given company, 'it's hard to capture the returns on your innovation,' he went on. 'From an economics perspective, that should hamper innovation.' He found a possible answer to the puzzle in the work of two management scholars, Carliss Y. Baldwin and Kim B. Clark. In their book 'Design Rules: The Power of Modularity' (MIT Press, 2000), they argued that when there is a lot of technological uncertainty, the fastest way to find the best solution is to permit lots of independent experiments. That requires modular designs rather than tightly integrated systems. 'By having a lot of modular experimenters, you can take the best, which will be a lot better than the average,' Professor Rebitzer said. Employee mobility may encourage productive innovation, as people quickly move to whichever company comes up with the best new technology. But you would not expect to find people moving around all the time in every industry, only those where technical uncertainty justifies spending lots of resources on experiments - including many that will not pan out. 'In most other settings,' said Professor Rebitzer, 'it's going to be easier simply to design things with special purpose parts that fit in.' In a forthcoming article in The Review of Economics and Statistics, he and two economists at the Federal Reserve Board, Bruce C. Fallick and Charles A. Fleischman, empirically test the claim that Silicon Valley employees move more often than computer industry employees in other places. (The article, 'Job Hopping in Silicon Valley,' is available at www. federalreserve.gov/research/staff/fallickbrucex.htm.) The two Fed economists, who are interested in the macroeconomic patterns created when people move from employer to employer, use data from the Current Population Survey. Until recently, economists almost entirely ignored such voluntary job hopping because they did not have good data to track it. Since 1994, however, the Current Population Survey has asked respondents whether they have changed jobs in the last month. This question was added simply to cut down on repetition. Respondents who are still at the same workplace do not fill out questions about their employer. But the change created the first large database that tracks job changes. Since the survey is geographically based, it is ideal for examining job changes within the same area. To Professor Rebitzer's surprise (though not his co-authors'), it turns out that Silicon Valley employees really do move around more often than other people. The researchers looked at job changes by male college graduates from 1994 to 2001. During that period, an average of 2.41 percent of respondents changed jobs in any given month. But, they write, 'living in Silicon Valley increases the rate of employer-to-employer job change by 0.8 percentage point.' 'This effect is both statistically and behaviorally significant - suggesting employer-to-employer mobility rates are 40 percent higher than the sample average.' Computer industry employees in other California technology clusters also seem to switch jobs more often than those in other states. This result supports an argument made by Ronald J. Gilson, a law professor at Stanford and Columbia. In a 1999 article, he suggested that a 19th-century California law helped create Silicon Valley's hypermobility by prohibiting the enforcement of noncompete agreements. In other states, businesses use these agreements to keep employees from easily hopping to other companies in the same industry. (That article is available at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=124508.) Finally, the economists test whether computer industry employees are more likely to move than employees in other industries, as the modularity hypothesis would predict. Again, statistical tests suggest that the theory is right. Looking at cities within California, they write: 'We find no evidence that outside the computer industry, job changes are more likely within Silicon Valley. Indeed, rates of job hopping appear to be lower in Los Angeles and San Diego than elsewhere in the nation.'

Subject: Paul Krugman: Bullet Points Over Baghdad From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 03:05:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ December 2, 2005 Paul Krugman: Bullet Points Over Baghdad By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman turns his thoughts to The National Security Council document 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' and asks, implores, journalists not let the Bush administration get away with 'fuzzy math and fuzzy facts' yet again: Bullet Points Over Baghdad, by Paul Krugman, Victory in Iraq Commentary, NY Times: The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to provide the world with a demonstration of American power. It didn't work out that way. But the Bush administration has come up with the next best thing: a demonstration of American PowerPoint. Bullets haven't subdued the insurgents in Iraq, but the administration hopes that bullet points will subdue the critics at home. The National Security Council document released this week under the grandiose title 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' is neither an analytical report nor a policy statement. It's simply the same old talking points - 'victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest'; 'failure is not an option' - repackaged in the style of a slide presentation for a business meeting. It's an embarrassing piece of work. Yet it's also an important test for the news media. The Bush administration has lost none of its confidence that it can get away with fuzzy math and fuzzy facts - that it won't be called to account for obvious efforts to mislead the public. It's up to journalists to prove that confidence wrong. Krugman gives several examples of misleading statements in the document. One involves an increase in Iraqi oil production where, conveniently, the baseline for assessing progress is a time that includes the invasion when oil production was shut down. When compared to prewar levels, the conclusion is quite different: ...we're not supposed to understand that the real story of Iraq's oil industry is one of unexpected failure: ...Iraqi production has rarely matched its prewar level, and has been on a downward trend for the past year. He also looks at the security situation in Iraq, specifically the situation in Najaf and Samara, and shows that statements in the document regarding the degree of control of those cities do not accord with reports from other sources. For example, the document says that Samara is under the control of the Iraqi government, but: ...there, too, it's stretching things to say that the city is under Iraqi government control: according to The Associated Press, only 100 of the city's 700 policemen show up for work on most days. Krugman concludes with: There's a lot more like that in the document. Refuting some of the upbeat assertions about Iraq requires specialized knowledge, but many of them can be quickly debunked by anyone with an Internet connection. The point isn't just that the administration is trying, yet again, to deceive the public. It's the fact that this attempt at deception shows such contempt - contempt for the public, and especially contempt for the news media. And why not? The truth is that the level of misrepresentation in this new document is no worse than that in a typical speech by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Yet for much of the past five years, many major news organizations failed to provide the public with effective fact-checking. So Mr. Bush's new public relations offensive on Iraq is a test. Are the news media still too cowed, too addicted to articles that contain little more than dueling quotes to tell the public when the administration is saying things that aren't true? Or has the worm finally turned? There have been encouraging signs, notably a thorough front-page fact-checking article - which even included charts showing the stagnation of oil production and electricity generation! - in USA Today. But the next few days will tell. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy - or was he? I'm glad Krugman wrote this, and I too hope that the worm has finally turned.

Subject: What the efficient frontier looks like? From: David E.. To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 19:09:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: A surprising look at the last 45 years of history. Break the history up into 10 year pieces and calculate the efficient frontier. I was surprised to find that the last 5 years were exceptional-the only period when bonds beat stocks. Another surprise - the long term return of stocks for this period is 6%. I think there is a good chance that folks who are counting on more are not going to reach their goals. http://static.flickr.com/6/69124826_1d5235fd78_o.gif

Subject: 45 years- stocks return 6% From: David E.. To: David E.. Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 19:17:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'Another surprise - the long term return of stocks for this period is 6%.' S/b 'Another surprise - the long term return of stocks for the 45 year period is 6%.' These numbers are real numbers, apparently adjusted for inflation. I hope everybody remembers to put in an inflation adjustment on their expected returns.

Subject: Mapmakers and Mythmakers From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 14:02:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/business/01maps.html?ex=1291093200&en=36a47550a0ca8379&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss December 1, 2005 Mapmakers and Mythmakers By ANDREW E. KRAMER MOSCOW - Bruce Morrow worked for three years on the shores of Lake Samotlor, a tiny dot of water in a maze of oil wells and roads covering more than a thousand square miles of icy tundra in Siberia. From the maps the Russians gave Mr. Morrow, he could never really know where he was, a misery for him as an oil engineer at a joint venture between BP and Russian investors. The latitude and longitude had been blotted out from his maps and the grid diverged from true north. 'It was like a game,' Mr. Morrow said of trying to make sense of the officially doctored maps, holdovers from the cold war era provided by secretive men who worked in a special department of his company. Unofficially, anyone with Internet access can take a good look at the Samotlor field by zooming down through free satellite-imaging programs like Google Earth, to the coordinates 61 degrees 7 minutes north latitude and 76 degrees 45 minutes east longitude. Mr. Morrow's plight illustrates how some practices that once governed large regions of the former Soviet Union may still lurk in the hallways where bureaucrats from the Communist past cling to power. Not only do they carry over a history of secrecy, but they also serve to continue a tradition of keeping foreigners at bay while employing plenty of people made dependent on Moscow. The misleading maps also reflect the Kremlin's tightening grip on Russian oil, one of the world's critical supplies, and one that is to become even more important in the future with plans for direct shipments to the United States by 2010 from ports in the Far East and the Arctic. The secrecy rule over maps is enforced by the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., a successor to the old K.G.B. It was written at a time the Russians were suspicious of virtually all foreign businesses and fearful of a missile strike on their Siberian wells. Those days are gone. But as the Russian government reasserts its control over strategic industries - particularly oil - it is not letting up on the rule. The doctored maps belong to a deep-rooted Russian tradition of deceiving outsiders, going back to the days of Potemkin villages in the 18th century and perhaps earlier. During the cold war it was called maskirovka, Soviet military parlance for deception, disinformation and deceit. For decades, government bureaucrats created false statistics and misleading place names. For instance, Baikonur, the Russian space center, was named for a village hundreds of miles away. Accurate maps of old Moscow's warren of back alleys appeared only after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Even now, Mr. Morrow and his colleagues can use only Russian digital map files that encrypt and hide the coordinates of his location. Officially, only Russians with security clearances are permitted to see oil field maps with real coordinates at scales greater than 1:2,500. 'It was totally futile,' Mr. Morrow said of the false coordinates on his F.S.B. maps, created through an encrypting system. 'None of us was particularly keen on pushing it. There were rumors if you do that, you end up in the slammer.' A spokeswoman for the F.S.B. confirmed that it controls maps around sites deemed important for national security, including oil fields. Asked whether the easy availability of accurate maps on the Internet made such continued secrecy obsolete, she said the agency was interested only in national security and would not elaborate on its practices. Foreign business executives, though, say there is a secret behind the secret maps, and it has little to do with national security. The rules are not only a way to maintain control over a strategic industry, but also form a subtle trade barrier and are a convenient way to increase Russian employment. After all, TNK-BP, the 50-50 joint venture where Mr. Morrow works, pays scores of cartographers to encode and decode the maps, said Frank Rieber, a former engineer there. The rules cover all oil companies, but are particularly pressing for TNK-BP. They provide a livelihood to hundreds of F.S.B.-licensed cartographers. Oil companies either outsource the work of stripping and restoring coordinates to independent institutes, or employ Russians with security clearances to do the work, as TNK-BP does. The map orientations are shifted from true north - the top of the map could be pointing slightly east, for example - and the grid does not correspond to larger maps. 'It makes us pull our hair out,' Mr. Rieber said. Yevgenia M. Albats, author of a 1994 book on the K.G.B., 'The State Within a State,' said the spy agency's interest in oil field mapping is just anther way of asserting its influence on society and business here, though one increasingly made obsolete by the Internet. 'The F.S.B. knows about Google Earth as well as anybody,' she said. 'This doesn't have anything to do with national security. It's about control of the cash flow.' The agency is guarding the wells as much from foreign business executives as from foreign missiles these days, she said. The laws about oil field secrets are used to persuade TNK-BP to replace foreign managers with Russians, more susceptible to pressure from the authorities, Ms. Albats said. 'Russians are easier to manipulate,' she continued. 'They don't want to end up in Khodorkovsky's shoes,' she said, referring to the former chief executive of the Yukos oil company, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, now in a Siberian penal colony serving an eight-year sentence. He was convicted of fraud and tax evasion after falling out with the Kremlin over taxes, oil-export routes and politics. The F.S.B. has also pursued scientists who cooperate with foreign companies in other industries. Last winter it charged a physicist, Oskar A. Kaibyshev, with exporting dual-use metal alloy technology to a South Korean company. Mr. Kaibyshev objected in vain that the technology had already been discussed in foreign journals. The case is pending. On Oct. 26, F.S.B. agents arrested three scientists at a Moscow aerospace company and accused them of passing secrets to the Chinese. Another physicist, Valentin V. Danilov, was convicted of selling technology for manned space flights to the same Chinese company last year, though he also protested that the information was available from published sources. At the same time, the Kremlin is using oil to recapture status lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union, which explains the close attention paid to the industry by the security services. Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov told a Parliament committee in October that energy exports were Russia's most powerful diplomatic tool in relations with other nations, according to a report in the newspaper Nezavisimaya. BP bought into the Tyumen oil company, or TNK, in 2003. Friction over the use of oil field maps existed from early on, geologists at the company said, but intensified this year. The issue has risen to high levels in the government, with a faction that embraces foreign investment protesting that the F.S.B. is hobbling the work of Western engineers who come to help this country drill for oil, providing technology and expertise in the process. In October, Andrei V. Sharonov, a deputy economic and trade minister, said F.S.B. pressure on the oil venture over the classification of maps had disrupted production in western Siberia, an article in Vedomosti reported. It quoted Mr. Sharonov as saying that the agency was pressing TNK-BP to replace Western managers with Russians. A spokeswoman for Mr. Sharonov declined to comment. An F.S.B. spokeswoman denied any ulterior motives in policing oil field maps. Engineers call the practice a nuisance, but say it has not disrupted production. The licensed cartographers are skilled in accurately translating between real and false coordinates, and so far, they do not know of any major mistakes, they say. In a telephone interview from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., Mr. Morrow, who worked as an engineer for TNK-BP from 2002 until May, said he left partly because he became frustrated with the police controls. He guided a reporter to Lake Samotlor on Google Earth. The lake lies just north of Nizhnevartovsk, a city on the Ob River, as it loops in silvery ribbons through a background of dark green Siberian wilderness. In the middle of the lake is an island, like a bull's eye. 'That was the folly of it,' Mr. Morrow said. 'You could get this information anywhere. The bureaucracy got in the way of common sense. But that didn't make it any less illegal, or any less inconvenient.'

Subject: Strategy to Restore Western Grasslands From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 13:35:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/national/01grazing.html December 1, 2005 A Strategy to Restore Western Grasslands Meets With Local Resistance By FELICITY BARRINGER BOULDER, Utah - No cows remain on the federal lands set aside for grazing here above the Escalante River. At first glance, this would seem a boon to land and cow alike. The layered rockscape just west of this small town is immense, rolling from the river toward the sky. The grass is thin and dry. The soil, the same. How fat could a cow get? So, seven years ago an environmental group based in Arizona, the Grand Canyon Trust, began paying ranchers to give up their grazing rights when their herds, or bank accounts, had failed to thrive. By this fall, the trust had spent more than $1 million to end grazing on more than 400,000 acres. The deals seemed to suit all concerned, until a group of local officials decided that they were bad for the local economy and a threat to the ancestral tradition of living off the land. The group set out to end this latest, uncharacteristically civil chapter in the fraught history of cattlemen, environmentalists and dueling visions of the West's future. Michael E. Noel, a former Bureau of Land Management employee who now is a Republican state representative from southern Utah, led the charge to roll back agreements the trust had forged. Mr. Noel said the loss of the grazing allotments would hurt ranching, which would in turn deprive the area's young people of the character-building chance to work on the land. 'Yes, it's a free market to buy and sell,' Mr. Noel said recently. 'But if you buy it, you use it.' By retiring the lands, he said, the trust is reneging on an implicit agreement, and 'if we allow that to occur, we go down the path of eliminating all grazing on public lands.' The Grand Canyon Trust's strategy had been to look amid Utah's ancient russet cathedrals for lands that needed a long rest from grazing. If the rancher with the grazing rights wanted to relinquish them to the Interior Department, the trust would pay him to do so. One deal involved simply paying a rancher to relinquish his grazing rights and find new pastures or reduce his herd. The trust also started a round of musical chairs, paying three ranchers to yield their allotments, then consolidating cattle on one grazing area while leaving the riverbanks free of livestock. In tandem with the trust's efforts, the federal land bureau was conducting environmental reviews that tended to find that grazing should end on the acreage at issue. Bill Hedden, the executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust, said he could not understand why his efforts, involving transactions between a willing buyer and willing sellers, seemed a threat to Mr. Noel. Mr. Hedden said he had hoped to create a situation with no losers. Ranchers could consolidate their herds in more congenial settings. Federal officials could bar grazing during a drought without bankrupting ranchers. The trust, dedicated to preserving the Colorado plateau, could show its financial supporters results. Besides, he said, the land in question is marginal economically and at risk environmentally. Pointing to the soil's crust, a mat splotched with bacterial growths that replenish soil nitrogen, Mr. Hedden said grazing left both grass and crust in tatters. 'We don't know how long this land takes to heal,' he said. But given the resistance of local officials, Mr. Hedden is shelving the strategies he used here. The arc of his efforts to preserve the plateau says much about the evolution of the environmental movement in the West, where the fight over grazing goes back years. Anger over the government's stewardship of public lands helped feed the Sagebrush Rebellion, which in turn fed the Republican revolution of the 1980's. In the years since, the canyons that lace the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument near here drew cows and hikers. The cows sought forage on the banks of the Escalante River; the hikers sought spiritual forage in the same places. They did not mix well. Throughout the 80's era of state rebellion against the Bureau of Land Management and the 90's period of criticism of grazing policies by environmentalists, the Interior Department was buffeted with lawsuits. Grazing, in the view of local ranchers and officials like Mr. Noel, 'can be one of the best tools to use to improve watersheds, to improve forage, to improve soil structure on public lands.' Grass grows better when cut back, Mr. Noel said. Manure can improve the soil. Dave Hunsaker, the manager of the national monument, an area of 1.7 million acres, relies on the land bureau's experts to settle that issue. 'The idea of grazing decisions is to achieve rangeland health objectives, No. 1,' Mr. Hunsaker said. 'No. 2, it is to provide stability to those ranching operations on the monument right now. 'The Grand Canyon Trust,' he said, 'can provide us flexibility for the future.' Brent Robinson sold the 25,000-acre Clark Bench grazing allotment to a trust subsidiary in 2000, though he retains a basic distrust of environmentalists. Mr. Robinson said his intention was 'to scale down a little bit' his herd of 300 head, a sizable herd in these parts. But Mr. Noel and members of the Kane County commission were concerned enough about the potential retirement of the Clark Bench acreage that they sought out ranchers to appeal the bureau's decision to let Mr. Hedden's group buy it and to seek the allotment for themselves. 'Most of the herds here are very small,' Mr. Noel said. 'But because the income in this area is very low, those 25 to 30 cows are what make the difference between being able to really provide for family that extra little thing. They can buy a pickup truck or send a kid to college or on a Mormon mission.' Ranching is a small and declining part of the economy of Kane and its northern neighbor, Garfield County. In several recent years, the total ranching income was in negative numbers in one county or the other. But Kane officials, after some effort, found people to seek the retired grazing permits for themselves. Trevor Stewart, one of the ranchers seeking the Clark Bench allotment, is Mr. Noel's son-in-law. Mr. Noel said he was able to get $50,000 from the state to support Kane County when it joined Mr. Stewart's suit. The county's challenge before an administrative law judge in the Interior Department is pending. But even the remote prospect that the complex choreography of ending the grazing might have gone for naught has been enough to dissuade the Grand Canyon Trust from doing more in Utah, Mr. Hedden said. The eight-year process, however, did result in some cross-pollination. As ranchers like Mr. Robinson have warily shed suspicions and made common cause with an environmental group, the trust itself is gingerly adopting ranching to achieve conservation goals. The purchase of the Kane and Two-Mile Ranches north of Grand Canyon National Park - 1,000 acres of land and grazing allotments on an additional 830,000 acres - was recently completed by the Grand Canyon Trust and the Conservation Fund, based in Arlington, Va. Instead of retiring the allotments, they will use them, though for fewer head of cattle. By running cattle on some of the land, the groups may inoculate themselves against new lawsuits, even as they restore acreage damaged by grazing. Mr. Hedden, however, remains quietly angry at the circumstances that led him to abandon his campaign to use free-market tools to curb grazing. 'We've been out there dealing with this,' he said. 'We solved the problems of the B.L.M., and we're hurting the Kane County economy by buying out guys who are going bankrupt? I don't get it.'

Subject: Its Own Business Model From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 11:05:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/realestate/30cabelas.html November 30, 2005 Sporting Goods and Its Own Business Model By KATE MURPHY BUDA, Tex. - Since it opened in June 2005, it's been hard to find a parking space at the Cabela's in this tiny town, halfway between Austin and San Antonio. A shuttle like those that ferry travelers between gates at airports zips around Cabela's stadium-size parking lot taking people from their cars to the outdoor equipment retailer's rough-hewn entrance. In their sensible shoes and fanny packs, looking like tourists instead of shoppers, many reach for their cameras to take pictures of the hundreds of mounted wild animals that greet them as they walk through the door. It's the same scene at the 14 other Cabela's stores across the country, most of them built in the last five years. Typically perched on a hill overlooking a major Interstate, the stores look like giant stone hunting lodges and are essentially amusement parks for the hunting and fishing set. Each store annually attracts close to four million visitors, many of them traveling more than 100 miles, according to company officials. Even with the substantial tax incentives required to entice the company to break ground, the stores are a boon to the mostly small towns where Cabela's has put retail outlets. 'Having Cabela's here has accelerated growth tremendously,' said John Trube, mayor of Buda, which has a population of 4,000 and now has several restaurants, two hotels and a Wal-Mart under construction. 'We're having businesses come in that would have never located here before.' More than mere megamarts, Cabela's stores, stocking more than 200,000 products, are tourist attractions featuring 50,000-gallon fresh water aquariums, taxidermy displays worthy of a natural history museum, fudge shops and laser shooting galleries. They are designed to invite crowds. The 185,000-square-foot showroom in Buda has so far drawn almost as many visitors each month as the Alamo, the most popular tourist destination in Texas. But there would be no bustle in Buda, which has a municipal budget of $4.5 million, if the town had not secured a $40 million bond to make the infrastructure improvements Cabela's demanded. As it has done in other communities, the company then bought the debt in exchange for a sales tax exemption. The state of Texas also awarded Cabela's a $600,000 enterprise grant and made $19.5 million in Interstate and overpass improvements. 'We used to have two lanes going in and out of town and now we have five,' said Warren Ketteman, the executive director of the Buda Economic Development Corporation. 'The state got it done in a year. Otherwise, it would have been a traffic nightmare around here.' Cabela's, which is based in Sydney, Neb., negotiated a similarly favorable package of incentives from local and state officials before the September opening of its 150,000-square-foot store in Lehi, Utah, which is halfway between Provo and Salt Lake City. It is hard to quantify exactly how generous the deal was because it included an exemption from paying tax on catalog sales to Utah residents. (Founded in 1961, Cabela's started as a catalog company and its mail-order business still comprises more than half of its $1.6 billion annual sales, according to the company's annual report.) Moreover, a developer gave Cabela's its 40-acre store site in Lehi, according to company and town officials. 'We wanted them as an anchor tenant,' said Stephen C. Christensen, the chief executive of Mountain Home Development, a planned community of 8,000 homes and four million square feet of retail space in Lehi. He would not discuss the terms of the land transaction. Locating in small towns like Buda and Lehi, where locals are more likely to offer such sweetheart deals, is part of Cabela's strategy. The company's senior vice president for retail operations, Mike Callahan, said, 'They are more eager to work with us because we are a huge driver for economic growth,' not only because of the traffic the stores generate but the ancillary businesses like hotels and restaurants that tend to cluster around them. For example, there was only one hotel and a biker bar in Dundee, Mich., 17 miles south of Ann Arbor, before a 225,000-square-foot Cabela's opened in 2000. Today there are four hotels with a fifth under construction and eight new restaurants. 'We've been able to lower the village tax rate,' said Dale W. Zorn, a county commissioner. Cabela's, which went public last year in part to finance the growth of its retail business, prefers towns that are on major Interstates and less than a 30-minute drive from large metropolitan areas. The company maps out where it has the most catalog customers and how much they spend. 'I have a color-coded map of the U.S. on my wall with green representing the best areas for us to locate stores,' said Mr. Callahan, adding that Cabela's has identified at least 50 green zones and plans to open four stores next year. Each store costs $50 million to $80 million to build. As part of its site selection negotiations with city officials and developers, Cabela's typically requires that it be allowed to approve all nearby tenants. In some instances, as in Buda, the company will buy four times the property it needs so it can control who becomes its neighbors. 'They are very picky about who builds next to them,' said Mr. Ketteman of the Buda economic development corporation. Cabela's real estate covenants usually bar competing sporting goods retailers, liquor stores or used-car lots. Retail analysts worry that Cabela could face a problem that afflicts many tourist attractions like the Alamo: people will go once and figure they've been there, done that. Another concern is rising fuel prices. 'You've got to wonder with gas at $3 per gallon if people are still going to want to drive 200 miles to buy a fishing rod,' said John Shanley, senior athletic and footwear analyst at the New York office of Susquehanna Financial Inc., which is based in Philadelphia and has a neutral rating on Cabela's stock. But the parking lots at Cabela's stores that have been open for several years are still packed. 'Amazingly enough, the people keep coming,' said Marilyn Scheibel, director of the Convention and Visitors Bureau in Lenawee County, which is near Cabela's Dundee store. 'The store has all sorts of fishing and hunting events, bird-calling classes and things like camper shows that bring people in.' Other store events might include jerky tastings or workshops with titles like 'The Secrets of Stalking' and 'Cast Iron Cooking.' Another concern for analysts is that the stores will cannibalize the catalog sales. But Mr. Callahan said that although there was a regional dip of 8 percent to 10 percent in catalog orders in the first few months after opening a store, it rebounded within 18 months. He also noted that online sales continued to be robust. 'We're in an age of multichannel shopping,' he said.

Subject: Alpha in a Predominantly Beta World From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 10:56:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/business/30place.html?ex=1291006800&en=f76ab9ea3c5979e8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 30, 2005 How to Generate Alpha in a Predominantly Beta World By RIVA D. ATLAS Money managers have been stepping up their search for Wall Street's holy grail: an investment that consistently generates 'alpha.' While that may just be Greek to people far removed from Wall Street, when money managers talk about alpha, they are referring to investments that make money even when markets are slumping. It is the opposite of beta, the term applied to investments whose returns tend to track the market. With conventional beta investments in stocks and bonds earning low single digits, a growing list of money managers are pitching an alternative, known as portable alpha. This fancy sounding name refers to a relatively simple strategy: combining an ordinary stock or bond index with something that the investor believes will provide alpha. If the source of alpha outperforms the stock or bond index, investors in portable alpha strategies, which include large pension plans, figure they are ahead of the game. Here's how it works: An investor with, say, $100 million to invest puts down a fraction - 5 percent or less - to enter into a derivatives contract with a notional value of $100 million linked to the performance of the Standard & Poor's 500 or some other benchmark index. The investor stands to gain - or lose - the difference between the index's performance and the cost of the contract. That's the beta component. The remaining $95 million is put into something else that the investor believes will generate a different return, not tied at all to that index. Increasingly, that money is being invested in funds of hedge funds. The $95 million hedge fund investment represents the alpha; it is portable because its return is being combined with that of the beta, or market-tied investment. Sometimes a portion of the $95 million is kept in short-term investments to meet any margin calls on the derivatives contract in case the market drops sharply. While hedge funds are a popular avenue, alpha can come from any sort of investment. Since 1986, for example, Pimco, the giant bond manager, has offered to combine the beta of traditional stock indexes with the return of short-term bonds. The firm manages more than $30 billion in portable alpha strategies. But as large investors get more comfortable investing in hedge funds, they are increasingly looking to these partnerships as their alpha provider of choice. 'Institutions are getting really aggressive about looking for alpha,' said Jane Buchan, chief executive of Pacific Alternative Asset Management, which manages funds of hedge funds. 'They are investing anywhere they can find it.' Precise data on the size of the assets in portable alpha strategies are hard to come by, although Institutional Investor magazine recently estimated that some $125 billion is invested this way by pension funds and other large institutions. Even as all that cash is flowing into portable alpha strategies tied to hedge funds, some consultants fear such strategies will no longer outperform the markets to the degree they once did. 'Portable alpha sounds great in theory, but I don't believe alpha is something that is just sitting on trees, waiting to be plucked,' said Peter L. Bernstein, a consultant to pension funds and other institutions. 'Investors underestimate the risks in hedge funds.' Yet pension funds and other adopters of portable alpha strategies are increasingly getting their alpha from a diversified portfolio of hedge funds. After the stock market collapse in 2000, hedge funds looked particularly appealing, returning 5 percent on average that year, according to Hedge Fund Research. But hedge fund returns have started to falter even as tens of billions of dollars are flooding into their coffers. Through Nov. 28, the CSFB/Tremont Investable Hedge Fund Index is up just 3.68 percent, compared with a 5.49 percent return for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. That reverses a lead of more than one percentage point that hedge funds had over stocks through the end of October. The recent performance is not expected to discourage the view that hedge funds can consistently generate alpha, given that there are few other attractive alternatives, consultants said. Robert Hunkeler, the director of International Paper's $6.9 billion pension plan, remains enthusiastic about his company's $340 million investment in portable alpha strategies that include investments in funds of hedge funds. International Paper began looking at the portable alpha concept after the market's steep drop in 2000, when the company was grasping for ways to invest its portfolio of large-capitalization stocks. International Paper was looking for a return of around three to four percentage points above the S.& P., Mr. Hunkeler said. Instead, it has earned just under two percentage points above the index since it began allocating to portable alpha strategies in 2003. 'Returns haven't been as high as expected,' Mr. Hunkeler said, but he attributed that to the relatively low volatility among stock prices this year. When stocks move up or down it creates opportunity for investors to outperform by making aggressive positive or negative bets based on selecting particular stocks. 'Given the overall environment, we're reasonably satisfied with our performance,' he said. Managers of portable alpha portfolios agree that they are making the best of a poor market environment. 'This is a bet that pays off over long periods of time,' Ms. Buchan of Pacific Alternative Asset Management said. 'But that doesn't mean there aren't times when the clock runs against you. There is no perfect solution.'

Subject: A Secure Old Age in Australia From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 10:51:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/business/30pension.html?ex=1291006800&en=90c70e8876749d97&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 30, 2005 A Secure Old Age in Australia From Investments Abroad By WAYNE ARNOLD It is the kind of problem most governments could only wish for: After several years of budget surpluses, debt is headed to zero and a huge privatization next year will add billions of dollars more to the treasury. How to spend it: On public works? Tax cuts? A rainy-day fund? The Australian government, faced with just such an embarrassment of riches, has elected to plow roughly $15 billion in surpluses, together with the $18.5 billion it expects to earn from the sale of the rest of its former phone monopoly, Telstra, into a professionally managed investment fund. Called the Future Fund, this national nest egg would also absorb future budget surpluses and invest it in world financial markets. The goal is to raise the $103 billion that the government estimates it will need by 2020 to pay pensions owed to its employees. Finance Minister Nicholas Minchin, referring to money held in the central bank, said by telephone from Canberra, 'We're satisfied that a diversified and well-managed investment fund will be able to earn over the longer term considerably more, and build up to the requisite size in a much more likely fashion, than just leaving it with the reserve.' Having proposed the investment fund last year, the government plans to introduce legislation in the next two weeks to create it. The fund would soon become one of the largest in Australia and, at its peak, is likely to number among the world's largest public investment funds - joining the ranks of the $100 billion Government of Singapore Investment and the nearly $200 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, or Calpers. And like them, analysts say, the Future Fund is likely to have a proportionate influence in global financial markets. There was no immediate indication how its portfolio would be divided between Asian and other world markets. Officials, though, want the Future Fund to avoid buying so much stock in any company that it becomes a controlling shareholder. That means it would seek its opportunities outside Australia. 'There simply aren't enough large equities that would allow significant liquidity without the fund having a significant shareholding,' said John Edwards, chief economist at HSBC in Sydney. 'It will have to look offshore.' Once overseas, big funds cannot help but exert influence - on prices and politics. Calpers, for example, has influenced markets in developing countries, many with total value smaller than the pension fund. In 2002, it roiled Asian markets by declaring that it would pull out of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand because these countries did not meet new investment standards for political stability, labor rights, a free press and credible accounting. The Filipinos and Thais sent senior aides to California to persuade fund officials to change their mind. Calpers has since reapproved all those markets except Indonesia. Beyond owning no controlling stakes, Mr. Minchin said, the government will not impose restrictions on where the Future Fund should invest, or what it should or should not invest in. 'We're not going to have a 'you can't buy this,' or 'you can't buy that,' ' he said. 'We're just saying, 'Have regard to the Australian government's reputation.' ' All this presents officials with another riddle: How can a government become a market player when it also serves as referee, and how does it ensure that its investment decisions do not become extensions of government policy? Placing the Future Fund under an independent agency that farms it out to professional managers is one possible solution. Not surprisingly, the government's plans are running into opposition from critics, like Wayne Swan, the opposition Labor Party's shadow treasurer, who said, 'This is a de facto tightening of fiscal policy, which is inhibiting the ability of the government to invest in the productive capacity of this country.' Few doubt that Australia needs to save more to ensure public-worker pensions. Like most industrial nations, its population is aging, and while a commodity-driven economic boom has kept the government flush, the public's savings rate is relatively low and paying for pensions will put a growing burden on working-age Australians. The government has taken steps to head off this problem by requiring all workers to put 9 percent of their income into private pension funds. Public employees are no exception, but those who were part of the previous pension plan will retire eventually, posing a 91 billion Australian dollar liability ($67 billion), the government's largest obligation. So analysts and economists generally support programs like the Future Fund. 'It's certainly a positive development in the sense of doing something about their pension obligations,' Sharad Jain, government debt analyst at Standard & Poor's in Melbourne, said. And Moody's recently extolled Australia's solution as a good alternative to the system in the United States, where the government pays retirement benefits from commingled general revenue.

Subject: Issue of Foreign Ownership From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 10:46:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/business/worldbusiness/01ports.html December 1, 2005 Britain, the Continent and the Issue of Foreign Ownership By ALAN COWELL and HEATHER TIMMONS LONDON - It had been a sinew of empire, a shipping line that ferried soldiers and diplomats, even royalty, on the Victorian mail runs that tied Britain to its outposts far to the east and beyond. But when the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, known as P&O, agreed on Tuesday to a £3.3 billion ($5.7 billion) takeover offer from DP World, Dubai's port company, the 165-year-old company headed the way of so many other onetime jewels in the British economic crown - into foreign hands. The deal invited perhaps a more philosophical question: What makes Britain so relaxed about selling companies to outsiders in a way that many nations in Continental Europe - France, Italy and Germany in particular - seem reluctant to emulate? It is a question that has much wider repercussions. As the European Union ponders its future, the same conflict between free markets and national protectionism has all but stalemated the European debate and even threatens world trade talks. For some in Britain, the answer lies in a deep-rooted faith among the business and political elite in what is termed the Anglo-Saxon model, meaning the belief, common to Britain and the United States, that market forces will ultimately provide a more robust economy and greater prosperity. 'Capitalism has been here for a long time,' said Robert Grindle, an analyst with the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London, leading to a conviction that 'the best owner for an asset is the one who wants to pay the most for it.' 'It's not a Blair thing; it's a Thatcher thing,' he added, citing Britain's lower unemployment, stronger growth and flexible capital markets as evidence that the system works. There is little doubt that the buy-sell ethic of the marketplace has taken root here since the privatizations of the 1980's, when the sale of public utilities like the state-run gas and telephone companies turned many Britons into stockholders overnight. Foreign ownership is extensive, from Harrods, the upscale department store owned by the Egyptian entrepreneur Mohamed al-Fayed, to the soccer team Chelsea, owned by the Russian billionaire Roman A. Abramovich. Rupert Murdoch, a naturalized American citizen born in Australia, owns some of the country's biggest newspapers, including The Times of London and The Sun. True, there are crucial companies like BP and British Airways resolutely regarded as predominantly British entities. But consider a string of other companies - the supermarket chain ASDA is owned by Wal-Mart Stores, and Telefónica of Spain is bidding for O2, the wireless offshoot of BT, the direct descendant of Britain's state-run phone company. In early October the Boots pharmacy chain, founded in 1849 by the farmer John Boot as an herbal remedy shop and an emblem of the British Main Street, was sold to Alliance UniChem, a pan-European drug distributor. And in June, the H. J. Heinz Company snapped up HP Foods, the 170-year-old manufacturer of such curiously English condiments as HP Sauce and Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce. 'It's the easiest place to do business,' said a partner at one American private equity shop in London that has bought British brand names in recent years. Not only that, said Oliver Bretz, a specialist in European and competition law at the Clifford Chance global law firm, 'even within the defense and nuclear industries, Britain has a more forgiving regulatory framework' than in much of Continental Europe. 'Nationality does not figure very highly' as an obstacle to acquisitions. 'Britain has learned that there is no harm in selling your local champions to foreigners,' said Holger Schmieding, an economist with Bank of America in London. In the auto industry, Ford Motor owns such illustrious British sports car nameplates as Jaguar and Aston Martin. Volkswagen of Germany owns Bentley. Indeed, the auto industry is where some of the differences between Britain and Continental European cultures seem particularly apparent. This year, when the doomed MG Rover company teetered, finally, on the brink of collapse, the British authorities toyed with intervening but abandoned the idea. A Chinese company ended up buying the company's leftovers, closing a final chapter of mass auto production in a country that had once built cars from Mini Coopers to Rolls-Royces, now both owned by BMW of Germany. In Germany, by contrast, when Volkswagen, which is shielded by German law from takeovers, seemed to be facing potential troubles in September, Porsche stepped in and took a 20 percent stake, keeping the carmaker in German hands in what seemed a display of the clubbiness of German business practices reinforced by political maneuvering. The British government's refusal to become involved in the collapse of MG Rover showed something of the way Britain's bare-knuckles culture has spread into the national psyche since the days of extensive state involvement in the economy, from coal mines to steel mills. Britons 'don't expect the state to be the first to fix it,' whatever the problem, said Katinka Barysch, economist at the Center for European Reform, which is based in London. 'They have less confidence in the state managing things.' Underlying the differences, many in Continental Europe see the takeover culture of Britain and the United States as, quite simply, a threat to jobs - even though the statistics show that the traditional social model of France and Germany has not been able to generate work for millions of Europeans. 'The perception is that foreign investment is not good for jobs,' Ms. Barysch said. For instance, Nicolas Sobczak, a European economist at Goldman Sachs in Paris, said that corporate owners in France were seen as more likely to be concerned about the future of their employees' jobs than foreign managers coming in after a takeover would be. Indeed, the consensus is that French owners will respect the 'agreement that you will try to safeguard jobs first,' a deal sustained by powerful labor unions. 'The French model was exceptionally good at the end of the Second World War,' Mr. Sobczak said. 'You needed a very enlightened elite of technocrats to lead the Continent, with American money, of course. France has been very good at reconstructing and modernizing.' But the system it created has become too costly, he added. Some Europeans argue that the distinction between British and Continental practices is narrowing. 'On the Continent you find varying shades of openness,' said Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies, a research group in Brussels. 'There is a wide variety of views as to the extent one should allow raw capital to be allowed to do its work.'

Subject: It's just a matter of time From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 07:41:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The World Is Tilted The popular idea that America is one step smarter and more sophisticated than its rivals is a dangerous myth, and a threat to the global economy. By Clyde Prestowitz Newsweek Issues 2006 - For most of the last 50 years, globalization has been a win-win proposition, making America richer while lifting hundreds of millions in the developing world out of poverty and despair. Recently, however, it has begun to operate differently, undermining U.S. welfare while creating imbalances likely to end in a global economic crisis. In this new mode, globalization is tilting the world like a giant sliding board game on which the 'flattening' of old barriers is accelerating the transfer of the supply side of the U.S. economy to the rest of the world, especially Asia. Take Boeing as an example. Long America's leading exporter, it symbolizes the kind of high-tech leadership on which the future of the U.S. economy is widely said to depend. After losing market share to the European Airbus in recent years, Boeing responded by developing the new 787 Dreamliner, which is gathering record orders. Yet these sales may not add a lot to the U.S. economy because much of the work—including production of the critical carbon-fiber wings that Boeing always insisted would be kept at home—will be done in Japan. Even more telling is the example of the semiconductor king, Intel. When economists and political leaders say American industry should concentrate on producing very-high-technology products where it has a clear comparative advantage, Intel's chips are what they have in mind. Yet company executives recently told a presidential advisory panel that under present circumstances they must consider building more of their new factories abroad. Over the next 10 years, they explained, the cost of running a semiconductor factory in the United States could be $1 billion more than that of running it abroad. That there is something odd here is not yet widely acknowledged. Indeed, most business, academic, media and political leaders continue to insist that globalization is proceeding smoothly, making the world rich, more democratic and more peaceful. President Bill Clinton called globalization America's strategy, and President George W. Bush describes the American economy as the 'envy of the world.' Nor is this view entirely unjustified. U.S. GDP and productivity growth are the highest in the developed economies, while inflation, unemployment and interest rates are among the lowest. Nevertheless, a closer look reveals a dark side. The U.S. trade deficit is now more than $800 billion, or 7 percent of GDP, and grows inexorably as Americans continue to consume more than they produce. The trade imbalance is of unprecedented size and breadth. Economists typically expect the United States to import commodities and cheap manufactured goods while exporting high-tech products, sophisticated services and agricultural goods, for which its land and climate are well suited. In reality, the U.S. high-tech trade surplus of $30 billion in 1998 has collapsed to a deficit of about $40 billion. Agricultural trade is now also in deficit for the first time in memory, and the modest surplus in services is declining as global deployment of the high-speed Internet has made it possible for services to move offshore as easily as manufacturing. In short, U.S. exports are declining versus imports across the board, while its growth depends on foreign lenders (primarily in Japan and China) to finance the excess consumption. Two factors explain these unexpected trends. The first has been at work for a long time. It is the gradual construction of the global economy in an asymmetrical form. For the United States, globali-zation has meant building its economy into a giant consumption machine. Easy consumer credit, home-equity loans with tax-deductible interest payments, markets largely open to imports, policies that emphasize growth through demand management and accommodative monetary policy, and myriad other incentives have led Americans to save nothing while both households and government borrow at record rates. This is often justly criticized as excessive. But it is important to understand that American buying drives most of the world's growth because the United States is virtually the only net consuming country in the world. Globalization for most others has meant export-led growth. Particularly in Asia, 'catch-up' development policies have focused on creating production and export machines. There are many flavors, but most Asian economies are characterized by relatively low consumption, savings rates of 30 to 50 percent of GDP, government intervention in markets, managed exchange rates, promotion of investment in 'strategic' industries, incentives for exports and accumulation of chronic trade surpluses along with large reserves of dollars. Indeed, the dollar is the key to this whole lopsided global structure. The dollar, of course, is not only America's money, but also the world's primary reserve currency. As long as others will accept it in payment, America can buy and borrow without concern for saving, investment or production. Thus, deficits—whether trade or budgetary—really don't matter and America can get away with fiscal irresponsibility. Oddly, the rest of the world can be just as irresponsible. By managing exchange rates to keep the dollar overvalued and their export prices low, other countries can oversave and overinvest because the excess production can be exported to the U.S. market. This structure has grown for so long because it has great benefits for both sides. America gets to live above its means, as cheap imports and foreign capital keep inflation and interest rates down and home values rising. The rest of the world, especially Asia, gets to climb the ladder of technology faster than it would otherwise. By accumulating dollars, Asia also gains strategic leverage over the lone superpower—which, by outsourcing management of the dollar, has ceded a degree of control over its own long-term interest rates. There is a downside, however. By keeping the dollar chronically overvalued and providing investment subsidies to attract strategic industries out of the United States, the Asian export-led-growth approach has long tended to shrink U.S. productive capacity. For some time, this was true mostly of commodity manufacturing, and the significance of the trend was discounted with the rationale that the U.S. economy was moving to the 'higher ground' of high-tech and sophisticated services. This argument was never entirely satisfactory because of the exchange-rate management and the investment subsidies used by export-led-growth countries to attract high-tech production to their shores. For instance, Boeing is outsourcing much of the 787's construction to Japan in part because an overly strong dollar reduces yen-based costs, and in part because the Japanese government will provide production subsidies unavailable in the United States while 'encouraging' Japanese airlines to buy the planes if the work is done in Japanese factories. For Boeing, this is all of critical importance as a way to offset the launch subsidies provided by the EU to archrival Airbus. But if it was always flawed, the argument is now in tatters in the face of the second aforementioned factor: the entrance into the global economy of China and India. Not only do they offer low costs, which the strong dollar further reduces, but—contrary to common assumptions about developing countries—significant portions of their populations are highly skilled. They can thus be competitive across the entire range of manufactured goods and services. The negation of time and distance by the Internet and air-express services makes this all the more true. Further, the potential size of these markets attracts investment in anticipation of growth, even if the initial production cost is not fully competitive. This is particularly true of China, where national pride and an authoritarian government willing to offer large investment incentives create an environment in which foreign companies are encouraged to engender 'trust' by transferring factories and technology to China, regardless of the fact that the comparative cost advantage lies elsewhere. This, combined with the asymmetric global economic structure, is why the U.S. trade balance is collapsing even in advanced-technology products and serv-ices. The growing trade imbalance, in turn, makes the current mode of globalization unsustainable. To finance the deficit, the United States is already absorbing about 80 percent of available world savings. The value of U.S. imports is now more than double that of exports. To merely stabilize the deficit at its current rate would require that exports grow more than twice as fast as imports. But this cannot happen if the supply side continues to move offshore. If it doesn't happen and the deficit keeps growing, world savings will eventually be insufficient and a financial crash will be inevitable. Of course, U.S. consumption and imports could be cut, but if that were to occur without a commensurate increase in consumption elsewhere, the whole world economy would suffer recession, if not depression. Some economists speak bravely of a 'soft landing.' In this scenario, the United States reduces its budget deficit and excess consumption, while a gradually falling dollar results in rising exports to foreign markets where governments are stimulating consumption. While desirable, this will not occur automatically. Interest groups in all the key nations will defend the status quo. Thus, for the sake not only of the United States but of all nations with a stake in globalization, it is imperative that political leaders change its current mode. The game cannot continue with one participant playing consumer while nearly all the others play producer. For the long-term success of all, everyone must agree to play the same globalization game

Subject: Worshipping Consumerism Altar From: Johnny5 To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Thurs, Dec 01, 2005 at 16:07:03 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: ...the significance of the trend was discounted with the rationale that the U.S. economy was moving to the 'higher ground' of high-tech and sophisticated services.... I wonder how long Silicon Valley houses can stay so high in price when silicon valley leaves the USA? As the capital leaves that area to other places? http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5978283.html?tag=zdfd.newsfeed Intel will build a $3.5 billion chip plant in Israel, the largest investment ever by an industrial company in the country. ...but if that were to occur without a commensurate increase in consumption elsewhere... We just need to turn all the middle eastern, south american and african countries into mass consumerism centers like the west - get them buying starbucks and gap and whole foods like terri and emma and everything will be A OK Pete - you worry too much. Bush is committed to turning the whole world into one mass customer base eh? Differences in culture and religion will be wiped away if they don't buy their starbucks coffee at the cybercafe right?

Subject: Pair of Wings Took Evolving Insects From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 13:39:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/science/29inse.html?ex=1290920400&en=4da41dd313fa803c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 A Pair of Wings Took Evolving Insects on a Nonstop Flight to Domination By CARL ZIMMER In the annals of life, insects are one of the great success stories. A little over 400 million years ago, their six-legged ancestors came out of the water onto dry land. They have evolved into an estimated five million living species - dwarfing the diversity of all other animals combined. Even if you throw in all the known species of plants, fungi and protozoans, insects still win. Insects are also a success in terms of sheer biomass. Put all of the insects on a giant scale, and they will outweigh all other animals, whales and elephants included. And insects are also ecologically essential. If all humans decided to leave for Mars, taking all the vertebrates with them, the disruption to life on Earth would be incomparably less than the catastrophe that would ensue if insects disappeared. Forests would probably collapse, rivers and oceans would be poisoned, and many other animals would starve. Two entomologists have now written the first book that chronicles this success story. 'Evolution of the Insects,' published by Cambridge University Press, results from five years' labor by David Grimaldi of the American Museum of Natural History and Michael Engel of the University of Kansas. Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Engel are well qualified for the job. Among their many accomplishments, they identified the oldest insect fossils from a 410-million-year-old rock in 2004. But to write 'Evolution of the Insects,' they went well beyond their own research and synthesized the work of the armies of scientists who study living insects, dig up insect fossils and discover evolutionary secrets in insect DNA. This effort has produced an increasingly clear picture of the rise of insects. Their success, scientists now recognize, did not occur overnight. The oldest living lineages of insects - which include bristletails and silverfish - number only 900 species today. These early insects may not have been able to become very diverse because they didn't have wings. When insects later evolved the ability to fly, they gained the ability to explore more territory and find new kinds of food - giving rise to more species. Early flying insects grew wings that stuck straight out - as illustrated by mayflies and dragonflies, the oldest flying insects alive today. By 300 million years ago, other insects had evolved folding wings. This innovation may have given a new boost to the diversity of insects. Such an insect could keep its wings safely tucked away as it crawled through leaf litter, squeezed under tree bark or even dived into water. It is unlikely that insects would have enjoyed their great success without the success of plants, which evolved from algae about 450 million years ago. Plants set the table for insects. They provided a vast amount of food for the taking, spurring the evolution of all manner of insect mouthparts for nibbling, sucking and drilling. The assault of insects prompted the evolution of sophisticated chemical weapons in plants. But the insects evolved defenses against them. Some insects, like monarch butterflies, can recycle poisons from plants they eat, making themselves poisonous to birds and other predators. As Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Engel make clear, though, vegetarianism is hardly the rule among insects. Some of the most successful lineages eat other insects, drink the blood of mammals and birds, or lay their eggs inside unlucky hosts. Scientists are beginning to learn how some of these transformations took place. Take fleas. Recent research has revealed that fleas descend from mosquitolike insects called scorpionflies, which have long wings and powerful eyes, aiding them in finding insect carcasses for food. A clue to how scorpionflies evolved into fleas comes from the fleas' closest living relatives. Known as boreids or snow fleas, these 24 species walk across snow in late winter to feed on moss. Unlike other scorpionflies, snow fleas have tiny wings that are useless for flying. They don't have the keen eyesight of other scorpionflies, probably because they need their eyes only to detect predators. Once the ancestors of fleas split from snow fleas 160 million years ago, they continued this trend. They lost their wings altogether and their eyes became completely covered over. But at the same time, they were adapting to a new habitat, the hair of mammals and the feathers of birds. That shift turned out to be a key to evolutionary success. There are now 5,000 species of fleas, 200 times as many as their snow flea relatives. Insects came on land more than 50 million years before our vertebrate ancestors arrived. They were barely touched by the mass extinctions that annihilated the dinosaurs and marine reptiles 65 million years ago. But Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Engel believe that they now face a challenge almost without precedent in their history: humans. Roaches, houseflies and a few other species have adapted well to a human-dominated world. Insects that eat crops have even evolved resistance to almost all the pesticides farmers have sprayed on them. But other species are not so fortunate. Insects that live only in certain habitats can face extinction when their homes are taken over - when houses are built on coastal dunes, for example. Other insects depend entirely on a single species of plant for food, and if that plant disappears, they may disappear as well. While pests evolve resistance, pesticides are devastating neighboring insects that don't feed on the crops. So we can expect more pests and fewer bees and butterflies. 'The behavior, life histories, ecological interactions and biology of most insects in our own yards and city parks are largely unknown, let alone the millions of species in remote regions,' Dr. Grimaldi and Dr. Engel write. 'We will never know the full extent of what we are losing.' 'Evolution of the Insects' may at least show us what came before.

Subject: Cautions for the Future From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 13:27:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/30/business/30econ.html November 30, 2005 Upbeat Signs Hold Cautions for the Future By VIKAS BAJAJ Gasoline is cheaper than it was before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Consumer confidence jumped last month and new- home sales hit a record. The stock market has been rising. Even the nation's beleaguered factories seem headed for a happy holiday season. By most measures, the economy appears to be doing fine. No, scratch that, it appears to be booming. But as always with the United States economy, it is not quite that simple. For every encouraging sign, there is an explanation. Consumer confidence is bouncing back from what were arguably some of its worst readings in years. Gasoline prices - the national average is now $2.15, according to the Energy Information Administration - have fallen because higher prices held down demand and Gulf Coast supplies have been slowly restored. The latest reading on home sales, released yesterday, contradicts most recent measures of housing activity, which generally indicate a slowdown. And, yes, manufacturers' fortunes are on the mend, but few besides airplane makers are celebrating. It all means the economy is likely to end the year with a splash. But before you splurge on a new car, consider this: Many economists do not expect the party to continue, especially if the Federal Reserve continues taking the punchbowl away and raises interest rates. That could further slow the housing market, damp consumer spending and crimp corporate profits. Indeed, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday that 2005 growth would most likely settle at 3.6 percent, down from 4.2 percent in 2004. The organization also forecast 2006 growth at 3.5 percent, but other economists think that may be too optimistic. 'The two major concerns are the extent of slowdown in housing and how it can feed into growth and consumer spending,' said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc., a research firm in New York. Many analysts, including Mr. Shapiro, say a housing slowdown is already under way. Along with rising interest rates and anemic job growth, any such drop-off could sap the economy next year - by just how much is still subject to debate. Americans have taken advantage of historically low mortgage rates to buy homes, refinance existing loans and borrow money for renovations or other household needs, all of them important and substantial spurs to spending, Mr. Shapiro said. 00 While neither he nor others expect that activity to dry up, even a modest tapering off could knock growth down a peg or two. Mr. Shapiro, for one, says growth could drop from 3.5 percent in 2005 to 3.2 percent in 2006. The average interest rate on a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage was 6.28 percent last week, up from a low of 5.53 percent in June, according to Freddie Mac, the housing-finance company. The Commerce Department said yesterday that new-home sales jumped 13 percent in October, to an annual pace of 1.42 million, a record. But that contradicted earlier data showing sales of existing homes slowing, construction activity easing, mortgage applications falling and confidence declining among home builders. Two possible explanations for the record pace of new-home sales are that buyers see a final opportunity to purchase a new house before interest rates go up again, and they are taking advantage of sales incentives that some home builders are now offering. But not everyone agrees. 'I basically have a wait-and-see attitude with some healthy suspicion about this report,' said David F. Seiders, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. 'Either there is something that all of those other reports are not telling us, or this will get revised.' In another seemingly upbeat report, the Conference Board, a research group supported by business, said consumer confidence jumped 16 percent. Still, it is below the pre-Katrina level. And the Commerce Department said orders for durable goods - big-ticket items that last more than three years - jumped 3.4 percent, but most of that increase was concentrated in military and commercial planes. In addition to housing, the Federal Reserve and businesses will have a big part in setting the economy's pace next year - the Fed through interest rates and companies by their hiring decisions. There is great speculation about how much more the Fed, where Ben S. Bernanke is expected to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman in February, will raise its benchmark short-term rate, now at 4 percent, before Mr. Greenspan leaves. There is also the question of whether Mr. Bernanke will feel compelled to prove his inflation-fighting mettle by nudging them higher still. The question may seem like splitting hairs, especially when the debate is whether the rate will be 4.5 percent or 4.75 percent, but it certainly has investors' attention. The recent rally in the bond market, which is considered a haven in periods of economic stress, indicates that many investors are betting that the Fed 'is likely to overshoot in its tightening,' Ethan S. Harris, chief United States economist at Lehman Brothers, wrote in a note to clients. A harder question, and one that could greatly influence policy makers, is whether business will pick up any of the slack if consumers are no longer spending as much. So far the evidence is inconclusive. After adding an average of 202,000 jobs a month for the first seven months of the year, companies hit a slow patch late in the summer. In August, businesses created just 148,000 jobs; that was followed by a decline of 8,000 in September after Katrina. And just when economists expected a big bounce back in October, the Labor Department reported a net increase of just 56,000 jobs. Analysts are eagerly awaiting the Labor Department's next jobs report, out Friday, and hoping the recent weakness will prove temporary. But they worry that job creation may turn out to be disappointing because of deep-rooted concerns about thinning profit margins, caused by, among other things, high energy costs. 'This is only a fear that has sprung up recently,' said Mr. Shapiro of Maria Fiorini Ramirez. Economists expect 220,000 new jobs will be created, according to a survey by Bloomberg News. Another hard-to-measure factor that could have a positive bearing on both businesses and consumers is rebuilding activity in the Gulf Coast and parts of Florida. The reconstruction that accompanies major disasters has been known to have a greater economic impact than the initial series of shocks. Many analysts say a housing-led slowdown is likely to be delayed until the second half of 2006 because billions of dollars that the federal government and insurance companies are starting to pump into hurricane-affected regions will make up for softer consumer spending. 'That is going to push up production activity into the first half of the year,' said Michael C. Fratantoni, an economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, which expects 3.7 percent economic growth in 2006, up from 3.6 percent in 2005. 'The second half of the year, we see somewhat of a drop-off.'

Subject: Poisonings From a Popular Pain Reliever From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 06:26:07 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/health/29cons.html?ex=1290920400&en=ee6e938355aa717a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Poisonings From a Popular Pain Reliever Are on the Rise By DEBORAH FRANKLIN Despite more than a decade's worth of research showing that taking too much of a popular pain reliever can ruin the liver, the number of severe, unintentional poisonings from the drug is on the rise, a new study reports. The drug, acetaminophen, is best known under the brand name Tylenol. But many consumers don't realize that it is also found in widely varying doses in several hundred common cold remedies and combination pain relievers. These compounds include Excedrin, Midol Teen Formula, Theraflu, Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold Medicine, and NyQuil Cold and Flu, as well as other over-the-counter drugs and many prescription narcotics, like Vicodin and Percocet. The authors of the study, which is appearing in the December issue of Hepatology, say the combination of acetaminophen's quiet ubiquity in over-the-counter remedies and its pairing with narcotics in potentially addictive drugs like Vicodin and Percocet can make it too easy for some patients to swallow much more than the maximum recommended dose inadvertently. 'It's extremely frustrating to see people come into the hospital who felt fine several days ago, but now need a new liver,' said Dr. Tim Davern, one of the authors and a gastroenterologist with the liver transplant program of the University of California at San Francisco. 'Most had no idea that what they were taking could have that sort of effect.' The numbers of poisonings, however, are still tiny in comparison with the millions of people who use over-the-counter and prescription drugs with acetaminophen. Dr. Davern and a team of colleagues from other centers led by Dr. Anne Larson at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, tracked the 662 consecutive patients who showed up with acute liver failure at 23 transplant centers across the United States from 1998 to 2003. Acetaminophen poisoning was to blame in nearly half the patients, the scientists found. The proportion of cases linked to the drug rose to 51 percent in 2003 from 28 percent in 1998. Not all the poisonings were accidental. An estimated 44 percent were suicide attempts by people who swallowed fistfuls of pills. 'It's a grisly way to die,' Dr. Davern said, adding that patients who survive sometimes suffer profound brain damage. But in at least another 48 percent of the cases studied, the liver failed after a smaller, unintentional assault by the drug over several days. 'I see some young women who have been suffering flulike symptoms for the better part of a week, and not eating much,' Dr. Davern said. 'They start with Tylenol, and maybe add an over-the-counter flu medicine on top of that, and pretty soon they've been taking maybe six grams of acetaminophen a day for a number of days. In rare cases that can be enough to throw them into liver failure.' Each Extra Strength Tylenol tablet contains half a gram, or 500 milligrams, of acetaminophen, and arthritis-strength versions of the pain reliever contain 650 milligrams. One tablet of Midol Teen formula contains 500 milligrams of acetaminophen, as does one adult dose of NyQuil Cold and Flu. One dose of Tylenol Cold and Flu Severe contains 1,000 milligrams. The recommended maximum daily dose for adults is 4 grams, or 4,000 milligrams. 'Part of the problem is that the labeling on many of these drugs is still crummy,' said Dr. William Lee, a liver specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, who for years has been lobbying the Food and Drug Administration to make manufacturers put 'acetaminophen' in large letters on the front of any package that contains it, so that as they reach for the bottle, patients will be more likely to pause and keep track of exactly how much they are swallowing. Some companies have voluntarily added new warnings about acetaminophen's risk to the liver, and they should be given credit for that, said Dr. Charles Ganley, director of the F.D.A.'s Office of Nonprescription Products. 'But labeling isn't where I would like it to be,' Dr. Ganley added. McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, updated the labeling on all its Tylenol products in 2002 to list all the active ingredients on the front of the bottle, increase the type size of acetaminophen, and added a label on the front warning consumers not to use the product with others that contain acetaminophen, said Kathy Fallon a spokeswoman. 'I urge consumers to read the label,' she said. 'Anything more than the recommended dose is an overdose.' Dr. Lee said he was disturbed by a pattern: 'that acetaminophen is always billed as the one to reach to for safety, probably even more so now, with other pain relievers pulled from the market.' In fact, the drug, when given in precise, appropriate doses is safer for children and teenagers than aspirin, which can interact with a viral infection to bring on rare but serious damage to the brain, liver and other organs in a constellation of symptoms known as Reye's syndrome. And among adults, low doses of acetaminophen are less likely than aspirin, ibuprofen or naproxen to eat away at the stomach, aggravate bleeding or harm the kidneys. Even patients with chronic liver disease are justly advised to take acetaminophen for the occasional fever, or for the pain of osteoarthritis, a back injury or other malady, if they keep the total daily dose under about two grams, Dr. Lee said. Experts agree that a vast majority of people can safely take the four-gram daily maximum that labels recommend for adults - the equivalent of eight Extra Strength Tylenol spread across 24 hours - and some people swallow much more without harm. But by eight grams in a single day, a significant number of people whose livers have been stressed by a virus, medication, alcohol or other factors would run into serious trouble, Dr. Lee said. Without intervention, about half the people who swallowed a single dose of 12 to 15 grams could die. How much alcohol over what time period is problematic? Recent research suggests the answer isn't simple. The package labels now warn anyone who drinks three or more drinks every day to consult a doctor before taking acetaminophen, but Dr. Lee thinks that people who are sober during the week but binge on weekends may be vulnerable, too. The few days of fasting that can accompany a bad stomach bug also seem to increase the liver's vulnerability to acetaminophen. And though safe levels of the drug for large men may, in general, be higher than those for small women, obese people aren't protected; extra fat in the liver seems to prime the organ for further damage. Nearly two-thirds of the people in the transplant center study who unintentionally poisoned themselves were taking one or another of the roughly 200 prescription drugs that contain acetaminophen plus an opiate. Among the most popularly prescribed drugs in this group include hydroconebitartrate plus acetaminophen, which is commonly sold as Vicodin, and oxycodone hydrochloride plus acetaminophen, better known as Percocet. While these acetaminophen/opiate combination drugs can be very effective in curbing pain after surgery or injury, some patients who take the drugs chronically soon find they need increasing amounts to achieve the same level of pain relief. Because the narcotic part of the compound can be addictive, its accompanying doses of acetaminophen climb sky high in lock step. The liver may keep pace with gradual increases of the drug initially, only to suddenly crash months later. It is the acetaminophen that kills the liver. Lynne Gong of San Jose, Calif., watched her 28-year-old daughter, Leah, nearly die last summer after that sort of crash. What had started out as a treatment for the pain of a dislocated shoulder and subsequent surgery had escalated over two years to a full-blown addiction. After her daughter was hospitalized, Ms. Gong said she found herself warning friends, neighbors 'and anyone else who would listen' that they needed to closely monitor their own intake of acetaminophen and that of their children. Some dangers lurk in surprising corners. One day, after Lynne Gong told the women in her prayer group about Leah's experience, a member went home and, after a little investigating of her own, discovered that her 12-year-old son and his friends had started nipping NyQuil on Friday nights for the alcohol content, in hopes of getting drunk. There are 9.8 grams of acetaminophen in a 10-ounce bottle of NyQuil, Ms. Gong said. 'Everyone really needs to be more aware.'

Subject: Does Stress Cause Cancer? Probably Not From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 06:24:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/health/29canc.html?ex=1290920400&en=94bf8418d0c63cb9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Does Stress Cause Cancer? Probably Not, Research Finds By GINA KOLATA Christina Koenig found out she had breast cancer on a Friday afternoon. She was just 39 years old. On Monday, she thought she knew why the cancer had struck. 'I went in and talked to a team of medical professionals who ultimately performed a lumpectomy, and I said, 'How long has this been there?' They said, 'Five to ten years.' And immediately, my mind jumped to: 'Well, I did go through a divorce. I did have stress.' ' Ms. Koenig, who lives in Chicago, was divorced four years before her cancer was diagnosed. Was it just a coincidence, she wondered? Now, four years later, she still wonders. So do many other women who get breast cancer. Ms. Koenig now works for Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, which gets 40,000 calls a year on its hot line. Over and over, she says, women ask, Did stress cause their cancer by weakening their immune system and allowing a tumor to grow? 'It's a widespread belief,' Ms. Koenig said. And it is not restricted to women with breast cancer. Jim Kiefert of Olympia, Wash., is absolutely convinced that stress led to his prostate cancer. It was diagnosed in 1989, when he was 50. Mr. Kiefert was a school superintendent, and he was in the midst of difficult negotiations with teachers over their contracts. 'I was stressed out,' he says. 'I know stress caused my cancer.' The question of whether there is a link between stress and cancer has puzzled and intrigued researchers as well as patients. Study after study has asked whether people who developed cancer had more stress in the years before the diagnosis, and conversely, whether people who experienced extreme stress were more likely to develop cancer. Investigators have also explored possible mechanisms, asking, for example, whether stress might suppress the immune system cells that might be needed to squelch rogue cancer cells. And they have tried to determine whether the immune system, the body's defense system, protects people from cancer in the first place. What has emerged is a tenuous connection between stress, the immune system and cancer, with a surprising new insight that is changing the direction of research: it now appears that cancer cells make proteins that actually tell the immune system to let them alone and even to help them grow. As for whether stress causes cancer, the question is still open. 'I have no idea, and nobody else does, either,' said Barbara Andersen, a psychology professor at Ohio State University who studies stress reduction in cancer patients. 'If somebody suggested that they know, I would question them.' Polly Newcomb, the head of the cancer prevention program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, decided to ask whether stress caused breast cancer, because women seemed convinced that it did. The issue came up in her epidemiologic studies of what might be causing cancer. She used trained interviewers to ask women with cancer and healthy women who served as controls about their medical histories, their environments and the medicines they were taking. Then the interviewers asked the women if they had anything to add. Repeatedly, the women with cancer would turn to their interviewers and say, 'Why didn't you ask me about what really caused my cancer?' What really caused it, they would say, was stress. It was plausible, Dr. Newcomb reasoned. After all, stress could alter the functioning of the immune system, in turn altering susceptibility to cancer. So Dr. Newcomb incorporated standard questions about stressful life events into her continuing study of nearly 1,000 women. Had family members or friends died? Had they gotten married or divorced? Had they lost a job or had they retired? Had their financial status changed? Were there stressful events not on the list that they would like to add? The women did not know why the questions, incorporated as part of a longer interview, were being asked. And the interviewers did not know which women had had cancer. But the results were clear: there was no association between stressful events in the previous five years and a diagnosis of breast cancer. Other studies had the same result. Still, not everyone was convinced. Critics told Dr. Newcomb and her colleague, Dr. Felicia Roberts, that they had measured stressors, not stress. And Dr. Newcomb had to agree that they had a point. She chose stressful life events as a surrogate for experienced stress, but it is not easy to measure the actual physiological stress that people experience and then follow them to see if they got cancer. Barrie Cassileth, chief of the integrative medicine service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, suggested that there was another way to ask the question. 'These are what we call natural experiments in the real world,' Dr. Cassileth said. 'Look at situations of extreme stress or distress - being in a concentration camp, being a prisoner of war. How about a mother losing a child? 'People in all of those circumstances have been followed. And they have no higher incidence of cancer.' Many large studies of cancer and stress were done in Denmark, which has national records of illnesses. One looked at the incidence of cancer in 11,380 parents whose children had cancer, surely a stressful event, Dr. Cassileth said. The parents, though, had no more cancer than members of the general population. Another study looked at the cancer rate among 21,062 parents who had lost a child. There was no increase in cancer among the parents for up to 18 years afterward. A third Danish study looked at cancer rates among 19,856 parents who had a child with schizophrenia. Once again, there was no increase in cancer. It also is unclear whether stress reduction can improve the prognosis of people who already have cancer. 'If the question is, Have we established it?, the answer is, Absolutely not,' said Sheldon Cohen, a psychology professor at Carnegie Mellon University who has studied the role of support groups and stress reduction in cancer. 'If the question is, Would it work?, we don't know that, either.' The concern, Dr. Cassileth said, is that cancer patients, under enormous stress, often worry that they are hurting their own prognosis. And patients who look back over their lives and remember that they went through stressful times before their diagnosis often conclude they brought the cancer on themselves. 'People need answers,' Dr. Cassileth said. For many, a diagnosis of cancer is a complete shock. They thought that they were healthy; they were exercising and eating right. 'They are at a loss to understand why that happened to them,' she said. And, she added, all people can find stress in their lives if they look for it. 'I tell them they did not cause their cancer. Absolutely not,' Dr. Cassileth said. The question for Dr. Drew Pardoll, director of the cancer immunology program at Johns Hopkins' Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, was not whether stress causes cancer. It was how cancers can even exist. The white blood cells of the immune system are always bumping into cancer cells. They should attack cancers as foreign bodies and destroy them. Why don't they? Is it that the immune system is too weak? Or is it something else? As it turns out, Dr. Pardoll and others found, it was something else, and not at all what most scientists expected. The old idea, Dr. Pardoll said, was that cancers arise every day but the immune system destroys them. Anything that weakens the immune system - stress, for example - could hinder this surveillance. The result would be a cancer that grows large enough to resist the body's effort to heal itself. 'Nobody believes that anymore,' Dr. Pardoll said. Dr. Fred Applebaum, director of the clinical research division at the Fred Hutchinson Center, said that he and most other cancer experts believed the theory. But then they looked at mice that were genetically engineered to have no functioning immune systems. 'They really don't show a huge increase in the incidence of cancer,' Dr. Applebaum said. For example, researchers looked at people whose immune systems were suppressed because they were taking drugs to prevent rejection of a transplanted organ or because they had AIDS. 'There are small increases in certain types of cancers,' Dr. Applebaum said, but those tend to be cancers that are associated with infections - like stomach cancer, associated with ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori; liver cancer, associated with hepatitis B and hepatitis C infections; Kaposi's sarcoma, associated with herpesvirus 8 infections; lymphoma, associated with Epstein-Barr virus; and cervical cancer, associated with human papillomavirus. 'The common types of cancer, the ones that cause the huge burden of suffering in humans, really aren't increased,' he said. What happens to the immune system in cancer patients? It should be protecting them. Every tissue of the body is larded with white blood cells, and cancers are no exception. In fact, Dr. Pardoll said, in some tumors, including melanomas and kidney cancers, white blood cells make up 50 percent of the cancer's weight. And cancer cells are clearly foreign tissue. Their surfaces are studded with proteins that look very different from the proteins on normal cells. The T cells of the immune system, which should start the attack, are perfectly capable of recognizing the foreignness of the cancer cells. But for some reason, they do not. Why not? The answer, Dr. Pardoll, Dr. Allison and others have found, is that proteins on the surface of cancer cells turn off the immune system's attack. At the same time, the tumor is excreting molecules that recruit immune system cells to help it metastasize, spreading through tissues and organs. 'We knew very little about what regulated these immune responses to tumors until very recently,' Dr. Pardoll said. 'We now are in a position to totally rewrite the book.' One immediate consequence of this line of thinking is a new idea for treatment: scientists could seal off the cancer cells' proteins that block the immune system and enable white blood cells to kill the tumor. Or they could make the immune system more aggressive. To do that, they can block a molecule on the surface of T cells, CTLA-4, that tends to dampen the immune response. The first strategy is only starting to be investigated because the discoveries are so new. But the second strategy is well under way. In mice, said James Allison, chairman of the immunology program at Sloan-Kettering, some cancers went away after just a single injection of an antibody to CTLA-4. Other cancers required a vaccine, as well, to bolster the newly unleashed immune attack. But then, Dr. Allison found, even the most intractable tumors in mice were destroyed. Dr. Allison licensed the technique to Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is working with Medarex to see if the method will work in humans. But while the work showed that the immune system can destroy cancers, at least in mice, it leaves unanswered the question that plagues many patients: Did a weakened immune system, possibly weakened by stress, cause cancer in the first place? Cancer immunologists are skeptical. 'There is absolutely no evidence for that association,' Dr. Pardoll said. Dr. Allison agreed. 'I can't rule it out,' he said, 'but I would be very skeptical.' Christina Koenig said that her group, Y-ME, is careful in its response to women who think stress caused their breast cancer. While Ms. Koenig said she thought it might have contributed in her case, she knows what scientists say and she does not want to overstate the evidence. When women ask, she said, Y-ME hot line peer counselors tell them, 'We don't have scientific evidence' and focus on recruiting emotional support to help them now, when they are dealing with treatment and survival. As for Mr. Kiefert, he is now chairman of the board of Us Too, an advocacy and support group for cancer patients, and he does not hesitate to tell men what he believes: that stress caused his cancer, that stress fuels the growth of the prostate cancer cells that are still in his body, and that stress may well have caused their cancer, too. That is not what many men want to hear, he said. 'Men almost never like to admit that they are under stress,' Mr. Kiefert said. 'Our male ego says it is a sign of weakness. We have a tendency to keep it inside, we try to tough it out.' Not him, he adds. He still has prostate cancer, and he has changed his life. 'I avoid stress,' Mr. Kiefert says. 'I know what happens when I'm under stress.'

Subject: But Will It Stop Cancer? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 06:22:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/science/01canc.html?ex=1288501200&en=6b1910c8d232f318&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 1, 2005 But Will It Stop Cancer? By GINA KOLATA Bernyce Edwards's daughter was 42 in 1997 when she died of breast cancer. It was just 69 days from diagnosis to death. And through her shock and grief, Ms. Edwards had a terrible worry: what if she got breast cancer, too? 'That's my biggest fear,' she said. So, to protect herself, she has taken up exercise. And not just any exercise. This 73-year-old woman has turned into an exercise zealot. She walks, she runs, she leaves her house in Bellingham, Wash., as early as 5 a.m. and spends an hour every day, rain or shine, putting in the miles on the trails and around a lake. But will her efforts help? Medical researchers agree that, at the very least, regular exercise can make people feel better and feel better about themselves. There is less agreement on whether it can also prevent cancer. But for two types, the evidence is promising: breast cancer and cancer of the colon. Other cancers have not been studied, or the studies that have been done have yielded little evidence that exercise can help. Even for breast and colon cancer, further confirmation is needed. Researchers who are enthusiastic about a cancer-exercise connection also caution against too much enthusiasm. Exercise is like a seat belt, says Dr. Anne McTiernan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, a co-author of 'Breast Fitness: An Optimal Exercise and Health Plan for Reducing Your Risk of Breast Cancer.' 'It's not a guarantee, but it can reduce your risk,' Dr. McTiernan said. 'The negative side is when a person says, 'The reason I got cancer is that I didn't exercise.' That's the problem.' Dr. Brian Henderson, dean of the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, knows just where the idea that exercise might prevent breast cancer came from. It was an extrapolation from an observation, and from the start it was filled with untested assumptions. He knows this, Dr. Henderson said, because it included work that originated with his research group. He began with the observation that exercise could affect when girls started to menstruate. For menstruation to begin, girls must be eating more calories than they burn, Dr. Henderson said. Adolescent girls who exercise strenuously often do not eat enough to make up for the extra calories they are using, and as a result, they may start menstruating later than more sedentary girls. Researchers also knew that the older a girl was when she started to menstruate, the lower her risk of eventually developing breast cancer, Dr. Henderson said, and 'that's where the idea came from that exercise might affect risk for breast cancer.' The question was whether they could document it. Dr. Henderson knew the problems with such studies. 'It's hard to measure exercise,' he said. Researchers can ask people to recall how much they exercised, but their answers may not be accurate. And it is almost impossible to account for incidental activities, like walking up a flight of stairs, that can cause one person to get more total daily exercise than another. 'We all go around in circles: isn't there a better way to measure this?' Dr. Henderson said. Another problem for researchers is the timing of exercise. Is it important throughout life? Only in young adulthood? Or is it as effective to start to exercise in middle age, when breast cancer risk rises? The best test of the exercise hypothesis would be to assign thousands of people randomly either to exercise or not exercise and then follow them for years, keeping track of cancer diagnoses as they occur. But, researchers say, not only would such a study be expensive - the exercise groups would need constant support, and researchers would have to monitor how much they were exercising - but volunteers would be unlikely to comply with their assigned regimens. Telling someone to exercise or to remain sedentary for years is not like telling her to take a pill. The alternative is to look at populations of people who did or did not exercise and try to correct for factors that might be linked to exercise and to cancer. Exercisers might be thinner, for example, and if they had a lower incidence of breast cancer it might be body weight, not exercise, that was responsible. Study after study was conducted: some found small protective effects of exercise on breast cancer; others found none. Now, in Dr. Henderson's opinion, there is no point in continuing to ask the same question in the same ways. 'We've pretty much settled the issue that there is a small effect,' he said. The effect, Dr. Henderson added, is so small, that even if it is real, it makes little difference to an individual woman. In one of his studies, the effect of exercise was so small that if he took into account alcohol consumption - which has been associated with a slightly increased breast cancer risk - the exercise effect went away. 'If you are going to exercise, there are other good reasons,' Dr. Henderson says. 'But protection from breast cancer is not one of them.' Dr. McTiernan has a different view. Instead of continuing to ask if there is a correlation between exercise and breast cancer, she said, she has been asking, 'What are the biochemical changes that occur with exercise and could they affect a woman's risk?' In Dr. McTiernan's studies, she randomly assigned overweight postmenopausal women to exercise for an hour a day, six days a week, or not to exercise. And she kept track of the levels of sex hormones - estrogens and androgens - in their blood. After menopause, women's estrogens and androgens are mostly synthesized by an enzyme in body fat. The more fat a woman has, the more hormones she makes. Exercise can reduce fat levels, and so it may reduce hormone levels and thereby lower breast cancer risk. The results of the study were as Dr. McTiernan might have predicted: women who lost fat had lower hormone levels and those who did not lose fat did not. On average, the exercisers lost about three pounds of fat over the yearlong study; the more fat they lost, the more their hormone levels dropped. Nearly a third lost at least 2 percent of their fat - about 4 pounds for a typical woman in the study, who weighed 180 pounds at the start and whose body was 47 percent fat. That modest loss in fat was accompanied by a 10 percent drop in estrogen levels, nearly twice what would have been expected if they had lost the same amount of weight with diet alone, Dr. McTiernan said. That is enough of a hormone drop to be associated with a decreased breast cancer risk, she added. Such studies, of course, do not prove that exercise prevents breast cancer. But, Dr. McTiernan said, finding biochemical changes that are consistent with a protective effect at least gives some plausibility to the findings from the population studies. 'It makes us more confident that exercise is working,' she said. While the link between breast cancer and exercise sprang from observation, the notion that exercise and colon cancer might be related came out of the blue. And epidemiologists and statisticians laughed when they first heard it. The idea originated about 20 years ago when Dr. David Garabrant, now a professor of occupational medicine and epidemiology at the University of Michigan, was a young assistant professor at U.S.C. Dr. Garabrant was interested in cancer epidemiology and, in particular, a cancer registry that Dr. Henderson had started and that kept track of all the cases of cancer in Los Angeles County. 'Our statisticians used to do computer runs, looking at cancer by age and ethnicity, and we used to look through these big computer printouts asking, 'Do we see anything interesting?' ' Dr. Garabrant recalled. 'One day we were looking through the cancer risks for various occupations and we noticed that all the jobs where people sat around had higher rates,' he said. 'I said, 'Gee, that's interesting.' So we came up with a rating scheme and we grouped occupations according to how active they were - sedentary, moderately active or an active job.' Then, Dr. Garabrant said, he examined the colon cancer data. Sure enough, there was a direct relationship between exercise and illness. The more active the job, the less likely its holder was to have colon cancer. 'I presented it at a department meeting and they laughed at me; they hooted,' Dr. Garabrant said. He added: 'This was a department made up of epidemiologists and statisticians. They just razzed me. 'Come on!' ' But it turned out that he was right. Now, Dr. Garabrant says, he knows of at least 50 studies, all of them showing the same relationship between exercise and colon cancer. 'Everyone who has data that allows them to look for it finds it,' he said. Others researchers agree. In fact, said Dr. John Baron, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth Medical School, there have now been so many studies of colon cancer and exercise that the issue is no longer whether there is a correlation. There is. Now, Dr. Baron said, the main issue is what does the correlation mean and why is it occurring. He and others worry that the interpretation of such studies can be confounded, because people who exercise are often different from people who do not exercise in many other ways, as well. 'Who has very active jobs? Probably poor people who aren't making a lot of money. Who joins health clubs?' Dr. Baron said. 'Well, these other characteristics may be important.' Researchers take into account every factor like this that they can think of. But, Dr. Baron said, 'The problem is the things we're not smart enough to know about, the things we haven't even thought of.' He said he remembered studies of colon cancer and dietary fiber. Some studies of populations found that the more fiber a person ate, the lower the risk for colon cancer. But two large studies that randomly assigned people to eat lots of fiber or stay away from it found no protective effect. On the other hand, noted Dr. Robert Sandler, a gastroenterologist at the University of North Carolina, the finding that people who took aspirin on a regular basis had less colon cancer, also from population studies, was supported by a large study that he directed. In it, people were randomly assigned to take aspirin or not take aspirin. So is exercise like fiber or is it like aspirin? Medical researchers may never know. There are animal studies, but it is hard to know what they mean. With cancer, Dr. Baron said, 'sometimes animal studies are right on the money and sometimes they're not.' The problem, he added, 'is that you don't know which is which.' Still, Dr. Baron said, with the possible exception of over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin, nothing has been so strongly associated with reduced risk of colon cancer as exercise. And he said he thinks it makes sense to counsel patients who are at risk of colon cancer to exercise. There, is, however, one problem: Doctors say that it is so hard to persuade most patients to exercise that many do not even try. Dr. Sandler said he sees patients right after they have had a colonoscopy, a screening test for cancer that looks for small growths, polyps, in the colon. Although most polyps are not cancerous, most colon cancer starts with a polyp, and so patients with polyps are at increased risk. Doctors cut polyps out in a colonoscopy but more can grow back. So patients with polyps are often frightened, and they ask what could have caused the polyps and how they can protect themselves from colon cancer. Dr. Sandler suggests aspirin and he suggests exercise. 'I'm pretty confident it will work,' Dr. Sandler said of the exercise prescription. But, he adds, most patients dismiss that advice. 'They kind of blow me off,' he said. Dr. John Min, an internist in private practice in Burlington, N. C., loves exercise - he runs in marathons - and he believes it can improve health and possibly protect people from colon and breast cancer. But he does not even mention it to his patients as a way to protect against those cancers. 'Unfortunately, trying to get patients, even those who are very interested, to start exercising is very difficult,' he says. He said he has tried, and patients have left his office seeming excited about turning their life around. But they soon return to their sedentary ways. 'This is unfortunately what I have realized,' Dr. Min said. 'The ability for someone to significantly change their lifestyle, which they've lived with for years, is extremely difficult unless it is personally important to them. I can't make it personally important to them in the time of an office visit.' Once in a while, though, someone who never thought they wanted to exercise takes it up out of fear of cancer and discovers that they love it. That happened with Ms. Edwards, who worries about breast cancer but says her life is so much better now that she is active. John Knudson, a 58-year-old mathematics instructor at Seattle Central Community College had a similar experience. Mr. Knudson had never really been a regular exerciser. He would sometimes play soccer on the weekends, he said, but 'I would play one day and hurt for four days.' Then, about five years ago, Mr. Knudson had a colonoscopy. Mr. Knudson had polyps, lots of them. 'I remember my gastroenterologist, when he was doing it, said, 'Well, you're a regular polyp farm,' ' Mr. Knudson said. Soon afterward, he got a letter from his gastroenterologist asking him to be in another of Dr. McTiernan's studies - a one-year study at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center that would randomly assign people like him, with lots of polyps and so a high risk for colon cancer, to exercise vigorously for a year or to remain sedentary. As in the breast cancer study, the idea in this research was to track biochemical changes with exercise to see if they were related to cancer. In the case of colon cancer, the researchers were looking for prostaglandins, insulin and insulin-like growth factor, all proteins that have been associated with colon cancer risk. And they were looking for small molecules that have been associated with cell growth, reasoning that excessive growth might indicate cancer risk. Mr. Knudson agreed to participate in the study. He was assigned to the exercise group, and he discovered he loved running. Dr. McTiernan says she and her colleagues are still analyzing their data from the study and so it is not clear yet whether there is a biochemical explanation for the colon cancer connection. But Mr. Knudson has gone beyond his original reason for exercising. Running has become his passion. Years after the study ended, Mr. Knudson is now running in half marathons. His polyp problem has gone away, although, he says, he has no idea if it was the exercise or whether his doctor just cut out all the polyps the first time and they have not had a chance to grow back. In any event, he said, 'The polyp farm is kind of dormant.' Some of the other study participants had trouble with the exercise program, he noted. 'It was a big commitment.' But not for him. 'I like the freedom I get running,' he said. 'I like the feeling that I can pick up and run somewhere. It's kind of exhilarating.'

Subject: Programs To Foster Heart Health From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 06:18:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-page.html?res=9F05EEDC143FF93AA15751C1A96E958260&fta=y December 29, 1998 Dean Ornish; A Promoter of Programs To Foster Heart Health By GINA KOLATA It cannot be easy to go out to dinner if you are Dr. Dean Ornish. As a best-selling author and developer of a program that promises to reverse heart disease and help people live better, he is recognized everywhere. But the real problem with going out to eat, if you are Dr. Ornish, is what to order. His diet is not just vegetarian. It also has little or no added salt, fat or oil. He allows virtually no sugar. It is not easy finding a restaurant that can accommodate him. So, Dr. Ornish says, he likes to go to places like the Avenue Grill in Mill Valley, Calif., where the staff members know him and can prepare the food he requires. One evening last spring, Dr. Ornish started with Caesar salad, which he ordered with dressing on the side. When the salad came, he ignored the dressing, along with the Parmesan cheese and croutons that were sprinkled over the lettuce. Dr. Ornish's ''Caesar salad'' was simply a handful of leaves of Romaine. His main course was a plate of steamed vegetables surrounding a scoop of plain white rice. No butter. No oil. No salt. Not even any spices. He drank water. No dessert. No coffee. It hardly seemed like enough. But Dr. Ornish, who is far from gaunt, explained his secret. ''I eat throughout the day,'' he said. ''I graze.'' The diet, however, is only part of Dr. Ornish's programs. Adherents practice stress-management techniques derived from yoga. They exercise. They regularly attend support group meetings. And those who smoke must stop. It is an intense commitment, requiring at least 12 hours a week, not counting time to find and prepare the food, Dr. Ornish said, and an iron will during holidays when everyone around is stuffing down calories as if there were no tomorrow. Dr. Ornish's programs to prevent or reverse heart disease and one he is testing now to prevent cancer, and his efforts to publicize them, have turned him into an American phenomenon. He runs the Preventive Medicine Institute in Sausalito, Calif., where he directs week-long workshops for people who want to start his program. In March, he began endorsing a line of foods that he helped develop, Advantage/10, with the 10 standing for the 10 percent fat in his diet. Dr. Ornish's adherents swear by his programs. Victor Karpenko, 76, from Danville, Calif., said he started the program more than 10 years ago, lost 30 pounds and avoided the bypass surgery his doctor had recommended. ''I feel great,'' he said. Jack Brandon, 68, from San Rafael, Calif., said his family pushed him to start the program two years ago because he had had a prostate cancer scare. Dr. Ornish hopes that his program will prevent prostate cancer or, if a man already has it, slow or reverse the tumor's growth. ''I'm in love with the program,'' Mr. Brandon said. ''I'm in love with Dean, I'm in love with the world.'' Experts on heart disease have long recommended that people exercise more, with many suggesting so-called ''heart-healthy'' diets that have less fat, though not as little as Dr. Ornish suggests. And Dr. Ornish has supporters in academic medicine. ''Fundamentally, he's right,'' said Dr. Lee Goldman, the chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. ''It makes good sense and we have been very supportive of his program.'' Dr. William R. Fair, the director of the Prostate Diagnostic Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, ''a believer'' in Dr. Ornish's program, started it after he contracted colon cancer. Now he is collaborating with Dr. Ornish on research into whether the diet can reverse cancer. Meanwhile, Dr. Fair said, ''I am into the diet, I take soy proteins and vitamin E. I am into exercise, into yoga.'' Dr. Claude Lenfant, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, observed that most Americans would not want to follow Dr. Ornish's strict regimen. Nor would they need to. he said. But he added that Dr. Ornish's most recent data, published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, show that ''if one wants to follow this regimen, then it's going to work,'' by slowing the buildup of plaque in coronary arteries. But others are not so sure. They question whether research supports Dr. Ornish's claims for his programs. They wonder if he can be objective about programs in which he has a financial stake. Dr. Ornish said that to protect his objectivity, he strives to ''make sure I collaborate with people who are the most respected in the field and whose biases are often quite different from mine.'' He adds that many who look askance at his financial arrangements themselves take money from drug companies for research and lectures while they are studying the companies' drugs. Others question Dr. Ornish's research findings. Dr. Richard Pasternak, director of preventive cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said that Dr. Ornish's studies were flawed. ''There's virtually no science here, as far as I can tell,'' Dr. Pasternak said. And Dr. Paul D. Thompson, the director of preventive cardiology at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, said, ''There does come a point where one starts becoming more of a cheerleader than a scientist.'' Though Dr. Ornish's curriculum vitae lists scores of speeches, television presentations and the like, it notes only three scientific studies. One involved 10 patients studied for a month. Another involved 48 people, who were studied for a month. It showed, he reported, that people who followed his program had drops in cholesterol levels, less chest pain, and an improvement in heart function. The third study began with 53 patients who were asked to follow his program and 43 who were asked if they would undergo regular medical assessments while having their usual care. But only 28 intervention and 20 control patients agreed to participate. One of the intervention patients died while exercising, ''greatly exceeding his prescribed exercise,'' Dr. Ornish says. In a paper published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ornish and his colleagues reported that after five years, 20 patients remained in the treatment group and 15 in the control group. Those who were in his program, he and his colleagues reported, had slightly wider coronary arteries, on average, and had, he says, ''dramatically less'' chest pain than those who were left to their own devices. One problem with these studies, critics said, was their small size. As Dr. Thompson put it, ''Rarely have so many conclusions been based on so few subjects.'' But Dr. Ornish said the size of the study was less important than the precision of the results. His measurements of changes in the average diameter of coronary arteries were so precise, he said, that he could see definitive results with just a few patients. But some researchers said Dr. Ornish should look beyond this measurement. Dr. Robert H. Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver and chairman of the nutrition committee of the American Heart Association noted that Dr. Ornish did not show differences in whether people lived longer on his program, or had fewer heart attacks. To see such differences typically requires studies with thousands of patients, followed for years. Dr. Frank Sacks, a nutrition professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, noted that Dr. Ornish found no improvements in the most narrowed parts of his patients' arteries -- where blood clots might be expected to lodge and cause heart attacks. And, he added, Dr. Ornish has no evidence that artery clogging plaque melted away in patients on his program. Dr. Ornish said that what mattered most was blood flow to the heart as well as heart attacks, hospitalizations, bypass surgery, and chest pain. ''We found marked improvements in blood flow and two and a half times fewer cardiac events,'' in patients on his program, he said. It was almost a matter of happenstance that Dr. Ornish found his calling. It happened in 1972 when he dropped out of Rice University in Houston to recover from mononucleosis and depression. At his parents' home in Dallas, Dr. Ornish met Sri Swami Satchidananda, who had been teaching Dr. Ornish's older sister meditation and relaxation techniques. Dr. Ornish asked the swami to help him, too. ''He said, 'Become a vegetarian.' '' Dr. Ornish recalled. ''I said, 'Fine,' '' He said the swami also told him to meditate, practice yoga, exercise and to ''always do something to help someone.'' The swami ''gave me my program,'' Dr. Ornish said. ''I felt better. I felt peaceful.'' Inspired by this experience, Dr. Ornish began a small study several years later, when he was in medical school at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He would see if the program the swami taught him might reverse heart disease. He found 10 patients. Half chose to follow his program; the others did not. ''I taught yoga and led exercise sessions. I taught nutrition,'' Dr. Ornish said. And he led the participants in a support group where, he said, they shared what he describes as their pain and loneliness. Dr. Ornish said the patients who followed his program ended up with lower blood levels of cholesterol, less chest pain and improved heart function. He followed with his one-month study of 48 patients. He wrote a book, ''Stress, Diet & Your Heart'' (New American Library) that was copyrighted in 1982, but came out early in January 1983, at about the same time as a scientific paper describing his findings. In 1984 he started his Preventive Medicine Institute and began another study to see if he could detect an actual reversal of atherosclerosis in patients who followed his program. He published a paper in 1990 while, that same year, he published a book, ''Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease'' (Ballantine Books), which climbed to No. 3 on The New York Times best-seller list. Now Dr. Ornish is hoping that he can show his program can prevent or reverse cancer. And, he says, he would like to see it licensed for use across the country. Dr. Sacks, for one, questions whether very many patients could stick with the program. ''I have extreme skepticism and a lot of experience with patients,'' he said. Dr. Sacks said he obtained a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study Dr. Ornish's program, but he had great trouble recruiting patients. ''We pulled out all the stops. We had a superb staff,'' Dr. Sacks said. But few patients agreed to try the program and they could not stick with it, he said. Dr. Ornish agrees that his program is not for everyone. But, he emphasizes, the program is more than just a medical treatment for heart disease. He follows the diet himself, he says, ''because I prefer low-fat foods.'' And, Dr. Ornish adds, the program has other rewards. ''Probably the most important reason that many people smoke or eat too much is because it helps them deal with stress and loneliness and isolation,'' Dr. Ornish said. That is where stress management and support group meetings come in, he said. Patients adhere to his program, Dr. Ornish said, because they have gone beyond ''fear of dying to joy in living.''

Subject: Stent vs. Scalpel From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 05:58:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/business/29stroke.html?ex=1290920400&en=c8dfc4ae0989363c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Stent vs. Scalpel By BARNABY J. FEDER After Linda Packer, a 64-year-old social worker in Manhattan, fell twice over the Memorial Day weekend and felt vaguely unwell, a series of tests revealed a serious problem: one of the two main arteries carrying blood to her brain was more than 80 percent blocked by plaque. Hers was a fairly advanced case of a condition, known as carotid artery disease, that becomes increasingly common with age and has been linked to 25 percent of the 700,000 strokes in this country each year. It also leads to millions of cases of mini-stroke, memory loss and other brain impairments that interfere with daily life. Doctors told Ms. Packer her condition was severe enough to justify cutting open the artery to clear out the plaque. Some 150,000 Americans annually undergo such surgery, whose risks include strokes, heart attacks and infections. Until recently, the only alternative was a combination of blood-thinning drugs and blood-pressure medications, and watchful waiting. But Ms. Packer sought a relatively new, less-invasive alternative called carotid stenting, which has been used on more than 10,000 patients since regulators approved it last year. The technique widens arteries from the inside by threading a catheter through the circulatory system, pressing the plaque into the wall and inserting a metal mesh stent to prop open the artery. Despite some complications, Ms. Packer is pleased with the results of her procedure. 'When it comes to carving up my neck and leaving a big scar I could avoid,' she said, 'then my vanity comes into play.' But the procedure's seeming ease and its growing popularity have some experts worrying that too many doctors and patients, spurred on by medical device makers, may embrace it without fully understanding that it is generally as risky as surgery - and potentially riskier in some cases. It is also expensive. Analysts estimate that sales of carotid stents, which cost around $3,000 each, have not yet topped $100 million. But some envision a $1 billion market for the devices within a decade - not counting doctors' fees. This country now spends about $2 billion annually on surgical treatment of carotid blockages. Both the surgery and carotid stenting procedures cost $10,000 to $15,000. Prominent skeptics include Dr. Mark J. Alberts, a professor of neurology at Northwestern University Medical School. He cites clinical data showing stroke and death rates of more than 10 percent within one year among those getting stents - not much different from the results in the same study for surgery. Dr. Alberts and some other doctors say that both procedures are done too often and that the advent of carotid stenting seems to be making the problem of over-treatment worse. 'There may be a few niche groups of patients that need a carotid stent, but we're already seeing more carotid stents being put in than is justified,' said Dr. Alberts, who practices at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, a major stroke treatment center for the Chicago region. Everyone agrees that clinical evidence about the relative risks in different types of patients is only beginning to emerge. But some clinical studies have found lower complications for both procedures than those cited by Dr. Alberts, with some results seeming to favor stenting and others leaning toward surgery. And advocates of the technology say that more recent data show that stenting success rates are climbing, now that the systems use temporarily implanted filters to catch bits of life-threatening plaque knocked loose during the procedure. By contrast, they say, carotid surgery - called endarterectomy - has no significant room for improvement. 'We are beginning to see results that make us believers that carotid stents will replace endarterectomy, and that it's only a matter of time,' Dr. L. Nelson Hopkins, a professor of neurosurgery and radiology at the State University at Buffalo School of Medicine, said last month at a symposium in Washington. The trickiest cases involve elderly patients for whom surgery is risky but stenting might be even riskier. Patients older than 80 are more likely to have calcified blockages that are hard to push aside with a stent, and they are more likely to have twisted arteries in which it is harder to implant the stent. Even stenting proponents worry about overuse of the technology in challenging cases. 'There is too much focus on who is a high surgical risk and not enough on who is at high risk for stenting,' Dr. Sriram S. Iyer, chief of endovascular interventions at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said at the same Washington symposium where Dr. Hopkins spoke. (Ms. Packer's procedure was conducted at Lenox Hill, one of the nation's busiest stenting centers.) The Washington symposium was sponsored by Boston Scientific, a leader in stents used in cardiac cases, which hopes to receive Food and Drug Administration approval for a carotid stenting system by the end of the year. So far, only Guidant and Abbott Laboratories are cleared to sell carotid stents and related equipment in this country. The F.D.A. has also tentatively approved a stent system from the Cordis division of Johnson & Johnson. Clearance is being delayed until Cordis convinces the government it has dealt with unrelated manufacturing and record-keeping problems. Medtronic, the largest company making only medical devices, could receive F.D.A. approval late next year. Registries in which doctors track the outcomes of patients who receive carotid stents are providing a growing body of data about their performance. But doctors and insurers place far more weight on randomized clinical trials that compare the various makes and models of stents with one another or with other therapies. By far the most important such trial under way is the Carotid Revascularization Endarterectomy Versus Stenting Trial, commonly known as Crest. A government- and industry-sponsored test comparing surgery with Guidant's stent system, the trial started in 2000 after three years of planning. But with less than a third of the enrollment goal of 2,500 patients completed, doctors will have a long wait for esults. Meanwhile, patient demand for stents is growing. Dr. Michael R. Jaff, the director of the vascular diagnostic laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told doctors and analysts at the Washington symposium that patients were showing up with 'reams of paperwork' from Web sites that have convinced them stenting is the right procedure for them. Specialists known as interventional cardiologists are poised to grab a majority of the carotid stent business. They make up the largest medical group in stenting, with as many as 15,000 practitioners, and are usually the first to spot carotid disease, which often develops along with heart disease. But those doctors face stiff competition from the nation's 2,800 vascular surgeons who, on average, receive about 30 percent of their revenue from endarterectomies. They say that their ability to do either procedure makes them the most unbiased source of information for carotid disease patients. Dr. John J. Ricotta, the chairman of surgery at Stony Brook University Hospital, on Long Island, sought training in the stenting procedure last April, to be able to give patients more options. 'There's going to be a lot of pressure to do these cases,' he said of stenting. But Dr. Ricotta said that in most cases he would still probably prefer surgery, for which he has had a low complication rate. Then there are the interventional radiologists, who have extensive experience with stenting in arteries not near the heart, and neurologists, who specialize in treating brain diseases. The neurologists moving into carotid stenting emphasize that they have superior training in recognizing and dealing with brain damage that carotid stenting can cause. 'All the specialties involved have the sense that they have as much or more to offer than the others,' said Dr. Barry F. Uretsky, an interventional cardiologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. Doctors say the single biggest brake on expansion of carotid stenting is the government's reimbursement policy. Medicare restricts coverage to patients who have a blockage of at least 70 percent of an artery, who have already had a stroke or displayed some other clear symptom of carotid disease and who have conditions that make surgery highly risky. That covers fewer than 10 percent of the patients who currently undergo carotid surgery, which is routinely covered by Medicare and commercial insurance plans. Meanwhile, Ms. Packer - whose insurer, Guardian Health Net, agreed to pay for the procedure - says she is happy she got the stent, despite some side effects. Those included swollen lymph glands and scattering bits of plaque that led to painful swelling in her foot and a serious infection in her thigh and groin, which required a two-week course of antibiotics. Not only does she believe her risk of stroke has been reduced, Ms. Packer is also convinced the procedure has other benefits that device companies have not yet even asked regulators to consider. 'My memory and energy levels are better now,' she said.

Subject: Argentine President Ousts the Architect From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 30, 2005 at 05:57:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/business/worldbusiness/29peso.html?ex=1290920400&en=f830c68759d3c5fa&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Argentine President Ousts the Architect of the Country's Economic Recovery By LARRY ROHTER Bringing an abrupt end to an alliance that had grown uneasy, even contentious, Argentina's president, Néstor Kirchner, yesterday fired his economy minister, Roberto Lavagna, the main architect of the country's recovery from the worst economic crisis in its history. Mr. Kirchner's chief of staff announced the change at the end of a news briefing in Buenos Aires at which new foreign, defense and social welfare ministers were also designated. No explanation was given for Mr. Lavagna's departure, but at a news conference of his own a couple of hours later, he made it clear that he had been asked to leave. 'The president signaled to me that he had concluded it was time to begin a new phase,' Mr. Lavagna said. 'The consequent logic was that I put my post at his disposal, which I did immediately.' Mr. Lavagna's successor is Felisa Miceli, president of the state-run Banco de la Nación and the first woman to hold the economy portfolio. Ms. Miceli, 51, an economist who once worked for Mr. Lavagna's consulting firm, is closely identified with many policies he has advocated, but is seen as lacking his political influence and independence. Domestic and foreign investors quickly made clear that they harbored doubts about the change. The Buenos Aires benchmark stock index fell 4.49 percent in heavy trading, the Argentine peso declined against the dollar, and Argentina's country-risk index rose. 'To change ministers at this moment is very risky,' Miguel Schiaritti, head of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told La Nación's news service. 'The outgoing official had shown himself to be the right man, after many years, to reach the targets and achieve the economic conditions we now have.' President Kirchner was virtually unknown when he took office in May 2003 after having won less than a quarter of the popular vote. Hoping to gain credibility and avoid market nervousness, he announced before he was sworn in that he intended to keep Mr. Lavagna in place, cementing a partnership that reached its peak in March, when Argentina announced a debt settlement in which its creditors agreed to take as little as 30 cents on the dollar. But in midterm congressional elections last month, President Kirchner's slate of candidates won a decisive victory, considerably reducing his dependence on Mr. Lavagna. Mr. Kirchner has since moved to consolidate his authority while at the same time showing signs of wanting to steer his government leftward. At a meeting of Western Hemisphere leaders in Argentina early in November, President Vicente Fox of Mexico criticized Mr. Kirchner, saying he had not worked hard enough to advance the cause of free trade and had thus embarrassed President Bush. Then, last week, Mr. Kirchner flew to Caracas and signed a series of agreements with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist leader and Washington's leading critic in the region. New doubts about Argentina's willingness to negotiate an agreement with the International Monetary Fund have also emerged. At the summit meeting, Mr. Kirchner asked Mr. Bush to lobby with the I.M.F. on his behalf for more favorable terms, but was rebuffed. 'My reading is that Argentina is continuing to deepen a tendency to go left,' an economist, José Luis Espert, told La Nación. 'Without Lavagna, Kirchner now has no one to rein him in.' Mr. Lavagna, 63, took the economy minister's post in April 2002 with the Argentine economy in ruins. The currency had collapsed a few months earlier, losing nearly 75 percent of its value, while bank accounts were frozen and the government had reneged on payment of more than $100 billion in debts, the largest government default in history. The economy shrank 11 percent that year but has grown by as much as 8 percent each year since then. Exports, employment and investment have all expanded, all without the I.M.F.'s stamp of approval on government policies. Recently, though, Mr. Kirchner and Mr. Lavagna quarreled over how best to confront a spurt of inflation. Last week, Mr. Lavagna complained of the 'cartelization' of public works projects, which carried an implication of corrupt price fixing and large cost overruns that appear to have enraged Mr. Kirchner.

Subject: Which of These Foods Will Stop Cancer From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 09:06:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/health/27canc.html?ex=1285473600&en=faa02f09bd83a2bc&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss September 27, 2005 Which of These Foods Will Stop Cancer? (Not So Fast) By GINA KOLATA Leslie Michelson does not have prostate cancer, but as chief executive officer of the Prostate Cancer Foundation he knows all too well how bad the disease is. So Mr. Michelson, 54, changed his diet. He used to avoid cruciferous vegetables, like cauliflower and brussels sprouts, hating their taste. Now he has them three or four times a week. He rarely ate fish, but now has it three times a week. He eats tomato sauce at least twice a week. 'I'm persuaded that with prostate cancer, diet makes a difference,' he said. Mr. Michelson is one of a growing number of people worried about cancer - because it is in their families or because they have seen friends suffer with the disease - who are turning to diets for protection. Cancer patients, doctors say, almost always ask what to eat to reduce their chances of dying from the disease. The diet messages are everywhere: the National Cancer Institute has an 'Eat 5 to 9 a Day for Better Health' program, the numbers referring to servings of fruits and vegetables, and the Prostate Cancer Foundation has a detailed anticancer diet. Yet despite the often adamant advice, scientists say they really do not know whether dietary changes will make a difference. And there lies a quandary for today's medicine. It is turning out to be much more difficult than anyone expected to discover if diet affects cancer risk. Hypotheses abound, but convincing evidence remains elusive. Most of the proposed dietary changes are unlikely to be harmful - less meat, more fish, more fruits and vegetables and less fat. And these changes in diet may help protect against heart disease, even if they have no effect on cancer. So should people who are worried about cancer be told to follow these guidelines anyway, because they may work and will probably not hurt? Or should the people be told that the evidence just is not there, so they should not deceive themselves? Dr. Barnett Kramer, deputy director in the office of disease prevention at the National Institutes of Health, said: 'Over time, the messages on diet and cancer have been ratcheted up until they are almost co-equal with the smoking messages. I think a lot of the public is completely unaware that the strength of the message is not matched by the strength of the evidence.' But Dr. Arthur Schatzkin, chief of the nutritional epidemiology branch in the National Cancer Institute division of cancer epidemiology and genetics, said people wanted answers, even if they are not are not definitive. 'It is not enough to say that, well, this is complicated science and maybe in seven or eight years we will have new methods in place' that might resolve the issues, Dr. Schatzkin said. 'We have a responsibility to give the best advice we can while pointing out where the evidence is uncertain and how we're working to improve the science.' That, however, is little consolation to cancer patients and family members who are terrified that cancer might strike them next. And there are more and more. As the population ages, the number of cancer patients is soaring. From 1997 to 2004, the number of Americans with cancer jumped, to 9.6 million from 9.4 million. Cancer strikes one in two men and one in three women in their lifetimes. Most people want some sort of control, a way to prevent the disease from ever striking them or, if it does strike, to keep it from recurring. Many think of diet as a strategy. Cassindy Chao, 36, of Oakland, Calif., said cancer runs in her family. Her mother has ovarian cancer and her grandmother died of the disease. 'I am absolutely frantic about it,' she said. Ms. Chao has made substantial changes in her diet, for example, drinking carrot juice, loading up on green and leafy vegetables and switching to organic meats. 'Some people might want to wait for the evidence, but I've noticed it takes a while,' Ms. Chao said. 'I'm not going to wait.' Dr. Tim E. Byers, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver, was convinced that up to 20 percent of cancers were being caused by diet and he wanted to be part of the exciting new research that would prove it. 'I felt we were really on the cusp of important new discoveries about food and how the right choice of foods would improve cancer risk,' Dr. Byers sad. That was 25 years ago, when the evidence was pointing to diet. For example, cross-country comparisons of cancer rates suggested a dietary influence. 'For prostate cancer, if you look around the world, there might be 50-fold or greater differences in rates; they're huge,' said Dr. Meier Stampfer, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. 'There are also big differences, many-fold differences, around the world for breast cancer and colon cancer.' And when people move from low risk countries to high risk countries, they or their children acquire the cancer rates of their new countries. At the same time, some cancers were inexplicably becoming more common or, just as inexplicably, fading away in the United States. In 1930, for instance, stomach cancer was the second leading cause of cancer death in women and the leading cause in men. Now, Dr. Stampfer says, stomach cancer is not even listed in the American Cancer Society's 10 leading cancers. 'So people think, 'What's happened in the past 70 years to make that change?' ' he said. 'Diet comes to mind.' There were also differences in diets in countries where cancer rates were high and in those with low rates. With breast cancer, for example, researchers could draw a straight line directly relating the amount of fat in the diet to the rate of breast cancer in the population. 'People looked at it and said, 'Here it is - fat causes breast cancer,' ' Dr. Stampfer said. Next came studies that compared the diets of people who developed cancer to the diets of those who did not. Those studies, Dr. Schatzkin said, tended to show that dietary fiber protected against colon cancer, that fruits and vegetables protected against colon and other cancers and that a low-fat diet protected against breast cancer. There were, of course, a few nagging questions. For example, people who had cancer might remember their diets differently. 'Whenever people get cancer, the first thing they ask is, 'Why me?' ' Dr. Stampfer said. 'And then they try to answer that question.' If colon cancer patients heard that fiber protected against colon cancer, for example, they might recall eating less fiber than people without cancer. Dr. Stampfer said evidence from one of his studies indicated that was occurring, at least with fat and breast cancer. But, he said, when he published a paper saying so, 'a lot of people didn't believe it.' The best studies are the hardest to conduct: prospective studies that that follow healthy people for years instead of looking backward and relying on memory. Even better - and harder and more expensive - are studies that randomly assign people to follow a particular diet or not. But those more difficult studies were well worth doing, researchers said. And as more studies started, scientists hoped for definitive evidence that diet affected cancer. The Fiber Theory But as the results from those studies have begun to roll in, many researchers say they are taken aback. The findings, they say, are not what they expected. Fat in the diet, the studies found, made no difference for breast cancer. 'For fat and breast cancer, almost all of the prospective studies were null,' Dr. Schatzkin said. Fiber, in the form of fruits and vegetables, seemed to have a weak effect or no effect on colon cancer. The more definitive randomized controlled trials were disappointing, too, with one exception. A study reported in May found that women with early stage breast cancer who followed a low-fat diet had a 20 percent lower risk of recurrence. Even so, the effects were just marginally statistically significant. The study's principal investigator, Dr. Rowan Chlebowski of the Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center, said it needed to be repeated before scientists would be convinced. Nonetheless, the study contrasted sharply with those preceding it. Several involved beta carotene and antioxidant vitamins like C and E, substances that scientists thought were the protective agent in fruits and vegetables. The idea was that antioxidants could mop up free radicals in the body, which left unchecked could damage DNA, causing cancer. Beta carotene was of special interest. People who ate lots of fruits and vegetables had more beta carotene in their blood, and the more beta carotene in the blood, the lower the cancer risk. But a four-year study that asked whether beta carotene, with or without vitamins C and E, could protect against colon polyps, from which most colon cancers start, found no effect. People who took either beta carotene, vitamin C, vitamin E or all three had virtually identical rates of new polyps compared to participants taking dummy pills. Another study, of 22,000 doctors randomly assigned to take beta carotene or a placebo, looked for an effect on any and all cancers. It found nothing. Two more, involving current and former smokers, found that those taking beta carotene actually had slightly higher lung cancer rates than those taking placebos. Studies of fiber and colon cancer were similarly disappointing. The fiber hypothesis had enormous appeal. Carcinogens from food can end up in stool. But when people eat a lot of fiber, their stool is bulkier and so carcinogens would be diluted. Bulkier stool is also excreted faster, reducing the time that the colon is in contact with cancer-causing substances. Fiber also binds bile acids in the bowel, substances that can damage the colon and, possibly, result in cancer. And the intestines metabolize fiber into short-chain fatty acids that seemed protective against cancer. Adding to the case for fiber was the fact that when researchers fed rodents carcinogens, the animals were protected against colon cancer if they also ate a lot of fiber. Based on these indications, the cancer institute financed two studies on high-fiber diets and colon polyps. In one, 2,079 people were randomly assigned to eat low-fat high-fiber diets or to follow their usual diets. In the other, 1,429 people were assigned to eat high-fiber bran cereals or wheat bran fiber or to eat cereal and bars that looked and tasted the same but that were low on fiber. Fiber, the studies found, had no effect. 'We had high expectations and good rationale,' Dr. Schatzkin said. But, he said, 'we got absolutely null results.' Now, the largest randomized study ever of diet and cancer is nearing completion, involving 48,835 middle-age and elderly women. The women were randomly assigned to follow a low-fat diet with five servings a day of fruits and vegetables and two of grains or to follow their usual diet. The question was whether the experimental diet could prevent breast cancer. The study is part of the Women's Health Initiative, a large federal project. When it began, the dietary fat hypothesis was ascendant. But after it was under way, other, less definitive studies failed to find any association between dietary fat and breast cancer. The Women's Health Initiative diet study's results should be ready early next year, said its principle investigator, Ross L. Prentice, a biostatistics professor at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. And if it fails to find an effect? Dr. Prentice said he would still wonder. Maybe what matters is diet earlier in life, he said, or maybe the women in the study did not stick to their diets. Others say they suspect they were simply na�ve about the cross-country comparisons that persuaded them in the first place. 'People drew inferences that were in retrospect overenthusiastic,' Dr. Stampfer said. 'You could plot G.N.P. against cancer and get a very similar graph, or telephone poles. Any marker of Western civilization gives you the same relationship.' Because of the striking differences in daily life between people in countries with high cancer rates and those in countries with low rates, diet may have nothing to do with the incidence of the disease, Dr. Schatzkin said. Or diet may play a large role but the questionnaires used to measure what people were eating might have been inadequate to find it. 'That's the problem.' Dr. Schatzkin said. 'We just don't know.' As for Dr. Byers, who once had such high hopes for the diet and cancer hypotheses, he says he is sadder now, but wiser. 'The progress has been different than I would have predicted,' Dr. Byers said. Specific food can affect general health, he added, but as for a major role in cancer, he doubts it. He now believes that it is the amount of food people eat, not specific foods or types of foods, that may make a difference. 'I think the truth may be that particular food choices are not as important as I thought they were,' Dr. Byers said. Individual Approaches Meanwhile, patients and those worried about cancer are adopting their own idiosyncratic dietary paths. Many know that the evidence is not solid, but they would rather take a chance that their diets will make a difference than wait helplessly for their fates to play out. That is the view of John Napolitano, a New York graphic designer and marketer. Three years ago, when he was 55, Mr. Napolitano found out that he had prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bones. Now, hoping to slow its progress, he avoids sugar and fat and almost never eats meat. He eats natural and organic foods. He drinks lots of water and green tea. He starts each day by whipping up a smoothie with a protein supplement and flaxseed. 'My diet is very different now than what it was three years ago,' Mr. Napolitano said, adding that thinks that his new diet helped. 'Until recently, I was totally symptom free,' he said. 'I can't endorse anything I'm doing, but I've never had nausea, never had constipation' from his treatments. Dr. Brad Efron, a professor of statistics at Stanford, has a different dietary approach. He does not have prostate cancer, but he had a couple of scares and he has friends who have it. So he is taking selenium, a trace mineral found in plants. A study that randomly assigned people to take selenium or not to see whether it protected against skin cancer found that it had no effect on that cancer, but that the men taking it had only a third as many prostate cancers. Now, the National Cancer Institute is conducting a study on whether selenium protects against prostate cancer. Dr. Efron chose not to wait. He even published a statistical analysis concluding that the prostate effect was likely to be real. 'One of my colleagues said, 'Why do you think something that people thought would work on skin cancer has anything to do with you?' ' he said. 'There's always a leap of faith. But I'm scared of prostate cancer and I wanted psychological reassurance.'

Subject: Age of Anxiety From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 08:46:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_112805M.shtml November 28, 2005 Age of Anxiety By Paul Krugman - New York Times Many eulogies were published following the recent death of Peter Drucker, the great management theorist. I was surprised, however, that few of these eulogies mentioned his book 'The Age of Discontinuity,' a prophetic work that speaks directly to today's business headlines and economic anxieties. Mr. Drucker wrote 'The Age of Discontinuity' in the late 1960's, a time when most people assumed that the big corporations of the day, companies like General Motors and U.S. Steel, would dominate the economy for the foreseeable future. He argued that this assumption was all wrong. It was true, he acknowledged, that the dominant industries and corporations of 1968 were pretty much the same as the dominant industries and corporations of 1945, and for that matter of decades earlier. 'The economic growth of the last twenty years,' he wrote, 'has been very fast. But it has been carried largely by industries that were already 'big business' before World War I. ... Every one of the great nineteenth-century innovations gave birth, almost overnight, to a major new industry and to new big businesses. These are still the major industries and big businesses of today.' But all of that, said Mr. Drucker, was about to change. New technologies would usher in an era of 'turbulence' like that of the half-century before World War I, and the dominance of the major industries and big businesses of 1968 would soon come to an end. He was right. Consider, for example, what happened to America's steel industry. In the 1960's, steel production was virtually synonymous with economic might, as it had been for almost a century. But although the U.S. economy as a whole created lots of wealth and tens of millions of jobs between 1968 and 2000, employment in the U.S. steel industry fell 60 percent. And as industries went, so did corporations. Many of the corporate giants of the 1960's, companies whose pre-eminence seemed permanent, have fallen on hard times, their places in the business hierarchy taken by new players. General Motors is only the most famous example. So what? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: why does it matter if the list of leading corporations turns over every couple of decades, as long as the total number of jobs continues to grow? The answer is the reason Mr. Drucker's old book is so relevant to today's headlines: corporations can't provide their workers with economic security if the companies' own future is highly insecure. American workers at big companies used to think they had made a deal. They would be loyal to their employers, and the companies in turn would be loyal to them, guaranteeing job security, health care and a dignified retirement. Such deals were, in a real sense, the basis of America's postwar social order. We like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, not like those coddled Europeans with their oversized welfare states. But as Jacob Hacker of Yale points out in his book 'The Divided Welfare State,' if you add in corporate spending on health care and pensions - spending that is both regulated by the government and subsidized by tax breaks - we actually have a welfare state that's about as large relative to our economy as those of other advanced countries. The resulting system is imperfect: those who don't work for companies with good benefits are, in effect, second-class citizens. Still, the system more or less worked for several decades after World War II. Now, however, deals are being broken and the system is failing. Remember, Delphi was once part of General Motors, and its workers thought they were totally secure. What went wrong? An important part of the answer is that America's semi-privatized welfare state worked in the first place only because we had a stable corporate order. And that stability - along with any semblance of economic security for many workers - is now gone. Regular readers of this column know what I think we should do: instead of trying to provide economic security through the back door, via tax breaks designed to encourage corporations to provide health care and pensions, we should provide it through the front door, starting with national health insurance. You may disagree. But one thing is clear: Mr. Drucker's age of discontinuity is also an age of anxiety, in which workers can no longer count on loyalty from their employers.

Subject: A Judge Tests China's Courts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 08:42:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/international/asia/28judge.html?ex=1290834000&en=ace85e7f20820210&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 28, 2005 A Judge Tests China's Courts, Making History By JIM YARDLEY LUOYANG, China - Judge Li Huijuan happened to be in the courthouse file room when clerks, acting on urgent orders, began searching for a ruling on a mundane case about seed prices. 'I handled that case,' Judge Li told the clerks, surprised that anyone would be interested. But within days, the Luoyang Middle Court's discipline committee contacted her. Provincial officials had angrily complained that the ruling contained a serious political error. Faced with a conflict between national and provincial law, Judge Li had declared the provincial law invalid. In doing so, she unwittingly made legal history, setting in motion a national debate about judicial independence in China's closed political system. In many countries, including the United States, a judge tossing out a lower-level law would scarcely merit attention. But in China, the government, not a court, is the final arbiter of law. What Judge Li had considered judicial common sense, provincial legislators considered a judicial revolt. Their initial response was to try to crush it. Judge Li, who had on the bench less than three years, feared her career might be finished. 'An order by those in power has forced local leaders, none of whom dared to stand on principle, to sacrifice me,' she wrote in rebuttal. 'I'm just an ordinary person, a female judge who tried to protect the law. Who is going to protect my rights?' Faced with the complex demands of governing a chaotic, modernizing country, China's leaders have embraced the rule of law as the most efficient means of regulating society. But a central requirement in fulfilling that promise lies unresolved - whether the governing Communist Party intends to allow an independent judiciary. The 2003 ruling by Judge Li has become, quite unexpectedly, a landmark case for the evolving Chinese legal system. Her plight exposed the limits on judicial autonomy in China and the political retribution faced by judges. But it also revealed the rising influence of legal reformers. Scholars and lawyers rallied to Judge Li's defense and embraced her ruling as a test case, if an accidental one, for a more autonomous court system. 'For the first time, a judge announced a local law or regulation was void,' said Xiao Taifu, a member of the Beijing Lawyers Association, which petitioned the central government on Judge Li's behalf. 'It was historic. For the legal process in China, it was a first, and it carried deep meaning.' Today, China's court system is far from an independent entity that can curb government power. Often, the courts remain a pliable tool to reinforce that power. Many judges are poorly educated in the law and corrupt. Judges often must answer to government officials as much as to the law. Political pressure is common, and private trial committees often dictate rulings. There are also signs of change. One of the busiest courts in Beijing announced in November that it would stop punishing judges if a ruling was later deemed politically or legally 'wrong.' A budding idealism about the law, and its potential to transform Chinese society, is evident not only in the number of new lawyers but also in the emerging civic belief that ordinary people have 'legal rights.' The case of Judge Li illustrates how such changes continue to meet enormous resistance within the system. Judge Li, now 32, a Communist Party member, is among the new generation of younger judges expected to become the future backbone of a strengthened court system. That Judge Li and others granted interviews for this article reflects, to some extent, the evolution of China's legal system and an effort by the judiciary to be more assertive. But the dispute over the seed case taught her that being a judge involved far more than simply interpreting laws. 'When I look back on the cases I dealt with, I have no regrets,' she said. 'I don't think any of the parties involved can complain.' But, she added, any judge who acts on conscience does so at a risk. 'I think my colleagues and supervisors think I'm naïve,' she said. 'And they think I'm not wise.' Youthful Ideals Meet Reality As a teenager, Li Huijuan first saw a judge as a character in a television soap opera. She grew up in southern Henan Province in the city of Nanyang, where she watched dramas about judges in ancient China. Their passion for justice was scripted, but it inspired a young girl. 'I saw these images of judges and lawyers defending the people,' she said. 'I thought it was glorious.' She was one of three children, and her father was a government official who oversaw local markets to ensure that merchants and vendors abided by city rules and regulations. To curry favor with her father, vendors often visited the family's apartment at night, banging on the door with offers of gifts or bribes. 'My father never accepted,' Judge Li recalled. 'He lectured them and drove them out. I think I have the same stubbornness in my character. My parents taught me to be a straightforward, honest person.' Her two siblings became teachers, an honored profession in China, but Li Huijuan graduated from Henan University with a four-year degree in law. She later earned a master's degree in law at the prestigious University of Politics and Law in Beijing. Her qualifications placed her in an elite circle at a time when China was starting to introduce new, tougher standards for the legal profession. Even so, she said much of her education had been 'more like legal theory.' 'The teacher was telling us how it should be,' she recalled of her undergraduate studies. 'But they did not teach us how it really worked in China.' She began learning that lesson in 1996 after she started working at the Middle Court in Luoyang in Henan's north. She arrived at a courthouse dominated by older judges, some with limited legal education, including retired soldiers given judgeships to reward them for serving their country. Her naïve belief that judges ruled independently - as they did on television - was quickly dispelled. Instead, she learned that cases were heard by panels of judges, whose rulings were often reviewed by supervisors or, in major cases, by private trial committees of court officials. Judges were held responsible for rulings that carried their name, even if others in the court actually made the decision. But if government officials or influential citizens complained about a ruling, a judge could be punished, fined or even fired. Some judges tried to reduce the pressure of a potential mistake by taking on fewer cases. 'The less you do,' Judge Li said, 'the fewer mistakes you make.' She began as a court secretary but quickly qualified as a judge and, later, as a presiding judge. In January 2003, she was named presiding judge over a three-judge panel hearing a dispute between two local companies over the price of seeds. The legal dispute revolved around a conflict between provincial and national law, but Judge Li never anticipated that that would bring her trouble. Instead, the political subtext of the case - the parochial interests of two local companies fighting over thousands of dollars - infused the process. At one point, a city official forwarded a letter from one company to Judge Li's supervisor. In the margin, the official had written an instruction for the court: 'Please pay attention.' 'I felt quite uncomfortable when I received the letter,' she said. 'I felt they were making assumptions that I was already taking sides. I didn't do anything about it. I just put it in the files.' At another point, the director of the Luoyang court - since replaced on an unrelated matter - telephoned Judge Li. A representative from one of the companies was in his office. Could she meet with him? 'I considered this very inappropriate,' Judge Li said. 'But I couldn't say so because of the director. So I told the man to come to my office.' When he arrived, Judge Li said, she pretended to be stuck on a long telephone call. Exasperated, the man finally left. A System Grappling With Reform Legal experts say political pressure on judges is routine and derives, in part, from the subservient status of the court system within the Chinese bureaucracy. Nationally, the chief judge of the People's Supreme Court is not even a member of the Politburo, the inner decision-making entity of the Communist Party. By comparison, the head of the Ministry of Public Security is a member. Locally, judges are appointed by their people's congresses, while the courts receive their budget from local governments. In addition, branches of the Communist Party operate committees that can apply pressure and exert influence on a court behind the scenes. Earlier this year, a presiding judge in the northeastern city of Harbin told Workers' Daily, a state-controlled newspaper, that government officials had overruled three different innocent verdicts and ordered the courts to convict a local businessman of fraud. The presiding judge was later censured for publicizing the case. The system also can make it easy for corrupt court officials to exploit their position. In April 2004, two vice directors of the Middle Court in Wuhan, a large city in central China, were sentenced to prison for selling verdicts in exchange for $500,000 in bribes. The directors paid judges to participate in the scheme. Many legal reformers believe the court system must become more autonomous to eliminate corruption in the legal system. But in seeking more authority, they also are trying to rapidly modernize the system and improve judicial training to counter public perceptions that too many judges are corrupt or unqualified. 'The public may be skeptical about judicial independence, given the quality of judges and judgments,' said He Weifang, a prominent constitutional scholar. 'But if you want accountability, you can only have accountability if you have independence. Otherwise, it is never clear who made a decision.' On the campus of the National Judges College on the outskirts of Beijing, the primary educational arm of the People's Supreme Court, roughly 10,000 judges spend a month of every year on professional training. In the past, judges were taught to serve the interests of the Communist Party, but now a different message is emphasized. 'We train them with a modern theory of law: that the courts are impartial, on the need for legal justice and of innocence until proven guilty,' said Huai Xiaofeng, president of the college. 'We stress that during a trial, you cannot favor the government or the National People's Congress. In the past, they told them to emphasize the political qualities. 'Now, we tell them to emphasize the law and the facts.' For Judge Li, the reaction to the ruling on the seed case proved how political considerations remained deeply embedded in the legal system. Because the case seemed likely to provoke controversy, she had submitted a draft ruling to the court director, who in turn forwarded it to a trial committee. Everyone signed off, and both parties were informed in June 2003. But by October, word of the case had reached the Henan Province People's Congress, the provincial legislature. In the legal affairs office, the ruling was interpreted as a naked challenge to the lawmaking authority of the People's Congress. Provincial officials publicly described the ruling as 'a serious breach of law.' 'The authority of the National People's Congress system is not to be challenged,' said Mao Yinduan, head of the legal office, in an interview. 'The judge in this case was very young and had little experience. She had every right to choose which law to use. But courts have no right in a verdict to say which law is invalid.' The reaction stunned Judge Li. To research the verdict, she had studied Chinese law, as well as the speeches of senior political leaders. China's Law on Legislation stated that local laws that conflicted with national laws should be abolished. She thought including this point in her opinion was within her judicial purview. She had not intended to challenge the political system, nor, apparently, did her director or anyone on the trial committee. 'He read the verdict and didn't realize the significance of what it said,' Judge Li said of the director. 'I, at first, didn't realize the significance, either.' But Judge Li, not the court officials who had approved the decision, faced the possibility of serious punishment. 'I felt persecuted,' she recalled. 'Everyone I talked to told me what I had done was wrong.' Job Saved but System Unchanged Anxious and uncertain of her future, Li Huijuan telephoned her husband, Chang Jianyi. High school sweethearts, they married in 1999 but lived apart because Mr. Chang worked in Beijing as a software developer. His wife reached him on a business trip to Tibet, and he advised her to seek help in Beijing. He believed she had been wronged. 'She had to fight back to restore her reputation and her dignity,' Mr. Chang said. 'If she did not fight back, she would have to live with the stain.' She left for Beijing and planned to seek help from an association of women in the judiciary. She wrote a long passionate letter in which she promised to 'undergo criticism and education' if she had erred. 'But if I'm right, I will protect my integrity and defend the integrity of the law, even if it means being like a moth that flies into a flame.' At the association's office, a woman told her that she had been treated too harshly and agreed to contact someone at the People's Supreme Court. Then the case attracted the attention of the Chinese news media and of scholars and lawyers pushing for legal reform. Mr. He, the constitutional scholar, rose to her defense in an op-ed article. In an interview, he characterized the seed case as one of the most important in the legal evolution of China because of the attention it focused on judicial independence. 'It may not be Marbury v. Madison,' Mr. He said of the landmark case credited with establishing the authority of the United States Supreme Court, 'but it is a very important case.' As it turned out, Judge Li had stumbled upon a fundamental contradiction. In the Chinese system, based loosely on European models and the old Soviet structure, judges are supposed to refer conflicts in law for review by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the country's center of legislative power. Judges are then expected to follow the decision made by the Standing Committee. Yet, in practical terms, those referrals rarely happen and when they do, the Standing Committee has rarely showed interest in the housekeeping role. As a result, judges have become accustomed to assuming this role, if doing so silently, and then simply leaving the conflicting law untouched. To many lawyers, the system was grossly inefficient and outdated. Mr. Xiao, the Beijing lawyer, joined three other lawyers in formally requesting that the National People's Congress review the situation. Scholars organized a legal conference at the elite Tsinghua University to debate the seed case and other issues about judicial autonomy. The public attention, and the possible intervention on her behalf by the People's Supreme Court, apparently saved Judge Li's career. She returned to work in summer 2004 before leaving on maternity leave later that year. She is now in Beijing on a leave to continue her legal studies. But the system remained largely intact. In summer 2004, the Standing Committee announced the creation of a new review panel to mediate conflicts of law. Some lawyers have hailed the panel as the equivalent of a constitutional court. Others are concerned about the panel's secrecy and believe the responsibility should belong to the courts. Judge Li still believes in the rule of law, but she is no longer the impressionable teenager who watched soap operas about judges. 'Judges are confused,' she said. 'It is not that they do not know how to do cases professionally. It is just all these relationships to coordinate. And they also have to weigh consequences.' In 2004, Henan's High Court reheard the seed case. It ruled exactly as Judge Li had, with one exception: it criticized her for invalidating the provincial law.

Subject: Taking Care of Everybody but Herself From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 07:23:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-page.html?res=9F06E6D6123EF937A15755C0A9679C8B63&fta=y June 24, 2001 Taking Care of Everybody but Herself By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG WOMEN are usually model patients, taking responsibility not just for their own health but also for the health of their husbands and children. We're much better than men about getting regular checkups, taking medications the way we're told to, reading up on illnesses that strike us or our loved ones, talking to other women with the same health concerns. Why, then, do we seem to have a blind spot when it comes to prevention? And why is it so hard for us to do the things we know we should do to reduce our risk of chronic illnesses -- especially the most dangerous of all, heart disease? We know the drill: get regular exercise, eat less fat, lose weight, reduce stress and, above all, stop smoking. But that doesn't mean we can summon the willpower to get with the program. ''The problem is not lack of motivation,'' says Julian Ford, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Connecticut Health Center. ''It's competing motivations. Women tend to have too many different priorities, and they find themselves pulled between them.'' A woman who knows she should be devoting half an hour a day to exercise, says Dr. Ford, might also be holding down a full-time job, raising three children and helping to care for a mother with emphysema. Where will she find 30 minutes in her crammed day? She has already concluded that those minutes are too precious to spend on something that will pay off only in the long run. Two misconceptions are at work here: women's belief that they're not at risk of heart disease in the first place; and that the ultimate payoff is highly uncertain and may never materialize. The ''I'm not at risk'' mentality infects even the most well-informed women. ''When you do phone surveys asking women what they think they're most likely to get, they usually say breast cancer,'' says Pamela Charney, an associate professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. But the truth, Dr. Charney says, is that heart disease kills 10 times as many women as breast cancer does -- a quarter of a million, a third of women who die in the United States each year. Highlighting the difference between facts and perception is a 1995 Gallup poll, Nanette Wenger writes in ''Coronary Artery Disease in Women.'' The poll, says Dr. Wenger, who is the chief of cardiology at the Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, ''showed that four of five women, and one of three primary care physicians, in the United States were unaware that heart disease was the leading cause of death for women.'' Six years later, this knowledge gap remains, though it has narrowed. ''When I give public lectures on women's health issues these days,'' Dr. Charney says, ''there are fewer people standing up and yelling at me for talking about heart disease instead of breast cancer.'' But being convinced of the risk is only half the story. How are women supposed to decide whose advice to follow to try to reduce that risk? How do they know which of today's sacrifices, made in the interest of prevention, will prove to be worth it? Take exercise, the first good health habit to be tossed out in a typical woman's effort to fit in as much as possible. How much exercise do you really need? What kind of exercise? What will it do for you in the long run? Does vacuuming count? Studies are divided over whether vigorous, heart-pounding exercise is the only kind that helps reduce heart disease risk, or whether incorporating movement into your daily activity is enough. No one disputes that it's better for you, in many ways, to be in motion rather than sitting still. But how much better, exactly? And how much motion? The lack of straightforward answers to these questions is enough to send anyone back to the couch and remote control. The most recent surprise came on June 2, at a meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, where one researcher reported that too much exercise could actually be bad for a woman's heart. Dr. Anne Zeni Hoch, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Medical College of Wisconsin, found that college-age women who ran more than 25 miles a week, to the point that they stopped menstruating, suffered a type of arterial damage (an 80 percent loss in the arteries' ability to dilate under stress) that signified the onset of premature heart disease. Fine fodder for women looking for a scientific-sounding excuse to throw away their running shoes. The uncertainties of risks and benefits are even more apparent when you make choices about diet. Any time you think you have to give up some food you love for the sake of a healthier heart, you can usually find a study that says you don't need to give it up after all. Scientists have recently reported that some of the foods you thought were most damaging to your heart -- beef, chocolate, butter -- really aren't so bad, and some, like nuts, might be good for you. It's hard to resist an allusion to ''Sleeper,'' the 1973 movie in which Woody Allen plays the owner of a health food store transported to the 22nd century. When he wakes up, he finds that people are appalled at his 200-year-old concept of a ''healthy'' diet. ''You mean no deep fat?'' they ask in horror. ''Cream pies? Hot fudge?'' THESE lines still elicit a laugh because they play on the pervasive feeling in America that it's absurd to think that food that tastes wonderful, like hot fudge, might actually be good for you. Maybe it's our Puritan heritage that makes us think that a healthy life and a happy life are mutually exclusive. But all things being equal, a surprising number of us would probably choose happy over healthy. Deep down, who can doubt that it's often more fun to sit on a chaise at the pool than it is to swim laps, and that high-fat Häagen-Dazs is much more satisfying than a plum? ''I don't want to live my life measured out in coffee spoons,'' says Debra Thomas, an information officer at Rice University in Houston. Ms. Thomas takes careful stock of her cholesterol readings and H.D.L.-to-L.D.L. ratios, and knows she should probably worry about them more; her father died of heart disease at age 54, just one year older than she is now. But she says she does not want to sacrifice the things she loves for the sake of lower numbers, which might not protect her anyway. ''I want to enjoy the food I eat and the life I lead.'' Anyone distraught about being told to give up porterhouse steaks or grandma's butter cookies may take solace in a study published 14 years ago but basically ignored since, partly because it questioned the conventional wisdom about the benefits of a low-fat diet. Scientists at the Harvard Medical School calculated that for high-risk individuals, who smoked and had high blood pressure or other coronary risk factors, a low-fat diet would prolong life by an average of just one year. For healthy nonsmokers with few coronary risk factors, they found the benefits even smaller: a lifetime of abstemious eating (where 30 percent of total calories came from fat, one-third of that from saturated fat) would buy them 3 to 90 days. ''Although there are undoubtedly persons who would choose to participate in a lifelong regimen of dietary change to achieve results of this magnitude,'' the researchers, led by Dr. William Taylor, deadpanned in the April 1987 issue of The Annals of Internal Medicine, ''we suspect that some might not.'' Dr. Ford, the Connecticut psychologist, says that when his medical colleagues ask him to counsel heart patients about lifestyle changes, ''Women will tell me, 'So much of my life is made up of doing what is required, I really want to have something I enjoy.' '' And that something is usually food, especially the comfort foods, all high in fat, sugar and calories, that Americans associate with freedom, pleasure and love. Society compounds the problem by inundating the public with TV commercials, fast-food options and overstuffed supermarket shelves that entice us with a huge variety of artery-clogging prepared foods. We succumb because the food is easy, quick and tasty. With such temptations, heart-healthy eating becomes a crusade, one that most women don't have the energy to wage. Take the Mediterranean diet, widely promoted as the heart-healthiest diet on the planet. It consists of plenty of fruits and vegetables, abundant pasta, very little meat and lots of fatty fish, olive oil and red wine. In the countries where this diet originates, sticking to it is easy, part of the rhythm of life. But daily marketing trips, followed by long sessions at the cutting board, are not part of a typical American woman's day. Even if you could spare the time needed to shop, chop and sauté, the fish and produce available in your local supermarket do not compare with what you can get in Italy or France. The Mediterranean diet just doesn't work as well, or taste as good, here as it does there. This probably helps explain why in America, foods that originated in the Mediterranean region have degenerated into something almost unrecognizable: the greasy gyro that you grab off a sidewalk cart; the cheese and pepperoni pizza you pick up for dinner on your way home from work; the frozen lasagna you microwave for the kids as you head for a P.T.A. meeting. In this country, we have managed to turn even the healthy staples of the Mediterranean diet into junk food. OF course, our national habit of eating fast food on the run is also a symptom of a larger problem, one that has even more profound implications for heart disease than a harmful diet or lack of exercise does. The problem is familiar to most Americans, especially overworked women with too much on their plates -- stress. ''I tell patients if there's one thing they should change about their lives, it's to find 10 or 15 minutes every day when they can put aside everything and focus on only one activity,'' Dr. Ford says. ''The activity can be reading, meditating, taking a walk, ''preferably not watching TV, but doing something where you can use your focusing skills to get the most experience out of the activity.'' Dr. Ford sees this as a first step in a gradual process of unwinding. If you can set aside those 15 minutes a day and really relax, then your overall stress level is reduced, which in turn reduces your sense of panic and fatigue and makes it seem more possible to quit smoking, to squeeze in time for exercise or to do something else that's good for you. Thinking about low-stress living brings us back to the Mediterraneans. In a new book, ''The Mediterranean Diet,'' Dario Giugliano, the director of the Center for Metabolism and Disease at the University of Naples, and his co-authors point out that one reason there are low rates of heart disease in their part of the world is not diet but a relaxed, unhurried life with a good deal of what the experts call ''social coherence.'' But we don't live in Greece or Spain or Tunisia; we live in the U.S.A., where the sun doesn't always shine and our lives are neither relaxed nor socially coherent. To say that individuals should simply reduce their stress, without changing the swirl of pressures and demands in which we find ourselves, is to ignore reality for most Americans. Consider, for instance, trying to transplant that most lovely of Mediterranean traditions, what the Italians call la passegiata (the after-dinner stroll), to a typical American home. Who has time for an evening passegiata when there's still homework to be supervised, laundry to be washed, a new sitcom to be checked out on TV? Where would most of us stroll, anyway, living as we do in suburbs without sidewalks or in cities in which the streets become deserted and creepy after dark? Even if we could find time for la passegiata, how many of us would sabotage its stress-reducing qualities by using the stroll for multitasking -- listening to books on tape, writing to-do lists or fielding a stream of cell-phone calls? Maybe that's the heart of the problem -- that everyone has too much to do, and doing things the healthy way instead of the easy way takes up a lot more of our precious time.

Subject: Revamping at Merck to Cut Costs From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 07:22:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/business/29merk.html?ex=1290920400&en=bccc76ae69946edf&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Revamping at Merck to Cut Costs By ALEX BERENSON Merck & Company, the third-largest American drug maker, plans to close five manufacturing plants by 2008 and lay off 7,000 employees, about 11 percent of its work force, as it struggles with falling sales and profits. The cuts, which the company announced yesterday, come after a similar announcement from Pfizer in April and are the latest sign of the problems faced by major drug makers as patents on some of their most profitable medicines expire. Next June, Merck will begin to face low-priced generic competition on Zocor, a cholesterol-lowering drug that is its top-selling medicine, with sales of $4.5 billion expected this year. Merck has almost 62,000 employees, half of whom work in the United States, and 31 plants, including 6 in this country, mainly along the East Coast. About 3,500 of the jobs Merck plans to eliminate are in the United States, with the rest overseas, the company said. Besides the plant closings, Merck is shutting three research laboratories. The company declined to disclose the location of any of the plants or laboratories it is closing, saying it needed to notify employees first. The layoffs will save the company a total of almost $4 billion by 2010, or about $1 billion a year, Merck said. Overall spending on research and development will be flat, it said. Merck also predicted yesterday that sales of two of its best-selling drugs would fall short of analysts' expectations in 2006. It said profit next year would probably be about $2.30 a share, not including restructuring costs, down from about $2.50 this year and slightly below Wall Street's forecasts. Shares of Merck tumbled by 4.6 percent yesterday. Richard T. Clark, Merck's chief executive, said in an interview yesterday that the layoffs and plant closings, which will cost about $2 billion by the time they are finished in 2008, were only part of a broader overhaul of Merck's corporate structure. Merck will announce a reorganization of its research and sales divisions in a meeting with analysts on Dec. 15, he said. 'This is only the initial step, the first phase,' said Mr. Clark, who was promoted in May to chief executive after the resignation of Raymond V. Gilmartin. 'This is getting the foundation solid.' He declined to say whether Merck would announce additional layoffs at the Dec. 15 meeting. Asked what he would tell employees worried about Merck's future, he said, 'You have a right to be concerned.' He added that he was doing everything possible to restore Merck's reputation and competitive position. Like other drug companies, Merck has struggled recently to find new medicines. And the company's formerly pristine image has been sullied by thousands of lawsuits over Vioxx, a painkiller that Merck stopped selling in September 2004 after a clinical trial showed Vioxx could cause heart attacks. Cheryl Buxton, a managing director for Korn/Ferry, an executive search firm, said that morale inside Merck had plunged since the withdrawal of Vioxx. 'They've been slow to react, slow to change,' Ms. Buxton said. 'I think the morale will get lower, and we'll see increased turnover, voluntary turnover. I think people will start to leave who would never have done so two or three years ago.' Analysts said they were generally unimpressed with Merck's announcement and were concerned about the company's guidance that sales of Fosamax, an osteoporosis treatment, and Cozaar, a blood pressure medicine, will be flat or drop in 2006. Fosamax is Merck's second-largest selling medicine, while Cozaar is fourth. 'Has the outlook really changed? The answer is no,' said David Moskowitz, an analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey & Company. 'We still have a company that has ailing growth prospects, and we still have a company today that has Vioxx liability risk.' Unless it can find new drugs to improve its prospects, Merck may be forced to announce more job cuts, Mr. Moskowitz said. 'Merck has a precedent of announcing head count reductions and then coming back to the table and cutting even further.' Merck's stock closed at $29.56, down $1.42. The company's shares had risen recently, after its victory earlier this month in the second Vioxx lawsuit to reach a jury. The layoffs and plant closings are overdue, said Roddy Martin, vice president for life sciences at AMR Research, a consulting firm that helps manufacturers operate more efficiently. Throughout the drug industry, manufacturing plants run at less than 40 percent of their capacity, Mr. Martin said. Historically, the industry has tolerated that inefficiency because the profit margins on drugs are so high; pills whose chemical ingredients cost a few pennies are sold for several dollars each. But with drug makers facing pressure for lower prices from consumers, insurers and governments, the industry must learn to develop and produce drugs more cheaply, Mr. Martin said. Merck did not announce deep reductions in its sales force. Like other drug makers, Merck has several thousand representatives who visit doctors' offices to promote its medicines. Many doctors complain that their offices are inundated by poorly trained representatives, and Wall Street analysts have predicted that the industry's sales forces will be cut. But so far the big drug makers have been reluctant to reduce their staffs, believing that any company that cuts its representatives will lose market share if its competitors do not follow. Scott Henry, an analyst at Oppenheimer, said that companies must market new drugs heavily to prevent prescriptions from going to much cheaper generic competitors. 'You're selling a premium product,' Mr. Henry said. 'There's still a sale involved.' Still, Merck may have to cut costs further, especially because Fosamax, which will have about $3.5 billion in sales this year, will be opened to generic competition in 2008, he said. 'At the end of the day, if you're going to lose Fosamax, Vioxx, and Zocor in a short period of time, you're going to have to right-size the company, which means either finding new revenues or cutting costs.'

Subject: Wood Duck (female) From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 06:06:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5905&u=4|3|... Wood Duck (female) New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Subject: Bufflehead (male) Taking Flight From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 06:05:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5900&u=4|2|... Bufflehead (male) Taking Flight New York City--Central Park, Harlem Meer.

Subject: Young Survivors of Cancer From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:54:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-page.html?res=9A00E3DE133EF93BA35752C0A9659C8B63&fta=y January 8, 2003 Young Survivors of Cancer Battle Effects of Treatment By MARY DUENWALD and DENISE GRADY Handing a deck of cards to Sarah Ludwig, the psychologist said, ''I want you to put the cards in order by suit, but keep in a separate pile those cards with the letter T in their names.'' Sarah, 15, planned her strategy and, as the psychologist clicked a stopwatch, began sorting. Ten years ago here at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Sarah was treated for leukemia, receiving an intensive two-year course of chemotherapy and steroids. Today, she is free of the disease, but, possibly as a result of the treatment, she has an impaired attention span and other learning disabilities. Her work with the psychologist is part of a 20-week experimental program intended to help improve her concentration and performance in school. Many other patients who, like Sarah, were treated for cancer at a very young age have found that the cure may come at a price: chemotherapy and radiation given early in life can have effects on both body and mind. Often, the physical problems are treatable. Now, doctors and psychologists are also starting to address the learning difficulties, as increasing numbers of young cancer survivors worry about school grades, college admissions and career prospects -- concerns about a future that would have seemed an unimaginable luxury a generation ago. ''Survival from childhood leukemia -- the most common malignancy of childhood -- is something of a medical marvel that I think the average person doesn't appreciate,'' said Dr. Robert Butler, a psychologist at Oregon Health and Science University who created the program in which Sarah is enrolled. ''In the 1960's and early '70's, cancer was a death sentence. There was a 90 percent probability that the child was going to die. Now, there's about an 80 percent chance that the child will be cured. It's turned around practically 180 degrees,'' Dr. Butler said. Survivors of childhood cancer number about 250,000 in the United States, and their ranks are growing steadily because of aggressive and effective treatments. Doctors are able to cure most cancers diagnosed in children and teenagers, 11,000 to 12,000 cases a year, Dr. Butler said. Over all, cure rates in adults are considerably lower, with only 62 percent living 5 years or more. Dr. Paul A. Meyers, vice chairman of pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, cited several reasons why children with cancer fared better than adults. For one, he said, since the 1950's, 85 percent of children with cancer -- as opposed to only 2 percent of adults -- have been treated in clinical trials, which have been proved to offer the best care. In addition, Dr. Meyers said, the types of cancer that affect children tend to be more treatable than those in adults, and children are better able than adults to tolerate intensive treatment. But the treatments can have lingering side effects. Doctors have known for about 20 years that chemotherapy and radiation administered early in life can cause health problems, post-traumatic stress and learning disabilities. Dr. Charles A. Sklar, director of a program for childhood cancer survivors at Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that the physical ailments confronting the young survivors might include stunted growth, low thyroid function, kidney problems, infertility, heart and lung disorders and even new cancers. Most of those illnesses can be treated, he said. But treatments for the learning disorders remain experimental. The likelihood that a childhood cancer survivor will develop such disorders depends on the child's age at the time of treatment and the intensity of the treatment, according to Dr. Pim Brouwers, a pediatric neuropsychologist at Texas Children's Cancer Center in Houston. Patients younger than 5 seem most vulnerable. Dr. Butler said: ''We used to think they would be the most likely to recover, because their brains have greater plasticity. But the youngest children actually take a bigger hit from the treatments.'' Children who have brain tumors -- the second most prevalent form of childhood cancer, after leukemia -- are at greater risk than those with other cancers. The tumor can damage brain tissue, Dr. Brouwers said, and the treatment, typically radiation directed at the head and spinal cord, can damage neurons. Doctors can minimize the damage by using only the lowest possible doses of radiation, said Dr. Anna T. Meadows, a pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Butler estimated that as many as 90 percent of children who had received radiation to the brain and spinal cord had some degree of impairment. Young patients like Sarah with acute lymphoblastic leukemia are often treated with chemotherapy alone. The drugs are often injected into the space containing the brain and spinal cord. Many of these children do not develop any cognitive problems, Dr. Meadows said. And those who do, studies show, are likely to be less impaired. About 30 percent of children who have received this chemotherapy end up with learning or concentration problems, Dr. Butler said. Such problems are also found among an undetermined number of children who have not had cancer, he noted. Sarah's problems were relatively mild compared with those of children who received radiation. And though experts cannot say for certain that chemotherapy caused her problems, Sarah's experience follows the pattern of other patients in her age group, according to Dr. Anne E. Kazak, the director of psychology at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a researcher in Dr. Butler's study. Radiation and chemotherapy can damage the cells of the basal ganglia, a section of the brain involved in attention functions, Dr. Brouwers said. The problems often do not show up until three years after the children have finished treatments, studies show, because the brain cells die off slowly. ''It's tough on the kids and tough on parents,'' Dr. Brouwers said. ''They're told the disease is gone, and then after five years, the kid is failing in school. And it just seems like it's never over.'' The trauma of cancer itself can contribute to the problem, many doctors and parents believe. ''Sarah repeated kindergarten because she missed a lot of school for her treatments,'' Sarah's mother, Mary Ludwig, said. ''It's always seemed as if she just never caught up.'' Throughout elementary school and middle school, Sarah had noticeable difficulty paying attention and comprehending concepts that other children picked up easily, Mrs. Ludwig said: ''There was just always something that she couldn't grasp.'' Dr. Butler's program, which consists of 20 two-hour sessions, tries to teach techniques for focusing and organizing thoughts -- skills other children use without realizing it. The teaching methods are borrowed from programs created to help people recover from strokes and other brain injuries. At the session that Sarah sorted the cards, the psychologist, Dr. Merritt M. Jensen, asked her, ''How can you help yourself concentrate on this?'' ''I could make a key,'' Sarah suggested, consulting the list of strategies that she and Dr. Jensen began compiling in their first five sessions. Sarah picked up her pencil and wrote the list of ''T'' cards on a nearby pad: 2's, 3's, 8's and 10's. Dr. Jensen started a stopwatch as Sarah began sorting. In less than two minutes, she was finished. ''I could do a better job than that,'' Sarah said, her shoulders dropping.''I was trying to go too fast.'' Dr. Jensen examined the piles. ''You caught 12 of the T cards and only missed 4,'' she said. ''To me, that's good work.'' By playing the card game, Sarah was practicing simple concentration techniques and learning to think about strategies, like making written keys and monitoring her own speed and attention. ''If she can practice and talk about the skills she needs to develop, I'm hoping they can become ingrained,'' Dr. Jensen said. Children in the program are instructed to work with pencil and paper on number problems and word puzzles. They play games like Uno and Mastermind that require concentration and memory skills. Homework is also incorporated into the training. Dr. Butler and his colleagues at seven hospitals across the country have been testing the program for almost three years. To be eligible for the training, children must be at least a year beyond their cancer treatment, and they must demonstrate problems in perception and concentration. The researchers intend to use the techniques with more than 100 children by midyear. These subjects will be compared with a somewhat smaller group of cancer survivors who receive no training for six months. The children in the control group are tested at the start and the end of the six-month period, and then are also offered a chance to take the training. At best, however, the problems that the young cancer survivors experience with concentration and learning will diminish, not disappear, Dr. Kazak said. And other learning problems are likely to persist. A pilot study of the training Dr. Butler conducted in 1995 showed that while the children improved their concentration, their math skills remained about the same. Ideally, Dr. Butler said, the training would help the children build new brain circuitry to replace what was damaged. This process, called functional reorganization, is known to occur in adults, he said, but is only theoretically possible in children. After Sarah's session was done, Dr. Jensen worked for two hours with Danny Clark of Schwenksville, Pa. Danny, 12, had received chemotherapy for acute myelogenous leukemia when he was 3. Like Sarah, he had had trouble in school, especially after he reached the sixth grade. ''They kept saying 'Pick up the pace,' and it was hard to get him to do that,'' his mother, Virginia Clark, said. Danny had only two weeks left in the program, and seemed to have learned to be more organized, to pay attention and to work faster, she said. Mrs. Clark plans to keep practicing with him at home. ''I really want to see this work,'' she said.

Subject: Texas Gives Hope to Unions From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:52:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/national/28janitor.html?ex=1290834000&en=42dbe85bf98c91d4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 28, 2005 Janitors' Drive in Texas Gives Hope to Unions By STEVEN GREENHOUSE Union organizers have obtained what they say is majority support in one of the biggest unionization drives in the South in decades, collecting the signatures of thousands of Houston janitors. In an era when unions typically face frustration and failure in attracting workers in the private sector, the Service Employees International Union is bringing in 5,000 janitors from several companies at once. With work force experts saying that unions face a slow death unless they can figure out how to organize private-sector workers in big bunches, labor leaders are looking to the Houston campaign as a model. The service employees, which led a breakaway of four unions from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. last summer, has used several unusual tactics in Houston, among them lining up the support of religious leaders, pension funds and the city's mayor, Bill White, a Democrat. Making the effort even more unusual has been the union's success in a state that has long been hostile to labor. 'It's the largest unionization campaign in the South in years,' said Julius Getman, a labor law professor at the University of Texas. 'Other unions will say, 'Yes, it can be done here.' ' Mr. Getman predicted that the Houston effort would embolden other unions to take their chances with ambitious drives in the South, although success could prove difficult because many companies will continue to fight unionization efforts, and many workers still shy away from unions. 'This could be important to build momentum in the South, but it's still an incredibly hard task to organize' there, said Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell. 'One big problem is there's not a base of union members in the South to use to do organizing. And employers in the South have demonstrated a very strong antiunion bias and a willingness to go to great lengths to avoid unionization.' The service employees' success comes as the percentage of private-sector workers in unions has dropped to 7.9 percent, the lowest rate in more than a century. With its campaign to organize the janitors, the union has focused on two groups it says are pivotal if labor is to grow again: low-wage workers and immigrants. The janitors, nearly all of them immigrants, earn just over $100 a week on average, usually working part time for $5.25 an hour. Some of Houston's business leaders oppose the unionization drive, saying its pledge of higher wages may hurt business. 'I don't see how it's going to help Houston from a business standpoint,' said Mark Jodon, a Houston lawyer who represents employers. 'It has the potential of raising the cost of doing business.' The union has trumpeted the Houston effort - which cost more than $1 million - as part of its Justice for Janitors campaign, billed as an antipoverty movement. Flora Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who cleans an office tower for $5.25 an hour, volunteered to help the organizing drive as soon as the union gave the janitors questionnaires asking what aspects of their jobs they thought needed improvement. 'The wages are terrible, there are no benefits, there's nothing,' Ms. Aguilar said. 'I have to stretch myself like a rubber band to make ends meet. I want a union because it will give me a better life.' In recent days, the union has collected cards signed by about three-fifths of the workers at four of Houston's biggest janitorial companies. An agreement signed in August calls for the American Arbitration Association to inspect the cards and certify when the union has received majority support. The janitorial companies have promised to recognize the union once that happens. Even if the union is recognized, it still faces a big obstacle in negotiating a contract that delivers some of the hoped-for improvements in wages and benefits. Yet the union's Texas achievement stands in stark contrast to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s failed drive in the early 1980's, which sought to recruit tens of thousands of Houston workers. Known as the Houston Organizing Project, that $1-million-a-year effort faltered along with the economy, as unions retreated and focused on holding onto the workers they had, and as Texas companies fought hard against unionizing. Despite the A.F.L.-C.I.O.'s anger at the service employees' union, which in breaking away had accused the federation of doing too little to organize workers, Stewart Acuff, the federation's organizing director, praised the Houston janitors' campaign, saying more such drives were needed. In the current campaign, the service employees urged several public-employee pension funds to press building owners and janitorial companies not to mount hard-hitting anti-union campaigns to defeat the organizing drive. To step up the pressure, the union called a strike at one building in Houston and then arranged sympathy strikes by janitors at 75 office buildings in four other states. Because the union had no office or local in Houston, its giant local of building-service workers in Chicago oversaw the recruitment drive. That local dispatched a top official to Houston to run the campaign and flew in 25 Spanish-speaking janitors for weeks at a time to talk to janitors at their homes and workplaces. Workers were told of the union's success in New Jersey, where the salaries of 4,500 recently organized janitors had risen to $11.90 an hour from $5.85 an hour three years ago, and where many part-time workers had been converted to full-time status with health benefits. The union announced its campaign last April, but two years earlier, it sent a community liaison to Houston who helped line up backing from the city's mayor, several congressmen and dozens of clergymen, including the Roman Catholic archbishop, Joseph A. Fiorenza. The archbishop even celebrated a special Mass for janitors in August and spoke at the union's kickoff rally, telling the janitors that God was unhappy that they earned so little and did not have health coverage. 'They work for the same companies that are in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and their counterparts there are getting much higher salaries,' Archbishop Fiorenza said in an interview. 'It's just basic justice and fairness that the wages should be increased here.' Office building janitors average $20 an hour in New York City. They make $13.30 in Chicago and Philadelphia, cities with office rents comparable to Houston's and a cost of living about 40 percent higher. Janitors in Houston typically earn $5.25 an hour, 10 cents more than the federal minimum wage. But business leaders say the wages are consistent with what other unskilled workers earn. 'The wages that are paid in Houston to janitors are generally above minimum wage,' said Tammy Bettancourt, executive vice president of the Houston Building Owners and Managers Association. 'Their wages are very much in line with every other part-time job and with the city's retailers. That's what the market dictates.' Ercilia Sandoval, who cleans offices in a prime office tower, says she has not had a raise in eight years and does not have health insurance. A school dentist recently found that her 7-year-old daughter had six cavities, and fillings will cost $750, when her weekly take-home pay is $91.50. 'Everything has gone up except our wages,' Ms. Sandoval said. 'If we ask for a raise, they say, 'Anyone who doesn't like it here, there's the door.' ' The union and the janitorial companies declined to discuss details of the drive because of a confidentiality agreement. The service employees have pressured the companies to accept majority support based on the number of workers who sign cards saying they want a union. Convinced that it is easier to unionize workers through card checks, the union has shunned the typical process of having an election run by the National Labor Relations Board. Even before the confidentiality agreement was signed, cleaning company officials were reluctant to discuss the janitors' wages and why they had agreed to card checks and arbitrators' oversight. OneSource, one of the nation's largest cleaning companies, said, 'OneSource, along with every other major contractor in the Houston area, made a business decision to remain neutral in this process.' The company said it was premature to discuss wage levels while workers were considering whether to join the service employees' union. Union leaders said the cleaning companies had agreed to remain neutral because of pressures from building owners and pension funds, and because the service employees had threatened to pressure operations elsewhere, as it did with the sympathy strikes in California, Illinois, New York and Connecticut. Many unions hope to copy the Houston effort, but that could be difficult because many do not have the skilled organizers that the service employees have. Moreover, not all other industries are as vulnerable to union pressures. Expanding on the Houston effort, the service employees hope to unionize 4,000 janitors in Atlanta, 2,000 in Phoenix and tens of thousands of shopping mall janitors nationwide. But even the service employees have encountered problems. For instance, their effort to organize 7,000 condominium workers in Miami has stalled because of opposition from the largest property management company there. Still, the Houston effort has gone more smoothly than union officials had expected. 'We decided that Houston would be the place to bring to bear everything we've built in the last 15 years,' said Stephen Lerner, director of the Justice for Janitors campaign. 'That would allow us to organize a whole city at once.'

Subject: Telling Tale of Afghan Wars From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:51:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/theater/newsandfeatures/26note.html?ex=1290661200&en=257fba564932679a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 26, 2005 Telling Tale of Afghan Wars by Any Means Necessary By MARGO JEFFERSON What do we want from political theater, the kind that lays bare the social realities we are shielded - or shield ourselves - from? For starters, we want these sometimes awful, alien realities to have force, to be as tangible to us as our everyday lives. And by force I don't mean brute power: blood and screams of anguish, brandished rifles and carefully simulated rapes; I mean power that continues after the play is over. Not just images that haunt us, but also sounds and words that prompt us to think more, learn more and take action. How to make vital political theater is hardly a new question. Playwrights, directors and performers everywhere have used satire, fable, melodrama, propaganda, puppet theater, epic theater, carnivals and performance art. Still, seeing 'Beyond the Mirror,' at Theater for the New City through Dec. 4, reminds us how urgent a question it is. The first collaboration between an Afghan and an American theater company, it has a quiet authority, even delicacy, that is truly powerful. The project began in Pakistan's refugee camps shortly after 9/11, when members of Bond Street Theater met a group of Afghan actors who called themselves the Exile Theater. The next year, the Bond Street company, led by its director, Joanna Sherman, went to Kabul. There, along with two million other returning Afghans, the Exile troupe started over. The entire country had been devastated by war. The Soviets invaded in 1979; then came the Mujahadeen resistance and factional wars, leading to the rise of the Taliban, which banned all the arts, including theater; in 2001 came the United States invasion. That same year, the theatrical collaboration began. First, Exile's director, Mahmoud Shah Salimi, created a nonverbal scenario about the quarter-century of war. Then came rehearsals that melded various traditions: what Ms. Sherman called, in American Theater magazine, 'an exciting mix of music, dance, martial arts, mime, acrobatics, any way we can communicate our tale without words.' And in a radical move, a woman joined the all-male Exile troupe; women's experiences became a central part of this war story. The result is theater with restrained mime and abstracted imagery. Two puppet heads twist on sticks. We don't see a literal hanging; we have to imagine it. As in a nightmare, the details become very exact and intimate. Props are nonliteral, too. Sticks with ropes attached serve as rifles (and every other kind of brute-force weapon). A small blue puppet becomes a child gurgling happily as it crawls towards a land mine. Short scenes show normal life being interrupted or destroyed, or remade so that brutality becomes ordinary. After all, killing a man for a sack you believe contains food can be normal behavior if you are starving. 'Beyond the Mirror' has eight actors (four American, four Afghani) and one musician. And the theater is small, so you do not have the luxury of physical distance. A robed man sits onstage, playing long melodies on the ruhab, an elegant, short-necked lute with roots in the eighth century. The most literal images appear and disappear on a screen (really a cloth stretched across the back wall of the stage). Here are tanks and machine guns. Here is the lavish greenery of the countryside and austere snow-capped mountains; a white-gold sun, in a beige sky; a camel with a load of hay on its back that looks like a cloud. People too, in cars and on bicycles, or cooking in markets and crouching in muddy streets. In a 1972 essay called 'Photographs of Agony,' the critic and novelist John Berger wrote that images of literal and explicit horror exist apart from our lives. They create a discontinuity that we may feel as moral inadequacy, and that sense of inadequacy, he says, numbs us. We're all too familiar with it. This applies to theater too. 'Beyond the Mirror' takes us beyond the obviously horrific. That is when we start to mistrust the apparent safety and privilege of our own lives.

Subject: Upstart From Chinese Province From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:50:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/business/28hunan.html?ex=1290834000&en=eaec3cf70f085b6b&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 28, 2005 Upstart From Chinese Province Masters the Art of TV Titillation By DAVID BARBOZA CHANGSHA, China - They called it 'The Mongolian Cow Sour Yogurt Super Girl Contest,' and for much of the year, this 'American Idol' knockoff was one of the hottest shows on Chinese television. By the time it ended in August, more than 400 million viewers had tuned in, making it one of the most-watched shows in China's television history and creating another blockbuster hit for a group of daring television producers here at Hunan TV in south central Hunan Province. No one really knows why a search for a new female pop star gripped much of the nation. But analysts here say that in addition to capturing the pulse of the nation's increasingly trendy youth, the producers allowed people to do something quite remarkable in China: cast their own vote, albeit for a pop idol. Here at the headquarters of Hunan TV, on the outskirts of this dusty, provincial capital, the station's producers say their formula for success is simple: creating zany, off-beat and even risqué entertainment programs in a country still dominated by bland and predictable state-run television programming. 'We do a lot of market research,' says Li Hao, director of the chief editing department at Hunan TV, which produces the shows. 'We try to find out what people like, what they want to watch.' Hunan TV, which only began broadcasting nationally by satellite in 1997, is now one of the most powerful television properties in China, behind only China Central Television, or CCTV, the country's biggest broadcaster, and the Shanghai Media Group. Hunan TV is flourishing at a time when government support for Chinese television is dwindling, creating a burst of commercialism as stations compete for viewers and advertising dollars. The station has found its niche in producing entertaining and rowdy variety shows, and other satellite stations in China are eagerly copying its formulas. 'They've been at the forefront of making meaningless but entertaining TV for a while, and 'Super Girl' is their climax,' says Hung Huang, chief executive of the China Interactive Media Group, or C.I.M.G., a media and publishing company in Beijing. 'They're also very good at ripping off American TV shows, like dating shows and game shows, and then reinventing them.' Hunan TV is also facing increasing competition from foreign media companies trying to break into a market that already has MTV and Nickelodeon cartoons. The News Corporation, which is controlled by Rupert Murdoch, came here two years ago and agreed to jointly finance and produce television shows with the Hunan station. But Hunan TV could benefit from new restrictions placed on foreign film and television companies in August by the Chinese government. Hunan TV's long-running game show, 'Citadel of Happiness,' is one of the most popular shows on Chinese television. And another hit, 'Who's the Hero?' features people doing weird stunts, like biting the caps off beer bottles with their teeth. These shows resonate with viewers. They have even attracted the likes of multinational corporations, including the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, which are suddenly seeking prime-time advertising slots. 'The huge success of this 'Super Girl' program really woke people up,' says Bessie Lee, chief executive at Group M, a media agency that places advertising on Chinese television. 'Now, everyone wants to advertise with them.' Like all television stations in China, Hunan TV is owned and controlled by the government. But Hunan provincial officials have allowed producers here to experiment, and test the bounds of what is permissible on television. A result has been news programs that cut from today's top news story to old movie clips; variety shows with lively, unconventional hosts who do stand-up comedy, sing, dance and even drag celebrities and audience members on stage to compete in silly games. Occasionally, however, Hunan TV is reeled in by censors. Two years ago, government officials pulled the plug on a slightly erotic weather show that featured several scantily clad beauty pageant winners cooing the weather forecasts while lying on a sofa or bed. The station's producers do indeed seem to have an eye for what is popular. They produced an anticorruption drama called 'Absolute Power,' which was a hit with viewers. They were also quick to purchase the rights to a Korean soap opera that is popular with Chinese viewers. Still, many are asking how a TV station from the less-developed Hunan Province can produce such a string of national hits. 'Normally, the more economically developed the region, the better the TV station,' says Bai Ruoyun, a researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a specialist in the Chinese media. 'Hunan TV is an anomaly in this sense. It's puzzling. But they've gone so far in creating titillating programs appealing to the lowest common denominator.' Hunan TV's rise really began in 1997, when the station introduced its satellite channel hoping to reach more remote parts of the province, as well as a national audience. Almost immediately, its dating and game shows were a national sensation. 'China didn't have many entertainment programs at the time,' said Mr. Li at Hunan TV. 'And we soon discovered that we had even larger potential nationally, rather than within the province.' With the station's revenues growing, Hunan TV listed its production arm on the Chinese stock market and then left its dingy headquarters for an enormous 500-acre site north of downtown Changsha. Today, their campus here has a four-star hotel, luxury villas, a 20,000-seat convention center, a workers' dormitory, a bulky office tower and several studios for live music and entertainment shows. Yet soon after moving in, competition intensified and the station's ratings soured, putting financial pressure on the fast-growing media conglomerate, executives say. Near the end of 2002, the station's toughest year, top executives met and carved out a new direction: they decided to focus almost entirely on entertainment programming and youth. The station later adopted the slogan 'Happy China,' created a bright orange logo and vowed to be hip and to aim at viewers 16 to 24 years old. Li Jun, a 35-year-old producer, says he was directed to shift from a cultural program to the entertainment show 'Who's the Hero?' 'The only requirement was to change the culture program into a program that had a mass audience and a high rating,' he said. 'There was no other requirement.' Since then, revenues have soared, from about $35 million in 2002 to an estimated $90 million in 2005. And nothing has succeeded like 'Super Girl.' Originally broadcast as 'Superboy' on local Hunan TV in 2003, the show was picked up by the satellite station in 2004, and re-cast with new hosts and a format that created more drama. In this, the second year, the show's fortunes have soared. More than 120,000 women in five provinces participated. And the show got a huge promotional boost from Mengniu, one of China's biggest dairy companies, which sponsored the show (hence the show's full title). Mengniu paid $3 million to become the lead sponsor and run television ads during the show. The company then spent another $10 million to $12 million for nationwide promotions of the show - a huge budget by Chinese standards. The show succeeded, in part, because it allowed viewers to participate, by paying a fee to vote by mobile phone - another source of revenue for the station. Much of the success, however, may have also come from the sassy and slightly rebellious nature of some of the women who made it to the finals, particularly Li Yuchun, the lanky, spiky-haired 21-year-old woman from Sichuan who stole the show. For months, Li danced wildly on stage, and sang with a husky voice, in Spanish, English and Chinese, gyrating her hips. She wore her hair short, and favored jeans and a black shirt. She also exuded tremendous confidence on stage. And the fans loved her for her androgynous look, some seeing it as a challenge to traditional ideas about gender and femininity. During the finals, Hunan TV producers turned up the emotional heat, showing teary-eyed fans on the set. Outside thousands surrounded the Hunan TV campus waiting for the final decision. What's next for Hunan TV? A reality show based on a national search for great Ping-Pong players. Who knows? It could be a hit.

Subject: Putting Billions Into Hedge Funds From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:47:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/business/yourmoney/27hedge.html?ex=1290747600&en=f1f8a2ada9436d16&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 27, 2005 Pension Officers Putting Billions Into Hedge Funds By RIVA D. ATLAS and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Faced with growing numbers of retirees, pension plans are pouring billions into hedge funds, the secretive and lightly regulated investment partnerships that once managed money only for wealthy investors. The plans and other large institutions are expected to invest as much as $300 billion in hedge funds by 2008, up from just $5 billion a decade ago, according to a study by the Bank of New York and Casey, Quirk & Associates, a consulting firm. Pension funds account for roughly 40 percent of all institutional money. This month, the investment council that oversees the New Jersey state employees pension fund said it would put some of its money into hedge funds for the first time, investing $600 million over the next several months. While most pension plans have modest stakes in hedge funds, others have invested more than 20 percent of their assets. Weyerhaeuser, the paper company, has 39 percent of its pension fund's assets in hedge funds. In Congress, there has been a push for amendments that would make it easier for hedge funds to manage even more pension money, without having to comply with the federal law that governs company pensions. Pension officials who have been shaken by market downturns and persistent deficits are attracted by hedge funds' promise of richer, or more consistent, returns. But the trend has caused some consultants and academics to voice cautions. They question whether hedge funds, with risks that are hard to measure, are appropriate for pension funds, whose sole purpose, by law, is to pay out predetermined benefits to retired workers. Those benefits are considered so crucial that they are guaranteed: corporate pension failures are covered by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency, while pension failures by state and local governments are covered by taxpayers. Given that the benefits are paid out on a set schedule, critics wonder whether it makes sense to rely on investments whose returns are hard to predict, managed by private partnerships that disclose little about their operations and charge some of the highest fees on Wall Street. 'It's very inappropriate when the company is offering a pension plan that is guaranteed by the federal government,' said Zvi Bodie, a professor of finance and economics at Boston University who is enthusiastic about hedge funds in other contexts. Hedge funds make large, sophisticated investments based on the premise that by swimming outside the currents of the markets, often betting against conventional wisdom, they can outperform other investments. Hedge funds became famous in the 1990's, when managers like Michael Steinhardt and George Soros made huge swashbuckling bets that sometimes produced returns of 30 percent or more. More recently, hedge funds have made headlines when they ran into trouble: Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund whose principals included two Nobel Prize-winning economists, nearly collapsed in 1998; and this summer, Bayou Group, a $450 million hedge fund based in Connecticut, shut down after most of its money disappeared. Its two officers have pleaded guilty to fraud charges. Hedge funds have traditionally been only for wealthy, sophisticated investors so regulators have not monitored them as they have stocks or mutual funds, although they are starting to do so. The news of splashy gains and scandals may not paint an accurate picture of a business that in many ways has become more conservative as a result of the flood of pension fund money. To attract that money, many hedge fund managers emphasize stability. Among pension fund managers, however, 'the whole mentality has changed,' said Jane Buchan, chief executive of Pacific Alternative Asset Management, which manages $7.5 billion in funds that invest in hedge funds, primarily for large pension funds. 'They are saying, we need returns and we will be aggressive about getting them. They just don't want any downturns.' One of the first pensions to start working with hedge funds is also the nation's biggest corporate pension fund, the $90 billion General Motors fund. It started with a small test investment in 1999 and increased it to about $2 billion in 2003, said Jerry Dubrowski, a G.M. spokesman. The company is using hedge funds, along with other unconventional investments, in hopes of getting something close to stock market returns without the market's volatility, Mr. Dubrowski said. To pay out the $6.5 billion G.M. owes to its retirees each year, the pension fund must produce annual returns of a little more than 7 percent. Otherwise, G.M. will have to dip into the fund's principal. At current interest rates, G.M. cannot get those returns with bond investments, and if it tries to juice returns by betting on the stock market, it will have to cope with market swings. 'It's really not helpful to have that up-10, down-10' performance, Mr. Dubrowski said. 'You want a return that allows you to cover the benefits payments without attacking the capital.' It is that kind of consistency some pension mangers are seeking. 'We are looking for consistently positive returns rather than the absolute highest returns,' said Robert Hunkeler, manager of International Paper's $6.8 billion pension plan, which has been invested in hedge funds for around five years. Most pension funds have modest stakes of less than 5 percent, according to a recent J. P. Morgan survey. Verizon has 3 to 4 percent of its portfolio invested with hedge funds, and is considering adding to its investment, said William F. Heitmann, senior vice president for finance. Some pension fund managers say that diversifying away from stocks through a modest stake in hedge funds is reasonable, especially as hedge funds offer the promise of returns not linked to stock market performance. In 2000, for example, when the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 9 percent, hedge funds rose 5 percent, according to Hedge Fund Research. The New Jersey state pension fund's investment of $600 million represents less than 1 percent of its assets, but it hopes eventually to raise the figure to $3 billion as part of a plan to diversify its portfolio, said Orin Kramer, the chairman of the oversight board. The New Jersey fund has been wrestling with a $30 billion shortfall, after the stock market bubble burst five years ago. 'In recent years, conventional stock investments haven't worked,' said Mr. Kramer, who is also a hedge fund manager. He said that in general it is good to diversify no matter what the market does. Other pension plan managers are far more aggressive. Eli Lilly has about 20 percent in hedge funds and the Pennsylvania state employees' pension fund has 22 percent. Weyerhaeuser's big position has significant benefits for the company. Accounting rules let companies factor expected pension returns into their operating income; Weyerhaeuser's hedge-fund-laden portfolio allows it to claim expected annual returns of 9.5 percent. By comparison, the 100 largest companies that sponsor pension funds predicted last year that their average long-term returns would be 8.5 percent, according to Milliman Inc., an actuarial firm. For Weyerhaeuser, each 0.5 percent increase in the expected rate of return is worth an additional $21 million to the company's pretax income this year, according to S.E.C. filings. Weyerhaeuser did not respond to phone inquiries about its hedge fund investments, but said in S.E.C. filings that its actual pension investment returns more than justify its assumption of 9.5 percent. Hedge fund investors place a lot of trust in the funds' managers, giving them great flexibility in how they produce returns. The managers do not need to give investors specifics about trading activities, and there are no daily updates on the value of investors' holdings as there are with mutual funds. Employees of G.M., Verizon or International Paper, who are involuntary hedge-fund investors through their participation in pension plans, will not find any reference to the funds in those companies' annual reports. In their footnotes, these and other companies drop hints that a sophisticated investor might recognize as a reference to hedge funds, but they do not give the particulars. International Paper's description of its pension asset allocation, for example, breaks it down into 'equity securities,' 'debt securities,' 'real estate' and 'other.' Some companies and governments, like Pennsylvania, make the argument that hedge funds are not really an asset class at all, but an 'asset management tool' that does not have to be disclosed as part of the fund's allocation to stocks or bonds. That lack of disclosure has some regulators and pension specialists worried. Labor Department officials, who regulate pension funds, declined to discuss the hedge fund phenomenon, but referred to a 1996 letter the department wrote to the United States comptroller of the currency. The letter said that the Labor Department still expected pension officials to exercise prudence when investing in derivatives, a form of trading in which hedge funds often engage. The letter also said pension officials were responsible for understanding and fully vetting their hedge fund investments, and measuring how they might perform - and how they might affect the pension fund - under a variety of conditions. Susan M. Mangiero, author of 'Risk Management,' a textbook for pension officials, said she had come across pension executives who had not done that level of analysis. Some did not even know they had derivatives in their portfolios, she said. 'A lot of well-intentioned people don't know they don't know,' she said. In Washington, despite concerns over the health of the nation's pension system, there has been little discussion of pension plans' growing use of nontraditional investments. Even as Congress has been working to shore up the pension system and strengthen the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a provision to relax the pension law for hedge funds has been proposed. The provision would raise the limit on how much pension money a hedge fund can handle before it is deemed a fiduciary under the pension law, which would require it to be more prudent and careful than is required under securities law and would bar some trades entirely. The provision was added to a broad pension bill in the House shortly before the Committee on Education and the Workforce approved the legislation. Currently a financial institution becomes a pension fiduciary when more than 25 percent of its assets consist of pension money; the bill would raise that to 50 percent. The House bill would also change the definition of 'plan assets,' so that only corporate pension money would be counted, not pension money from government plans or foreign plans. These two changes are not in the counterpart Senate pension bill that was recently approved, but they could be added soon during efforts to reconcile the House and Senate bills. Wall Street's interest in overcoming these legal barriers shows the allure of pension money, which tends to stick with an investment strategy and is far less likely to fly out the door when the markets turn bad. 'Pension money is the stickiest form of capital,' Mr. Kramer of the New Jersey pension fund noted. But the surge of pension money is coming at a time when the returns of many hedge funds have not been as strong as in past years, raising questions about whether pensions are arriving at the party late. Hedge funds actually lost money in four of the first ten months of this year, although they still had an overall average return of 5.7 percent. Those returns easily beat the stock market: the S.& P. 500 index was up 1 percent in the same period. But as they continue to attract money, hedge funds may start to more closely mimic the performance of plain old stocks and bonds. 'There is no such thing as a free lunch,' said Frank Partnoy, a professor at the University of San Diego law school and a former trader at Morgan Stanley whose clients once included large pension funds. 'And even if there were, nobody is offering it to pension funds.'

Subject: Best Supporting Asian From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 29, 2005 at 05:43:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/29/opinion/29tue4.html?ex=1290920400&en=88676dfc71394982&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 29, 2005 Goodbye to Pat Morita, Best Supporting Asian By LAWRENCE DOWNES Pat Morita, the Japanese-American actor, died on Thanksgiving Day in Las Vegas. He was 73. News reports over the weekend were not specific about the cause of death or funeral details. Also not clear was what Hollywood would do now that Mr. Morita is gone. The movie and TV industry has never had many roles for Asian-American men, and it seemed for a while that they all went to Mr. Morita. He made his debut as 'Oriental No. 2' in 'Thoroughly Modern Millie' in 1967 and never stopped working. He hit two peaks - as Arnold the diner owner on TV's 'Happy Days' and the wise old Mr. Miyagi in the 'Karate Kid' movies - and spent the rest of nearly 40 years roaming an endless forest of bit parts. He was Mahi Mahi, the pidgin-talking cabby in 'Honeymoon in Vegas,' Lamont Sanford's friend Ah Chew in 'Sanford and Son,' Brian the waiter in 'Spy Hard,' Chin Li the Chinese herbalist in 'The Karate Dog.' Whenever a script called for a little Asian guy to drive a taxi, serve drinks or utter wise aphorisms in amusingly broken English, you could count on Mr. Morita to be there. Those who knew Mr. Morita say he was a man of uncommon decency and good humor. He fulfilled the actor's prime directive, to keep busy. But it's distressing to think that the life's work of one of the best-known, hardest-working Asian-American actors is mostly a loose collection of servile supporting roles. I know nothing about Mr. Morita's ambitions; if he had a longing to interpret Eugene O'Neill on Broadway, I have not heard of it. But actors generally have to work within the range of what's available. And with Asian-Americans, particularly men, what's available generally stinks. Mr. Morita was one of the last survivors of a generation of Asian-American actors who toiled within a system that was interested only in the stock Asian. Harold Sakata played Oddjob in 'Goldfinger' and was typecast as a mute brute forever after. Philip Ahn played houseboys and villains for decade upon decade. Some actors - well, a couple - broke out, like George Takei, Mr. Sulu in 'Star Trek,' and Jack Soo on 'Barney Miller.' B. D. Wong's role on 'Law & Order: Special Victims Unit' is a major improvement, but it will be a long, long time before we erase the memory of the bucktoothed, jabbering Mickey Rooney in 'Breakfast at Tiffany's,' or Sidney Toler as Charlie Chan. Watch Rob Schneider play Ula, a leering Hawaiian in the Adam Sandler movie '50 First Dates,' with a pidgin accent by way of Cheech and Chong, and you get the sense that Hollywood still believes that there is no ethnic caricature a white actor can't improve upon. Mr. Morita, who was born Noriyuki Morita to migrant farmworkers in California and was sent to an internment camp in Arizona during World War II, never gave the sense of bearing a racial burden. He had a comic's perspective and sense of humor, and would play his parts - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, whatever - with relaxed professionalism. As a standup comedian in the 1960's, he called himself 'the Hip Nip,' and he once told a group of Pearl Harbor survivors in a Waikiki nightclub that he was sorry about messing up their harbor. Mr. Miyagi remains everybody's idea of a positive character. Who can forget 'wax on, wax off,' his wise counsel linking car care to karate? But still, it bother me Miyagi-san so wise, but find so hard use articles, pronouns when talk. Mr. Morita's legacy may soon take a posthumous turn for the better. He has a role in an unreleased movie, 'Only the Brave,' about Japanese-American soldiers of the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Team, one of the most decorated units in World War II. He plays a Buddhist priest who is imprisoned in Hawaii after Pearl Harbor. Lane Nishikawa, who wrote, directed, produced and acted in the film, which is now making the rounds of festivals in search of a distributor, said it told its story from the Asian-American point of view - an unusual perspective, by past or current standards. With its wide pool of Asian-American talent, including Mr. Morita, Tamlyn Tomita and Jason Scott Lee, the film promises to be at least different from the other movie about the 442nd. That one -'Go for Broke!' - was made in 1951 and starred Van Johnson, with a large, and utterly forgotten, supporting cast.

Subject: Bad for the Country From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 13:30:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/printer_112505Z.shtml November 25, 2005 Bad for the Country By Paul Krugman - New York Times 'What was good for our country,' a former president of General Motors once declared, 'was good for General Motors, and vice versa.' GM, which has been losing billions, has announced that it will eliminate 30,000 jobs. Is what's bad for General Motors bad for America? In this case, yes. Most commentary about GM's troubles is resigned: pundits may regret the decline of a once-dominant company, but they don't think anything can or should be done about it. And commentary from some conservatives has an unmistakable tone of satisfaction, a sense that uppity workers who joined a union and made demands are getting what they deserve. We shouldn't be so complacent. I won't defend the many bad decisions of GM's management, or every demand made by the United Automobile Workers. But job losses at General Motors are part of the broader weakness of US manufacturing, especially the part of US manufacturing that offers workers decent wages and benefits. And some of that weakness reflects two big distortions in our economy: a dysfunctional health care system and an unsustainable trade deficit. According to A. T. Kearney, last year General Motors spent $1,500 per vehicle on health care. By contrast, Toyota spent only $201 per vehicle in North America, and $97 in Japan. If the United States had national health insurance, GM would be in much better shape than it is. Wouldn't taxpayer-financed health insurance amount to a subsidy to the auto industry? Not really. Because most Americans believe that their fellow citizens are entitled to health care, and because our political system acts, however imperfectly, on that belief, tying health insurance to employment distorts the economy: it systematically discourages the creation of good jobs, the type of jobs that come with good benefits. And somebody ends up paying for health care anyway. In fact, many of the health care expenses GM will save by slashing employment will simply be pushed off onto taxpayers. Some former GM families will end up receiving Medicaid. Others will receive uncompensated care - for example, at emergency rooms - which ends up being paid for either by taxpayers or by those with insurance. Moreover, GM's health care costs are so high in part because of the inefficiency of America's fragmented health care system. We spend far more per person on medical care than countries with national health insurance, while getting worse results. About the trade deficit: These days the United States imports far more than it exports. Last year the trade deficit exceeded $600 billion. The flip side of the trade deficit is a reorientation of our economy away from industries that export or compete with imports, especially manufacturing, to industries that are insulated from foreign competition, such as housing. Since 2000, we've lost about three million jobs in manufacturing, while membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 50 percent. The trade deficit isn't sustainable. We can run huge deficits for the time being, because foreigners - in particular, foreign governments - are willing to lend us huge sums. But one of these days the easy credit will come to an end, and the United States will have to start paying its way in the world economy. To do that, we'll have to reorient our economy back toward producing things we can export or use to replace imports. And that will mean pulling a lot of workers back into manufacturing. So the rapid downsizing of manufacturing since 2000 - of which GM's job cuts are a symptom - amounts to dismantling a sector we'll just have to rebuild a few years from now. I don't want to attribute all of GM's problems to our distorted economy. One of the plants GM plans to close is in Canada, which has national health insurance and ran a trade surplus last year. But the distortions in our economy clearly make GM's problems worse. Dealing with our trade deficit is a tricky issue I'll have to address another time. But GM's woes are yet another reminder of the urgent need to fix our health care system. It's long past time to move to a national system that would reduce cost, diminish the burden on employers who try to do the right thing and relieve working American families from the fear of lost coverage. Fixing health care would be good for General Motors, and good for the country.

Subject: You've always been by my side... From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 10:29:10 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: OF MIGHT AND RIGHT By Joseph S. Nye The allure of Asia PRESIDENT Bush is in Asia to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Council in China, but he should pay attention to another Asian summit to which he was not invited. In December Malaysia will host an East Asian meeting that deliberately excludes the United States. According to many close observers, America’s attractiveness is declining in the region where the allure, or “soft power,” of others has increased. Asian countries have impressive potential resources for soft power. The arts, fashion, and cuisine of Asia’s ancient cultures have had a strong impact on other parts of the world for centuries, but Asia went through a period of relative decline as it lagged behind the industrial revolution in the West, and this undermined its influence. In the fifties Asia conjured up images of poverty and starvation. There was a brief political infatuation among some Westerners in the sixties with Nehru jackets and Maoist revolution, but it was brief. As John Lennon sang in 1968, “if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow.” Asia’s resurgence began with Japan’s economic success. By the end of the century, Japan’s remarkable performance not only made the Japanese wealthy, but also enhanced the country’s soft power. As the first non-Western country that drew even with the West in modernity while showing that it is possible to maintain a unique culture, Japan has more potential soft-power resources than any other Asian country. Today Japan ranks first in the world in the number of patents, third in expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP, second in book sales and music sales, and highest for life expectancy. It is home to three of the top 25 multinational brand names (Toyota, Honda and Sony). The decade-long economic slowdown of the nineties tarnished Japan’s reputation, but it did not erase Japan’s soft-power resources. Japan’s global cultural influence grew in areas ranging from fashion, food and pop music to consumer electronics, architecture and the art. Japanese manufacturers rule the roost in home video games. Pokemon cartoons are broadcast in 65 countries, and Japanese animation is a huge hit with filmmakers and teenagers everywhere. In short, Japan’s popular culture was still producing potential soft-power resources even after its economy slowed down. Now, with signs of a reviving economy, Japan’s soft power may increase even more. But there are limits. Unlike Germany, which repudiated its past aggression and reconciled with its neighbors in the framework of the European Union, Japan has never come to terms with its record in the thirties and forties The residual suspicion that lingers in countries like China and Korea sets limits on Japan’s appeal that are reinforced every time the Japanese prime minister visits the Yasukuni Shrine. Japan also faces serious demographic challenges. By mid-century, Japan’s population could shrink by 30% unless it attracts 17 million immigrants—a hard task in a country historically resistant to immigration. Moreover, the Japanese language is not widely spoken, and Japan’s meager English-language skills make it difficult to attract international talent to its universities. Japan’s culture remains inward looking. Looking ahead, China and India are the looming giants of Asia, with their huge populations and rapid economic growth rates. Not only are their military, or “hard power,” resources growing; there are signs that their soft-power resources are increasing, too. In 2000 Chinese novelist Gao Xingjian won China’s first Nobel Prize for literature, followed a year later by the Indian diaspora writer V.S. Naipaul. The Chinese film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon became the highest grossing non-English film, and Indian movies like Monsoon Wedding were global box-office successes. Indeed, “Bollywood” produces more movies every year than Hollywood. The list goes on. Yao Ming, the Chinese star of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets, could become another Michael Jordan, and China is set to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. Large expatriate communities in the US—2.4 million Chinese and 1.7 million Indians—have increased interest in their home countries among other Americans. Moreover, transnational connections in the information industry are close, as Western high-tech companies increasingly employ affiliates in Bangalore and Shanghai to provide real-time services. But the real promise for China and India lies in the future. A country’s soft power rests upon the attractiveness of its culture, the appeal of its domestic political and social values, and the style and substance of its foreign policies. In recent years, both China and India have adopted foreign policies that have increased their attractiveness to others. But neither country yet ranks high on the various indices of potential soft-power resources that are possessed by the US, Europe and Japan. While culture provides some soft power, domestic policies and values set limits, particularly in China, where the Communist Party fears allowing too much intellectual freedom and resists outside influences. Both countries have a reputation for corruption in government. India benefits from democratic politics, but suffers from overly bureaucratized government. In foreign policy as well, both countries’ reputations are burdened with the problems of longstanding disputes over Taiwan and Kashmir. Moreover, in the US, the attraction of an authoritarian China is limited by the concern that it could become a future threat. The soft power of Asian countries, then, lags behind that of the US, Europe, and Japan, but it is likely to increase. Indeed, if the US continues to pursue unattractive policies, it may find that its absence from the summit in Malaysia in December is a harbinger of things to come. http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/nov/18/yehey/opinion/20051118opi6.html

Subject: What's at the Heart of G.M.'s Woes? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 09:52:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/opinion/l28motors.html What's at the Heart of G.M.'s Woes? To the Editor: Charles E. Wilson, a former General Motors president, once said that he thought 'what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.' It seems that a large portion of G.M.'s travails is directly tied to the company's generous contract-negotiated health care benefits for its workers and retirees. These benefits were negotiated when American industry reigned supreme. It isn't that way anymore. Isn't it time for America to seriously consider a universal health care plan? That would not only free workers from worrying about how their kids will get medical coverage, but also put corporate America on an economic equal footing with other corporate entities of first-world countries, where universal health care is a fact, not a notion debated by ideologues and politicians. Guy Sheaffer Columbus, Ohio, Nov. 22, 2005 • To the Editor: The decision by General Motors to reduce its work force by an additional 5,000 employees and to close all or parts of a dozen assembly plants, parts factories and distribution centers is sad, especially for those affected. Yet this decision is but an outward manifestation of a deeper and more intransigent problem facing the company: the problem of leadership. Even if Rick Wagoner, the chairman of General Motors, might have been the perfect chief executive to run the company during prosperity, as Prof. John Paul MacDuffie of the Wharton School suggests, he doesn't seem to be the perfect manager to rally the company through a recession. If this assessment is accurate, the blame falls not so much on Mr. Wagoner personally, but on the G.M. system, especially the system that selects and promotes executives. Until G.M. reforms its personnel system, the company will continue to stumble, and this once-proud symbol of American capitalism will erode until it is little more than a hollow shell. Augustus Goddard Atlanta, Nov. 22, 2005 • To the Editor: Your front-page article 'For a G.M. Family, the American Dream Vanishes' tells much more than one family's or one company's tale of lost prosperity. In 1955, I left the service to join battle in the American car industry. General Motors had edgy styling; Ford guys were sharp marketers. Imports were not a factor until Volkswagen Bugs came to our Pioneer Valley to give us American-brand dealers all we could handle as, to our disbelief, we saw import cachet trump gas mileage, practicality, self-interest and patriotism. Today all the domestic makers, and their dealers, are feeling the heat of Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and other brands that ship in a variety of vehicles, or build them here in nonunion plants, with lower costs due to younger work forces. Many countries competing for plants have national health care plans. The challenge may be great for G.M., Ford and DaimlerChrysler; however, it is finally time for the nation's leaders to answer Lee Iacocca's decades-old call to level the playing field, cut our enormous trade deficit and defend this key domestic industry, which for more than 100 years has created opportunities for working American families, not incidentally raising everyone's standard of living. Jim Cahillane Williamsburg, Mass., Nov. 21, 2005 The writer is a retired car dealer. • To the Editor: One must marvel at the extraordinary incompetence of General Motors executives. Decades ago, we saw more and more cars sporting the logo 'VW.' G.M. chose behemoths. Years ago, our friends started to buy electric hybrid vehicles. G.M. stuck with its behemoths (but added slogans and gimmicks). Now these executives can only say that economies must be made and the workers are the economies. Marvelous management. David H. Slade Silver Spring, Md., Nov. 22, 2005 • To the Editor: I'd add that what's bad from General Motors is bad for the country. While Honda and Toyota have developed hybrid technology that is so much in demand that buyers wait months for delivery of new vehicles, G.M. continues to grind out more of the same: monster S.U.V.'s that inhale gas, spew out fumes and clog our highways. G.M.'s manufacturing practices haven't evolved, only its advertising. Now it's trying to convince us that its S.U.V.'s and trucks conserve gas! For years G.M. has pushed the macho truck-owner image instead of demonstrating the kind of leadership that General Electric, BP Amoco and, yes, Ford have begun to show by transforming themselves into responsible environmental citizens. Robert F. Sommer Overland Park, Kan., Nov. 25, 2005 • To the Editor: When a General Motors chief executive and his wife visited New York some years back, they invited my husband and me to join them for dinner. I questioned him about G.M.'s not making compact cars (we had purchased a Toyota Camry) and was told that America wanted big cars. Today I would ask him when G.M. is coming out with a fuel-saving car. We are now driving a Toyota Prius. Being big and 'knowing better' contributed as much as anything else to G.M.'s present problems. Barbara S. Rosenthal Scarsdale, N.Y., Nov. 25, 2005 • To the Editor: Paul Krugman writes that the weakness of General Motors and other American manufacturing companies reflects 'a dysfunctional health care system and an unsustainable trade deficit.' The failure of the American auto industry to keep up with market demands for smaller, efficient vehicles provides the third missing leg. A major investment in clean, energy-efficient technologies and a national health care program would stimulate growth in jobs, help sustain them and provide valuable goods and services to export. Now that combination would make an attractive campaign platform for the coming Congressional elections. Paul R. Epstein, M.D. Boston, Nov. 25, 2005 The writer is associate director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School.

Subject: Public Broadcasting's Enemy Within From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 09:09:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/28/opinion/28mon2.html?ex=1290834000&en=607ac879d77265ab&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 28, 2005 Public Broadcasting's Enemy Within As chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Tomlinson proved to be a disastrous zealot. Internal investigators found he repeatedly broke federal law and ethics rules in overreaching his authority and packing the payroll with Republican ideologues. His actual job - to maintain a 'heat shield' between public broadcasting and politics - was turned on its head. The scathing investigation concluded that Mr. Tomlinson was a beacon of partisanship, hiring G.O.P. consultants as ludicrous bias-control monitors and recruiting Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, to be the corporation's new president. Mr. Tomlinson, who has now left the corporation, insisted he had 'absolutely no contact' with White House partisans. But the inspector general's report found he did indeed consult with administration powers like Karl Rove, President Bush's political guru. He even hired someone still on the White House payroll for advice on creating a balance 'ombudsman' for public broadcasting. And he was found to violate the law by promoting a $4 million deal for conservative writers from The Wall Street Journal to be featured as a 'balancing program.' Mr. Tomlinson, a Reader's Digest editor appointed to the board by President Bill Clinton, threatened the independence at the heart of public broadcasting's popularity. His departure is no cure-all, however, for the board remains a haven for such political appointees as Cheryl Halpern, a Republican fund-raiser chosen by Mr. Tomlinson as the new corporation chairwoman. The inspector general's report is a case study of how dangerous ideological cronyism is as a substitute for nonpartisan expertise. Defenders of public broadcasting now must guard against still another conservative putsch - a Congressional move to cut financing for the corporation's $400 million budget of vital aid for local stations. This time, the 'balance' zealots may resort to irony by citing the very chaos wrought by Mr. Tomlinson.

Subject: City's Slave Past From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 08:39:47 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/26/arts/design/26slav.html?ex=1290661200&en=e9be9ce7beedc7db&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 26, 2005 The Anger and Shock of a City's Slave Past By FELICIA R. LEE They have the awkwardness of amateur home videos: background noise, long silences, people looking away from the camera. But inside a booth at the New-York Historical Society, visitors to the exhibition 'Slavery in New York' are recording their reactions, creating snapshot reflections on race and history in the nation's largest city. 'It allows our young people to understand, really, how this city was born and who carried the brunt of the prosperity that we see in New York, not only then but now,' a black man from 'Harlem, New York,' said of the show, the largest in the museum's 201-year history. The man, who appeared to be in his 30's, said he wanted to know what businesses in the city today derived profits in the past from selling human beings. A white lawyer went into the booth twice to sort out his feelings. 'This has just been devastating,' he said. As he looked at the exhibition's array of documents, he said, he realized that the some of the laws used to isolate and dehumanize enslaved black New Yorkers became custom after the laws vanished and 'contributed to the way whites look at blacks,' even today. 'It's striking for any of us who are New Yorkers to realize that the ground we touch, every institution, is affected by slavery,' he said. Two young African-American brothers crammed into the booth together. 'Slavery in New York was bad, and it's how New York became the richest city in the world,' one of them declared. The exhibition, which illustrates the centrality of 200 years of slavery to the growth of New York City, opened on Oct. 7 and runs through March 5. The very idea of slaves walking the streets of what is now SoHo or of slave auction blocks in Lower Manhattan - in a city known for tolerance and diversity - has attracted people of varied races and ages. There are no specific attendance figures yet, but museum officials said the exhibition galleries had been packed and attendance was up 83 percent over the same period last year, when the museum presented an exhibition on Alexander Hamilton. The $5 million slavery exhibition features more than 400 artifacts, documents, paintings and maps spanning 9,000 square feet in 10 galleries. Visitors can see advertisements for runaway slaves and 'negroes, to be sold'; caricatured drawings of blacks; items like chairs and cribs made by slave hands; and a 1644 document granting slaves 'half freedom' and land around what is now Washington Square. The visitor response booth is at the end of the exhibition. There, visitors touch a blue-screened computer asking questions about what they have seen: their overall impression, how it added to or altered their knowledge on the subject, what they found noteworthy. They then look at the camera and speak their answers. 'This is a much more qualitative way of knowing who's coming to the museum,' said Richard Rabinowitz, the show's curator. 'We really wanted to let people talk and think through things. We wanted people to frame a meaning for this as they leave.' Museum officials plan to use those responses to figure out what and how people learn from such exhibitions. So far, about 400 responses have been videotaped. Some will become part of the 'visitor reaction' monitors now in three galleries, which showcase selected people who previewed the show. In one, for example, a middle-aged white woman says the exhibition can make a difference. 'A difference when you look at a black person on a subway train,' she says, 'or you're working next to a black person, that you have a little more empathy and understanding and also praising for how far so many people came.' In the raw videotape, the names given are not clear, one has to guess at ages and there is no consensus on what people found most noteworthy about the show. Some said they were shocked to learn that some slaves fought with the British during the Revolutionary War (in a bid for freedom); others said they had discovered that George Washington owned slaves; and some mused that New York City slavery was no more benign than the Southern variety. After all, slaves in New York worked sunup to sundown. Slaves helped build the wall on Wall Street (and were sold there) and built the first City Hall and Trinity Church. Slavery was the lifeline for hundreds of city businesses. During British rule, about 40 percent of the city's households owned slaves. Institutional exhibitions about America's slave-holding past are relatively new and help foster a national conversation about race, said James Oliver Horton, the chief historian for 'Slavery.' This show's size and location facilitate that dialogue, he said. 'Back in the 90's, when Bill Clinton asked for a national conversation about race, most people didn't have the context in which to have the conversation,' said Dr. Horton, a professor of American studies and history at George Washington University. 'This exhibition will help Americans have such a historical context. It will help people start with a common experience.' One commonality that emerges from viewing five hours of the visitor videotapes is how much people do not know. Many were unaware of the existence or extent of slavery in New York, which lasted until 1827, longer than in any other Northern state except New Jersey. 'It's terrible to know that the city that I love was part of the slave trade,' said a middle-aged white woman from New Jersey. 'I'm shocked to hear about it.' An African-American man in the booth with his young daughter said: 'It's just a constant reminder that here in New York, like in other places in the United States, we were nothing more than cattle in the eyes of the owners and were treated that way. It's just amazing that people were able to survive and thrive after that.' An elderly white woman who said she had two college degrees said, 'I never knew until I walked in here about slavery in New York.' Now, she said, 'It just breaks my heart.' An African-American woman who identified herself as a graduate of Cornell University said, 'I've actually had people tell me that black people in New York had no history.' 'I can now feel that I have information I can share,' she said. A middle-aged white woman who said she lived down the street from the museum noted that her daughter's advanced placement courses in history included only one hour about slavery. 'It made me realize how history doesn't go away,' the mother said of the exhibition. 'These burdens are carried through generations.' Clearly, schools are failing to educate students about slavery, said Louise Mirrer, the society's president. Dr. Mirrer said she would be gratified to see the public schools use the educational materials developed by the society for 'Slavery.' While most visitors are admirers, the exhibition comes in for some criticism, too. Some said it was saturated with facts but failed to convey slavery's brutality. One woman wondered why she did not see a single shackle. Dr. Rabinowitz said it was an informed decision to let the facts speak, without graphic depictions of beatings or family separations. But in the reaction booth, a young black man from Harlem argued that the show should be enraging. 'Why are there ghettos in New York City? Because of slavery,' he said. He learned many facts from the show, he added, but wanted explicit connections between race and class. 'The ramifications of slavery still affect the world,' he said. 'It's not something to be put in the past, like dinosaurs or fossils.' An African-American woman from Washington complained, 'The soul of it was completely gone.' She added, 'It was spoken about as if it was any economic phenomenon instead of human.' But some people caught on camera said the show had certainly made them think harder about skin color and the echoes of the past. A woman from Chicago, who described herself as an artist and a second-generation Slovakian, said the exhibition helped her in that way. She watched two African-American children playing in the museum, and it dawned on her that in another time they would have been slaves. 'They had no choice,' she said. 'They had no power.' And after learning that at one time 20 percent of New Yorkers were enslaved, the artist said, she went to the lobby of the grand Historical Society building and began imagining the past. 'I'd look around and look around,' she said, 'and one in five people would be a slave.'

Subject: Mr. Good Governance Goes Bad From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 07:16:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/opinion/27sun2.html?ex=1290747600&en=3f00802f83e625f4&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 27, 2005 Mr. Good Governance Goes Bad Somebody needs to remind Meles Zenawi that he is supposed to be setting the example for how democracy should work in Africa. As things stand, the only example Mr. Meles, the Ethiopian prime minister, is setting is one of autocratic repression. Mr. Meles has often been lauded as an exemplar of good government by the likes of the British prime minister, Tony Blair, who picked him to help draft his Commission for Africa report on how to reduce poverty and promote democracy on the continent. But it turns out that Mr. Meles is in favor of democracy only when people are voting for him. During parliamentary elections in May, many voters in Ethiopia, particularly in Addis Ababa, cast ballots for lesser-known opposition party members instead of entrenched government officials. When the Meles government announced that it won 296 of Parliament's 547 seats, with the opposition taking 176, many critics charged voter fraud. To make matters worse, the ruling party then suddenly changed parliamentary rules so that only a party with 51 percent of the seats could raise an issue for discussion. In June, rioters took to the streets of Addis Ababa. Government security forces responded by firing live rounds into crowds, killing 40 protesters. Earlier this month, another protest erupted. Government soldiers again fired live rounds on crowds of people. By the end of the clashes, some 46 more people were dead. Has Mr. Meles never heard of tear gas? Soldiers swept through the streets and arrested more than two dozen opposition party members and even a few journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York group that promotes a free press, wrote Mr. Meles that it was 'deeply troubled by your government's harassment and censorship of journalists.' Alemzurya Teshoe, 25, the daughter of one opposition leader, told Marc Lacey of The Times that police raided her home to take away her father and fatally shot her mother, who was screaming in protest. Ms. Teshoe said neighbors who went to recover her mother's body were told that they had to sign a document saying that the opposition party was responsible for the killing. 'I was there when they killed my mother,' she said of the request, which was later dropped. 'I saw it with my own eyes.' Left with egg on its face, the British government is withholding some of Ethiopia's foreign aid money. But that would actually hurt the poorest of the poor, at no cost to Mr. Meles. Western donors should funnel money to ground-level aid projects, while shunning direct budgetary support of the government. Mr. Blair should publicly evict Mr. Meles from his Commission for Africa. The rest of the international development crowd should exile him. That is the problem with good press: eventually you have to live up to your image.

Subject: Calling Out the Cable Guy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 07:00:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/business/yourmoney/27cable.html November 27, 2005 Calling Out the Cable Guy By LORNE MANLY and KEN BELSON TERRY DENSON and Dan York are not exactly boldface names in entertainment industry circles, but perhaps they should be. After all, nearly $30 billion and the future of two Baby Bells hang in part on whether these two refugees from the television programming world find success in their new jobs. Mr. Denson, who works for Verizon Communications, and Mr. York, his counterpart at AT&T, are playing starring roles in their companies' risky forays into the TV business. In the latest twist in an accelerating technological free-for-all, the Baby Bells are trying to shore up their flagging fortunes by muscling their way into what was until just a decade ago the bailiwick of cable companies. Rarely competitors in the past, cable operators and telephone companies are now scrambling to be the one-stop shop that will gladly accept your monthly payments to watch television, use the phone and have high-speed Internet access. Executives at both Verizon and AT&T, which last week officially changed its name from SBC, hope that the extensive selection of channels, whiz-bang features and low pricing of their video offerings will sway television viewers around the country to switch. Although cable and satellite have spent billions upgrading their delivery systems to accommodate a future in which all forms of entertainment are digital and perhaps interactive, the Baby Bells contend that bandwidth is destiny. When they're done spending their billions, the phone companies say, they will surpass their rivals. They promise a seemingly infinite number of channels, many in crisp high definition, and plenty of interactive tie-ins, like the ability to check e-mail messages or screen incoming telephone calls on the TV set. But as the Baby Bells know better than most, talk is cheap and the challenge is daunting. The capital expenditures are staggering. Holding little leverage with the content creators, they also end up paying more for programming than cable companies and satellite operators, who already hold the accounts of 92 million consumers and are rapidly making inroads into the telephone companies' own business of phone service. What's more, the Baby Bells aren't expected to reach consumers in meaningful numbers anytime soon. Verizon began its Fios service in its first town, Keller, Tex., only two months ago, and AT&T will not roll out a service until later this year or next year. That means that the cable operators will have had years to solidify their relationships with customers for all their television and telecommunications needs. 'It's awfully difficult to see how a late entrant operating at a dramatic cost disadvantage and employing a strategy of charging less for more has any shot at earning acceptable returns,' said Craig E. Moffett, a cable and satellite analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. THE phone companies, of course, cannot be discounted. The newly combined AT&T, with $90 billion in revenue, and Verizon, with $71 billion, dwarf the biggest cable operator, Comcast, with $20 billion. The phone giants have about 50 million local phone lines each and their service representatives communicate with many customers each day, offering prime opportunities to sweet-talk them into buying their television services. The Baby Bells are not strangers to television, either, but that history is one that they would just as soon forget. During the mid-1990's, when the cable companies had the playing field to themselves, telephone companies formed two groups that tried - and failed - to establish TV programming services. Bell Atlantic, Nynex and Pacific Telesis, whose names have mostly been lost to the industry's mania for mergers, worked on Tele-TV, but that consortium's reliance on wireless technology proved its undoing. The other group, called Americast and made up of Ameritech, BellSouth and SBC, never got off the ground. But the Baby Bells could be forgiven for acting distracted. The landmark Telecommunications Act of 1996, which deregulated the industry and allowed the Baby Bells to jump into the long-distance phone market, offered what seemed like a far cheaper and potentially more lucrative alternative to taking on the cable industry. Things haven't worked out so swimmingly, however. Nearly 10 years later, the core business of the Baby Bells - renting phone lines - is under attack as never before, shrinking by an average of 4 percent each year over the last three years. Nearly 13 million people are forgoing land lines, relying entirely on cellphones instead, according to CTIA, a wireless-industry trade group. While the erosion has been minimized by the ownership stakes that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth have in Verizon Wireless and Cingular, the cable companies and small independent concerns like Vonage and SunRocket are picking off thousands of customers a day with their Internet-based phone lines. In just two years, the cable industry alone has persuaded about two million households or businesses to forsake the phone company. Cablevision has signed up more than 600,000 customers. Time Warner Cable is nearing one million accounts. And Comcast, the country's largest cable operator, with 21.5 million customers, has finally turned its marketing machine on the phone business, meaning that the pace of defections is likely to quicken. The Baby Bells 'see their land-line business as an ice cube melting in the sun right now, so they need to become a purveyor of content,' said Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital, a venture firm focused on media and technology. The formidable task of acquiring that content and taking on the cable operators and satellite companies has fallen to Mr. Denson and Mr. York. The two men share more than a job description. Mr. Denson, 39, and Mr. York, 42, have both worked in midlevel positions on two sides of the television business equation - for the programmers and the cable companies. Mr. Denson, vice president for video programming and content marketing and strategy at Verizon, toiled at ABC and MTV Networks before moving to Insight Communications, the country's ninth-largest cable operator. Mr. York, executive vice president for programming at AT&T, spent 13 years at HBO and then switched to In Demand, a venture of three cable companies that carries pay-per-view movies and subscription sports packages. They both took their new gigs for similar reasons, attracted by the opportunity to create something new on a large, blank canvas. And both came into the negotiating process with the upper hand firmly held by the folks across the bargaining table. Content providers like the Walt Disney Company, Viacom and Time Warner charge a per-subscriber fee for their cable networks and demand carriage of some of their smaller cable channels in return for the right to carry the broadcast networks. Few television viewers will scurry to sign up with Verizon or AT&T because they prefer those companies' network architecture. The prime responsibility of Mr. Denson and Mr. York - buying content at a reasonable price - will be a determining factor, at least until newfangled features like the ability to choose multiple camera angles for a sporting event or to view digital photos become reality. Facing entrenched competitors, the telephone companies can ill afford not to match or surpass what cable and satellite offer. That imperative has led many analysts covering this converging world to estimate that the content providers will be able to wrest a hefty premium - as much as 25 percent - from Verizon and AT&T, meaning that profitability for the Baby Bells' television services may be years, perhaps decades, away. Mr. Denson and Mr. York cautioned against accepting too readily the conventional wisdom. 'Obviously, we're not negotiating Comcast rates,' Mr. Denson said. But those estimates, he said, were off the mark. Besides, they say, Verizon and AT&T are not entirely lacking in the clout department themselves. 'We're not a mom-and-pop start-up cable system,' Mr. York said. 'We are one of the largest communications companies in the world and partners with some of the content providers already.' Indeed, Verizon and AT&T control the two biggest cellphone companies in the country in Verizon Wireless and Cingular, and content providers searching for new outlets are frantically striking deals with wireless companies to carry their programming. And the two phone giants just happen to be among the biggest advertisers on the media conglomerates' cavalcade of broadcast and cable networks. Annoy them too much, and they could take a chunk of their advertising elsewhere. Companies like Disney, Viacom and NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric and Vivendi Universal, know better - most of the time - than to push too hard and jeopardize a gushing revenue source. 'Don't assume they're paying a big premium,' said Sean R. H. Bratches, executive vice president for sales and marketing at ESPN and ABC Sports, both of which are divisions of Disney. Mr. Bratches was the lead negotiator for the parent company's recent deal with Verizon. Another motive keeps Disney, Viacom and other content providers from exacting too many pounds of flesh. 'We are enamored of the fact there will be more gatekeepers in the marketplace,' Mr. Bratches said. The more fragmented the industry offering television service, content providers say, the harder it will be for the biggest players, like Comcast, to push back against the annual increases in programming fees that content companies desire and demand. But the programmers are certainly reaping benefits. For example, all of the cable channels of Disney and Viacom - including relative newcomers like ESPNU, an all-college sports network, and MTV Desi, a music-video-centric channel for South-Asian Americans - reside on Verizon's extended basic tier rather than on a more limited, more expensive digital tier. Disney and Viacom do not have similar deals with any cable operator or satellite provider. The benefits for the content companies are substantial. They are paid a per-subscriber fee for a lot more people. And getting their newer channels in front of more viewers often translates into higher ratings and more advertising revenue. VERIZON will even be a partner on promotions, as it was recently for ESPNU in Keller, Tex.: during a Friday night football game, the company was a co-sponsor of a halftime kicking contest, complete with Randy White, the former Dallas Cowboys star. Disney has also created a whole new revenue stream by persuading Verizon to pay a fee for each of its 4.8 million high-speed Internet subscribers to receive Disney's selection of proprietary broadband Web sites, including ESPN 360. While Verizon lacks the leverage of cable and satellite companies with their millions of subscribers, it hopes to wow consumers with extra channels and diverse programming. Cable operators have regularly struggled with the capacity constraints of their systems, forced to limit the number of channels so they can deliver innovations like video-on-demand and high-definition channels. 'We don't have to make that trade-off or compromise,' said Mr. Denson, because Verizon's network is more advanced. That explains why Verizon and AT&T have agreed to carry on their extended basic tiers truly niche networks like the Soundtrack Channel, a four-year-old offering devoted to - yes - movie soundtracks, with a healthy dollop of entertainment news and features. 'Because they are new to the marketplace themselves, their appetite for channels like ours - that will help differentiate their offerings - is far greater,' said William Lee, the channel's chief executive. But just how much prospective customers care about receiving hordes of niche channels - like the Gospel Music Channel and Blackbelt TV - remains unclear. 'There's also too much of a good thing,' said Joseph Laszlo, an analyst at Jupiter Research. 'If Verizon added the Lint and Dust Channel, they would just end up with a program guide that is difficult to navigate.' The Baby Bells are under no illusions that smaller channels will persuade people to jettison their current providers. 'Are we going to get two, three, four percentage points because we have the Black Family Channel?' said Mr. Denson, referring to gains in market share. 'No, we're not.' But they will do everything they can to reinforce a message of serving the customer's needs in all aspects, including service, something that the cable industry has struggled with for decades. In Keller, Tex., about 30 minutes north of Fort Worth, Verizon is doing just that. With its new fiber lines, Verizon can sell multiple phone lines and broadband connections that are six or more times as fast as the cable company's. Verizon's lowest-priced television service charges $39.95 a month for 180 channels. The most similar offering from Charter Communications, the local cable company, provides 260 channels for $52.99. 'The first thing that got me was price. When you're a dad, that's what it's all about,' said Tony Rodges, a Keller resident who switched to Verizon's Fios service from Charter. 'But then the little things kick in, like the picture, the sound, the channels.' MR. RODGES also marveled at the eagerness of the Verizon technician. 'The guy jumped through hoops' for the installation, he said. 'I didn't feel he was going to leave me hanging like the cable guys.' Verizon's decision to run fiber-optic cable all the way to customers' homes is a calculated - and expensive - risk, and a counterpoint to AT&T's television strategy. Verizon will spend an estimated $22 billion through 2010 burying high-capacity cables, according to Sanford C. Bernstein research. But that substantial investment gives Verizon the flexibility to add data-hungry high-definition programs, faster broadband speeds and other features that customers like Mr. Rodges are already enjoying. Though costly, these fiber connections are seen by Verizon as the only way to reliably leapfrog the competition. By the end of 2006, the company expects to make these fiber-based services available to six million homes in its territory, including Fairfax, Va., and Huntington Beach, Calif. By contrast, AT&T is installing fiber cables only to within 3,000 feet of homes and using compression technology to make sure that television, phone and broadband signals can travel the rest of the way over older and narrower wire already in the ground. That will save billions of dollars in construction costs and help AT&T start selling television faster. Sanford C. Bernstein estimates that AT&T will spend more than $7 billion through 2010; the company has said that it will spend about $4 billion through 2008. But there are hiccups. The software that Microsoft is installing for AT&T has rarely been deployed on such a large scale. And while AT&T says that it will start selling television this year or early in 2006, only one market - the company's home base in San Antonio - is expected to get the service initially. AT&T hopes to make its television service available to 18 million homes by the first half of 2008. As the Bells rumble into action, cable companies are aggressively selling discounted bundles of television, broadband and phone services. They are also offering many of the services that the Bells expect to provide. Comcast, for instance, now gives away nearly 3,800 hours of on-demand movies and programs to some subscribers. Time Warner Cable and others offer a raft of free interactive features like video games and home shopping and are leasing powerful digital video recorders. That will not only generate more revenue but will also make it harder for Verizon and AT&T to lure away cable customers. According to Jonathan Schildkraut, an industry analyst at Jefferies & Company, customers who buy at least two products from one company are half as likely to switch carriers than if they had just one. Mr. Rodges, for example, is already hooked on Verizon's bundle of services, and he is unlikely to switch back. But he is one of the few who have the option of buying television from a Baby Bell. Brian L. Roberts, the chairman of Comcast, is careful not to count out the phone companies, with their millions of customers, billions of dollars in cash and long history of fighting back. He also knows that the cable industry unwisely laughed off satellite companies when they entered the television market a decade ago. Now, he must wrestle with the likes of DirecTV, which is part of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. EVEN SO, Mr. Roberts figures that the Bells have too many hurdles - financial, technical and cultural - to make a serious dent in his business. 'I don't understand their economic model; I don't understand how that pays off,' he told investors recently. 'It didn't work when Bell Atlantic did it. It didn't work when Tele-TV did it. And it didn't get cheaper to do in 2005 and 2006.' How the Baby Bells will fare may be subject to debate, but one outcome can be reliably predicted, said Nicole Browning, president of affiliate sales and marketing for MTV Networks and BET. 'It means more choice and more recourse,' she said, 'when you're not satisfied with what you're getting.'

Subject: Nuclear Energy Program From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 06:58:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/international/americas/27venezuela.html?ex=1290747600&en=d49a6631bb1f06bd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 27, 2005 Venezuela's Leader Covets a Nuclear Energy Program By LARRY ROHTER and JUAN FORERO BRASÍLIA - With his country sitting on top of some of the world's largest oil and gas reserves, and with his constant talk of socialist revolution and criticism of the Bush administration, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has acquired a certain notoriety in Washington and with some of his Latin American neighbors. But he has seldom sent eyebrows so high as when he recently announced plans to start a nuclear energy program with the help of Brazil and Argentina. Coupled with his talk of a spending binge on weapons like rifles, ships and combat aircraft, and his support of Iran's right to develop a nuclear program, his moves have set off a debate about his motives. Mr. Chávez and his government dismiss the concerns, saying the world should worry less about what is happening in Caracas than in Washington. 'It cannot be that the countries that have developed nuclear energy prohibit those of the third world from developing it,' Mr. Chávez argued recently. 'We are not the ones developing atomic bombs, it's others who do that,' he added in an interview with a Brazilian newspaper. In early November, Bernardo Álvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to Washington, said: 'It is absolutely ridiculous the idea that Venezuela would want to be a nuclear power and become a nuclear threat. Latin America is completely respectful of nonproliferation treaties, but of course that does not mean that nuclear energy cannot be pursued, just as it is in Europe and elsewhere. Venezuela says it has a right to explore these possibilities.' So far, the Bush administration has cautiously reacted to Mr. Chávez's ambitions. The Venezuelan president has sought to position himself as the nemesis of 'American imperialism' and a defender of Cuba and Fidel Castro, and to criticize him publicly would only add to his popularity in Latin America. 'We are watchful, but not worried,' said one American diplomatic official who spoke on condition he not be identified because of the political delicacy of the issue. 'Chávez says a lot about a lot of things,' he added. 'Sometimes he ends up doing them, and sometimes he doesn't.' Mr. Chávez first broached the subject of nuclear power in May, saying that he was interested in starting negotiations with Iran so as to diversify Venezuela's energy supplies. He returned to the theme early in October but this time named Brazil and Argentina as his preferred partners. He has found support for the idea. When Mr. Chávez spoke at a summit meeting in Spain in October of acquiring as many as a dozen reactors, Brazil initially reacted with enthusiasm. 'Any country that wants to share with Brazil its peaceful-use programs will be welcomed,' Marco Aurélio Garcia, national security adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said at the conference. But after an immediate uproar here, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry began backpedaling. 'There is no accord yet, only an idea,' said Celso Amorim, the foreign minister and Mr. Garcia's rival for control of foreign policy. 'This is a theme that needs to be examined when we receive a concrete proposal.' In reality, Brazil and Venezuela already have a very broad agreement, a memorandum of understanding signed over a dozen years ago, to cooperate in the nuclear field. Almost nothing has been done since then, but both countries are interested in reviving the accord as part of what a Brazilian government official called a broader 'process of approximation and integration' that has grown since Mr. da Silva and his leftist Workers' Party took office in 2003. Just last year, Brazil itself tangled with the International Atomic Energy Agency over inspectors' access to a plant to produce nuclear fuel. Brazil claims to have developed a proprietary centrifuge technology for processing enriched uranium and wanted to limit inspectors' ability to certify that use of the centrifuges complied with international regulations. The director of Brazil's National Commission on Nuclear Energy, Odair Gonçalves, declined a request for an interview on prospects for a deal with Venezuela, saying through a spokesman that his agency was ordered not to discuss the subject. But in an interview with O Estado de São Paulo in October, he made it clear that Brazil was not interested in selling the centrifuges to Mr. Chávez. Any nuclear cooperation program with Venezuela 'would not signify the transfer of technology,' he said. 'Transferring uranium enrichment technology is unthinkable.' Argentina, too, has said that Mr. Chávez recently made overtures about buying a reactor. 'We are ready and willing to cooperate with all countries that are part of the Nonproliferation Treaty, and Venezuela is one of them,' Deputy Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana said in October. Though Brazil's nuclear program is more advanced than Argentina's, experts say that Argentina offers the best fit for Venezuela. It specializes in small reactors of a type appropriate for medical research and generating power, which it has sold to Australia, Egypt, Peru and Algeria. 'The technology is quite advanced, and because of the system of safeguards and inspections, there is no way to divert it' into weapons programs, said Elías Palacios, an Argentine scientist who is co-secretary of the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials. 'If it's economically profitable for Argentina, there's no reason why it shouldn't be done.' Like Brazil, Argentina had a nuclear arms program when it was ruled by a military dictatorship in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Civilian governments in the two countries later shelved them, however, and 'because of economic factors and other priorities over the last 15 years, a lot of activity has had to be slowed or postponed,' Mr. Palacios said. With relations between the Bush administration and Mr. Chávez so hostile, Washington has little leverage over Venezuela. But that is not the case with Brazil and Argentina, which have extensive ties, and the United States seems to have decided to focus its efforts there. 'We consider partners like Brazil and Argentina to be responsible partners on issues like nuclear power and proliferation,' said Thomas A. Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs. 'We fully expect them to act in a responsible fashion.' But while Brazil and Argentina do not want to appear to be encouraging Mr. Chávez's nuclear ambitions, they also do not want to offend him. With his country eager to join the Mercosur trade group that they lead, Mr. Chávez has promised to invest heavily in regional energy projects, including the construction of a $10 billion, 3,700-mile natural gas pipeline from Venezuela to Argentina, and to supply energy on favorable terms to the group's four nations. José Goldemberg is a physicist who as minister of science and technology in the 1990's led the dismantling of Brazil's nuclear weapons program. While he says he worries that even a flirtation with Venezuela will hurt the reputation of two countries that have won praise for renouncing their nuclear arms programs, he does not think much will come of Mr. Chávez's campaign. 'This is braggadocio,' he said. 'It's a way of challenging Bush, of making themselves feel important and forcing the United States to pay attention.' But Lawrence Scheinman, who was assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation and disarmament in the Clinton administration, notes there is 'a prestige factor involved' in having nuclear reactors, and prestige has always interested Mr. Chávez. No matter what Mr. Chávez says now, if Venezuela acquired the technology to produce nuclear energy, he would have uranium and fuel that could be used to build a bomb. 'One has to contemplate that possibility,' Mr. Scheinman said. 'We do have a problem here of a country that's very antagonistic toward the United States and linking itself with Cuba. There is reason to be vigilant.'

Subject: Why Is This Man Smiling? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 06:55:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/books/04mcgr.html September 4, 2005 Why Is This Man Smiling? By CHARLES McGRATH PHILIP ROTH does not look or act like a man who has just been canonized. He is still among us, and there is still a gleam in his eye. He still tosses off jokes with a rimshot quickness and gift for mimicry that would have guaranteed him - had the writing career ever fizzled - top billing as a stand-up act in Vegas. He used to have a great routine, for example, about why Jewish couples keep their sex manuals in the credenza. Nevertheless, Mr. Roth, who grew up in the Weequahic section of Newark, not exactly a cultural hotbed, and who for a while in the 60's was considered the wiseacre of American letters, has been admitted to this country's most exclusive literary club: the Library of America, that handsome series of uniform editions with dramatic black jackets, ribboned bookmarks and Bible-thin, acid-free paper. Even the typeface, crisp 10-point Galliard, confers upon the volumes a kind of memorial dignity. This is an honor usually reserved for the long dead, like Melville and Longfellow, and only two other living writers have been awarded membership: Eudora Welty in 1998 and Saul Bellow in 2003, when they were then 90 and 88, respectively, and had more or less stopped writing. Mr. Roth, now 72, is still reinventing himself. The first two volumes are just out, 'Novels and Stories 1959-1962' (which includes 'Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories' and 'Letting Go') and 'Novels 1967-1972' ('When She Was Good,' 'Portnoy's Complaint,' 'Our Gang' and 'The Breast'), and the plan calls for six more to be issued, one every year or so, for a total of eight, which will put him second in Library of America shelf space only to Henry James, who has 14. The last volume is scheduled to appear on Roth's 80th birthday in March 2013, at which time Max Rudin, the publisher of the Library of America, has promised to give him a party. On learning of this arrangement, Mr. Roth said, he told Mr. Rudin, 'Max, maybe we should have the party sooner.' The volumes have full-size jacket photos of a young and darkly handsome Philip Roth with burning Tyrone Power-like eyes. The publishing plan also calls for the photos to be updated in subsequent volumes, so that Mr. Roth will gradually age, in not quite Dorian Gray fashion, right before his readers' eyes until by Volume 8, presumably, he looks much the way he does today - still handsome, but thinner on top, bushier of brow and senatorially gray at the temples. He could pass these days for president of Metropolitan Life, where his father toiled for so many years without ever being offered a promotion. Mr. Roth, who at various times in his life has been a reluctant celebrity - when Claire Bloom published her memoir blaming him for the breakup of their marriage, for example - these days leads a life of Tolstoyan quietness and privacy, devoted to reading and writing. He spends most of his time in an 18th-century Connecticut farmhouse he bought in 1972 - so long ago, he says, that he now almost qualifies as an honorary Yankee. The place is so out of the way that you need G.P.S. to find it, and it includes stone walls, towering ash trees and a triangular, tree-rimmed clearing that Mr. Roth, a lifelong baseball fan, jokes about turning into a ball field. There is a spare, wood-paneled studio in back where he writes every day, standing up mostly, at a tall computer table. Canonization has not carried Mr. Roth away. 'The initial delight is wonderful,' he says. 'But after a while, it's just another edition of a book.' On the other hand, the occasion has apparently caused him to take stock. In midcareer - in novels like 'The Counterlife' and 'Operation Shylock' and the several Zuckerman stories - Mr. Roth specialized in spinning off multiple fictional versions of himself, and in person he was formidable and intense. But the current Roth is more reflective and serene, or at least he was on a recent afternoon when he sat on a little screened porch behind the studio and talked about what he persisted in calling his 'apprentice work.' Some apprenticeship. If you think of it in geographical terms, it's a journey that begins (in 'Goodbye, Columbus') in Short Hills, N.J., in the earthly paradise owned by Brenda Patimkin's father, the kitchen and bathroom sink baron, where fruit multiplies in the basement refrigerator and the trees drip sporting goods, and ends in the New York hospital room where poor David Kepesh lies suspended in a special hammock because he has unaccountably turned into an exquisitely sensitive 155-pound female breast. In between there are stops in Iowa City and Chicago (for 'Letting Go'), in rural Liberty Center, Ill. (for 'When She Was Good'), in the paranoid White House of President Trick E. Dixon, who is conspiring to massacre the Boy Scouts of America, and of course in the second-floor flat on the south side of Newark, where Alexander Portnoy, that raging horndog, has sex with the family supper. Mr. Roth said he had deliberately not reread these early works. 'That would have been a bad idea,' he explained, 'because I read my own work, or anybody's, with a pencil in my hand and I would have been tempted to make changes. But that part of my life is long gone and closed. Whatever those books are, they are.' He added: 'This is a writer beginning. If you think of 'Goodbye, Columbus,' 'Letting Go,' 'When She Was Good' and 'Portnoy's Complaint,' it's a bit like four different writers, because I didn't know what kind of writer I was. Maybe there are some people who do know, but I didn't. You have to figure out what your strength is, and I had no idea.' He wrote 'Goodbye, Columbus' and the stories collected in that volume, he said, because that was what aspiring writers did in those days - they wrote stories and hoped to publish them in places like The New Yorker and The Paris Review, which he succeeded in doing. Then, in the late 50's, he deliberately set out to write a big, ambitious novel - what proved to be 'Letting Go,' his longest book by far, and one that combines elements of James, of Bellow, of Dostoyevsky even. There was something about the bigness of novel writing, the process of adding on and thickening, he says, that appealed enormously to him, and except once or twice he has never gone back to stories. From 1962 to 1967, Mr. Roth published hardly a word. It was the longest drought of his career. 'I really didn't know where to go,' he said, 'and I had two or three false starts - significant false starts of a hundred pages or so. They're down in the Library of Congress - the Library of False Starts, they ought to call it. And then I decided I would just completely shift into this other tone, which was as unlike the other books as it could be.' The resulting novel was 'When She Was Good,' the most un-Rothian of Roth's many books, the one that could almost have been written by Dreiser or Sherwood Anderson instead: a spare, urgent story of small-town 1940's America and of a young woman so disappointed by the men in her life - her father, her husband and her husband's uncle - that she becomes consumed with rage and defiance. It drew, Mr. Roth says, on his years of living in the Midwest (in the early 60's he taught at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa) and on visits he and his first wife, Margaret Williams, made to her family in Michigan. 'Her family's front porch could have been the Taj Mahal as far as I was concerned,' he said. 'The manner of speaking, the attitudes, the family secrets were unlike anything I knew.' But even once he figured it out, the book went slowly. 'I think that down in the Library of False Starts there are eight or nine drafts of this book,' Mr. Roth said. 'Again, we're talking about a writer's beginning, and all the drafts mean is that you're just getting it wrong. They don't attest to your craftsmanship or to the fact that you're a perfectionist - they just attest that you can't write the God damn thing.' In the end he was pleased with the novel, but he also knew that he couldn't continue in that vein. 'I would have had to stay in the Midwest, and I would have had to stay married,' he said, laughing. While still working on 'When She Was Good,' Mr. Roth separated from his wife and moved back East. That homecoming was the great turning point in his career. 'I was back in touch with my place,' Mr. Roth said. 'Getting back to New York, I had friends who were metropolitan Jews, whose conversation was very different from what it was back in the Middle West.' His friends in those days included Robert Brustein, who was then teaching drama at Columbia; the writer Albert Goldman; the editors Jason and Barbara Epstein; and the cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and they got together for dinner parties that sound like intellectual free-for-alls. 'Those were hilarious dinners,' Mr. Roth recalled. 'I think I was encouraged by the wildness of our conversation and by the comic rivalry. It's tough to be in a room with Jules Feiffer and with Al Goldman, who was a great storyteller. But there was no way I was going to be able to get that into the 'When She Was Good' formula. I needed to find my freedom as a writer - how could I get in touch with my real verbal talent? - and in 'Portnoy's Complaint' I think I was able to do that, to unshackle myself from certain rules of literary conduct.' Twenty-five years later, in the chaste pages of the Library of America, 'Portnoy's Complaint' still goes off like a car bomb. It's irreverent; brash and angry at times, full of feeling and affection at others; and in those censorious times, it surely contained more masturbation scenes than any book not sold from under the counter. It's a dirty book that happens to be extremely funny, and vice versa, and fairly or not, it may be the book for which Mr. Roth will always be best known, the one that got him labeled both a pervert and a betrayer of the Jews. Mr. Roth chuckled at the memory of a chapter whose title is still a little risqu� for this newspaper, but added that he thought the book's really disturbing element was its scenes of family dysfunction. 'So many people of the people who claimed to be offended by the book said they were offended by the masturbation,' he recalled. 'But that's silly. Everybody knew about masturbation. What they were really offended by was the depiction of this level of brutality in a Jewish family.' For Mr. Roth, and for American fiction in general, 'Portnoy's Complaint' was the end of an era - the idea of apprenticing yourself to the old literary models and carefully observing the rules of literary procedure and decorum. And it was the beginning of a period, still going on, of figuring out what to do when there are no longer any rules. 'After I finished 'Portnoy's Complaint' I thought: How far can one go with a kind of hyperrealistic farce?' Mr. Roth said. 'What would it yield if I went further? For me it was very much an experiment in verbal exuberance. What could come up? I didn't know. In a certain way it was still back to the very beginning: What kind of writer am I? What kind of talent do I have?' He had, among other things, a talent for political satire. 'Our Gang,' that eerily prescient satire of the Nixon administration written a year before the Watergate scandal, is in some ways a period piece, a minor work in the Roth canon, except that Washington doublespeak turns out not to have changed very much in the interim. Sitting there in his tranquil retreat and contemplating Richard Nixon, Mr. Roth for an instant got mad all over again. A few years ago, some critics began to write off Mr. Roth. But starting with 'Sabbath's Theater,' in 1995, and continuing through 'The Plot Against America,' which came out a year ago, he has experienced an extraordinary burst of second wind. 'I think I've gotten better,' he said decisively, dismissing the notion that the young writer, the one with the burning eyes staring out from the Library of America jacket, might have been able to do things the older one can't. But he has been thinking lately about writers who weren't so lucky and who petered out - about Hemingway, for example, whose posthumous 'Islands in the Stream' he has been rereading. 'Booze,' he said. 'Booze was the problem with Hemingway, with Faulkner and with so many others. They both died in their early 60's. It's almost inconceivable.' At this time of year, Mr. Roth still reads outside in the early evenings, in a tent of mosquito netting, until the daylight fades, and his main vice is then slipping indoors to check on the Yankees for a couple of hours. 'The canonized go on,' he said, adding that he has just about finished a new piece, which he called 'a very long story, 90 pages or so, and very dark.' Pressed to describe it further he said: 'That's it - 90 dark pages.'

Subject: 'Mirror to America' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 06:52:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/books/chapters/1127-1st-frank.html November 27, 2005 'Mirror to America' By JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN Living in a world restricted by laws defining race, as well as creating obstacles, disadvantages, and even superstitions regarding race, challenged my capacities for survival. For ninety years I have witnessed countless men and women likewise meet this challenge. Some bested it; some did not; many had to settle for any accommodation they could. I became a student and eventually a scholar. And it was armed with the tools of scholarship that I strove to dismantle those laws, level those obstacles and disadvantages, and replace superstitions with humane dignity. Along with much else, the habits of scholarship granted me something many of my similarly striving contemporaries did not have. I knew, or should say know, what we are up against. Slavery was a principal centerpiece of the New World Order that set standards of conduct including complicated patterns of relationships. These lasted not merely until emancipations but after Reconstruction and on into the twentieth century. Many of them were still very much in place when beginning in the late 1950s, the sit-ins, marches, and the black revolution began a successful onslaught on some of the antediluvian practices that had become a part of the very fabric of society in the New World and American society in particular. Born in 1915, I grew up in a racial climate that was stifling to my senses and damaging to my emotional health and social well-being. Society at that time presented a challenge to the strongest adult, and to a child it was not merely difficult but cruel. I watched my mother and father, who surely numbered among the former, daily meet that challenge; I and my three siblings felt equally that cruelty. And it was no more possible to escape that environment of racist barbarism than one today can escape the industrial gases that pollute the atmosphere. This climate touched me at every stage of my life. I was forcibly removed from a train at the age of six for having accidentally taken a seat in the 'white people's coach.' I was the unhappy victim, also at age six, of a race riot that kept the family divided for more than four years. I endured the very strict segregation laws and practices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was rejected as a guide through busy downtown Tulsa traffic by a blind white woman when she discovered that the twelve-year-old at her side was black. I underwent the harrowing experience as a sixteen-year-old college freshman of being denounced in the most insulting terms for having the temerity to suggest to a white ticket seller a convenient way to make change. More harrowing yet was the crowd of rural white men who confronted and then nominated me as a possible Mississippi lynching victim when I was nineteen. I was refused service while on a date as a Harvard University graduate student at age twenty-one. Racism in the navy turned my effort to volunteer during World War II into a demeaning embarrassment, such that at a time when the United States was ostensibly fighting for the Four Freedoms I struggled to evade the draft. I was called a 'Harvard nigger' at age forty. At age forty-five, because of race, New York banks denied me a loan to purchase a home. At age sixty I was ordered to serve as a porter for a white person in a New York hotel, at age eighty to hang up a white guest's coat at a Washington club where I was not an employee but a member. To these everyday, ordinary experiences during ninety years in the American race jungle should be added the problem of trying to live in a community where the economic and social odds clearly placed any descendant of Africans at a disadvantage. For a profession, my father, Buck Franklin, proudly chose the practice of law. Depending as it did on the judicial system in which it operated, the practice of law in America could not possibly have functioned favorably or even fairly for a person who qualified as, at best, a pariah within it. My father, ever the optimist, persisted in holding the view that the practice of law was a noble pursuit whose nobility entailed the privilege of working to rectify a system that contained a set of advantages for white people and a corresponding set of disadvantages for black people. The integrity and the high moral standards by which he lived and that he commended to his children forbade him to violate the law or resort to any form of unethical conduct. And, as children, we had to adjust ourselves to dignified, abject poverty. My mother, Mollie, shared these views, to which she added a remarkable amount of creativity and resourcefulness in her effort to supplement the family income and boost the family morale. She taught in public schools, made hats, and developed a line of beauty aids. To these creative skills should be added her equanimity, her sense of fairness, her high standards of performance, and her will to succeed. On many occasions she would say to me, 'If you do your best, the angels cannot do any better!' These qualities became the hallmark of her relationship with her four children, giving us the strength and skills to cope with the formidable odds she knew we would encounter. If we did not always succeed, it was not the fault of our parents. But the challenges I, my brother, Buck, and my sisters, Mozella and Anne, faced were always formidable. Living through years of remarkable change, the barrier of race was a constant. With the appearance of each new institution or industry, racism would rear its ugly head again. When the age of the automobile made its debut, there was the question of whether African Americans should be given the opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to find work within that industry. It was the same with the advent of the computer age. More than one company dragged its feet when it came to making certain that young people on 'both sides of the track' had an opportunity to acquire the skills necessary to be successful participants in the new scientific revolution. Indeed, the expansion of numerous American industries caused debates or at least discussions regarding the abilities of African Americans to cope with new developments, whatever they were. Even at the end of the twentieth century, many Americans continued to debate nineteenth-century racial theories regarding the abilities of blacks to see at night, to make accurate calculations, and to learn foreign languages. These debates ranged from discussions having to do with the effect of African Americans on the growth of the gross national product to their ability to resist new diseases or their capacity to adjust to new educational or cultural developments. Throughout a life spent at the intersection of scholarship and public service, I have been painfully aware that superstitions and quaint notions of biological and even moral differences between blacks and whites continue to affect race relations in the United States-even into the twenty-first century. In 1943 Gunnar Myrdal called attention to these discussions and debates over racial differences in his classic American Dilemma. And when the Committee on the Status of Black Americans, of which I was a member, took another look in 1989 while updating Myrdal's book, we saw much the same thing and set forth these and other views in A Common Destiny: Blacks and American Society. In our discussion of the problem of race, we declared that it could well create new fissures that might, in turn, lead to an increased level of confrontations and violence. The Rodney King riots of 1991 offered vivid testimony that there still persists much too much potential for racial conflict for anyone to be complacent. Of the many recollections I have arising from my fifteen months as chair of President Clinton's advisory board on race is that of the black woman who screamed during a meeting her history of how she had been abused and mistreated because of her race. My memory of the white man who claimed that already too much was being done for African Americans, and it was he who needed protection from policies such as affirmative action, is no less vivid. The advisory board was troubled by these and similar competing claims, and it became clear that open dialogues and, if necessary, limitless discussions were the civilized approach to finding constructive ways of dealing with America's racial ills. It did and will require not only persistent diligence but also abiding patience. During my life it has been necessary to work not only as hard as my energies would permit, but to do it as regularly and as consistently as humanly possible. This involved the strictest discipline in the maximum use of my time and energy. I worked two jobs in college and graduate school that made inordinate demands on my time, but there was no alternative to the regimen that circumstances demanded. And those circumstances included a refusal to check my catholic interests that have always prompted me to participate in activities beyond scholarship. Balancing professional and personal activities has resulted in a life full of rich rewards, a consequence deeply indebted to my near sixty-year marriage to Aurelia Whittington. My father called her the Trooper for her patient, good-willed, indomitable spirit. She was that and so much more. How do I calculate the influence of having spent two-thirds of my life living alongside an exemplar of selfless dignity? Even before we were married, I learned much from Aurelia. She taught me to put others ahead of my own preference, as she did routinely. There is no more vivid example of her habit of self-sacrifice than when she abandoned her own career. She did so in order to be there for Whit, our only child, when our adult Brooklyn neighbors taunted him and sought in every way possible to convey that neither he nor his family was welcome to live in their previously all-white neighborhood. My life has been dedicated to and publicly defined by scholarship, a lifelong affection for the profession of history and the myriad institutions that support it. A white professor at historically black Fisk University powerfully influenced my choice of a career, one I decided early on to dedicate to new areas of study, wherever possible, in order to maintain a lively, fresh approach to teaching and writing history. This is how I happened to get into African American history, in which I never had a formal course but that attracted an increasing number of students of my generation and many more in later generations. But I was determined that I would not be confined to a box of any kind, so I regarded African American history as not so much a separate field as a subspecialty of American history. Even in graduate school I was interested in women's history, and in more recent years I have studied and written papers in that field, although I never claimed more than the desire to examine it intensely rather than presume to master it entirely. I could not work in the field of history without maintaining some contact with other historians and some affiliation with historical associations. Consequently, at the Library of Congress and in local libraries where I was engaged in research, I made a point of meeting other historians and discussing with them matters of mutual interest. I not only maintained an active membership in the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History but joined other groups, even where it became necessary to educate members, to the extent possible, that history knows no bounds, either in the human experience or in the rules governing who is eligible to record it. This would not, could not involve demeaning myself or in any way compromising my own self-respect. On occasion it did involve venturing into groups and organizations when it was not clear if their reception of me would be cool or cordial. Nevertheless, as a consequence I became active in the major national professional organizations long before most other African Americans joined them. In much the same way, I became involved with historical groups in other parts of the world. My ever-widening contacts in the United States presented me with opportunities to become associated with historians in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. Each contact was instructive not only about the many things that peoples of the world have in common but also as to the intense interest other peoples have in problems and developments far removed from their own that would nevertheless assist them in understanding their own society. A remarkable and unforeseen result of my determination to pursue my profession wherever it led, be that into the halls of previously all-white academic associations or to the far-flung scholarly organizations scattered across the globe, were the contacts that released me from the straitjacket confinement of pursuing a career exclusively in historically black colleges and universities. My life and my career have been fulfilled not merely by my own efforts but also by the thoughtful generosity of family, friends, and professional colleagues. I can only hope that they realize, as do I, how interdependent we all are and how much more rewarding and fulfilling life is whenever we reach a level of understanding where we can fully appreciate the extent of our interrelationships with and our reliance on those who came before us, kept us company during our lives, and will come after us. . . .

Subject: Making History From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 06:51:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/books/review/27oshinsky.html November 27, 2005 Making History By DAVID OSHINSKY JOHN HOPE FRANKLIN is among a handful of scholars who have changed the way Americans view their past. It wasn't so long ago that mainstream histories of the United States ignored the experience of minorities or employed the sort of stereotypes that most readers today would find offensive. An African-American, raised and educated in an era of stifling race prejudice and legal segregation, Franklin, now 90 years old, has spent his career exposing the bigotry that once dominated American intellectual life and continues to infect society at large. His scholarship is his weapon. 'Mirror to America' is a riveting and bitterly candid memoir. Born in an all-black Oklahoma town in 1915, Franklin can remember his mother, a teacher, riding a horse to work 'with a pistol in her saddlebag to protect herself from wolves or some vagabond who might attempt to molest her.' In 1921 his father, an attorney, moved to Tulsa to open a law practice and buy a home for the family. A few months later, the black section of that city was demolished in one of the bloodiest race riots in American history. His father lost everything, postponing the family move for four years. In Tulsa, Franklin encountered a seething racism that kept the black community in a state of perpetual unease. There 'was never a moment in any contact I had with white people,' he writes about this time, 'that I was not reminded that society as a whole had sentenced me to abject humiliation for the sole reason that I was not white.' A superb student, Franklin won a scholarship to Fisk, a distinguished black university in Nashville, where he intended to study law. There he met the two most influential people in his adult life: Theodore S. Currier, a young, white faculty member who would fuel Franklin's interest in 'Negro history,' and Aurelia Whittington, the woman who would become Franklin's wife and inseparable companion for the next 60 years. At Fisk, he recalls, 'I became known as the person who had disciplined himself to the point of letting nothing interfere with his studies.' When Currier learned that his favorite student had been admitted to graduate school in history but lacked the funds to attend, he borrowed $500 and placed it in Franklin's hand. 'Money,' he declared, 'will not keep you out of Harvard!' Having never lived among whites, Franklin navigated the Harvard campus of the 1930's like an anthropologist on an exotic field trip. On a given day, he might attend Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.'s seminar in American intellectual history and then walk to the law school to hear Felix Frankfurter lecture about the Constitution. But he can still recall the 'darky' jokes that were told in his history classes. And he could hardly believe the shabby treatment endured by the handful of Jewish students in the program (including his friend Oscar Handlin). Prejudice, he discovered, came in many forms. Franklin decided to write his dissertation on the free blacks of North Carolina during the antebellum era. It was a wonderfully rich subject, inviting him to recreate a vibrant but forgotten African-American community. Franklin did most of his research at the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, working in a segregated space adjoining the 'whites only' reading room. Published to glowing reviews in 1943, 'The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790-1860,' helped Franklin land a spot at Howard University, the pinnacle of black higher education. The talent there was stunning: Rayford Logan in history, E. Franklin Frazier in sociology, Thurgood Marshall in law. Living in the Washington area allowed Franklin to present his work at C. Vann Woodward's famed seminar on Southern history at Johns Hopkins and to assist the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund in preparing Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 case that outlawed racial segregation in the nation's public schools. His reputation soared. As the first African-American to deliver a paper before the prestigious but retrograde Southern Historical Association, Franklin brilliantly dissected that region's militant opposition to change. His next book, 'From Slavery to Freedom,' a magisterial account of the American black experience, reached audiences far beyond the academy. Still, Franklin fretted about his future. 'I felt certain,' he recalls, 'that whatever else I accomplished . . . there was nowhere for me to go beyond Howard.' But in 1956, Brooklyn College approached him. Franklin was flabbergasted, and he wasn't alone. The offer was so novel that when Franklin accepted it, his photo appeared on the front page of The New York Times under the headline: 'Negro Educator Chosen to Head Department in Brooklyn College.' He would spend eight years there, endlessly amazed, he says, by a culture in which 'students asked for extra assignments and sought satisfactory explanations from faculty for their eventual grades. Even parents entered the fray . . . seeking information about their children's performance and requesting appointments with teachers.' Franklin still made time for his writing, which took on a sharper edge as the civil rights movement progressed. In 1961, he published 'Reconstruction After the Civil War,' a seminal work that challenged the common portrait of the era as one in which wild and ignorant former slaves, led by corrupt Northerners, rode roughshod over the defeated white South. 'I would insist,' he writes 'that most freedmen were desperate for an education and extremely eager to participate in the ongoing development of their communities.' Indeed, Franklin dared his opponents to find 'anywhere at any time a more serious and responsible group of people so recently in bondage.' There were no serious takers. By the 1960's, higher education had belatedly discovered the absence of minorities in the ranks. Though Franklin felt a deep loyalty to Brooklyn College, an offer in 1964 from the University of Chicago proved too hard to turn down. The appointment was duly reported in Time magazine. At Chicago, and later at Duke University, Franklin trained a legion of graduate students to merge the study of African-American society and culture into the larger fabric of American history. As a public intellectual, widely quoted in the media, he spoke out against what he saw as the federal government's retreat from civil rights during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In 1997, Bill Clinton chose him to lead the advisory board of the President's Initiative on Race. Hoping to begin a public dialogue on issues of equality and justice, Franklin found only frustration, as critics mocked the committee for its political correctness. Franklin uses 'Mirror to America' to vent his considerable anger at this turn of events. At one point he claims that the 'Negro seat' on the Supreme Court once held by his idol, Thurgood Marshall, has been 'bleached white' by the appointment of Clarence Thomas, a man he thoroughly despises. A bit later he sneeringly dismisses Dinesh D'Souza, a conservative opponent of affirmative action, as 'a 1978 immigrant from Calcutta'- as if D'Souza has not lived long enough in the United States to merit an opinion. Indeed, when C. Vann Woodward wrote a favorable review of D'Souza's book 'Illiberal Education,' Franklin fired off an angry public letter of protest, leaving a perplexed Woodward to guess that his old friend had 'got up on the wrong side of the bed.' Franklin wasn't amused. What whites cannot experience and may never understand, he writes, is that 'no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in a racially divisive America.' That, it appears, is the sad truth of this remarkable book. Franklin has studied his nation for nearly three-quarters of a century. His scholarship tells us that people must be judged by their willingness to remove the obstacles and disadvantages that oppress society's most vulnerable members. His conscience reminds us of how much remains to be done. David Oshinsky is the Littlefield professor of history at the University of Texas.

Subject: Pioneer in Social and Management Theory From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 03:48:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/12drucker.html?ex=1289451600&en=14f52a771ff8f431&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 12, 2005 Peter F. Drucker, a Pioneer in Social and Management Theory By BARNABY J. FEDER Peter F. Drucker, the political economist and author, whose view that big business and nonprofit enterprises were the defining innovation of the 20th century led him to pioneering social and management theories, died yesterday at his home in Claremont, Calif. He was 95. His death was announced by Claremont Graduate University. Mr. Drucker thought of himself, first and foremost, as a writer and teacher, though he eventually settled on the term 'social ecologist.' He became internationally renowned for urging corporate leaders to agree with subordinates on objectives and goals and then get out of the way of decisions about how to achieve them. He challenged both business and labor leaders to search for ways to give workers more control over their work environment. He also argued that governments should turn many functions over to private enterprise and urged organizing in teams to exploit the rise of a technology-astute class of 'knowledge workers.' Mr. Drucker staunchly defended the need for businesses to be profitable but he preached that employees were a resource, not a cost. His constant focus on the human impact of management decisions did not always appeal to executives, but they could not help noticing how it helped him foresee many major trends in business and politics. He began talking about such practices in the 1940's and 50's, decades before they became so widespread that they were taken for common sense. Mr. Drucker also foresaw that the 1970's would be a decade of inflation, that Japanese manufacturers would become major competitors for the United States and that union power would decline. For all his insights, he clearly owed much of his impact to his extraordinary energy and skills as a communicator. But while Mr. Drucker loved dazzling audiences with his wit and wisdom, his goal was not to be known as an oracle. Indeed, after writing a rosy-eyed article shortly before the stock market crash of 1929 in which he outlined why stocks prices would rise, he pledged to himself to stay away from gratuitous predictions. Instead, his views about where the world was headed generally arose out of advocacy for what he saw as moral action. His first book ('The End of Economic Man,' 1939)was intended to strengthen the will of the free world to fight fascism. His later economic and social predictions were intended to encourage businesses and social groups to organize in ways that he felt would promote human dignity and vaccinate society against political and economic chaos. 'He is remarkable for his social imagination, not his futurism,' said Jack Beatty in a 1998 review of Mr. Drucker's work 'The World According to Peter Drucker.' Mr. Drucker, who was born in Vienna and never completely shed his Austrian accent, worked in Germany as a reporter until Hitler rose to power and then in a London investment firm before emigrating to the United States in 1937. He became an American citizen in 1943. Recalling the disasters that overran the Europe of his youth and watching the American response left him convinced that good managers were the true heroes of the century. The world, especially the developed world, had recovered from repeated catastrophe because 'ordinary people, people running the everyday concerns of business and institutions, took responsibility and kept on building for tomorrow while around them the world came crashing down,' he wrote in 1986 in 'The Frontiers of Management.' Mr. Drucker never hesitated to make suggestions he knew would be viewed as radical. He advocated legalization of drugs and stimulating innovation by permitting new ventures to charge the government for the cost of regulations and paperwork. He was not surprised that General Motors for years ignored nearly every recommendation in 'The Concept of the Corporation,' the book he published in 1946 after an 18-month study of G.M. that its own executives had commissioned. From his early 20's to his death, Mr. Drucker held various teaching posts, including a 20-year stint at the Stern School of Management at New York University and, since 1971, a chair at the Claremont Graduate School of Management. He also consulted widely, devoting several days a month to such work into his 90's. His clients included G.M., General Electric and Sears, Roebuck but also the Archdiocese of New York and several Protestant churches; government agencies in the United States, Canada and Japan; universities; and entrepreneurs. For over 50 years, at least half of the consulting work was done free for nonprofits and small businesses. As his career progressed and it became clearer that competitive pressures were keeping businesses from embracing many practices he advocated, like guaranteed wages and lifetime employment for industrial workers, he became increasingly interested in 'the social sector,' as he called the nonprofit groups. Mr. Drucker counseled groups like the Girl Scouts to think like businesses even though their bottom line was 'changed lives' rather than profits. He warned them that donors would increasingly judge them on results rather than intentions. In 1990, Frances Hesselbein, the former national director of the Girl Scouts, organized a group of admirers to honor him by setting up the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management in New York to expose nonprofits to Mr. Drucker's thinking and to new concepts in management. Mr. Drucker's greatest impact came from his writing. His more than 30 books, which have sold tens of millions of copies in more than 30 languages, came on top of thousands of articles, including a monthly op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal from 1975 to 1995. Among the sayings of Chairman Peter, as he was sometimes called, were these: ¶'Marketing is a fashionable term. The sales manager becomes a marketing vice president. But a gravedigger is still a gravedigger even when it is called a mortician - only the price of the burial goes up.' ¶'One either meets or one works.' ¶'The only things that evolve by themselves in an organization are disorder, friction and malperformance.' ¶'Stock option plans reward the executive for doing the wrong thing. Instead of asking, 'Are we making the right decision?' he asks, 'How did we close today?' It is encouragement to loot the corporation.' Mr. Drucker's thirst for new experiences never waned. He became so fascinated with Japanese art during his trips to Japan after World War II that he eventually helped write 'Adventures of the Brush: Japanese Paintings' (1979), and lectured on Oriental art at Pomona College in Claremont from 1975 to 1985. Peter Ferdinand Drucker was born Nov. 19, 1909, one of two sons of Caroline and Adolph Drucker, a prominent lawyer and high-ranking civil servant in the Austro-Hungarian government. He left Vienna in 1927 to work for an export firm in Hamburg, Germany, and to study law. Mr. Drucker then moved to Frankfurt, where he earned a doctorate in international and public law in 1931 from the University of Frankfurt, became a reporter and then senior editor in charge of financial and foreign news at the newspaper General-Anzeiger, and, while substitute teaching at the university, met Doris Schmitz, a 19-year-old student. They became reacquainted after waving madly while passing each other going opposite directions on a London subway escalator in 1933 and were married in 1937. Mr. Drucker had moved to England to work as a securities analyst and writer after watching the rise of the Nazis with increasing alarm. In England, he took an economics course from John Maynard Keynes in Cambridge, but was put off by how much the talk centered on commodities rather than people. Mr. Drucker's reputation as a political economist was firmly established with the publication in 1939 of 'The End of Economic Man.' The New York Times said it brought a 'remarkable vision and freshness' to the understanding of fascism. The book's observations, along with those in articles he wrote for Harpers and The New Republic, caught the eye of policy makers in the federal government and at corporations as the country prepared for war, and landed him a job teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y. Writing 'The Future of Industrial Man,' published in 1942 after Mr. Drucker moved to Bennington College in Vermont, convinced him that he needed to understand big organizations from the inside. Rebuffed in his requests to work with several major companies, he was delighted when General Motors called in late 1943 proposing that he study its structure and policies. To avoid having him treated like a management spy, G.M. agreed to let him publish his findings. Neither G.M. nor Mr. Drucker expected the public to be interested because no one had ever written such a management profile, but 'The Concept of the Corporation' became an overnight sensation when it was published in 1946. ' 'Concept of the Corporation' is a book about business the way 'Moby Dick' is a book about whaling,' said Mr. Beatty, referring to the focus on social issues extending far beyond G.M.'s immediate operating challenges. In it, Mr. Drucker argued that profitability was crucial to a business's health but more importantly to full employment. Management could achieve sustainable profits only by treating employees like valuable resources. That, he argued, required decentralizing the power to make decisions, including giving hourly workers more control over factory life, and guaranteed wages. In the 1950's, Mr. Drucker began proclaiming that democratic governments had become too big to function effectively. This, he said, was a threat to the freedom of their citizens and to their economic well-being. Unlike many conservative thinkers, Mr. Drucker wanted to keep government regulation over areas like food and drugs and finance. Indeed, he argued that the rise of global businesses required stronger governments and stronger social institutions, including more powerful unions, to keep them from forgetting social interests. According to Claremont Graduate University, Mr. Drucker's survivors include his wife, Doris, an inventor and physicist; his children, Audrey Drucker of Puyallup, Wash., Cecily Drucker of San Francisco, Joan Weinstein of Chicago, and Vincent Drucker of San Rafael, Calif.; and six grandchildren. Early last year, in an interview with Forbes magazine, Mr. Drucker was asked if there was anything in his long career that he wished he had done but had not been able to do. 'Yes, quite a few things,' he said. 'There are many books I could have written that are better than the ones I actually wrote. My best book would have been 'Managing Ignorance,' and I'm very sorry I didn't write it.'

Subject: Paul Krugman: Age of Anxiety From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 03:41:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ November 28, 2005 Paul Krugman: Age of Anxiety By Mark Thoma This is what I was trying to say in The Old Deal is Broken, but Krugman says it so much better: Age of Anxiety, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Many eulogies were published following the recent death of Peter Drucker, ... however, ... few ... mentioned his book 'The Age of Discontinuity,' a prophetic work that speaks directly to today's ... economic anxieties. Mr. Drucker wrote 'The Age of Discontinuity' in the late 1960's, a time when most people assumed that the big corporations ... like General Motors and U.S. Steel would dominate the economy for the foreseeable future. He argued that this assumption was all wrong. It was true, he acknowledged, that the dominant industries ... of 1968 were pretty much the same as the dominant industries ... of 1945, and for that matter of decades earlier. ... But all of that, said Mr. Drucker, was about to change. New technologies would usher in an era of 'turbulence' ... and the dominance of the major industries ... of 1968 would soon come to an end. He was right. ... Many of the corporate giants of the 1960's ... have fallen on hard times, their places in the business hierarchy taken by new players. General Motors is only the most famous example. So what? ...: why does it matter if the list of leading corporations turns over every couple of decades, as long as the total number of jobs continues to grow? The answer is the reason Mr. Drucker's old book is so relevant...: corporations can't provide their workers with economic security if the companies' own future is highly insecure. American workers at big companies used to think they had made a deal. They would be loyal to their employers, and the companies in turn would be loyal to them, guaranteeing job security, health care and a dignified retirement. Such deals were, in a real sense, the basis of America's postwar social order. We like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists, not like those coddled Europeans with their oversized welfare states. But as Jacob Hacker of Yale points out in his book 'The Divided Welfare State,' if you add in corporate spending on health care and pensions ... we actually have a welfare state that's about as large relative to our economy as those of other advanced countries. ... [T]hose who don't work for companies with good benefits are, in effect, second-class citizens. Still, the system more or less worked for several decades after World War II. Now, however, deals are being broken ... What went wrong? An important part of the answer is that America's semi-privatized welfare state worked in the first place only because we had a stable corporate order. And that stability - along with any semblance of economic security for many workers - is now gone. Regular readers ... know what I think we should do: instead of trying to provide economic security through the back door, via tax breaks designed to encourage corporations to provide health care and pensions, we should provide it through the front door, starting with national health insurance. You may disagree. But one thing is clear: Mr. Drucker's age of discontinuity is also an age of anxiety, in which workers can no longer count on loyalty from their employers.

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 14:02:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 11/25/05 Australia 14.6 Canada 25.5 Denmark 16.9 France 7.1 Germany 5.6 Hong Kong 8.5 Japan 15.4 Netherlands 8.3 Norway 22.7 Sweden 5.3 Switzerland 15.7 UK 5.3

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 14:02:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 11/25/05 Australia 22.1 Canada 22.3 Denmark 35.9 France 24.1 Germany 22.4 Hong Kong 8.3 Japan 34.8 Netherlands 25.5 Norway 35.9 Sweden 27.9 Switzerland 34.2 UK 17.8

Subject: Demolition From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 13:15:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/opinion/25fri3.html November 25, 2005 Demolition By VERLYN KLINKENBORG Now that it's winter outside - wind chill in the single digits, ice and snow on the ground - I can feel again where the cold air leaks into this house. A couple of weeks ago, I began pulling apart the walls in the oldest part of the house, the mudroom and the laundry room. What I felt, as I worked, was a forensic hostility. The laundry room, for instance, had been built around the washer and dryer, making it impossible to replace them without taking the room apart. So I took the room apart. I found what appears to be the oldest beam in the house, dating, perhaps, back to the late 18th century. I found miles and miles of BX electrical cable. And I found the cold spots, which I am slowly plugging. Perhaps the most satisfying part of all of this has been burning the house from within. By the time I finished tearing out the laundry room, which was renovated sometime in the 1980's, there were stacks of scrap wood on the deck. I have enjoyed cutting them up and feeding them - nails and all - to the woodstove. I try to imagine the carpenter who framed in that room and its cupboards and closets and how solidly he did his job. He stinted nothing when it came to lumber and nails and, especially, screws. In the evening, lengths of his handiwork crackle in the fireplace. In the morning, those dry scraps get the woodstove roaring in no time. Behind all that work - all that Sheetrock - there is another house and another set of lives. When we reroofed the house a few years ago, the contractor reported that there had once been a serious chimney fire. The other day, I found its scars on an old log beam hidden above the false ceiling in the mudroom. I wish that the house were more articulate, or that I were better at hearing what it has to say. I can hear the most recent occupants pretty clearly - they obviously hated the thought of exposed wooden beams and brickwork. But the ones who lived here before them, all the way back to the first settlers, are nearly inaudible to me. I often marvel at the decisions the previous owners made. We have, for instance, enough wiring hidden in the walls for a commercial office building. I wonder who will marvel at the decisions that I'm making now. The trouble is that you can see only what remains - not what has been erased. When I'm finished with my work, an era in the life of this house will have vanished, gone up in smoke while keeping us warm. I'll rebuild, as best I can, from the bones of the house outward. Meanwhile, I get to burn the house from inside. Think of it as a controlled chimney fire. I add another 2 by 4 to the flames, and I imagine those terrible scenes from bitter wars and bitter winters - breaking up the furniture to keep warm. They say this will be a hard season coming. But what do they know?

Subject: Marketing Drug Plan Draw Complaints From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 13:14:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/national/27medicare.html November 27, 2005 Insurers' Tactics in Marketing Drug Plan Draw Complaints By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - Bush administration officials say they have received scores of complaints about the aggressive tactics used by some insurance companies and agents to market Medicare's new prescription drug benefit. The officials said they would take disciplinary action if they found that the tactics had broken federal rules. Possible violations reported to Medicare officials in the past few weeks include uninvited door-to-door solicitation of business and misrepresentation of insurance products. Federal and state officials said they had also received complaints that some insurance agents identified themselves as working for the Social Security Administration or the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In addition, they said, some insurance agents have asked beneficiaries for personal information like Social Security numbers and credit card or bank account numbers. 'These steps are illegal, totally inappropriate and unacceptable,' said Patricia P. Smith, who works with health plans as director of the Medicare Advantage Group at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. 'They not only endanger the beneficiary. They could endanger the program. This will draw the ire of people who are legitimately looking at the program to make sure beneficiaries are protected.' The federal government can take a range of compliance actions, like imposing a corrective action plan on an insurer or freezing its enrollment. States can fine insurance agents and suspend or revoke their licenses. Insurers are rushing into the Medicare market, offering drug coverage to 42 million people who are 65 and older or disabled. The new drug benefit is heavily subsidized by the federal government, but will be delivered by private health plans and insurers. Many of the insurers have little experience with Medicare. Marketing began on Oct. 1. The benefit takes effect on Jan. 1. Federal officials have issued rules and a 53,000-word set of guidelines for marketing the drug benefit. The guidelines allow use of insurance agents, including independent agents who represent more than one company, but stipulate that insurers are responsible for the conduct of their agents. Christopher Eisenberg, director of health plan accountability at the federal Medicare agency, said the federal government had received 'more than 100 complaints concerning misconduct by independent agents' marketing Medicare products. 'This is developing into a major compliance concern,' Mr. Eisenberg said, and 'it appears to be growing.' Part of the problem is that the federal government and the states share responsibility for regulating the sale and marketing of Medicare drug plans, and the division of labor is not always clear. Insurance agents are generally licensed and regulated by state government agencies. But the federal government regulates prescription drug plans and managed care plans, known as Medicare Advantage plans. When insurers sign contracts with Medicare, they promise to comply with all federal standards. In some cases, Mr. Eisenberg said, when the federal government tried to investigate complaints, insurers said they had little control over the agents. 'We are not receptive to that argument,' he said. In some circumstances, insurers offering the drug benefit, known as Part D of Medicare, can offer other types of insurance, as well as discounts on hearing aids, eyeglasses, health club memberships and general financial services. But state officials are leery of such sales activities, sometimes called cross selling. Christina Urias, director of the Arizona Insurance Department, said: 'By its very nature, the new Part D benefit is fundamentally confusing for the Medicare beneficiary. It is inappropriate to capitalize on that confusion with an offer or sale of other insurance products that may be unsuitable for that individual.' In a recent bulletin, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents state officials, reminded agents they were subject to state insurance laws prohibiting 'high-pressure sales tactics.' David G. Evans, senior vice president of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America, a trade group, said most agents adhered to the letter and spirit of the law. Agents, he said, play an important role, because they can help people understand the new drug benefit and can serve as their advocate in resolving claim disputes. Suzi Lenker, who coordinates insurance counseling for the Kansas Department on Aging, said that agents from several companies had tried to sell Medicare drug plans door to door in high-rise apartment buildings. 'We are still having problems with that,' she said Friday. Such activity appears to violate the Medicare guidelines, which say, 'Prescription drug plans shall not conduct door-to-door solicitation or marketing prior to receiving an invitation' to a beneficiary's home. Bonnie Burns of California Health Advocates, who trains state insurance counselors, said she had also heard that 'some insurance agents showed up at beneficiaries' homes, unannounced, and asked for personal information they were not supposed to ask for.' Federal officials said they were investigating reports that some agents had offered cash payments to Medicare beneficiaries as an inducement to enroll in a prescription drug plan or a managed care plan. The marketing guidelines prohibit 'cash inducements' and cash gifts. The new market is intensely competitive, and many insurers say they are making greater use of independent agents. Federal rules allow insurers to pay fees, or commissions, for sales of Medicare products. Regence Blue Shield, in Seattle, recently told insurance agents and brokers that the new Medicare program provided a 'new sales opportunity.' For sale of a free-standing drug plan, Regence said it was paying agents a commission of $48 a year. For a managed care product, which includes medical and drug coverage, the commission is $192 a year. Mr. Eisenberg, the Medicare official, said the federal government would exchange information with states and was drafting a list of 'best practices' for insurers and agents. For example, he said, insurance company managers might 'conduct on-the-job training for new agents by riding along with them to monitor their presentations to Medicare beneficiaries.' Since marketing began on Oct. 1, some insurance companies have accused their competitors of making grossly inaccurate or misleading statements in sales presentations. While the federal government investigates such complaints, the abuses sometimes persist, insurers said. Insurers and agents said the Medicare marketing rules were complex. Insurance companies cannot directly compare their plans with others by name. An insurer can say that its drug plan is approved by Medicare, but cannot say the plan is endorsed or recommended by Medicare.

Subject: A Good but Puzzling Drug Benefit From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 11:23:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/opinion/27sun1.html?ex=1290747600&en=6ee9cdb0e8ce8da3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 27, 2005 A Good but Puzzling Drug Benefit The enrollment period for Medicare's new prescription drug benefit opened this month amid complaints about its complexity, its drawbacks and its seemingly irrational structure. Many of the critics are right. But the new program is still an important new benefit - the largest expansion of Medicare in decades and a vital step to bringing Medicare into the modern era. The problems, while irksome, can be remedied later. It would have been a better plan if it had been drawn up by people who believed in government-supported health care and were actually willing to forgo other initiatives (like tax cuts) in order to pay for it. Instead, the Republican-controlled Congress produced an oddly shaped program whose most salient feature has been dubbed the 'doughnut hole.' All beneficiaries have their initial drug purchases covered (except for deductibles and co-payments) up to a specified limit. Then anyone with higher bills falls into the 'doughnut hole,' where there is no coverage and the beneficiary pays the full cost until reaching $3,600 out of pocket, at which point catastrophic coverage kicks in and pays most of the bill. That part of the plan makes no sense in terms of normal insurance principles. The doughnut hole was a device to keep costs from ballooning, and the broad but shallow initial coverage was intended to maximize political support. Still, the most important target population - the millions of Americans who previously had no drug coverage and the minority who have enormously high drug costs - should find the new program a boon. (Retirees and elderly workers currently covered by employer or union drug plans may want to stay put if they receive notices that their existing plans are as good or better than Medicare's.) The new program is also off to a surprisingly auspicious start from the viewpoint of the consumer. Far more insurance companies are participating than anyone dreamed likely and many are offering a wide variety of plans. The downside, of course, is that all that choice can be bewildering. Premiums can range from a few dollars a month for skimpy coverage to more than $100 a month, depending on the benefits desired. Plans differ in the drugs they cover; in premiums, deductibles and co-payments; and in the pharmacies they use. Many plans will even cover purchases in the doughnut hole, for generic drugs alone or for brand-name drugs as well, for an additional fee. The drawback is that such coverage does not count toward the out-of-pocket expenses required to qualify for catastrophic coverage. Those who estimate that their drug bills will reach into the doughnut hole but no further may want to buy the fill-in coverage. Those who think their bills might soar into the stratosphere may want to forgo the doughnut filler so as to reach catastrophic coverage quickly. All elderly Americans can use software on the Medicare Web site to help pick the best plan for them. Beneficiaries can type in such data as the drugs and dosages they use, the pharmacies they patronize, and the premiums and deductibles they would prefer. Presto, they get a list of plans that meet their criteria, the estimated annual cost of those plans, and, with another click of the mouse, suggestions on how to cut costs further by picking cheaper drugs. The Web site may be daunting to those who are inexperienced with the Internet, but it should offer their computer-savvy friends and advisers a valuable tool to sort through the options. No decision is irrevocable - beneficiaries can change plans once a year. If the drug coverage program is to meet the hopes of Republicans who believe that it should be based on private insurance policies, it will need to sign up legions of healthy people who do not use many drugs, to offset the cost of heavy users. Officials hope that the low monthly premiums for some plans and the financial penalties imposed on those who wait and sign up later than May 15 will bring lots of healthy people into the program at the start. If the insurance companies drop out, or if elderly voters become extremely aggravated by the doughnut hole, chances are that Congress will feel compelled to step in and improve the entire package. That was the assumption under which this page endorsed the program two years ago - as the first step toward meeting a vital modern need. By that standard, it's a promising beginning.

Subject: Athletes Get Into College From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 11:20:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/sports/ncaafootball/27school.html?ex=1290747600&en=7be09f00ca509a4e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 27, 2005 Poor Grades Aside, Athletes Get Into College on a $399 Diploma By PETE THAMEL and DUFF WILSON By the end of his junior year at Miami Killian High School, Demetrice Morley flashed the speed, size and talent of a top college football prospect. His classroom performance, however, failed to match his athletic skills. He received three F's that year and had a 2.09 grade point average in his core courses, giving him little hope of qualifying for a scholarship under National Collegiate Athletic Association guidelines. In December of his senior year, Morley led Killian to the 2004 state title while taking a full course load. He also took seven courses at University High School, a local correspondence school, scoring all A's and B's. He graduated that December, not from Killian but from University High. His grade point average in his core courses was 2.75, precisely what he wound up needing to qualify for a scholarship. Morley, now a freshman defensive back for the University of Tennessee, was one of at least 28 athletes who polished their grades at University High in the last two years. The New York Times identified 14 who had signed with 11 Division I football programs: Auburn, Central Florida, Colorado State, Florida, Florida State, Florida International, Rutgers, South Carolina State, South Florida, Tennessee and Temple. University High, which has no classes and no educational accreditation, appears to have offered the players little more than a speedy academic makeover - and illustrates that even as the N.C.A.A. presses for academic reforms, its loopholes are quickly recognized and exploited. In the case of University High, the athletes were grateful that its classes gave them an opportunity to qualify for college, although many acknowledged that they learned little. Lorenzo Ferguson, a second-year defensive back at Auburn, said he left Miami Southridge High School for University High, where after one month he had raised his average to 2.6 from 2.0. 'You take each course you failed in ninth or 10th grade,' he said. 'If it was applied math, you do them on the packets they give you. It didn't take that long. The answers were basically in the book.' The N.C.A.A. has allowed students to use correspondence school courses to meet eligibility requirements since 2000. That year, the N.C.A.A. also shifted the power to determine which classes count as core courses to high school administrators. In doing so, it essentially left schools to determine their own legitimacy. 'We're not the educational accreditation police,' Diane Dickman, the N.C.A.A.'s managing director for membership services, said in September. But last week, Myles Brand, president of the N.C.A.A., said he would form a group to examine issues involving correspondence courses and high school credentials. Brand acted partly in response to a letter sent on Nov. 2 from the Southeastern Conference that highlighted cases similar to Morley's and Ferguson's. The man who founded University High School and owned it until last year, Stanley J. Simmons, served 10 months in a federal prison camp from 1989 to 1990 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud for his involvement with a college diploma mill in Arizona. Among the activities Simmons acknowledged in court documents were awarding degrees without academic achievement and awarding degrees based on studies he was unqualified to evaluate. In interviews last week, he said he should never have pleaded guilty and that he operated legitimate correspondence schools for adults. In 2004, Simmons sold University High to Michael R. Kinney, its director. Kinney, 27, who was arrested for marijuana possession in 2003 and is wanted on a bench warrant, declined to comment, despite requests by phone, fax and visits to his apartment. Several University High graduates said they found the school through Antron Wright, a former XFL and Arena Football League player who is prominent in Miami's high school athletic circles. He is considered a savior by some players, but at least one principal has barred Wright from his building for luring athletes to a rival school and introducing them to University High. Miami has ideal conditions for academic-athletic exploitation. It is fertile recruiting ground: 38 players from Dade County were on N.F.L. rosters at the start of the 2004 season, more than any other county. Also, Florida's public schools require an exit examination for graduation, but private schools have no such requirement, and operate under a law that prohibits any state regulation. That allows University High to operate essentially unsupervised. Pat Herring, the interim admissions director at the University of Florida, looked into University High after admitting one of its graduates, Dane Guthrie, a former Killian tight end. 'We found that University High School was kind of a storefront operation,' Herring said. 'It didn't seem to have much in the way of an academic program.' While Florida officials were discussing whether to allow Guthrie to remain, he transferred to Arizona State. Other colleges that have admitted University High graduates say they know little about it. Auburn admitted Ferguson in 2004 and a fellow University graduate, Ulysses Alexander, this year. 'The bottom line is they were both qualifiers by the N.C.A.A.,' said Mark Richard, a senior associate athletic director at Auburn. A four-member academic panel at Tennessee admitted Morley after sending an athletic department official to Miami to investigate University High. Morley has thrived on the field at Tennessee, but Philip Simpson has stumbled at Temple. Simpson, a standout quarterback at Southridge High, said Wright had met with him and his parents and offered a sure alternative from high school to college, telling him: 'You either stay there and bust your behind and hope and pray that at the end you don't get short-handed. Or you can do this.' Simpson said his mother called the N.C.A.A. to check whether University High courses would be accepted. He said he graduated in three weeks by taking four classes, improving his average to 2.3 from 2.0. He now says he lacks the educational skills for college. For a basic math class at Temple, Simpson said, he studied at least three hours every day, got help from tutors and met regularly with the professor. He still did not score higher than 53 out of 100 on any test. Simpson said Temple ruled him academically ineligible to play. He watched this season from the sideline. A Quick Diploma University High School consists of two small rooms on the third floor of an office building wedged between a Starbucks and an animal hospital on Route 1 in south Miami. Inside are three desks, three employees and two framed posters from art museums on the wall. Promotional brochures say diplomas can be earned in four to six weeks, with open-book exams, no classes and no timed tests. A diploma costs $399, no matter how many courses. In paperwork filed with the state of Florida, the school says it has six teachers. None of the school's graduates interviewed, however, mentioned dealing with anyone besides Kinney, the current owner. John M. McLeod, a Miami-Dade Community College educator, is identified as the University High principal on a letter welcoming new students. McLeod said he met Simmons in the 1970's, but that he had no connection to University High. He said his signature had been copied. 'I've never seen this letter,' he said. 'I know nothing about University High School.' Simmons said he did not know why McLeod's signature was on the letter. Former students said in interviews that courses consisted of picking up work packets from University High and completing them at home. Grades they received on the packets counted the same on their transcripts as a yearlong high school course. 'If it was history, they had the story with the questions right next to it,' Simpson said. 'They were one-page stories. It wasn't really hard.' University High says its textbooks are the Essential Series from Research and Education Association of Piscataway, N.J., but their publisher describes them as study guides. 'You wouldn't describe them as textbooks,' Carl M. Fuchs, president of Research and Education, said. 'You would say they're more supplemental, but they can be used on their own. A textbook is certainly going to have a lot more text, a lot more information.' University High's literature claims it is accredited by the National Association for the Legal Support of Alternative Schools. The association's Web site says it is 'not meant to represent an evaluation and/or approval of the materials, teaching staff or educational philosophy employed by the applicant program.' It says 'only one standard is applied: consumer protection.' The Florida Department of Education's Web site lists accreditation for University High by the National Coalition of Alternative and Community Schools and by the Association of Christian Schools International. But the alternative schools coalition does not accredit high schools, and David Ray, the Florida regional director of the Christian schools association said, 'University was never accredited and has never sought accreditation with us.' To Some, a Second Chance Simmons said that he opened University High School in 2000 to serve adults and that in the first few years the average age of students was 36. Football players from public schools in poor neighborhoods began enrolling around March 2004, when University applied for membership to the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse, which determines if a student is eligible and can qualify for a scholarship. Several players said Wright led them to University High. Philip Simpson said that when he went to University to enroll, Kinney was expecting him because Wright had called. Ferguson and Simpson said they worked on their University High packets at Wright's apartment. Wright, 30, could relate to talented athletes with academic struggles, some of the players said. A former star at Southridge and Palmetto High Schools in Miami, he did not attend a Division I-A university because of poor grades, local players and coaches said. He graduated from junior college, then played two years at Division I-AA Bethune-Cookman. Wright later rooted himself in the Miami football community, serving as an assistant coach at three schools and as a substitute teacher at Dade County football powers. He developed a strong bond with his players. 'I thank God every time I step on the practice field for Tron,' said Keyon Brooks, a former Killian player and University High graduate now playing for South Carolina State. 'He got me here. He helped me succeed in life. I look at him as a role model.' Tavares Kendrick, a top-rated quarterback from Homestead High, credits Wright for helping him get to Florida International University, where he is a backup quarterback. Kendrick said his average improved to 3.0 from about 2.1 in about seven weeks by taking nine classes at University High. 'Antron is a great guy,' he said. 'He helps kids that have great talent but don't have the smarts for school.' Yet Wright is barred from Southridge, partly because he lured players to Killian and to University High. In January 2004, five football players left Southridge and later played crucial roles on Killian's state title team. 'He can't come into my building,' Carzell J. Morris, the principal at Southridge, said. 'Just for the fact he comes in and takes my kids out. Kids that could probably make it if they weren't looking for the easy way out.' Southridge Coach Rodney Hunter said Wright also encouraged Damaso Munoz, who is now at Rutgers, to leave for University High early this year. Thirteen of the 38 seniors on Killian's 2004 state title team did not graduate with their class. Many, including Morley and Brooks, wound up at University High. 'How legitimate is it?' Otis Collier, the athletic director at Killian, said about Morley's improvement at University. 'I don't know. I guess it's because of me. I probably should want to know, but I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything about it.' Wright declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this article. By transferring to University High, students can bypass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is mandatory for public school graduation, and focus on passing through the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse. N.C.A.A. minimum standards require the completion of 14 core courses. Grade-point average in those courses and standardized test scores are rated on a scale. Students with high averages can qualify with lower test scores and vice versa. For example, after Morley's junior year at Killian, a computer program used to project eligibility showed him graduating with about a 2.1 G.P.A., meaning he would need at least a 960 on the SAT. At University, he raised his average to 2.75, so his 720 SAT score was exactly what he needed to qualify. Although the standardized testing services flag suspicious jumps in scores, there is no similar alarm for grade-point averages that suddenly go up. Assuring the legitimacy of high school credentials is one reason Brand says he is forming the N.C.A.A. panel, which will make recommendations by June 1. 'We see the problem accelerating,' he said. 'We want to stop it as soon as possible.' Doing Something About It When Morley was preparing to enter college, Tennessee and the Southeastern Conference questioned his University High transcript. Brad Bertani, the associate athletic director for compliance at Tennessee, went to Miami to investigate. Bertani, who met with Simmons for three hours, said he determined that Morley had done his own work. But Bertani refused to comment on University High's curriculum. 'There's all kinds of schooling out there, whether you think it's legitimate or not,' Bertani said. 'That's for the admissions people at each school to evaluate.' Copies of Bertani's handwritten notes from the visit, obtained through a freedom of information request, say that there were no records of University's teachers and that no lab was required for the chemistry course for which Morley received a B. Tennessee's research showed that University High School sent transcripts from 28 athletes to the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse, according to documents obtained through the freedom of information request. Bertani also spent weeks investigating Morley's connection to Wright, who accompanied Morley on his recruiting trip to Knoxville and kept in contact with Trooper Taylor, an assistant football coach at Tennessee. Bertani said he found no improprieties with Wright or any connection between him and University High. Morley, who played defensive back and returned kicks this season, did not respond to repeated attempts for comment by e-mail and through Tennessee officials. His mother, Felicia Henry, demanded to know who had told a reporter he had attended University High and said she knew nothing about the school's academics. Morley took a full course load at Killian while playing football, along with seven other core courses - half the N.C.A.A. minimum for a high school career - at University. Transcripts obtained by The New York Times show he received four A's and three B's from University. At Killian, he received C's in English all four years, but he got an A in classical literature from University. Grades like that helped his G.P.A. in core courses improve to 2.75 from 2.09 from August to December. Three of the four members of Tennessee's admissions panel expressed reservations. 'I didn't see anything fraudulent or out of line,' Richard Baer, the dean of enrollment at Tennessee, said of his initial reaction to Morley's transcript. 'It looked like it could have been another student's transcript from another institution. I didn't see anything that struck me as saying: 'You know what? We need to look carefully at this.' ' The other panelists reacted differently. 'All of this was in my mind very, very questionable,' Anne Mayhew, the vice chancellor for academic affairs, said. Todd Diacon, the head of the history department, said, 'Anytime I see a transcript like a University High School, it concerns me.' Ruth Darling, an assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, said, 'I always had reservations about this type of school, if students are actually learning.' In the end, the panel never voted, accepting the transcript because the N.C.A.A. approved University High and Bertani found that Morley had done his own work there. But when told of Simmons's fraud conviction, Mayhew said Tennessee should have been more careful. 'I think we need to add a new layer of caution to deal with high school diploma mills,' she said. Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer lauded the university, pointing out that no other college had visited University High. 'I'm a Tennessee graduate as well,' he said. 'I want the university to be represented in the right way.' At What Cost a Degree? When describing his reasons for transferring to University High, Simpson recalled a Southridge basketball player with Division I potential who failed his last chance at Florida's mandatory graduation exam. 'I still remember to this day him walking around the hallways crying,' he said. 'He was ready to fight every principal and teacher in Miami.' That image stuck with him as he struggled academically. Simpson said he still has his ninth-grade report card showing a 0.6 grade point average. He said he relied heavily on others to do his work. 'The basic skills I'm supposed to have from way back then,' he said, 'none of them are there.' Mark Eyerly, Temple's chief communications officer, said, 'It is in the best interests of our students and of the university for us to offer admission to students whom we believe can succeed here academically.' Simpson said that his problems at Temple have made him more determined. As a freshman, Simpson played defensive end and made seven tackles for a 2-9 team. Temple completed an 0-11 season this month. When his football career ends, he said, he sees himself in only one place. 'I believe that my fate is to go back to Miami and change things,' he said. 'My job is to go into school systems like Miami and be a coach and teach kids right from wrong.'

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 05:54:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 11/25/05 S&P Index is 6.3 Large Cap Growth Index is 6.9 Large Cap Value Index is 8.0 Mid Cap Index is 13.8 Small Cap Index is 8.5 Small Cap Value Index is 7.5 Europe Index is 6.1 Pacific Index is 14.6 Energy is 43.3 Health Care is 12.9 Precious Metals 36.5 REIT Index is 13.3 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 1.4 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 3.3

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 05:53:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 11/25/05 Energy 40.9 Financials 7.9 Health Care 6.9 Info Tech 5.9 Materials 1.4 REITs 13.4 Telecoms 4.6 Utilities 15.2

Subject: The Strong Dollar From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 16:32:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Beyond the rightfully constructed institutional warnings about American international debt, there is no reflection at all of the warnings in international markets. This is a superb year in international stock markets. Real estate is holding. Bonds are moderately weak. The dollar is strong everywhere.

Subject: Following the Trend From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 17:48:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I wish I could reconcile what I know are legitimate economic worries and wonderful stock market, but I cannot. So, I follow the trend.

Subject: When the s... hits the fan.... From: Poyetas To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 14:31:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: From the IMF: 'World Economic Outlook Building Institutions September 2005' ' Looking ahead, the support to the U.S. current account from income flows is likely to erode rapidly—indeed, the IMF staff projects that the U.S. international income position will move into deficit later this year. Rising global interest rates will raise the deficit on income flows from debt instruments, a trend reinforced by continuing increases in the net foreign liabilities from large U.S. current account deficits. With about equal contributions from interest rate and debt increases, this could reduce the net income balance of the United States by about 1 percent of GDP in coming years, putting downward pressure on the current account and exchange rate.'

Subject: Rise in Gases Unmatched From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 09:08:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/science/earth/25core.html?ex=1290574800&en=d5078e33050b2b0c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 25, 2005 Rise in Gases Unmatched by a History in Ancient Ice By ANDREW C. REVKIN Shafts of ancient ice pulled from Antarctica's frozen depths show that for at least 650,000 years three important heat-trapping greenhouse gases never reached recent atmospheric levels caused by human activities, scientists are reporting today. The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels. The sampling and analysis were done by the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the results are being published today in the journal Science. The evidence was found in air bubbles trapped in successively older ice samples extracted from a nearly two-mile-deep hole drilled in a remote spot in East Antarctica called Dome C. Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate. Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory. The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years. 'They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have,' said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. 'We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time.' James White, a geology professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, not involved with the study, said that although the ice-age evidence showed that levels of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases rose and fell in response to warming and cooling, the gases could clearly take the lead as well. 'CO2 and climate are like two people handcuffed to each other,' he said. 'Where one goes, the other must follow. Leadership may change, or they may march in step, but they are never far from each other. Our current CO2 levels appear to be far out of balance with climate when viewed through these results, reinforcing the idea that we have significant modern warming to go.' The new data from the ice cores also provides the first detailed portrait of conditions during ice-age cycles that occurred more than 400,000 years ago - a point in Earth's two-million-year history of cold periods and warm intervals after which some unknown influence lengthened ice ages and shortened and amplified the warm periods. Both before and after that transition, the ice record shows, there was always a tight relationship between amounts of the greenhouse gases and air temperature. While the overall climate pattern has been set by rhythmic variations in Earth's orientation to the Sun, the records show that carbon dioxide and methane consistently made the interglacial climate warmer than it would otherwise have been, said Thomas Stocker, one of the researchers and a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland. Last year, the same cores provided new evidence that the current warm period, the Holocene, which began about 12,000 years ago, is similar to the longer warm periods that were typical before 400,000 years ago, and could last at least another 16,000 years. The European team is analyzing deeper, older sections of the Dome C ice cores, and the researchers said they might be able to take the climate record back 800,000 years, possibly providing information about yet another early warm interval similar to the Holocene. The new long-term record is essentially creating a subset of climate science, letting scientists compare different warm periods. They can then sort out influences, including greenhouse gases, said Gavin A. Schmidt, a climate modeler at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan.

Subject: The Passion of Henry James From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 07:33:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E7DC1430F933A15755C0A9629C8B63&fta=y June 20, 2004 The Passion of Henry James By DANIEL MENDELSOHN THE MASTER By Colm Toibin. For a while, during the Gay Nineties of their respective centuries, the American writer Henry James and the Irish writer Colm Toibin -- whose remarkable new novel is about James -- were faced with the same embarrassing problem. It was a problem that touched both their personal and professional lives; to both writers, it seemed to be a problem that fiction alone could solve. Early in 1895, James had been asked by his friend Mrs. Daniel Sargent Curtis, a great American hostess who lived in a great Venetian palazzo, to write an appreciation of the writer John Addington Symonds, the aesthete, Italophile and early crusader for the rights of homosexuals, who had died a couple of years before. Mrs. Curtis had appealed to James not out of any awareness (or, at least, any conscious awareness) of his deeply submerged sexuality, but rather because James and Symonds famously had another passion in common: Italy. (More than a decade earlier, he had sent to Symonds a copy of an essay he'd written about Venice, with a note declaring -- the phrasing strikes us now as almost comically suggestive -- that ''it seemed to me that the victim of a common passion should sometimes exchange a look.'') In his reply to Mrs. Curtis, James was careful to distance himself from that other, unmentionable, passion, what he called Symonds's ''strangely morbid and hysterical nature,'' even as he acknowledged that to write about the dead author without referring to it would be ''an affectation; and yet to deal with it either ironically or explicitly would be a Problem -- a problem beyond me.'' But the subject matter that was an insoluble problem for James the critic and essayist had already proved to be a godsend to James the master of fiction. In his notebook entry for March 26, 1884, James, who was fascinated by gossip about Symonds's unhappy marriage to a prim woman who detested his writings, wrote down the framework of a short story about a similarly unhappy couple: ''the narrow, cold, Calvinistic wife, a rigid moralist, and the husband impregnated -- even to morbidness -- with the spirit of Italy, the love of Beauty, of art, the aesthetic view of life.'' A few months later, James published the short story ''The Author of 'Beltraffio,' '' a small masterpiece of delicate luridness in which the conflict between the aesthete (whose book, like Symonds's essay in defense of homosexuality, had provoked a scandal) and his disapproving wife for possession of their small, ''extraordinarily beautiful'' son ends with the mother allowing the boy to die rather than belong to his father. Almost exactly a century after James, acting out of a profound discomfort at the possibility of self-exposure, turned down the occasion to write explicitly about homosexuality, the Irish journalist and novelist Colm Toibin did more or less the same thing, for more or less the same reasons. In the preface to the British edition of his 2001 collection of essays about gay writers and artists, ''Love in a Dark Time: And Other Explorations of Gay Lives and Literature,'' Toibin describes how he recoiled after being invited in 1993 by an editor at The London Review of Books to write about his homosexuality: ''I told him instantly that I couldn't do that,'' Toibin recalls. ''My sexuality . . . was something about which part of me remained uneasy, timid and melancholy. . . . I told him I couldn't do it. I had nothing polemical and personal, or even long and serious to say on the subject.'' Not to be discouraged, the editor simply resorted to another method of -- the language is suggestive -- ''enticing'' Toibin: he started sending him books by or about gay writers, some of which Toibin found ''too interesting to resist.'' Because of his own timidity and melancholy, he goes on to say, the figures to whom he was attracted were not contemporary authors like Edmund White and Jeanette Winterson, ''whose novels had done so much to clear the air and make things easier for gay people,'' but rather ''other figures from an earlier time, whose legacy was ambiguous, who had suffered for their homosexuality.'' And yet the writer from an earlier time whose legacy is, famously, perhaps the most ambiguous of all with respect to the vexed issue of secret sexuality, of how the ''silence and fear'' can affect an artist's life and work, is the one artist whom Toibin chose not to include in his collection. This is not to say that Henry James isn't present in ''Love in a Dark Time'': a large part of the introductory chapter is, in fact, devoted to James. But for Toibin, he stands as the negative example -- a figure who, because of his self-repression, not only didn't have a ''gay life,'' but had no life at all. At the end of a discussion of James's great story ''The Beast in the Jungle'' (1903), which is about a man who spends his life convinced that some ''rare and strange, possibly prodigious and terrible'' destiny awaits him, only to realize that he's missed what life has had to offer while he's been waiting, Toibin argues that the story ''becomes much darker when you know about James's life. . . . You realize that the catastrophe the story led you to expect was in fact the very life that James chose to live, or was forced to live. . . . In 'The Beast in the Jungle,' James's solitary existence is shown in its most frightening manifestation: a life of pure coldness.'' For Toibin, this coldness, this evasiveness, cripples rather than enhances notoriously ambiguous works like ''The Author of 'Beltraffio,' '' whose coded implications of unnamed moral dangers he finds frustrating rather than (as with many readers and critics) tantalizing. James, he writes, ''left himself with no opportunity to dramatize the scene he imagined since he could not even make it clear.'' This failure to be clear seems to have frustrated Toibin when he was preparing ''Love in a Dark Time,'' and so he didn't include James in the collection itself. For him, it would seem, James as both a man and an artist was something prodigious and terrible -- something, in a word, of ''a Problem.'' It now appears that the problem Toibin couldn't solve in nonfiction prose is one he, like James, has labored to resolve in a work of fiction: ''The Master.'' (The title refers to the nickname that the rather overpoweringly impressive and oracular James acquired from a reverential younger generation; it should be said at the outset that Toibin's novel, with its crisp, almost tactile scene-setting, is anything but overpowering or heavy in the way many people think James's work is.) As with James in ''Beltraffio'' and, indeed, ''The Beast in the Jungle,'' Toibin in ''The Master'' has grafted a novelist's imaginative sympathy and human insight onto the armature of real-life events. As with James, the result is both aesthetically and psychologically potent -- and weakened only, perhaps, by certain limitations that tell us more about the author than they do about his ostensible subject, which in this case is, in fact, the ''pure coldness'' that for Toibin was James's life. Whatever Toibin's literary-critical and ideological interest in James, ''The Master'' is unquestionably the work of a first-rate novelist -- one who has for the past decade been writing excellent novels about people cut off from their feelings or families or both. Of these, ''The Blackwater Lightship'' -- a finalist for the Booker Prize that was made into a film for television earlier this year -- is the best known, although ''The Heather Blazing'' (1992), whose protagonist is an emotionally remote Irish judge, has best expressed Toibin's preoccupation with the theme of tragic lack of self-awareness -- at least until now. Like some of the earlier novels, ''The Master'' seeks to build its portrait of an emotionally hobbled person by moving back and forth between a crisis in the character's present to illuminating episodes from his past. In the new novel, the present consists of the ''treacherous years'' in England (so described by Leon Edel, James's greatest biographer), from January 1895, the month when ''Guy Domville,'' the historical drama in which James had placed his hopes for commercial success, resoundingly flopped, to October 1899, when James's competitive older brother, the philosopher William James, came with his family for an extended visit. (This reunion results in a final, poignant illumination of the ''coldness'' at the heart of James's writing.) In each of the novel's 11 chapters, some incident triggers a memory in Henry -- as Toibin refers to James throughout -- and this oscillation between past and present allows the author to paint a detailed portrait not only of the claustrophobic anxiety of the late 1890's (not least the paranoia engendered by the trial of Oscar Wilde) but also the whole of James's life, from his supremely privileged Yankee childhood to his Atlantic-hopping young manhood right up until his late middle age, a period of crisis that turned out to be the threshold of his richest, densest work: ''The Ambassadors,'' ''The Wings of the Dove,'' ''The Golden Bowl.'' Toibin, of course, has more on his mind than just painting a novelistic portrait of Henry James. What he seeks to illuminate is the opacity, the failure of passion, that he sees at the core of James's work, as well as of his life. In each chapter, the present-day incidents and the memories they evoke are linked ingeniously to the genesis of Henry's art. There is, for instance, a scene that takes place early on in ''The Master'' in which Henry listens attentively to a remark made by the archbishop of Canterbury's son, about a pair of children he'd once heard of, abandoned on an old estate; this was, in fact, the real-life genesis of ''The Turn of the Screw.'' Toibin faithfully recreates this scene, but makes it the stimulus to a flashback about Henry's early life, his invalid sister Alice and their childhood see-sawing between Europe and America. For Toibin, this was the beginning of James's ''coldness'' as well as of Alice's hysterical hypochondria. ''Both of them,'' Toibin's Henry muses, ''had somehow been abandoned as their family toured Europe and returned, often for no reason, to America. They had never been fully included in the passion of events and places, becoming watchers and nonparticipants.'' Even as Henry realizes he failed Alice, now dead, he sees how she might become part of the story he has begun thinking about: ''Now, as he began to imagine a little girl, it was his sister's unquiet ghost which came to him.'' Similarly, a visit from Henry's boyhood acquaintance Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. leads to recollections of his cousin, the pretty and spirited Minny Temple, whose early death traumatized not only James but many other young men of his circle, including Holmes and the Harvard jurist John Gray. By the 1890's, James had already reincarnated her as Isabel Archer in ''The Portrait of a Lady,'' and a decade later would summon her once again from the dead, even more powerfully, as Milly Theale in ''The Wings of the Dove.'' A post-Civil War idyll in the countryside, peopled by Minny and Henry and the other youths, is beautifully evoked by Toibin in the course of a long and richly detailed section of the book that captures the lost Minny -- surely one of the most important if unwitting muses of 19th-century fiction -- far better than any biographer has been able to do. Here again, we see the process by which sentimental memory is alchemized into art in James's ever-churning mind: ''During the time since Holmes's visit and in the midst of all his worry and suffering, his interest in the picture of a young American woman slowly dying, which he had noted down, had intensified. It was the story of a young woman with a large fortune on the threshold of a life that seemed boundless in its possibilities.'' And so ''The Master'' proceeds, wending its delicate way between the middle and end of the 19th century, offering rich, darting, almost impressionistic glimpses of the moments of James's life that made him the ''Master.'' The most extended, and most tragic, of these shimmering episodes is, inevitably, the flashback to James's friendship with the novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson. A grandniece of James Fenimore Cooper and a woman of great intelligence and uncommon independence of mind and habit, Woolson was in many ways James's most intimate friend; her suicide in 1894, in Venice, could well have been the result of his inability to respond to her desire for a greater intimacy. (She killed herself during a particularly bleak Venice winter after it became clear that James wasn't going to be joining her there, as he indicated he might.) As Colm Toibin's Henry James faces the 20th century, it is clear he must come to terms with the losses, and failures, of the 19th; the author's evocation of an artist confronting his inadequacies as a man is, for much of the novel, delicate, complex and moving. ''The Master'' is not, of course, a novel about just any man, but rather a novel about a figure from the past about whom we know an extraordinarily great deal, through both his own and others' memoirs, books and letters. As Toibin well knows, ventriloquizing the past is a dangerous affair for a novelist who wants to be taken seriously: just to remind you, he has an indignant Henry tell his supercilious and critical brother (who has suggested he write a novel about the Puritans) that he views ''the historical novel as tainted by a fatal cheapness.'' Toibin himself gets around this pitfall in two ways. First, he avoids the obvious trap of trying to make his Henry James sound Jamesian: to try to ''do'' James would inevitably end up sounding comical (see, for instance, Gore Vidal's hilarious sendup of James in his historical novel ''Empire''). From this novel's haunted and haunting first line -- ''Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead'' -- ''The Master'' is wholly of the present, and stylistically belongs to Toibin alone, who achieves a new level of terse economy both in his descriptive passages and particularly in the dialogue. Everything you need to know about James's disdain for Oscar Wilde (whom, predictably, he detested: a ''fatuous cad,'' he told Henry Adams's wife, Clover) is summed up in his remark about Wilde's mother, who was said to be jubilant about his trial: ''It is difficult to imagine him having a mother.'' The ''fatal cheapness'' of many historical novels lies in the way they show off their own hard-won verisimilitude, as overrich detail congests the narrative. Of meticulous detail ''The Master'' lacks none: nearly every page bears witness to a prodigious amount of research, from passing references to the appearances of James's room in Mrs. Curtis's palazzo, with its ''pompous painted ceiling and walls of ancient pale green damask slightly shredded and patched'' -- almost a verbatim quotation of James, as it happens -- to the way Henry complains to himself, after the failure of ''Guy Domville,'' that he'd failed to ''take the measure of the great flat foot of the public'' -- another verbatim quotation. And yet while this dazzling embedding of bona fide Jamesian nuggets throughout his narrative will delight James scholars, they never obtrude into the smooth and elegant flow of the novel's movement. (Toibin's major departure from the known facts is temporal: a number of events that occurred after 1900 are shepherded into the preceding decade.) The deft wielding of the facts by (as it were) Toibin the journalist and critic would be mere window dressing without the acute psychological perceptiveness that informs the author's portrait of his subject. This intelligent sense of the bigger picture enables Toibin to come up with sensible solutions to some famous conundrums in James scholarship. I am not as persuaded as Toibin was by the assertion, in Sheldon M. Novick's 1996 biography, ''Henry James: The Young Master,'' that the young James had a homosexual affair with Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. when Holmes returned from the Civil War -- a scenario supported in Novick's book by a reading of the existing documentary evidence that has the same relationship to rigorous scholarship that ''A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'' does to high-resolution digital photographs. (Much hangs on a Freudian reading of an allusion to an ''obelisk'' that occurs in proximity to a description of the Holmes residence.) Toibin, however, finds the story ''oddly convincing'' -- and indeed makes it much more convincing in his novel, where it provides a scene of almost unbearable tension between the two young men, the one blandly curious, the other immobile with a desire he is too terrified to act on. (Or perhaps not: it seems entirely Jamesian to be in the presence of a scene that you can read again and again without being able to determine just what, if anything, has happened.) What's important is the way Toibin the novelist uses such scenes to suggest the sources of James's distinct artistic consciousness -- to show why he is the father of the psychological novel: ''He wondered at how, every day, as they moved around each other, each of them had stored away an entirely private world to which they could return at the sound of a name, or for no reason at all.'' ''The Master'' will inevitably be compared to another recent novel -- ''The Hours,'' by Michael Cunningham, which was, at least in part, about Virginia Woolf as she set out to write ''Mrs. Dalloway.'' But Toibin's book is concerned less with the creation of a single work than with something at once much bigger and much more elusive: the nature of an entire artistic consciousness (and a very great consciousness at that). Here is where ''The Master'' is both most suggestive and most problematic. For as you make your way through ''The Master,'' with its impressionistic ambling between past and present, a distinctive and perhaps too repetitive pattern begins to emerge: each memory that is triggered or captured may lead to the creation of a work of literature by Henry the artist, but each memory tends also to lead you to a scene of moral failure on the part of Henry the man. There's a passage early on in which the young Henry, working up one of his first short stories, uses an incident from his home life and is enthralled by the ''feeling of power'' that a ''raid on his own memories'' can produce when they are transformed into art; but this kind of artistic parasitism is increasingly held up to ruthless scrutiny -- and judgment -- by both the author and his characters. One friend suggests quite blatantly that Henry's shrinking from Constance Woolson drove her to self-destruction; Henry's use of the Symonds marriage as fodder for ''The Author of 'Beltraffio' '' shocks another friend, the writer Edmund Gosse. ''He insisted that writing a story using factual material and real people was dishonest and strange and somehow underhand.'' And Holmes flatly accuses Henry of responsibility for Minny Temple's death. (She'd hinted that she'd have loved to join him for a healthful vacation abroad, but he didn't respond.) By the end, remembering Minny, Henry shocks even himself. ''He felt a sharp and unbearable idea staring at him, like something alive and fierce and predatory in the air, whispering to him that he had preferred her dead rather than alive, that he had known what to do with her once life was taken from her, but he had denied her when she asked him gently for help.'' This emphasis on James's alleged responsibility for Minny's death is, as it happens, one of Toibin's rare departures from the documentary record about James's life: although he cites part of a letter that the real-life Minny wrote to James (''Think, my dear, of the pleasure we would have together in Rome''), he doesn't cite the postscript she added, in which it's clear she knows her fantasy of traveling with him in Europe was just that: ''I am really not strong enough to go abroad with even the kindest of friends.'' Toibin can't acknowledge that James may have been ''the kindest of friends,'' because it interferes with his larger vision of James the cold fish, the artistic vampire living off the lifeblood of his innocent and truly suffering victims. ''The Master'' is, of course, a novel, and Toibin isn't bound by the facts; but the way that he's loaded the dice against James here suggests what is, to my mind, a larger failure of sympathy. This is strange, because sympathy is something Toibin the critic, the chronicler of gay lives, has thought a great deal about. ''The gay past is not pure,'' he writes in ''Love in a Dark Time,'' referring to the way in which the homosexuals of an earlier generation were forced to lead double, lying lives. ''It is duplicitous and slippery, and it requires a great deal of sympathy and understanding.'' But ''The Master,'' Toibin's fifth novel, made me wonder whether he fully understands only a certain kind of suffering, and has only a certain kind of sympathy. For Oscar Wilde, with his extravagant public sufferings and real physical abasement, for the scholar F. O. Matthiessen, with his tortured closetedness and eventual suicide, Toibin -- who has acknowledged what he feels is the ''abiding fascination of sadness . . . and, indeed, tragedy'' -- clearly has great sympathy in his essays. And it is for this 19th-century, operatic sympathy that he has sympathy in the new novel, too: Minny and Constance and Alice James, with their Pucciniesque sufferings, their illnesses, premature death and suicide. But it may be that Toibin's very nature, his own fascination with high tragedy and his admirably fierce moral objection to the kind of secretiveness and closetedness that once ravaged him, as it did so many of us, makes him unable to get to the deep opaque heart of Henry James -- the elusive and frustrating thing that got him going about James in the first place. It's possible that James just didn't suffer in the way Toibin understands suffering. From everything we know, he was indeed quite a happy person (by his own standards, rather than ours) for most of his life -- productive, sociable, well loved and remarkably kind. And, of course, a very great artist for whom art was the highest satisfaction. Yet Toibin never explores what it might feel like to be satisfied by art alone in the way that most of us want to be satisfied by love and sex; he just keeps showing you the damage that art causes without really suggesting what its compensatory value might be -- for James or, indeed, for us. There is an early story of James's in which a young American asks himself whether ''it is better to cultivate an art than to cultivate a passion''; for James in real life, at least, it seems clear what the answer was -- just as it seems clear what Toibin thinks, too. The last page of ''The Master'' provides one final memory, one final illumination of why James was ''cold,'' why for him there was a kind of emotion in art that nothing in ''life'' could match. A closing image of the lone artist, anxiously culling moments from life to be preserved in art, is meant, I suspect, to come off as melancholy, if not tragic. But what if James wasn't tragic? That a life without passion as we think of it could still be a fulfilled life is one paradox that Toibin's artful, moving and very beautiful novel doesn't seem to have considered; and so he does not dramatize it because it isn't clear to him. What we get in ''The Master'' is, instead, the intricate and wrenching drama of James's ''victims.'' The Master himself remains, ultimately, unknowable -- a problem that perhaps no artist could ever solve.

Subject: Che's Second Coming? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 07:26:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/magazine/20bolivia.html?ex=1290142800&en=05015e3631998feb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 Che's Second Coming? By DAVID RIEFF The Bolivian Congress is an ornate building in the Spanish Colonial style. It is also a study in cognitive dissonance. Located on the Plaza Murillo, one of the central squares of Bolivia's main city, La Paz, it is flanked by the Presidential Palace, the Cathedral and the mausoleum of Bolivia's second president, Andrés Santa Cruz, who fought alongside Simón Bolívar. Around these decorous buildings, soldiers in red pseudo-19th-century uniforms stand at attention or march ceremoniously from point to point. Were it not for the fact that most of these young recruits have the broad Indian faces of the Andean altiplano, or high plains, and that those gawking at them in the square are also themselves mostly indigenous, it would be easy to become confused and believe you were in some remote corner of Europe, albeit the Europe of a century ago. Inside the Congress, this effect is, if anything, even stronger: marble floors, waiters wearing white shirts and black bow ties, photos on the walls in the office wing of the building, many now yellowing with age, that show previous generations of congressmen among whom there is barely an Indian face to be seen. The burden of this faux-Europeanness seems overwhelming, until, that is, you walk down one of the main corridors and, at its end, find yourself confronted with an enormous, colorized, Madonna-like image of Ernesto (Che) Guevara, Fidel Castro's comrade in arms, the archrevolutionary who died 38 years ago in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes trying to bring a Marxist revolution to Bolivia, then as now the poorest and most racially polarized country in South America. 'This is a sanctuary to El Che,' says Gustavo Torrico, an influential congressman from the radical MAS party, gesturing around his office. (Though mas literally means 'more,' the Spanish acronym stands for 'Movement Toward Socialism.') There are not just a few pictures of Che; there are literally dozens of them, big, small and in between: Che with Castro, Che in the field, Che with his daughter in his arms, smiling, smoking, exhorting. The effect is overwhelming. And yet, in Bolivia these days, Che's image is hardly restricted to the office of a few leftist politicians. To the contrary, it is everywhere. It stares down at you from offices and murals on city walls of La Paz and of Bolivia's second-largest city, Cochabamba, in working-class districts and slum communities and university precincts. In Bolivia, Che's image is not a fashion statement, as it is in Western Europe. When you see people wearing Che T-shirts, or sporting buttons with the martyred revolutionary's face, they are in deadly earnest. In Bolivia, only images of the Virgin Mary are more ubiquitous, and even then it's a close-run thing. 'Why do I like Che?' Evo Morales, MAS's leader and presidential candidate, said in response to my question, looking as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Morales is the first full-blooded Aymara, Bolivia's dominant ethnic group, to make a serious run for the presidency, which is in itself testimony to the extraordinary marginalization that Bolivian citizens of pure Indian descent, who make up more than half of the population, have endured since 1825, when an independent Bolivia was established. 'I like Che because he fought for equality, for justice,' Morales told me. 'He did not just care for ordinary people; he made their struggle his own.' We were sitting in his office in Cochabamba, a building in a condition somewhere between Spartan and derelict that Morales uses as a headquarters when he is in the city but that normally serves as the headquarters of the cocaleros, the coca-leaf growers from the country's remote, lush Chapare region. Morales started in politics as the leader of these cocaleros, and he has pledged that if he wins the presidential election scheduled for Dec. 18, one of his first acts will be to eliminate all penalties for the cultivation of coca, the raw ingredient in cocaine. Unlike Che, who was a kind of revolutionary soldier of fortune, Morales does not have to adopt the revolutionary cause of Bolivia. He was born into it 46 years ago, in a tin-mining town in the district of Oruro, high in the Bolivian altiplano. Morales's family history is similar to that of many mining families who lost their jobs in the 1970's and 1980's, when the mines closed, and migrated to the Bolivian lowlands to become farmers, above all of coca leaf. (Limited cultivation of coca in certain indigenous regions is legal in Bolivia, and the cocaleros insist that the coca they grow is used only for 'cultural purposes,' but the Bolivian government and American drug-enforcement officials say that as much as 90 percent of the coca in Morales's home region, Chapare, makes its way into the international cocaine trade.) As an adolescent and a young man, Morales was a coca farmer, but his political work on behalf of the cocaleros soon propelled him into the leadership of a coalition of radical social movements that constitute the base of the MAS party. How seriously to take Morales's tough talk about drug 'depenalization' and nationalization of natural resources - oil, gas and the mines - is the great question in Bolivian politics today. Many Bolivian observers say they believe that MAS is nowhere near as radical as its rhetoric makes it appear. They note that conservative opponents of Brazil's current leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, also predicted disaster were he to be elected, but that in office Lula has proved to be a moderate social democrat. And MAS's program is certainly much more moderate than many of its supporters would like. Washington, however, is not reassured. Administration officials are reluctant to speak on the record about Morales (the State Department and Pentagon press offices did not reply to repeated requests for an interview), but in private they link him both to narco-trafficking and to the two most militant Latin American leaders: Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist populist military strongman, and Fidel Castro. Rogelio (Roger) Pardo-Maurer IV, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs and a senior adviser to Donald Rumsfeld on Latin America, said in a talk last summer at the Hudson Institute in Washington, 'You have a revolution going on in Bolivia, a revolution that potentially could have consequences as far-reaching as the Cuban revolution of 1959.' What is going on in Bolivia today, he told his audience, 'could have repercussions in Latin America and elsewhere that you could be dealing with for the rest of your lives.' And, he added, in Bolivia, 'Che Guevara sought to ignite a war based on igniting a peasant revolution.. . .This project is back.' This time, Pardo-Maurer concluded, 'urban rage and ethnic resentments have combined into a force that is seeking to change Bolivia.' Morales has become almost as much of a bugbear to the Bush administration and many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle as Chávez or Castro. And for his part, Morales seems to revel in the role. At the summit meeting of the Organization of American States held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, earlier this month, he appeared with Chávez at a huge anti-American and anti-globalization rally just before the meetings began. The two men spoke in front of a huge image of Che Guevara. This is symbolic politics, but it is more than that too. The left is undergoing an extraordinary rebirth throughout the continent; Castro's survival, Chávez's rise, the prospect that the next president of Mexico will be Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist mayor of Mexico City, and the stunning trajectory of Morales himself all testify to that fact. Pardo-Maurer is right that Morales's success reflects both Bolivia's current dire economic conditions and the perception of the indigenous majority that it is finally their time to come to power. But it is also a product of the wider popular mood in Bolivia and, for that matter, in much of contemporary Latin America. For most Bolivians, globalization, or what they commonly refer to as neoliberalism, has failed so utterly to deliver the promised prosperity that some Bolivian commentators I met insisted that what is astonishing is not the radicalization of the population but rather the fact that this radicalization took as long as it did. Bolivia often seems now like a country on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Every day, peasants or housewives or the unemployed erect hundreds of makeshift roadblocks to protest shortages of fuel (a particularly galling affront in a country with vast hydrocarbon resources) or to demand increased subsidies for education or to air any of the dozens of issues that have aroused popular anger. The language of these protests is insistently, defiantly leftist, with ritual denunciations of multinational corporations, of the United States and of the old Bolivian elite, who are white, mostly descendants of Spanish and German settlers. Two presidents were chased out of office in the last two years by popular protests made up largely of MAS supporters: first Gonazalo Sánchez de Losada, then Carlos Mesa. (Since Mesa's government fell in June, the country has been run by a caretaker government overseen by a former chief justice of the supreme court.) What distinguishes the situation in Bolivia from that of some of its neighbors is the way that ethnic politics and leftist politics have fused. It is this hybrid movement that Morales has led with such popular success. The hopes of many indigenous Bolivians are now incarnated in Morales's candidacy, and even many members of the old elite, including former President Sánchez de Losada, seem to believe that if he wins, Morales must be given the opportunity to rule. When you meet him in person or read transcripts of his speeches, Morales seems like an unlikely vessel for these hopes. Whatever his gifts as an activist, and despite his obvious commitment to his cause, to an outsider, at least, he seems too young, too naïve, too provincial to serve as president of Bolivia. And when he talks of depenalizing coca production, as he often does, and insists that there will be nonnarcotic markets for coca leaf in China and Europe, it is hard to know whether he is simply being loyal to the cocalero constituency that first propelled him to prominence or whether he sincerely believes what he is saying. Certainly, such statements have played into the hands of his political enemies within Bolivia and abroad, who routinely accuse him of being in the pay of narco-traffickers - a charge Morales angrily denies and for which no concrete proof has ever been offered. One of Morales's supporters told me, 'Evo is a desconfiado, a man who tends to mistrust people until they show him a reason to think otherwise.' That, along with the naiveté, is certainly the impression he gives. And yet surrounded by his supporters, visibly basking in their affection - an affection that often seems to border on devotion - Morales, or Evo, as almost everyone in Bolivia calls him, is a man transformed, a natural orator with extraordinary charisma. It is worrisome to think what the reaction in poor urban neighborhoods and in the altiplano will be if Morales does not become Bolivia's president. Certainly, the candidate is starting to behave as if the office will soon be his. A telltale sign of this is the way Morales and MAS, while not repudiating previous statements about the changes they want to make in the Bolivian economy, seem to be leaving the door open to a more moderate approach. Increasingly in speeches and interviews, Morales has taken to emphasizing that when, for example, he speaks of nationalization, he is mainly speaking of Bolivia's reassertion of sovereignty over its natural resources and of partnership with multinational corporations, not, à la Fidel Castro, of the systematic expropriation of the multinationals' interests in Bolivia. Morales commented to me that 'Brazil is an interesting model' for cooperation between the state and the private sector, and, he added, 'so is China.' Only on the depenalization of coca production does he remain absolutely adamant and defiant, and in this, it must be said, he enjoys considerable popular support among not just the coca growers but also many Bolivians who believe that the cocaine problem should be addressed principally on the demand side, in the United States and Europe. A popular T-shirt in the markets of La Paz reads, 'Coca leaf is not a drug.' Assuming there is no attempt to cancel the elections outright, Morales's most difficult political problem may be that MAS's platform is actually quite a bit more moderate than many of its rank-and-file supporters would like - or, indeed, than they understand it to be. As Roberto Fernandez Terán, a development economist at the University of San Simón in Cochabamba and an expert on Bolivia's external debt, told me, 'I have no great hope that MAS will make profound changes.' Senior MAS officials insist, however, that their nationalization program alone would engender profound improvements in the Bolivian economy. By proposing that the Bolivian government renegotiate its contracts with the multinational oil companies, 'we are literally proposing changing the rules of the game,' said Carlos Villegas, a researcher at the University of San Andrés in La Paz and MAS's principal economic spokesman. 'The current contracts say that the multinationals own the resources when they're in the ground and are free to set prices of natural gas and oil once it has been extracted.' In March, the Bolivian Congress, under pressure from demonstrators, passed a law reasserting national ownership of resources, but, Villegas said, 'it is not being enforced.' MAS would not only enforce the law; it would also extend its powers. Bolivia has considerable oil reserves and, far more crucially, has the second-largest proved reserves of natural gas in South America after Venezuela - some 54 trillion cubic feet. Talk to ordinary Bolivians, and it often seems as if their profound rage and despair over what is taking place in their country is at least partly due to the gap between Bolivia's natural riches and the poverty of its people. 'We shouldn't be poor' is the way Morales put it to me. This perception is hardly limited to die-hard MAS supporters. In the campaign ads being run by Morales's two main rivals for the presidency - Samuel Doria Medina, a wealthy businessman, and Jorge Quiroga, a former president - each candidate makes populist appeals. Doria Medina, in his ads, says he will 'stand up' for Bolivia. And lest there be any doubt about what he is referring to, at the end of his ad he looks straight into the camera and says that if elected he will tell the multinationals, 'Gentlemen, the party is over!' If Petrobras, the oil company that is partly owned by the Brazilian state, can prosper, MAS supporters argue, why can't Bolivia adopt a similar strategy and flourish as a result? In any case, they point out, a large part of the population derives what little hope it has from Bolivia's hydrocarbon reserves. 'The population,' Carlos Villegas told me, 'is demanding to know why these resources haven't lifted the country out of poverty. And they blame the privatization imposed by international lenders.' At least according to Villegas's argument, taking back control over oil and natural gas would allow Bolivia to get a fair price and to pay for its industrialization, in the process creating employment and thus alleviating poverty, and escaping the problems that afflict so many resource-rich countries from Gabon to Indonesia. 'Look, this is not a fantasy,' he said at the end of our interview. 'It's a perfectly feasible, practical program.' At least some well-informed outsiders agree. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel laureate who was formerly the chief economist of the World Bank and is now a professor of economics at Columbia University and a stern critic of many international lending institutions, put it to me this way: 'They could do it.' If Bolivia abrogated its existing contracts, he said, some of the non-Western oil giants would gladly negotiate new deals on better terms. 'Petronas' - the Malaysian state oil company - 'would come in, China would come in, India would come in.' If Morales did nationalize the country's oil and gas, the multinational oil companies that currently hold the Bolivian concessions, including Repsol, a Spanish company, and British Gas, would probably sue Bolivia in an international court and try to organize an international boycott. But Stiglitz dismisses that threat: 'If you had three, four, five first-rate companies around the world willing to compete for Bolivia's resources, no boycott would work.' Of course, there are strong countervailing views not only to MAS's nationalization program but also to any sweeping criticism of the policies of the principal international lending institutions: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank. 'People criticize our recommendations,' said Peter Bate, a spokesman for the IADB. 'But before the international financial institutions intervened, Bolivia's inflation was running at 25,000 percent per year. What should we have done, let that continue?' For Jeffrey Sachs, Joseph Stiglitz's colleague at Columbia and a former economic adviser to the Bolivian government, the problem was less the international lending institutions' recommendations than the lack of follow-up on the part of Washington. Gonzalo Sánchez de Losada, the first of the two presidents ousted in Bolivia's recent wave of protests, has said that when he went to see President Bush at the White House in 2002, the president talked of little except Afghanistan. As Sachs put it later in an op-ed piece in The Financial Times, the Bush administration 'proved to be incapable of even the simplest responses to a profound crisis engulfing the region.' In an e-mail message to me, he said he had 'never seen such incompetence' as the Bush administration's approach to Latin America, which he characterized as comprising 'neglect, insensitivity, disregard, tone-deafness.' Sachs cited one damning example in Bolivia: as his government teetered on the verge of collapse in 2003, Sánchez de Losada asked the U.S. government for $50 million in emergency aid. Washington made $10 million available. As Sachs put it bitterly, the decision in effect invited MAS and the social activist movements - peasants, coca growers, laborers and the unemployed - 'to finish off the job of bringing down the government.' In this, Joseph Stiglitz agrees. 'One of the main stories' from Latin America's period of austerity measures imposed at the urging of international institutions, he told me, 'is the gap between what was sold and what was delivered.' In countries like Bolivia, he added, 'people went through a lot of pain, and 20 years later now they don't see any of the benefits. Leaders in the anti-inflation fight gave the countries that followed their recommendations A-pluses. But few of the results in terms of incomes of the average person and poverty reduction had been yielded.' Many Bolivians, and certainly almost all MAS supporters, are more than prepared to blame the Americans for much of what went wrong during what Roberto Fernandez Téran, the economist from the University of San Símon, described to me as 'the lost decade of the 1980's and the disappointments of the 1990's.' A joke you hear often in Bolivia these days sarcastically describes the country's political system as a coalition between the government, the international financial institutions, multinational corporations and la embajada - the U.S. Embassy. But while it would be unwise to underestimate the force of knee-jerk anti-Americanism in Latin America, the ubiquitousness of leftist sentiments in Bolivia today has more to do, as Joseph Stiglitz points out, with the complete failure of neoliberalism to improve people's lives in any practical sense. It is almost a syllogism: many Bolivians believe (and the economic statistics bear them out) that the demands by international lending institutions that governments cut budgets to the bone and privatize state-owned assets made people's lives worse, not better; the Bolivians believe, also not wrongly, that the U.S. wields extraordinary influence on international financial institutions; and from these conclusions, the appeal of an anti-American, anti-globalization politics becomes almost irresistible to large numbers of people. If Bolivians who support Morales and MAS seem drawn to thinking in conspiratorial terms about U.S. actions in the region, the mirror image of this attitude is to be found in Washington. There is a powerful consensus in U.S. government circles that holds that Morales is being bankrolled by Chávez - a charge that the Bolivian leader flatly denies. Roger Noriega, the former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, repeatedly made the point during his tenure, echoing background briefings by Pentagon officials. 'It's no secret that Morales reports to Caracas and Havana,' Noriega said last July, just before leaving office. 'That's where his best allies are.' Publicly, Thomas A. Shannon, Noriega's successor, has taken a more low-key approach. But the Bush administration's view of Morales does not appear to have changed significantly. Michael Shifter, a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a policy group in Washington, and one of the shrewdest and most experienced American observers of Latin America, told me that he has been struck by the depth of conviction in Washington that Morales is dangerous. 'People talk about him as if he were the Osama bin Laden of Latin America,' Shifter told me, adding that, after a recent lecture Shifter gave at a military institution, two American officers came up to him and said that Morales 'was a terrorist, a murderer, the worst thing ever.' Shifter replied that he had seen no evidence of this. 'They told me: 'You should. We have classified information: this guy is the worst thing to happen in Latin America in a long time.'' In Shifter's view, there is now a tremendous sense of hysteria about Morales within the administration and especially at the Pentagon. It has happened before. During the 2002 Bolivian elections, when Morales was a first-time candidate little known outside of the country, the U.S. ambassador at the time, Manuel Rocha, stated publicly that if Morales was elected, the U.S. would have to reconsider all future aid. Most observers, and Morales, too, who speaks of the episode with a combination of amusement and satisfaction, say that it got him and MAS at least 20 percent more votes. The current U.S. ambassador, David Greenlee, has been far more circumspect. But if anything, Washington's view of Morales has only hardened. And the reason for that, unsurprisingly, is Hugo Chávez's increasing role. As Michael Shifter puts it, 'There is this tremendous fear that Chávez is living out the Fidel Castro dream of exporting revolution throughout Latin America and destabilizing the region - something that wasn't done during the cold war and is now being financed by Venezuelan oil.' For his part, Morales is unapologetic and, when pressed, grows more rather than less defiant. At his rallies, Cuban flags are ubiquitous, as are Che Guevara T-shirts and lapel pins. But he is at some pains to make the point that neither Venezuela nor Cuba is a model for the kind of society he wants Bolivia to become. Castro and Chávez, he told me, are his friends, but so are Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, President Jacques Chirac of France and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain. Morales also makes a point of emphasizing that the era of 'state socialism' is past. Even when he is talking about the nationalization of Bolivia's natural resources, which with the depenalization of coca cultivation is the central plank of his campaign, Morales is at pains to point out that the model he has in mind is closer to Brazil's state-owned oil giant, Petrobras, than to anything Castro would endorse. When you spend time with Morales, it is hard not to conclude that he wants to have it both ways where his links with Chávez and Castro are concerned. For while he denies any particular affinity with either regime, there is no doubt that these two 'radical' leaders are the ones to whom he has turned time and again for advice. Certainly, Hugo Chávez has made no secret of the sympathy he feels for Morales's campaign, while the state-run Cuban press has lavished a great deal of attention on Morales. MAS seems unsure of how to present these links. In Morales's campaign biography, there are angry sentences denying a connection to Chávez. But on the same page where these lines appear, there is a photograph in which Morales and the Venezuelan strongman are posed together. On the campaign trail, 'populist' doesn't even begin to describe the Morales style. He seems genuinely indifferent to creature comforts. He also seems committed to a kind of political campaigning that more closely resembles the labor activism that catapulted him to fame than to political campaigning in the classic sense. Morales has drawn a number of important Bolivian economists like Carlos Villegas to his side, but he seems most at ease among his rank-and-file supporters. The overwhelming majority of MAS activists appear to be volunteers, and while they seem to view Morales's candidacy almost as a sacred cause, it quickly becomes obvious that most have little experience in electoral politics. Morales's two bodyguards didn't seem to have the first clue about how to protect their charge. He travels without any serious security, almost always moving from place to place in a single S.U.V., accompanied by only a driver, an aide and whomever he is meeting with at that particular moment. MAS campaign offices are almost all utterly unadorned except for the usual campaign paraphernalia and posters and images of the candidate, his running mate and, inevitably, Che. Even without apparent resources, MAS is surging, and the most recent polls put Morales ahead of his two principal rivals. Yet many Bolivians, including some who are sympathetic to MAS, say privately that Morales remains something of an unknown quantity. Shifter suggested to me that Morales is 'still a work in progress,' and a number of well-informed Bolivians I met agreed. The problem, of course, is that given the severity of the Bolivian crisis, the militancy of so much of the population and the impossibly high level of expectations that a MAS government would engender among Bolivia's poor and its long-marginalized indigenous populations, there is very little time. It is quite accurate to speak of the rebirth of the left in Latin America, but the sad truth is that the movement's return is more a sign of despair than of hope. Almost 40 years ago, one self-proclaimed revolutionary, Che Guevara, died alone and abandoned in the Bolivian foothills. Today, another self-proclaimed revolutionary, Evo Morales, could become the country's first indigenous and first authentically leftist president. But as was true of Che himself, it is by no means clear that Morales has any hope of fulfilling the expectations of his followers. On a stage in a soccer stadium in Mar del Plata, before a rapturous crowd and with Hugo Chávez beside him, or on the campaign trail back home, surrounded by people who look as if they would give their lives for him, Morales exudes confidence. And the more Washington makes plain its opposition to him, the greater the fervor he inspires in his supporters. But if the history of the left in Latin America teaches anything, it is that charisma is never enough. The fate of Che Guevara, who failed to foment a Latin American revolution and left no coherent societal model behind for his followers, should have taught us that already.

Subject: Correspondence School From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 07:03:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/sports/ncaafootball/27school.html November 27, 2005 Correspondence School Helped College Players Qualify By PETE THAMEL and DUFF WILSON By the end of his junior year at Miami Killian High School, Demetrice Morley flashed the speed, size and talent of a top college football prospect. His classroom performance, however, failed to match his athletic skills. He received three F's that year and had a 2.09 grade point average in his core courses, giving him little hope of qualifying for a scholarship under National Collegiate Athletic Association guidelines. In December of his senior year, Morley led Killian to the 2004 state title while taking a full course load. He also took seven courses at University High School, a local correspondence school, scoring all A's and B's. He graduated that December, not from Killian but from University High. His grade point average in his core courses was 2.75, precisely what he wound up needing to qualify for a scholarship. Morley, now a freshman defensive back for the University of Tennessee, was one of at least 28 athletes who polished their grades at University High in the last two years. The New York Times identified 14 who had signed with 11 Division I football programs: Auburn, Central Florida, Colorado State, Florida, Florida State, Florida International, Rutgers, South Carolina State, South Florida, Tennessee and Temple. University High, which has no classes and no educational accreditation, appears to have offered the players little more than a speedy academic makeover - and illustrates that even as the N.C.A.A. presses for academic reforms, its loopholes are quickly recognized and exploited. In the case of University High, the athletes were grateful that its classes gave them an opportunity to qualify for college, although many acknowledged that they learned little. Lorenzo Ferguson, a second-year defensive back at Auburn, said he left Miami Southridge High School for University High, where after one month he had raised his average to 2.6 from 2.0. 'You take each course you failed in ninth or 10th grade,' he said. 'If it was applied math, you do them on the packets they give you. It didn't take that long. The answers were basically in the book.' The N.C.A.A. has allowed students to use correspondence school courses to meet eligibility requirements since 2000. That year, the N.C.A.A. also shifted the power to determine which classes count as core courses to high school administrators. In doing so, it essentially left schools to determine their own legitimacy. 'We're not the educational accreditation police,' Diane Dickman, the N.C.A.A.'s managing director for membership services, said in September. But last week, Myles Brand, president of the N.C.A.A., said he would form a group to examine issues involving correspondence courses and high school credentials. Brand acted partly in response to a letter sent on Nov. 2 from the Southeastern Conference that highlighted cases similar to Morley's and Ferguson's. The man who founded University High School and owned it until last year, Stanley J. Simmons, served 10 months in a federal prison camp from 1989 to 1990 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud for his involvement with a college diploma mill in Arizona. Among the activities Simmons acknowledged in court documents were awarding degrees without academic achievement and awarding degrees based on studies he was unqualified to evaluate. In interviews last week, he said he should never have pleaded guilty and that he operated legitimate correspondence schools for adults. In 2004, Simmons sold University High to Michael R. Kinney, its director. Kinney, 27, who was arrested for marijuana possession in 2003 and is wanted on a bench warrant, declined to comment, despite requests by phone, fax and visits to his apartment. Several University High graduates said they found the school through Antron Wright, a former XFL and Arena Football League player who is prominent in Miami's high school athletic circles. He is considered a savior by some players, but at least one principal has barred Wright from his building for luring athletes to a rival school and introducing them to University High. Miami has ideal conditions for academic-athletic exploitation. It is fertile recruiting ground: 38 players from Dade County were on N.F.L. rosters at the start of the 2004 season, more than any other county. Also, Florida's public schools require an exit examination for graduation, but private schools have no such requirement, and operate under a law that prohibits any state regulation. That allows University High to operate essentially unsupervised. Pat Herring, the interim admissions director at the University of Florida, looked into University High after admitting one of its graduates, Dane Guthrie, a former Killian tight end. 'We found that University High School was kind of a storefront operation,' Herring said. 'It didn't seem to have much in the way of an academic program.' While Florida officials were discussing whether to allow Guthrie to remain, he transferred to Arizona State. Other colleges that have admitted University High graduates say they know little about it. Auburn admitted Ferguson in 2004 and a fellow University graduate, Ulysses Alexander, this year. 'The bottom line is they were both qualifiers by the N.C.A.A.,' said Mark Richard, a senior associate athletic director at Auburn. A four-member academic panel at Tennessee admitted Morley after sending an athletic department official to Miami to investigate University High. Morley has thrived on the field at Tennessee, but Philip Simpson has stumbled at Temple. Simpson, a standout quarterback at Southridge High, said Wright had met with him and his parents and offered a sure alternative from high school to college, telling him: 'You either stay there and bust your behind and hope and pray that at the end you don't get short-handed. Or you can do this.' Simpson said his mother called the N.C.A.A. to check whether University High courses would be accepted. He said he graduated in three weeks by taking four classes, improving his average to 2.3 from 2.0. He now says he lacks the educational skills for college. For a basic math class at Temple, Simpson said, he studied at least three hours every day, got help from tutors and met regularly with the professor. He still did not score higher than 53 out of 100 on any test. Simpson said Temple ruled him academically ineligible to play. He watched this season from the sideline. A Quick Diploma University High School consists of two small rooms on the third floor of an office building wedged between a Starbucks and an animal hospital on Route 1 in south Miami. Inside are three desks, three employees and two framed posters from art museums on the wall. Promotional brochures say diplomas can be earned in four to six weeks, with open-book exams, no classes and no timed tests. A diploma costs $399, no matter how many courses. In paperwork filed with the state of Florida, the school says it has six teachers. None of the school's graduates interviewed, however, mentioned dealing with anyone besides Kinney, the current owner. John M. McLeod, a Miami-Dade Community College educator, is identified as the University High principal on a letter welcoming new students. McLeod said he met Simmons in the 1970's, but that he had no connection to University High. He said his signature had been copied. 'I've never seen this letter,' he said. 'I know nothing about University High School.' Simmons said he did not know why McLeod's signature was on the letter. Former students said in interviews that courses consisted of picking up work packets from University High and completing them at home. Grades they received on the packets counted the same on their transcripts as a yearlong high school course. 'If it was history, they had the story with the questions right next to it,' Simpson said. 'They were one-page stories. It wasn't really hard.' University High says its textbooks are the Essential Series from Research and Education Association of Piscataway, N.J., but their publisher describes them as study guides. 'You wouldn't describe them as textbooks,' Carl M. Fuchs, president of Research and Education, said. 'You would say they're more supplemental, but they can be used on their own. A textbook is certainly going to have a lot more text, a lot more information.' University High's literature claims it is accredited by the National Association for the Legal Support of Alternative Schools. The association's Web site says it is 'not meant to represent an evaluation and/or approval of the materials, teaching staff or educational philosophy employed by the applicant program.' It says 'only one standard is applied: consumer protection.' The Florida Department of Education's Web site lists accreditation for University High by the National Coalition of Alternative and Community Schools and by the Association of Christian Schools International. But the alternative schools coalition does not accredit high schools, and David Ray, the Florida regional director of the Christian schools association said, 'University was never accredited and has never sought accreditation with us.' To Some, a Second Chance Simmons said that he opened University High School in 2000 to serve adults and that in the first few years the average age of students was 36. Football players from public schools in poor neighborhoods began enrolling around March 2004, when University applied for membership to the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse, which determines if a student is eligible and can qualify for a scholarship. Several players said Wright led them to University High. Philip Simpson said that when he went to University to enroll, Kinney was expecting him because Wright had called. Ferguson and Simpson said they worked on their University High packets at Wright's apartment. Wright, 30, could relate to talented athletes with academic struggles, some of the players said. A former star at Southridge and Palmetto High Schools in Miami, he did not attend a Division I-A university because of poor grades, local players and coaches said. He graduated from junior college, then played two years at Division I-AA Bethune-Cookman. Wright later rooted himself in the Miami football community, serving as an assistant coach at three schools and as a substitute teacher at Dade County football powers. He developed a strong bond with his players. 'I thank God every time I step on the practice field for Tron,' said Keyon Brooks, a former Killian player and University High graduate now playing for South Carolina State. 'He got me here. He helped me succeed in life. I look at him as a role model.' Tavares Kendrick, a top-rated quarterback from Homestead High, credits Wright for helping him get to Florida International University, where he is a backup quarterback. Kendrick said his average improved to 3.0 from about 2.1 in about seven weeks by taking nine classes at University High. 'Antron is a great guy,' he said. 'He helps kids that have great talent but don't have the smarts for school.' Yet Wright is barred from Southridge, partly because he lured players to Killian and to University High. In January 2004, five football players left Southridge and later played crucial roles on Killian's state title team. 'He can't come into my building,' Carzell J. Morris, the principal at Southridge, said. 'Just for the fact he comes in and takes my kids out. Kids that could probably make it if they weren't looking for the easy way out.' Southridge Coach Rodney Hunter said Wright also encouraged Damaso Munoz, who is now at Rutgers, to leave for University High early this year. Thirteen of the 38 seniors on Killian's 2004 state title team did not graduate with their class. Many, including Morley and Brooks, wound up at University High. 'How legitimate is it?' Otis Collier, the athletic director at Killian, said about Morley's improvement at University. 'I don't know. I guess it's because of me. I probably should want to know, but I don't want to know. I don't want to know anything about it.' Wright declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this article. By transferring to University High, students can bypass the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which is mandatory for public school graduation, and focus on passing through the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse. N.C.A.A. minimum standards require the completion of 14 core courses. Grade-point average in those courses and standardized test scores are rated on a scale. Students with high averages can qualify with lower test scores and vice versa. For example, after Morley's junior year at Killian, a computer program used to project eligibility showed him graduating with about a 2.1 G.P.A., meaning he would need at least a 960 on the SAT. At University, he raised his average to 2.75, so his 720 SAT score was exactly what he needed to qualify. Although the standardized testing services flag suspicious jumps in scores, there is no similar alarm for grade-point averages that suddenly go up. Assuring the legitimacy of high school credentials is one reason Brand says he is forming the N.C.A.A. panel, which will make recommendations by June 1. 'We see the problem accelerating,' he said. 'We want to stop it as soon as possible.' Doing Something About It When Morley was preparing to enter college, Tennessee and the Southeastern Conference questioned his University High transcript. Brad Bertani, the associate athletic director for compliance at Tennessee, went to Miami to investigate. Bertani, who met with Simmons for three hours, said he determined that Morley had done his own work. But Bertani refused to comment on University High's curriculum. 'There's all kinds of schooling out there, whether you think it's legitimate or not,' Bertani said. 'That's for the admissions people at each school to evaluate.' Copies of Bertani's handwritten notes from the visit, obtained through a freedom of information request, say that there were no records of University's teachers and that no lab was required for the chemistry course for which Morley received a B. Tennessee's research showed that University High School sent transcripts from 28 athletes to the N.C.A.A. Clearinghouse, according to documents obtained through the freedom of information request. Bertani also spent weeks investigating Morley's connection to Wright, who accompanied Morley on his recruiting trip to Knoxville and kept in contact with Trooper Taylor, an assistant football coach at Tennessee. Bertani said he found no improprieties with Wright or any connection between him and University High. Morley, who played defensive back and returned kicks this season, did not respond to repeated attempts for comment by e-mail and through Tennessee officials. His mother, Felicia Henry, demanded to know who had told a reporter he had attended University High and said she knew nothing about the school's academics. Morley took a full course load at Killian while playing football, along with seven other core courses - half the N.C.A.A. minimum for a high school career - at University. Transcripts obtained by The New York Times show he received four A's and three B's from University. At Killian, he received C's in English all four years, but he got an A in classical literature from University. Grades like that helped his G.P.A. in core courses improve to 2.75 from 2.09 from August to December. Three of the four members of Tennessee's admissions panel expressed reservations. 'I didn't see anything fraudulent or out of line,' Richard Baer, the dean of enrollment at Tennessee, said of his initial reaction to Morley's transcript. 'It looked like it could have been another student's transcript from another institution. I didn't see anything that struck me as saying: 'You know what? We need to look carefully at this.' ' The other panelists reacted differently. 'All of this was in my mind very, very questionable,' Anne Mayhew, the vice chancellor for academic affairs, said. Todd Diacon, the head of the history department, said, 'Anytime I see a transcript like a University High School, it concerns me.' Ruth Darling, an assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, said, 'I always had reservations about this type of school, if students are actually learning.' In the end, the panel never voted, accepting the transcript because the N.C.A.A. approved University High and Bertani found that Morley had done his own work there. But when told of Simmons's fraud conviction, Mayhew said Tennessee should have been more careful. 'I think we need to add a new layer of caution to deal with high school diploma mills,' she said. Tennessee Coach Phillip Fulmer lauded the university, pointing out that no other college had visited University High. 'I'm a Tennessee graduate as well,' he said. 'I want the university to be represented in the right way.' At What Cost a Degree? When describing his reasons for transferring to University High, Simpson recalled a Southridge basketball player with Division I potential who failed his last chance at Florida's mandatory graduation exam. 'I still remember to this day him walking around the hallways crying,' he said. 'He was ready to fight every principal and teacher in Miami.' That image stuck with him as he struggled academically. Simpson said he still has his ninth-grade report card showing a 0.6 grade point average. He said he relied heavily on others to do his work. 'The basic skills I'm supposed to have from way back then,' he said, 'none of them are there.' Mark Eyerly, Temple's chief communications officer, said, 'It is in the best interests of our students and of the university for us to offer admission to students whom we believe can succeed here academically.' Simpson said that his problems at Temple have made him more determined. As a freshman, Simpson played defensive end and made seven tackles for a 2-9 team. Temple completed an 0-11 season this month. When his football career ends, he said, he sees himself in only one place. 'I believe that my fate is to go back to Miami and change things,' he said. 'My job is to go into school systems like Miami and be a coach and teach kids right from wrong.'

Subject: Where Dreams and Snowflakes Dance From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 26, 2005 at 05:49:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/arts/dance/25nutc.html?ex=1290574800&en=fbea9e1ac01d7707&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 25, 2005 Where Dreams and Snowflakes Dance By JOHN ROCKWELL MANY years ago, when I was young and Rumpelmayer's, that fabled pink ice cream parlor in the St. Moritz Hotel, was already middle-aged, I went there one day with a friend and her young daughter. It was coming on Christmastime, the air outside was crisp, and the girl and all the other little girls were dressed delectably, with their festive coats and scarves and hats. A trip to Rumpelmayer's was a New York holiday ritual for those girls and their attendant relatives. The place ceased to exist more than a dozen years ago, but another ritual of the holiday season, 'The Nutcracker,' is still handsomely sustained by the New York City Ballet. Its annual 45-performance, five-plus-week run at the New York State Theater begins tonight. Going to 'The Nutcracker' is like a less-fattening version of going to Rumpelmayer's: the same little girls (or their children or maybe even grandchildren) are there, dressed up and bright-eyed and eagerly expectant. A few years ago one of those little girls was mine. There are beautiful children on the stage, too, part of the horde of youngsters that George Balanchine - recalling his own childhood in St. Petersburg in the late 19th century - choreographed into the production. The second act of 'The Nutcracker' is even set in 'Confiturembourg,' which replicates the dazzling sweets of Rumpelmayer's, albeit without the stuffed animals. 'The Nutcracker' is ballet's 'Messiah,' a surefire holiday staple so beloved as to be almost entirely critic-proof, no matter how amateurish or outré a production may be. Balanchine made his own version based on his memories of Lev Ivanov's original choreography. The City Ballet production, which dates to 1954, has become the standard against which all other American 'Nutcrackers' are judged, both the imitative ones and those that try to extend or flout tradition. Year after year, in town after town, that twinkling Christmas tree rising to gigantic heights, or the dizzying onslaught of snow at the end of the first act, or the elegance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier and the Dewdrop - and all the charming dancers of the delicious treats (hot chocolate, coffee, tea, candy cane, marzipan, ginger) - awaken wonder in children and their parents alike. And in the hard-working dancers, too, be they principals, soloists, corps members or School of American Ballet students. Toni Bentley, in her classic diary of a corps dancer's life, 'Winter Season' (1982), complained about the slippery snow and the sheer, injury-prone hard work of all those endless City Ballet 'Nutcracker' performances: 'Ah, to be rid of sugar and spice and dance to Stravinsky in leotards,' she groaned. But she also remained open to the ballet's wonder: ' 'The Nutcracker' is still wonderful. I still get chills when the tree grows and the little bed floats around the stage... 'The Nutcracker' can still excite.' It can also still balance the books. The reason so many American ballet companies consecrate weeks on end to this classic is because it's beloved, but being beloved translates, in a country largely bereft of public subsidy, into tickets purchased. Stravinsky in leotards is a deficit operation; 'The Nutcracker' can make actual money. 'The Nutcracker' is probably the most popular of all ballets, and there are reasons for that. Not much of the original 1892 Ivanov choreography for the Mariinsky Theater has survived, but the grand line of tradition, so carefully sustained and extended by Balanchine, most definitely has. Every famous choreographer has had a stab at it, among innumerable others Nicholas Sergeyev in the first London staging in 1934; Willam Christensen (the first American production for San Francisco in 1944); Vassily Vainonen and Yuri Grigorovich for the Kirov and Bolshoi Ballets in the Soviet era; John Cranko, Rudolf Nureyev, Fleming Flindt and John Neumeier in Europe; and Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theater in 1976. And there have been more iconoclastic efforts, like those of Mark Morris in 1991 and Matthew Bourne in 1992. But one way or another, the spirit remains a dream vision of ballet loveliness that has inspired ballet careers in as many young dancers as there are paper snowflakes at the end of Act I. That spirit is not all sugar and spice. Like most all classic fairy tales, 'The Nutcracker' is a triumph of good over evil, as befits the Germanic brooding of E. T. A. Hoffmann (as in 'Tales of...'), as translated through Alexandre Dumas père. The idyllic world of Marie and her parents and their friends is troubled by mean little boys (her brother breaks the wooden nutcracker) and her spooky godfather, Drosselmeier, and, of course, those malevolent scurrying mice and their fearsome, seven-headed king. (In some German versions he's the Rat King.) Passing through darkness makes the airy lightness of the end of the first act and all of the second brighter; joy has not just been granted; it's been earned. Most canonic ballets boast great scores, and Tchaikovsky's for 'The Nutcracker' is one of his grandest and most effervescent. It is usually less fussed with and reshuffled in its sequence than those of 'Swan Lake' and 'The Sleeping Beauty,' however much choreographers may tinker with details of the scenario. Just listening to a recording can reawaken images of beautiful dancing. Are there signs of 'Nutcracker' exhaustion, hints out there in the heartland that this classic is losing its hold on audiences? The Colorado Ballet just announced the cancellation of six of its scheduled 30 'Nutcracker' performances, citing poor ticket sales. But chances are this is a sign of that company's larger financial and organizational problems; when a company has to curtail or cancel 'The Nutcracker,' it's surely in trouble. There is also the question of how long the Balanchine choreography can remain canonical, whether it provides a template or a straitjacket. In my own triumphant, if little-remembered appearances as the Mouse King in Danbury, Conn., in 1991, I questioned the ethics of Marie's throwing her slipper and distracting me, thus allowing the callow Nutcracker to stab me in the back. What kind of hero is that, I asked the choreographer. Could I at least turn and face my nemesis and then be defeated in a fair fight? 'Oh, no,' she cried, truly shocked. 'That's how Balanchine did it.' But not to worry. 'The Nutcracker' is too good to go away any time soon. For all its darkness, it appeals to parents and their children because it's like one of those glowing glass globes that you can shake and see the snow swirl. It's a dream bubble, a vision of middle-class happiness and fantasy that precedes the Russian Revolution and all the horrors of the last century and this one. That world may have faded, like Rumpelmayer's, but it is still our sweetest dream.

Subject: Argentine Institution Sees Hope From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 09:32:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/arts/23colo.html?ex=1290402000&en=020b853e5b979679&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 An Argentine Institution Sees Hope Amid Chaos By LARRY ROHTER BUENOS AIRES - As a show of appreciation to the theater where she made her debut at the age of 11, the pianist Martha Argerich organizes and plays in a festival at the Teatro Colón here each year. But when she arrived one evening in September, she and her audience found themselves locked out of the hall by workers who had suddenly decided to go on strike. Ticket holders were offered reimbursement, and Ms. Argerich, 64, wound up performing at another theater nearby. But that embarrassing incident, perhaps more than any other, highlights the problems - which also include budget shortfalls, the overseas drift of local talent and disputes over programming - that have afflicted Latin America's most renowned concert hall in recent years and left it in a permanent state of crisis. Over the past decade, the Colón, which opened in 1908, has had seven different artistic directors or coordinators, including one who held the job twice. That chronic instability might have reached a peak in October, when the new management was forced to suspend the entire 2006 season, only to reverse course in early November when a tentative labor accord with one of the theater's two unions was announced. 'This has been a very complicated year for the theater, in various aspects,' said Marcelo Lombardero, the 41-year-old opera singer who became the Colón's artistic director in July. 'The conflicts have been building up for a long time, and there is plenty of blame to go around. You can't break this down into guilty and innocent, victims and offenders.' But since the theater's centennial is approaching, Mr. Lombardero and other managers see the turmoil as an opportunity to reshape the Colón. With the hall itself already scheduled to undergo a major face-lift beginning next year, they also want to rebuild its artistic and financial foundation by strengthening the two permanent orchestras and the house chorus and ballet, and by relying less on big imported names. 'It's not that we don't have good musicians, dancers and conductors, but that the economic crisis has meant that the best of them go abroad immediately and make their careers there,' Gustavo López, the city's secretary of culture, explained. 'We lost a whole generation of talent that is between 40 and 60, so we want to have a policy such that the young, emerging generation can be encouraged to remain in Argentina.' Because the Colón is owned and run by the municipality of Buenos Aires, it depends on the city for most of its $22.5 million annual budget, and its workers are city employees. But after numerous state-owned companies were privatized in the 1990's, followed by an economic collapse four years ago next month, there have been some suggestions that the Colón should move away from that European pattern and more toward a self-sustaining American-style model that emphasizes a proven repertory, including pop music. 'Most of the sustenance for the theater comes from the state and will continue to do so, but we want to be more like the private sector in the way we use public resources,' Mr. López said. 'In other words, we want to be more efficient, we want more private sponsorships, and we want to be able to maximize our revenues by taking our own productions abroad.' To lead the revitalization that they hope will result in the emergence of more internationally known Argentine artists like Ms. Argerich, the conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim, or the dancers Julio Bocca and Paloma Herrera, the Colón's managers are looking largely to foreign experts. As the music director, for instance, the team has recruited Stefan Lano, a Massachusetts-born conductor who began his career at the Vienna State Opera under Lorin Maazel. 'I've been conducting at the Colón for 12 years, and every time I went, there was one crisis or another,' Mr. Lano, also a pianist and composer, said in a telephone interview. 'But it's a very fine orchestra, and I kept going back out of solidarity. You just have to handle them in a particular way because it is Argentina, and they are faced with many problems that better-endowed orchestras in Europe don't have.' The labor dispute that disrupted Ms. Argerich's piano festival has come just when the economy here is booming, so the timing may seem curious. Even during the worst of the economic collapse of 2001-2, which led to the country's having five presidents in two weeks, the Colón continued to function normally, offering Argentines relief from the crisis. 'When this country went up in flames, the workers were the ones who kept this house open,' said Juan Barrile, director of the main union representing the theater's employees. 'But we have gone 15 years without a wage increase, and during much of that time, management wasn't making all of the payments into the social security fund that it should have, and we need redress.' For its part, management complains of featherbedding, noting that the Colón has 1,400 full-time employees, compared with about 900 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. But Mr. Barrile, whose union has now agreed to wage increases of 32 to 42 percent, says the blame for that belongs with administrators. 'The real problem is that every municipal government that comes to power sticks some of its people in jobs, so that what you end up with is advisers to advisers to advisers,' he said. 'There may be a problem with too many people, but I assure you that it is not on the artistic or technical side, because the size of the orchestra and the choir and the ballet has not grown.' A second union representing about 200 workers is still insisting on even larger raises. Mr. López said the union had agreed orally not to strike, but a spokesman for the theater said that promise held only until the beginning of March, when the fall performance season begins. Even if a permanent labor peace is achieved, the Colón is scheduled to be closed for nearly a year, beginning in the second half of 2006. During that time, the theater will undergo a multimillion-dollar renovation, meant to modernize its interior, supposedly without affecting the hall's extraordinary acoustics, to be finished just in time for a triumphant centennial return. 'It's going to be like a change of clothes,' said Salvatore Caputo, an Italian who has been hired as director of the chorus. 'But the body will remain the same.'

Subject: New Tenants in Tinseltown From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 09:31:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/movies/23rent.html?ex=1290402000&en=db26c02f211e944e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 New Tenants in Tinseltown By A. O. SCOTT Ever since it opened in 1996, 'Rent,' Jonathan Larson's rock 'n' roll updating of 'La Bohème,' has inspired passionate adoration, as well as its share of derision. The lyrics to one of its frenetic, show-stopping songs celebrate the idea of 'being an us - for once - instead of a them,' and the world around 'Rent' may be similarly divisible, into those whose hearts beat faster as soon as the lights go down, and those whose heads begin to ache before the first note has even sounded. Approaching Chris Columbus's film adaptation, which reunites most of the original Broadway cast to belt out Mr. Larson's lung-stretching songs about love, art, real estate and AIDS, I was inclined toward the latter category. Two hours later, I was pleased (and somewhat surprised) to find myself an us, for once, instead of a them. Some aesthetic objections still stand - on screen as onstage, 'Rent' is often dramatically jumbled and musically muddled - but every time the film seemed ready to tip into awfulness, the sneer on my lips was trumped by the lump in my throat. Some of the performers look a little old for their parts but nonetheless bring the ardent conviction of young strivers to the material, which is just what it needs. The characters, after all, are a diverse collection of young strivers themselves, living on Avenue A in the long-ago year of 1989. Mark (Anthony Rapp) is an aspiring filmmaker recently dumped by Maureen (Idina Menzel), a performance artist who has taken up with a lawyer named Joanne (Tracie Thoms). Mark's roommate, Roger (Adam Pascal), is a musician and a recovering addict who lost one lover to AIDS and is therefore reluctant to get involved with Mimi (Rosario Dawson, like Ms. Thoms a new addition to the cast), an exotic dancer who lives downstairs. AIDS also shadows the otherwise perfect love between Tom (Jesse L. Martin), a semi-employed philosophy instructor, and Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia), a sweet, tough transvestite. Popping in every now and then is Benny (Taye Diggs), another old pal who owns the building where Roger, Mimi and Mark live and who represents the twin specters of gentrification and generational sell-out. In telling their entwined stories, Mr. Columbus has managed a feat similar to the one he pulled off with the first two 'Harry Potter' movies; he has taken a source that is fiercely and jealously loved by its core fans and refrained from messing it up. It is not just that he shows dexterity and imagination in transferring the spectacle onto the actual streets of the East Village in Manhattan. The real key to his success is his utter lack of condescension. 'Rent' is nothing if not earnest - a full-throated, breathless defense of naïve idealism and unapologetic joie de vivre in the face of death - and the slightest whisper of knowingness or cynicism would spoil it. But a cameo from the smarty-pants shock comedian Sarah Silverman notwithstanding, Mr. Columbus's movie believes in itself utterly, and affirms that Mr. Larson's creation belongs with 'Hair' and 'Fame' in the pantheon of immortal musicals with one-word titles celebrating the self-dramatizing, unembarrassable and resilient spirit of youth. In other words, 'Rent' is occasionally silly, often melodramatic and never subtle. Every song swells toward bombast, and every theme, musical or narrative, is underlined almost to the point of illegibility. Mr. Larson's attempt to force the marriage of rock and Broadway often sends the worst of both genres into noisy collision, as if Meat Loaf and Andrew Lloyd Webber were reworking 'Exile on Main Street.' Certainly, the musical traditions of the show's native ground - home to the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, Sonic Youth and so on - are hardly audible in its tunes. But to raise such objections - or to chide 'Rent' for its childish politics or its simplistic and instantly obsolete vision of the New York demimonde - is to think like a them. Yes, Bohemia is dead. Its funeral rites are pronounced by Mr. Larson's best song ('La Vie Boheme,' quoted earlier), a wondrously nonsensical catalog of tastes, ideas and attitudes ranging from microbrewed beers to Kurosawa movies, with a toast along the way to 'Sontag and to Sondheim and to everything taboo.' But the passage of time, which has left almost nothing taboo, has also inoculated 'Rent' against the disdain of hipsters who might find it woefully unsophisticated. Its idea of Bohemia is not realistic, but romantic, even utopian. Openhearted to a fault, it stakes its integrity on the faith that even in millennial New York, some things - friendship, compassion, grief, pleasure, beauty - are more important than money or real estate. It never hurts to be reminded. Precisely because some of the specific concerns of 'Rent' have become dated, the truth at its heart is clearer than ever. It is undeniably sentimental, but its sentimentality might serve as a balm to those of us, in New York and elsewhere, who sometimes find ourselves living in the long, tuneless sequel. Who would ever want to see a show called 'Mortgage'?

Subject: States' Coffers Swelling Again From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 07:25:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/national/25states.html?ex=1290574800&en=8bc77f96820f60e9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 25, 2005 States' Coffers Swelling Again After Struggles By JOHN M. BRODER LOS ANGELES - After four years of tight budgets and deepening debt, most states from California to Maine are experiencing a marked turnaround in their fiscal fortunes, with billions of dollars more in tax receipts than had been projected pouring into coffers around the country. The windfall is a result of both a general upturn in the economy and conservative budgeting by state officials in recent years, and it is leading to the restoration of school funding, investments in long-neglected roads and bridges, debt reduction, and the return of money borrowed from cities and counties. In Sacramento, officials are setting aside part of a multibillion-dollar revenue windfall to build up California's depleted cash reserves. Delaware has appropriated money for a pilot program for full-day kindergarten, and Florida will spend nearly $400 million on a new universal preschool program for 4-year-olds. Some states, including New York, New Jersey, Hawaii and Oklahoma, are pouring significant new sums into public colleges and universities after several years of sharp cutbacks. One sign of the improved fiscal health, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers, is that only five states were forced to make midyear budget cuts, totaling $634 million, in the fiscal year that ended, for most states, on June 30. In 2003, by contrast, 37 states cut spending in the middle of the budget year, by a total of $12.6 billion, the association said. But the good news is not universal and may prove short-lived. The Great Lakes States continue to be hammered by the loss of manufacturing jobs, and full recovery from the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast States will take years. And experts warn that even though tax revenues are rising in most of the country, demands on state budgets - particularly for education, health care and pensions - are growing even faster. 'The general picture is that revenue is coming in better than expected for quite a few states,' said Scott Pattison, executive director of the National Association of State Budget Officers. 'The problem,' Mr. Pattison said, 'is that the states are like the guy who had been laid off and his income went way down, and now he's got a job again. But in the meantime, he put a lot of expenses on his credit card, his kids' tuition went up and he tapped into his retirement fund. That's exactly what a lot of states did.' During the lean years, states resorted to a lot of one-time fixes to balance their budgets while maintaining services. They cut spending, raised taxes, drew down their rainy-day funds, relied on federal programs, delayed payments to employee pension funds and borrowed heavily. Now they are coping with the hangover from those stopgap solutions. In California, for example, increased tax collections and the cumulative effect of state spending cuts produced a turnaround in the state's budgetary fortunes, to the tune of nearly $4 billion, according to analysts for the governor's office and the Legislature. Officials now project a surplus of $5.2 billion at the end of the current fiscal year, up from an earlier projection of $1.3 billion. But all of that excess revenue will be consumed during the coming fiscal year, and the state will find quickly itself back in the red unless Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and lawmakers agree on longer-term solutions to the chronic imbalance between revenue and spending. 'We still have to control the rate of growth in spending,' said H. D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance. Governor Schwarzenegger, a Republican, sponsored a ballot measure this fall that would have forced reductions in state spending when revenue fell short of projections, but it was soundly rejected by voters, who responded to heated warnings from state employee and teachers unions that it would mean steep cuts in education and other services. Mr. Palmer said the governor would work with the Legislature on another approach. The picture in New York is similar to that in California. New York entered the fiscal year that began in April with a projected deficit of $4.2 billion. Instead, because of a sharp rise in personal income taxes and capital gains receipts, the state now expects to end the year with a surplus of $1 billion, a $5 billion turnaround in one year. But Michael Marr, the communications director for the New York state budget office, said rapidly rising costs for Medicaid, education and other state programs demanded continued fiscal caution. New York City has also seen a significant brightening of its fiscal picture. Income, sales and real estate transfer taxes are coming in above forecasts, cutting the projected deficit for the next fiscal year to $2.25 billion from $4.5 billion, the City Hall budget office reported this week. New Jersey's finances, too, have benefited from the upturn in the economy and a relatively strong stock market, with state tax revenue growing at a double-digit rate over last year. New Jersey is one of several states considering tax cuts in the current fiscal year. The newly elected governor, Senator Jon Corzine, a Democrat, promised property tax relief in the recent campaign. Indiana is also considering property tax cuts, perhaps offset by an increase in cigarette taxes. Lawmakers in Utah are looking at ways to reduce sales or income taxes after the state took in $90 million more in taxes than anticipated in the first four months of the current fiscal year. Michigan's economy remains in the doldrums because of the deep slump in the auto industry, and its state budget woes have eased only slightly, said Jay Wortley, senior economist at the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency. Revenues are expected to grow by a modest 3.2 percent in the current year over the year just ended, Mr. Wortley said. But that rate of growth will not begin to make up for five years of cutbacks in virtually all state services, he added. Mr. Wortley said prison costs were rising, local governments were not getting promised payments from the state and financing for state universities remained tight. The state is selling publicly owned property and is borrowing against anticipated revenue from the nationwide settlement with tobacco companies to make ends meet. Despite all that, Michigan officials are debating a package of business tax cuts to attract and retain high-technology companies to replace the jobs lost in manufacturing. State officials know that the tax cuts will create additional stress on the budget, Mr. Wortley said. 'But they feel they have to do something to turn the economy around,' he said. 'The only thing state government can do to help business is to cut taxes.' And then there are Mississippi and Louisiana. Both states entered the current fiscal year on a high note. In Louisiana, oil and gas royalties were coming in at a record pace and sales tax revenue was growing at a double-digit clip. Mississippi ended the last fiscal year with a healthy surplus, and the current year began strong, with sales, corporate and individual income taxes exceeding estimates in July alone by $22 million. Then Hurricane Katrina hit in late August, followed by Hurricane Rita. 'In the absence of these storms,' said Greg Albrecht, chief economist for Louisiana's legislative fiscal office, 'we were rocking and rolling. Just before they hit, we were sitting around saying, Look at all the money we're going to have. We were finally going to come back from the recession of 2001.' 'Then the storms came along and just pulled the rug out from underneath us,' Mr. Albrecht said. Louisiana has emptied its rainy-day fund and cut $600 million from its $7.3 billion annual budget, and the state is still looking for ways to fill what has become a gaping hole in its finances. Mississippi, which was also hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, took out a $500 million line of credit to make up for lost sales and income taxes and to provide disaster assistance to state residents. J. K. Stringer Jr., executive director of the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration, said that despite the devastation after the storm, revenue rebounded in October because of heavy spending by federal workers, insurance companies and thousands of evacuees from neighboring Louisiana. But Mr. Stringer said the state faced unknowns that made it impossible to draft a budget for the coming year. 'We got things under control here,' he said, 'other than three little unknowns: how much state revenue we're going to collect, how much this thing is going to cost us and how much money we're going to get from the feds.' 'Other than that,' Mr. Stringer said, 'we've got a firm handle on things.'

Subject: The Crocodilian Past From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 07:16:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/opinion/23wed4.html?ex=1290402000&en=809c24bd05aaaf5c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 The Crocodilian Past It had a head like a bullet with jaws, the body of a crocodile and 52 serrated teeth, and it lived 135 million years ago. But perhaps the most surprising thing about this ancient crocodile - whose name is Dakosaurus andiniensis and whose discovery was announced in the current issue of the journal Science - is that there must also have been a world to which it was peculiarly fitted, a niche to which it had adapted. That world is as long gone as Dakosaurus itself. Like all such prehistoric beings, confronting us out of the depths of time, Dakosaurus is yet another reminder that most of the life that has ever lived on Earth has gone extinct. This crocodile seems peculiar to us because it looks so unfamiliar, so unexpected, the stuff of aquatic nightmares and bad Hollywood movies. But of course we would have looked peculiar to it, too. This is the deep, perspectival problem of life itself. The world we live in - including its modern crocodiles - looks normal to us because it happens to be our world. In our entire lives, most of us encounter only a minute fraction of the life forms present on Earth at this moment. And so we are barely cognizant of the strangeness of now - never mind the strangeness of 135 million years ago. Everyone knows Crocodylus acutus - the modern American crocodile. And yet you don't have to stare at it very long before it too looks strange, and you begin to wonder what it's doing in the world to which it is adapted. The problem of familiarity and perspective is one barrier that keeps some people from grasping the truth of evolution. The more you confront the diversity of life forms in existence - all the ways of getting a living on this planet - the easier it is to grasp the malleability of life itself under the pressure of natural selection. Then something like Dakosaurus comes along, reminding us that the record of all the life forms on this planet is far from complete, and far stranger than we could ever have guessed. We would be at an utter loss to make sense of this diversity, of all the ways life presents itself, without the theory of evolution to explain it.

Subject: China Wages Classroom Struggle From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 07:02:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/asia/20beijing.html?ex=1290142800&en=d37f3b4011ac983c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 China Wages Classroom Struggle to Win Friends in Africa By HOWARD W. FRENCH BEIJING - As the teacher, a career Chinese diplomat, spoke, his class of African diplomats scribbled furiously. At the United Nations, China opposed the United States invasion of Iraq and has defended the right of Iran and other developing countries to use civilian nuclear power, said the teacher, Yuan Shibin. China, he noted pointedly, swept aside American objections to making an African the secretary general. There was nothing subtle about his message, which will be repeatedly hammered home to the African diplomats during their three month, all-expenses paid stay at the Foreign Affairs University here. 'China will always protect its own interests as well as those of other developing countries,' Mr. Yuan said. By contrast, 'U.S. national interests are not often in conformity with those of other nations, including China.' The classes are one element in a campaign by Beijing to win friends around the world and pry developing nations out of the United States' sphere of influence. Africa, with its immense oil and mineral wealth and numerous United Nations votes, lies at the heart of that effort. Since 2000, Chinese trade with Africa has more than tripled, reaching nearly $30 billion in 2004. Beijing has signed at least 40 oil agreements with various African countries. Medical teams from China are training counterparts in numerous African countries and providing free equipment and drugs to help fight AIDS, malaria and other scourges. 'China is making a determined effort to make sure that its interests are represented,' said Drew Thompson, a China scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. 'They are making sure they have a seat at the table, and that their relationships are comprehensive and not just economic. It isn't competitive in the way the cold war was. It's more a case of seeing to it that their message is on one of the many cable channels out there.' China's efforts to cultivate African ties date to the earliest days of the independence era on the continent, when Beijing armed and trained liberation movements and sent its workers by the thousands to build roads, railways and stadiums. Today, Chinese bankers and oil executives are as common a sight as Westerners in African capitals. Meanwhile, several Chinese ministries, including Science and Technology, Agriculture, Commerce and Education, are working with African governments to train officials and develop human resources. While the aid seems aimed at winning African hearts, the classes in diplomacy, constantly refined over the past decade, seem aimed more at swaying African minds. In addition, to impart a sympathetic view of China, they put forth a distinctly Chinese view of the world on questions about everything from economic development and history to democracy. 'Soft power is said to be coercive, persuading people to do what you'd like them to do, as opposed to hard power, which means forcing them to do what you want to do,' said Qin Yaqing, vice president of the Foreign Affairs University, a state-run school that trains China's own diplomats and works with foreign trainees. 'In traditional Chinese philosophy we have something similar to this, and it is called moral attraction.' China's appeal to Africa and much of the third world centers on the idea that nations will be drawn to an emerging superpower that does not lecture them about democracy and human rights or interfere in what Beijing considers 'internal affairs.' The other pole of attraction is, of course, China's remarkable quarter century of economic growth, which has lifted it from the ranks of the poorest to make it one of the largest and most powerful economies. For developing countries, many of which have grown disenchanted with the so-called Washington consensus, a mixture of lowered trade barriers, privatization, democracy and free markets, there is intense interest in trying to learn from China. There is talk of a rival 'Beijing Consensus,' which emphasizes innovation and growth through a social-market economy, while placing less emphasis on free markets and democracy. Officially, China denies that it is promoting a competing program. 'Yes, a lot of African countries have been coming to China,' said Liu Jianchao, deputy spokesman of the Foreign Ministry. 'But although people may call it a Beijing Consensus, we are not trying to pose as a model for other countries.'

Subject: Emma please keep an eye on this topic From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 23:06:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma, Please keep an eye out for this topic and post any articles you see on this one. I believe this is a serious problem in the future. There are two underlying themes to this problem: 1. Movement towards democracy and economic liberation is not working in Africa. 2. China's hunger for resources and lack of responsible politics is a serious problem for human development. To elaborate: 1. Movement towards democracy and economic liberation is not working in Africa. Since the end of the cold war, there was a clear drive by the West to force African countries to become democratic. No longer would ruthless dictators receive allegiance money from the West or from the Soviet Union. We now had the perfect opportunity to invoke a positive influence in Africa. The World Bank and IMF looked to the economic liberation models of Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, S Korea and even China as a key to attracting foreign direct investment. These models were seen as the panacea to all economic problems and Africa was forced to follow suit. Open and liberate your economies and the FDI will come rushing in. Unfortunately just about everyone in the world was already doing the same and Africa was by no means an attraction in comparison to the slightly more developed economies of, say, South America that were also liberating. Countries like Zambia, Namibia, Botswana, Uganda, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho, etc all liberated their economies promising a new era of FDI that will make everyone richer. That flood of FDI money did not arrive. There were some success stories like Mozambique, but in contrast Lesotho (as an example) liberated its economy, did everything it should and today, the unemployment rate sits around 40% (after the government employs 50%) and Lesotho has first class infrastructure. Zambia’s currency is fully convertible to US Dollars. Any citizen or person in the country can go to a bank put their local currency (Kwacha) on the counter and get US Dollars if they want. Zambia has liberated, privatized and done everything the IMF told them to do. Yet that flood of FDI has not arrived. There is a growing anger among the populations who still live in poverty, particularly among those who lost their jobs when government run and subsidized institutions were closed down. There is already strong political statements by apposing parties to turn away from this “privatized liberal system” and nationalize companies such as the beer factories, hotels, rail sector, telecoms, etc, etc in order to provide more jobs. They only see this movement by IMF as a means for the Western companies to come in, lay off huge masses of work force and profiteer. It is very difficult to argue against these political voices when a lot of it is based on truth. My biggest fear is that we in the West are not hearing these stories. We are not reading the newspaper articles printed in Africa. I think most of us would probably be surprised to hear there are even newspaper companies in Africa. Ethiopia is probably one of the best case examples – a newly Democratically elected “responsible” government went about installing these “Western” principles, yet the life of the average person is just not getting any better. Now we have just had elections in Ethiopia and a major upset has occurred with a more radical socialist party winning what is arguably the entire election (all hell is still breaking loose over this matter in Ethiopia) Hey if those socialists are savvy enough – they can point to the US economy and say that this problem is just the same in the USA, how can we adopt this model if it even fails in the USA? These are very trying times. How can we convince Africans to improve their human rights record, environmental management, female upliftment and fiscal responsibility when all the other things we promised are just not happening? I am deeply worried about this. I am worried we are about to see more Che Gavaras who will rise up against system gain the backing of the poor masses, over throw democratic governments and introduce what?...... a communist system? Hey isn’t China Communist? > > > 2. China's hunger for resources and lack of responsible politics is a serious problem for human development. The case example I have now is Zimbabwe which has implemented outrageous acts. Zimbabwe was once one of only two nations regarded as the bread basket of Africa. Exporting food right throughout Africa and the world. Zimbabwe was once the world’s second largest exporter of tobacco. Today its tobacco exports (a key US Dollar revenue earner) is ZERO. They do not export anything and are desperate to only feed their people. This turn around has happened in a matter of a few years (approximately 4 years). Zimbabwe has been shunned by the UN and is facing sanctions from just about all its major trading partners. In the face of this, their tyrant president, Robert Mugabe, is now finally done with expropriating commercial farmland and has now started with relocating poor urban people in masses to far out rural areas. Another inhumane act that has made many at the UN angry with this blatant irresponsible governance. Zimbabwe’s inflation rates sits at a whopping 400%. We finally thought that Mugabe would be brought to his knees when he desperately needed US Dollar cash to make an IMF payment and continue receiving IMF loans. For the first time, every nation that he turned to, placed conditions on their loans. Conditions that went against Mugabe’s radically stupid politics. All nations…. Except for one. Yes you guessed it… China! China stepped to the plate gave Zimbabwe the money they needed with no political conditions perpetuating this ongoing suffering of people inside Zimbabwe. But why? Well as it turns out, Zimbabwe has huge deposits of Platinum. Take a look on the commodities market – platinum is worth far more than Gold for a good reason. This is a very versatile mineral. It appears to be very clear that Chinese were discussing the Platinum deposits and even inspecting the Platinum mines. We know this because all of Zimbabwe’s Platinum mines are owned by South African companies, who know they were inspected by Chinese officials and are now feeling very nervous that Zimbabwe may well nationalize the mines and hand them to the Chinese. Western values may not have all the wonderful merits and may not be perfect. The benefit of Western values is the mere fact that we can criticize our own leadership values and over time, correct them. Chinese leadership values in contrast are appalling with absolutely no mechanism for criticism and improvement. As China becomes more and more hungry for resources, it also stands a very strong probability of imposing “its” influence on the world. I am sorry to say this – but if I had to pick between evils, I’d rather pick a Bush Government than a Hu Jintao Government. Gawd I’d never thought I’d find myself saying this: I’d rather pick a Republican Government than a Communist Government. We have the golden opportunity to truly rid this world of all the factors that cause poverty, famine and all those dictators that should be part of the dark ages. The rise of China may well bring yet another obstacle to the greater progress for all.

Subject: German Auto Supplier Delphi Might Envy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 07:00:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/business/worldbusiness/24continental.html?ex=1290488400&en=caa85a7c7c6d10f1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 24, 2005 A German Auto Supplier Delphi Might Envy By MARK LANDLER FRANKFURT - When Manfred Wennemer talks about the American auto industry these days, he sounds like a driver thankful to have survived a nasty pileup with a few scratches. His German auto parts maker, Continental, has avoided most of the jolts that have rattled its American counterparts. While Delphi and its biggest customer, General Motors, are struggling to stave off financial problems, Continental's profits are surging and its stock is hitting record highs. And yet Continental has gotten a taste of the hard times across the Atlantic. It recently laid off a quarter of the 1,200 workers at its tire factory in Charlotte, N.C., and is demanding concessions in benefits from those who remain. It no longer predicts when it will stop losing money in the United States. 'There's a cost burden that no one can manage away,' Mr. Wennemer, the chief executive of Continental, said in an interview recently. 'The United States has to find a way to solve that.' Fortunately for Continental, the world's fourth-largest tire maker with brands like Uniroyal and General Tire, and Europe's second-largest auto parts supplier after Bosch, the United States accounts for less than a fifth of its $14.7 billion in sales. For Mr. Wennemer, the problems at Delphi, General Motors and in his own American factories merely serve to dramatize the message he drives home day after day. 'We have to reduce our prices to our customers by 3 percent to 5 percent per year,' Mr. Wennemer said. 'If you don't do this, you shouldn't be in this industry. Not everybody understands that.' This relentless focus on costs has turned Continental into one of the quiet stars of German industry - a global powerhouse that makes tires in Malaysia, conveyor belts in Hungary, and brakes in Brazil. It has also made Mr. Wennemer, 58, a blunt-spoken mathematician with eyeglasses the size of saucers, into one of Germany's most respected chief executives. 'He is a very unassuming guy,' said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, the director of the Center for Automotive Research in Gelsenkirchen. 'He always says, 'Look at the other C.E.O.'s, they're more important than me.' But those guys could learn from him.' The success of Continental is remarkable, given the fierce pressure on the American and European auto industries. Although it is in some of the same businesses as Delphi, and supplies the same carmakers, Continental's operating earnings jumped 35.9 percent in the first nine months of 2005, compared with last year. Its stock has risen close to 60 percent in the last 12 months. If Delphi is forced to auction some of its assets, Continental has already put up its hand as a potential bidder. 'They really want to get into electronic steering,' said Thomas Aney, an auto parts analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in Frankfurt. 'Delphi has got a good business in that.' Mr. Wennemer, a onetime cosmetics executive, took over Continental in 2001 after a string of acquisitions left the company deep in debt. His recipe for success, he insists, is not mysterious: create a stream of innovative products and produce them, as much as possible, in low-cost countries. Among Continental's most advanced offerings are an antirollover technology, known as electronic stability control, and 'run-flat tires,' which allow vehicles to roll to the next gas station on a deflated tire. Sixty percent of Continental's 81,600 employees work outside Germany; Brazil, China and Romania are among the fastest-growing markets. Fewer than 15 percent work in the United States and Mexico. On Tuesday, Continental announced that it would cut 320 jobs, or 10 percent of the work force, at its tire factory in Hanover, the northern German city where it was founded in 1871 and is still based. As Continental throttles back in Germany and the United States, it is accelerating in Asia. On Monday, the company opened a new Asian headquarters in Shanghai, and announced that its automotive systems division would double its sales in the region to 1 billion euros ($1.17 billion) by 2010. 'Where are the areas in the world with the new customers?' Mr. Wennemer said. 'Where is the music playing? It's in Asia.' Nor does he view countries outside Germany and the United States simply as a source of cheap labor. Continental recently opened a research center in Romania, where it is developing sophisticated electronics systems. That does not mean higher-cost economies like Germany have no role to play, he said. They must focus on retaining capital-intensive manufacturing. In suburban Frankfurt, for example, sits one of Continental's most advanced factories, making electronic braking systems. The plant is almost fully automated; labor costs account for less than 4 percent of the total production costs. And because its machines are running at full capacity, Mr. Wennemer said the factory was more efficient than similar plants in China, Japan and the United States. The trouble is, Germany still remains dependent on the kind of labor-intensive manufacturing that Continental is seeking to move abroad. That has inevitably strained its relations with the unions. Several hundred workers protested in front of Continental's headquarters last May, when word of its planned job cuts in Germany first circulated. They carried placards depicting the company as an 'insatiable caterpillar,' cutting jobs despite its growing sales and profits. Mr. Wennemer makes no apologies. German workers, he said, should forget about competing with workers in Romania or China. And they will not even be competitive with their neighbors in Western Europe, unless they are willing to work longer hours for the same pay. 'Why can't Germans work 40 hours a week, if the rest of the world is working 40, 50, and in China, 60 hours a week?' he said, rapping on the table. 'It's a mystery to me why we don't move in this direction, and finally compete with those countries where we have a chance.' Unlike other German chief executives, Mr. Wennemer does not trumpet those occasions when he keeps jobs in Germany. For him, the notion that German companies have a duty to preserve German jobs is not only illogical, but ultimately damages the country's competitiveness. 'I help my country because I think the problems have to grow before we finally are forced to act,' he said. 'We still think the world around us is O.K. People really don't understand what is happening.' As critical as Mr. Wennemer is of Germany, he is even more troubled by the United States. Continental has suffered heavy losses in its passenger car tire business there. And it is burdened by some of the same pension fund liabilities and other legacy costs as Delphi. 'Thank God we are smaller than Delphi,' he said. 'All our pension funds are fully funded.' Continental's labor relations in the United States make those in Germany look chummy. It has warned it might shut its plant in Charlotte, he said, because the costs there are 30 percent higher than in Western Europe. And it has ceased production at a tire factory in Kentucky. Costly product-liability lawsuits and a lack of innovation are added burdens in the United States, Mr. Wennemer said. Only 10 percent of American cars are equipped with antirollover technology, compared with 60 percent in Germany, although the Americans are putting it into new sport utility vehicles as a standard feature. That has propelled sales of Continental's electronic stability control, or E.S.C. 'With one less CD player in the car and more E.S.C.,' he said, 'we might have several thousand fewer people killed on the roads.'

Subject: China's Online Revolution From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 06:50:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/international/asia/24bloggers.html?ex=1290488400&en=b6bacdccaa8319c6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 24, 2005 A Party Girl Leads China's Online Revolution By HOWARD W. FRENCH SHANGHAI - On her fourth day of keeping a Web log, she introduced herself to the world with these striking words: 'I am a dance girl, and I am a party member.' 'I don't know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl,' that early post continued. 'But I'm sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I'm most likely the only party member among them.' Thus was born, early in July, what many regard as China's most popular blog. Sometimes timing is everything, and such was the case with the anonymous blogger, a self-described Communist Party member from Shanghai who goes by the pseudonym Mu Mu. A 25-year-old, Mu Mu appears online most evenings around midnight, shielding her face while striking poses that are provocative, but never sexually explicit. She parries questions from some of her tens of thousands of avid followers with witticisms and cool charm. Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China's ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control. Web experts say the surge in blogging is a result of strong growth in broadband Internet use, coupled with a huge commercial push by the country's Internet providers aimed at wooing users. Common estimates of the numbers of blogs in China range from one million to two million and growing fast. Under China's current leader, Hu Jintao, the government has waged an energetic campaign against freedom of expression, prohibiting the promotion of public intellectuals by the news media; imposing restrictions on Web sites; pressing search engine companies, like Google, to bar delicate topics, particularly those dealing with democracy and human rights; and heavily censoring bulletin board discussions at universities and elsewhere. So far, Chinese authorities have mostly relied on Internet service providers to police the Web logs. Commentary that is too provocative or directly critical of the government is often blocked by the provider. Sometimes the sites are swamped by opposing comment - many believe by official censors - that is more favorable to the government. Blogs are sometimes shut down altogether, temporarily or permanently. But the authorities do not yet seem to have an answer to the proliferation of public opinion in this form. The new wave of blogging took off earlier this year. In the past, a few pioneers of the form stood out, but now huge communities of bloggers are springing up around the country, with many of them promoting one another's online offerings, books, music or, as in Mu Mu's case, a running, highly ironic commentary about sexuality, intellect and political identity. 'The new bloggers are talking back to authority, but in a humorous way,' said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. 'People have often said you can say anything you want in China around the dinner table, but not in public. Now the blogs have become the dinner table, and that is new. 'The content is often political, but not directly political, in the sense that you are not advocating anything, but at the same time you are undermining the ideological basis of power.' A fresh example was served up last week with the announcement by China of five cartoonlike mascot figures for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They were lavishly praised in the press - and widely ridiculed in blogs that seemed to accurately express public sentiment toward them. 'It's not difficult to create a mascot that's silly and ugly,' wrote one blogger. 'The difficulty is in creating five mascots, each sillier and uglier than the one before it.' A leading practitioner of the sly, satirical style that is emerging here as an influential form of political and social commentary is a 38-year-old Beijing entertainment journalist named Wang Xiaofeng. Mr. Wang, who runs a site called Massage Milk, is better known to bloggers by his nickname, Dai San Ge Biao, which means Wears Three Watches. His blog mixes an infectious cleverness with increasingly forthright commentary on current events, starting with his very nickname, which is a patent mockery of the political theory of the former Chinese Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, which was labeled San Ge Dai Biao, or the Three Represents. In a recent commentary, as the government stoked patriotic sentiment during the commemoration of the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, Mr. Wang asked who really fought the enemy, making the provocative observation that only two Communist generals had died fighting Japan, while more than 100 of their Nationalist counterparts had. 'In blogging I don't need to be concerned about taboos,' Mr. Wang said. 'I don't need to borrow a euphemism to express myself. I can do it more directly, using the exact word I want to, so it feels a lot freer.' Another emerging school of blogging, potentially as subversive as any political allegory, involves bringing Chinese Web surfers more closely in touch with things happening outside their country. Typically, this involves avid readers of English who scour foreign Web sites and report on their findings, adding their own commentary, in Chinese blogs. Several bloggers like this have become opinion leaders, usually in areas like technology, culture, current events or fashion, building big followings by being fast and prolific. One of the leading sites was run by Isaac Mao, a Shanghai investment manager who had built a following writing about education and technology. His site, isaacmao.com, was later blocked by the authorities after he posted a graphic purporting to illustrate the workings of the firewall operated by the country's censors. Mr. Mao, an organizer of the first national bloggers' conference in Shanghai this month, recently went back online at isaacmao.blogbus.com/s1034872/index.html. By far the biggest category of blogs remains the domain of the personal diary, and in this crowded realm, getting attention places a premium on uniqueness. For the past few months, Mu Mu, the Shanghai dancer, has held pride of place, revealing glimpses of her body while maintaining an intimate and clever banter with her many followers, who are carefully kept in the dark about her real identity. 'In China, the concepts of private life and public life have emerged only in the past 10 to 20 years,' she said in an online interview. 'Before that, if a person had any private life, it only included their physical privacy - the sex life, between man and woman, for couples. 'I'm fortunate to live in a transitional society, from a highly political one to a commercial one,' she wrote, 'and this allows me to enjoy private pleasures, like blogging.'

Subject: Between City and Suburban Students From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 06:16:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/nyregion/23academy.html?ex=1290402000&en=3863e75c8fffd24c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 Closing the Gap Between City and Suburban Students By MICHAEL JANOFSKY GERMANTOWN, Tenn. - After serving the children of affluent parents for 40 years, St. George's Independent, a private elementary school here in a suburb of Memphis, decided to expand into higher grades. But just as plans got under way in 1999 for a middle school and a high school, a group of donors concerned about the racial divide between Memphis, which is largely black, and its suburbs, which are largely white, offered school officials $6 million to create an elementary school in the city that would mirror the suburban campus. The result became St. George's Memphis, an experiment that brings to the city the same lesson plans as the original school and some of the same teachers, in an effort to narrow the achievement gap in learning and to bridge social differences. By 2009, however, the first fifth-grade class from Memphis will join its Germantown counterpart to become an integrated sixth grade in the new middle school. Stewart Burgess, the Early Childhood Division director, said that in planning for the Memphis school, St. George's immediately rejected the idea of joining city and suburban children in large numbers before they finished fifth grade, even in the face of criticism from some city residents who accused St. George's of operating a 'separate but equal' system to keep the suburban campus largely white. 'It's been tried over and over,' Mr. Burgess said of quick immersion. 'It doesn't work very well. My work with a few individuals here showed a fair degree of discomfort.' School officials say they hope that St. George's high school graduates of 2016 and beyond, steeped in the school's dedication to cultural diversity, would return to the area after college. 'If an individual school can do something like this in Memphis,' said Rick Ferguson, St. George's president, 'our dream is that it could be emulated by other independent schools around the nation.' Only a few other private schools have attempted a similar project, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. The Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy, a suburban private school, opened a downtown campus for minority students six years ago. In North Philadelphia, a social services organization known as Project HOME is collaborating with Germantown Academy, the nation's oldest nonsectarian day school, to open an elementary school next year. For parents here, the effort has particular resonance. 'African-Americans have traditionally felt, especially in the South, that private schools were created to get rid of us and we're not welcome,' said Yolanda Toney, a parent who is black and the mother of an eighth-grade boy at the middle school. She added: 'It's a complicated thing for both sides. But I feel St. George's is looking at it in the face and trying to deal with it head on.' The effort here is building steadily as the St. George's campus in Memphis adds a class each year to reach parity with St. George's in suburban Germantown, which now has 400 children in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade. Most of the suburban students are from financially comfortable white families, and their parents pay up to $10,060 a year in tuition, school officials say. The Memphis school opened in a renovated church building with one pre-kindergarten class and now has nearly 100 children in pre-kindergarten through second grade. Most of the children are from black and Hispanic working-class families, officials say. Parents are required to pay at least $500 a year, with the rest covered by scholarships. School officials said they recruited children for their first class by knocking on doors in city neighborhoods. Now they have more applicants than openings. Mr. Ferguson said each child from the Memphis school who remained in St. George's from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade would represent a scholarship worth $250,000. St. George's two elementary schools are about eight miles apart, but increasingly they are less and less apart academically and socially, Mr. Burgess and other school officials said. Besides using the same approach to teaching, school officials have set out to ease whatever culture clash remains in 2009 by having children and their parents from both schools take part in events known as 'cross campus connections,' like field trips, plays, lunches and community service projects, throughout the year. Each child also has a 'buddy' at the other school. Gene Pearson, director of the Graduate Program in City and Regional Planning at the University of Memphis, said environmental psychologists generally agree that the gradual mixing of children gives them a better chance at long-term success. 'We know the maturation process humans go through,' he said. 'The phases are spaced around the house to the yard to the block to the neighborhood. That's why neighborhood-based elementary schools have always been the ideal.' So far, Mr. Burgess said, the educational signs are encouraging. In the classroom, tests given to second graders last month showed that all but 2 of the 20 attending the Memphis school were reading more than half a year above grade level, officials said, putting them within range of the 54 Germantown second graders, who were reading slightly above third-grade level. Mr. Burgess said it was close enough that the difference would most likely melt away by fifth grade. Officials said that only a very small percentage of struggling children at each school are terminated each year. 'I'm impressed with where we are,' Mr. Burgess said. 'I am more worried about the societal part than the academic.' For now, children appear to be at ease with others if not altogether ignorant of their differences. On a recent field trip to a nature preserve, kindergartners from both schools seemed separated more by sex than race. Hugs, hand-holding and smiles were abundant. 'I wanted my children to have it a little better than I had it, a little better education,' said Felecia Walker, who is black and has two sons at the Memphis school. 'When I first attended a parents' open house, they were talking about college, and that really touched me. It wasn't 'if' your child is going to college; it was 'when.' That helped set it in my mind that this was the right place for me.' The parents said their children have much to gain from each other, but they also admitted to tensions. For Ms. Walker, it was the possibility 'someone would call one of my boys the n-word.' She added, 'It's something you think about.' Ms. Toney said she worried about reactions to interracial dating as the children got older. Terry Harter, a white mother of a fifth grader at the suburban campus, agreed, saying interracial dating was fine with her 'as long as they had the same values.' Mr. Ferguson said the St. George's schools face other challenges as well. The fund-raising pressures are unrelenting, with the need to cover the Memphis scholarships at $1 million this year and growing. In addition, officials want to improve the Memphis location with facilities to match the suburban school, including a spacious library, a gymnasium and an auditorium. Still, he said, school officials were committed to seeing it through, and for him the effort was personal. As a child, he said, he watched as some whites ostracized his father, Bert, who created WDIA in Memphis, the first radio station in the country with programs aimed at black listeners. 'I grew up with a lot of flak,' he said. 'I'd come home to my white neighbors, and they knew what Dad did. We heard a lot of jokes, but that had a lot to do with how I feel about getting the races together.'

Subject: Artists Have Sounded the Warning Bells From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 06:11:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/arts/design/24ridi.html?ex=1290488400&en=8d8309a17f289e03&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 24, 2005 In France, Artists Have Sounded the Warning Bells for Years By ALAN RIDING PARIS - So life often imitates art. Yet with the recent uprisings in some French immigrant neighborhoods, this cliché came with a new twist: art, in the form of movies and rap music, has long been warning that French-born Arab and black youths felt increasingly alienated from French society and that their communities were ripe for explosion. Certainly anyone who saw Mathieu Kassovitz's 1995 film 'Hate' had no reason to be surprised by this fall's violence. At the time, Mr. Kassovitz's portrayal of a seething immigrant Paris banlieue (or suburb), even his choice of title, seemed shocking and exaggerated. Today, the movie could almost pass for a documentary. In 'Hate,' burning cars light up the soulless space between high-rise public housing projects as residents protest the beating of a young Arab, Ahmed. 'Don't forget, the police kill,' graffiti on the wall proclaim. Three angry, restless youths - a Jew, an Arab and a black - visit Ahmed at the hospital and are themselves beaten by the police. They plan revenge. After 'Hate' had been shown around the world, Mr. Kassovitz wrote, 'I made this film with the conviction that the police brutality of the time should be denounced, and that we should point our fingers at it, but also to dissect it, to understand what its inner workings are.' In other words, a movie director, then in his late 20's, recognized something politicians chose to ignore. This month, Mr. Kassovitz went further, accusing France's hard-line interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of provoking the latest troubles. 'As much as I would like to distance myself from politics,' Mr. Kassovitz wrote on his Web site (mathieukassovitz.com), 'it is difficult to remain distant in the face of the depravations of politicians. And when these depravations draw the hate of all youth, I have to restrain myself from encouraging the rioters.' Even in the mid-1990's, though, 'Hate' was hardly an isolated protest. Rather, it spawned a genre known as banlieue movies, which explored the problems of children of Arab and African immigrants and effectively announced the birth of a new 'lost generation.' (Coline Serreau's 'Chaos' also focused on young Arab women trying to escape male-run households.) The message of these films was uniformly disturbing. Why did these movies not ring alarm bells? Clearly, screen fiction has a distancing effect: it is 'only' telling a story. Yet television documentaries and news reports can have much the same result. For most middle-class French, nightly car burnings and police clashes with stone-throwing youths have been taking place on their television screens, not in their neighborhoods. Where fiction has an advantage portraying reality is in giving individual faces to well-documented social and economic problems. Banlieue movies have also proved more effective in analyzing these problems than have newspapers and politicians, who, of late, have variously expressed shock and surprise, as if the riots were as unpredictable as a natural disaster. French artists are not alone in taking a lead. In Britain, for instance, Udayan Prasad's movie 'My Son the Fanatic' (1997) explored Islamic fundamentalism in a Pakistani community eight years before this summer's suicide bombings in London. And many Britons only discovered their society's multiculturalism through Zadie Smith's best-selling novel 'White Teeth' and Monica Ali's 'Brick Lane.' In Germany and the Netherlands too, fiction - cinema and literature - is helping to record societies being irreversibly altered by immigrants and their locally born children and grandchildren. And here's the point: across Western Europe, de facto segregation exists, reinforced by the fact that immigrants usually live in their own communities and do lower-paid jobs. Only through fiction do many Europeans meet the 'foreigners' in their midst. The French banlieues, though, have found a voice in talented rap musicians. They burst on the scene here 15 years ago, borrowing a musical style from African-Americans, but using lyrics that spoke to the irate, frustrated and unemployed youth of immigrant extraction in the very banlieues where many of the rappers were raised. This month, the left-of-center Paris daily Libération had the clever idea of revisiting popular rap songs and interviewing the artists about their sentiments today. As with the banlieue movies, the warning signs were clear in some lyrics. As far back as 1991, for instance, a group called NTM addressed politicians in one song: Go visit the banlieues Look at young people in their eyes You who command from on high My appeal is serious, don't take it as a game Young people are changing, that's what is worrying. And, four years later, NTM sang: 'How long will this last?/ It's been years since everything could explode.' Rim-K of the group 113 was just 20 in 1999 when he wrote 'Facing the Police,' which included these lines: 'There'd better be no atrocity or the town will explode/ The community is a time-bomb that will go off/ From the commander to the intern, everyone of them is hated.' Rim-K told Libération that he had expected trouble after dozens of African immigrants housed in run-down Paris hotels died in fires this summer. For Henri Gaudin, a prominent French architect, along with discrimination, poverty and unemployment, the architecture of the banlieue housing projects, or cités, has also contributed to the uprising. Inspired by Le Corbusier, these stand-alone high-rises promised low-cost housing, but lack urban infrastructure, like streets. 'The youths in the cités have nowhere to be anonymous; they are constantly viewed,' Mr. Gaudin said in an interview. 'The only places they can go to escape their family is to hang out in hallways or in basements, or form groups at the foot of buildings. They have no city, no public space.' Disiz la Peste, a black rap singer, captured this sense of hopelessness just a few months ago in lyrics that ended: Those who treat me with disdain Who make rotten jokes Which don't even make sense Neither humor nor love And France cares little what I do Forever in its mind I'll just be a young man from the banlieue. So, in truth, life has not been imitating art. Rather, cinema and rap music have been mirroring the life and mood of France's immigrant underclass. The problem is that, in the corridors of power in central Paris, no one was paying heed. Until now, that is. This week, a group of conservative legislators asked the Justice Ministry to investigate whether seven rap groups had incited violence and racism through their lyrics. Shooting the messengers, though, may not be the most effective solution.

Subject: Paul Krugman: Bad for the Country From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 05:31:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ November 25, 2005 Paul Krugman: Bad for the Country By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman continues his series on the need to fix our health care system. Here's a condensed version: Bad for the Country, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: 'What was good for our country,' a former president of General Motors once declared, 'was good for General Motors, and vice versa.' G.M. ... has announced that it will eliminate 30,000 jobs. Is what's bad for General Motors bad for America? In this case, yes. ... I won't defend the many bad decisions of G.M.'s management, or every demand made by the United Automobile Workers. But job losses at General Motors are part of the broader weakness of U.S. manufacturing, especially ... manufacturing that offers workers decent wages and benefits. And some of that weakness reflects two big distortions in our economy: a dysfunctional health care system and an unsustainable trade deficit. ... [L]ast year General Motors spent $1,500 per vehicle on health care. By contrast, Toyota spent only $201 per vehicle in North America, and $97 in Japan. If the United States had national health insurance, G.M. would be in much better shape ... Wouldn't taxpayer-financed health insurance amount to a subsidy to the auto industry? Not really. ...[T]ying health insurance to employment distorts the economy: it systematically discourages the creation of good jobs, the type of jobs that come with good benefits. And somebody ends up paying for health care anyway. ... either ... taxpayers or ...those with insurance. Moreover, G.M.'s health care costs are so high in part because of the inefficiency of America's fragmented health care system. We spend far more per person on medical care than countries with national health insurance, while getting worse results. About the trade deficit: ... The flip side of the trade deficit is a reorientation of our economy away from ... manufacturing, to industries that are insulated from foreign competition, such as housing. ... The trade deficit isn't sustainable. ... [O]ne of these days the easy credit will come to an end, and the United States will have to start paying its way in the world economy. To do that, we'll have to reorient our economy back toward producing things we can export or use to replace imports. And that will mean pulling a lot of workers back into manufacturing. So the rapid downsizing of manufacturing since 2000 ... amounts to dismantling a sector we'll just have to rebuild a few years from now. I don't want to attribute all of G.M.'s problems to our distorted economy. One of the plants G.M. plans to close is in Canada, which has national health insurance and ran a trade surplus last year. But the distortions in our economy clearly make G.M.'s problems worse. ... G.M.'s woes are yet another reminder of the urgent need to fix our health care system. It's long past time to move to a national system that would reduce cost, diminish the burden on employers who try to do the right thing and relieve working American families from the fear of lost coverage. Fixing health care would be good for General Motors, and good for the country.

Subject: I disagree From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 21:02:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I disagree for two simple reasons: 1. As Krugman has even pointed out - GM is cutting jobs in Canada. 2. Toyota is opening factories in the USA. Look at the contrast and irony in this sentence, '[L]ast year General Motors spent $1,500 per vehicle on health care. By contrast, Toyota spent only $201 per vehicle in North America, and $97 in Japan. If the United States had national health insurance, G.M. would be in much better shape.' Hold on a second! Why did Toyota spend only $201 while GM spent $1,500 per vehicle? And what has this got to do with the national health insurance when both companies spent this amount inside North America? I am by no means a fan of the US health system, but I really don't think the GM move to cut jobs can be linked to the problems with the health care system. Sorry Krugman - I have a lot of respect for your economic knowledge. But there are times when I look at the facts you present and say, 'They don't add up.' I am by no means saying that Krugman is a hoax and I am NOT trying to back the conservatives. I am only pointing out that if you are making an argument - make a strong one. Actually I heard a statistic that blew me away and I wish someone could point me in the direction to check up this stat. The stat is as follows: 80% of all small businesses that go bankrupt is because the business owner did not have proper medical insurance, fell sick and had to liquidate their company paying for the medical bills. If this stat is true, it flies in the face of the Republican ideal. However, this stat was simply stated on a TV show and I have heard many statements on that same show that are bull. Anyone got any ideas on how to research this stat? Thanks.

Subject: Record sales for GM From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 23:19:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Now why is it that South Africa has an almost fully privatised Medical Insurance system yet GM has recorded such amazing sales in the country? Keep in mind that GM fully manufactures their cars in South Africa: artilce below taken from the GM internet site: www.gmsa.com/newsdetail.jhtml?id=77 RECORD SALES FOR GENERAL MOTORS SOUTH AFRICA COMPETING in a February automotive market hallmarked by exceptional overall growth and positive sentiment, General Motors South Africa recorded its best overall sales performance since 1980. “This is clearly a very pleasing result for GMSA, particularly in light of the fact that the overall market grew a massive 32,4 percent during this period,” commented GMSA Director of Sales and Marketing Malcolm Gauld. “All indications are that the positive growth trends the industry started experiencing last year will persist, particularly as we continue to enjoy favourable economic conditions. Stable interest rates, anticipated improvement in the economic growth rate and positive consumer and business sentiment are all factors which bode well, not only for GMSA, but for the industry as a whole,” said Gauld. With direct reference to GMSA’s February performance, Gauld pointed out that the result came despite increased competition in the market place and an expanded market itself. “The fact that we were able to grow in these market conditions is very encouraging and further underpins our performance, which also saw GMSA increase its market share and shift to third position in the overall manufacturers’ sales rankings,” said Gauld. He concluded that this overall performance was boosted by record light commercial vehicle sales – the best recorded February sales since 1984.

Subject: Oh no - we should have seen this coming From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 23:32:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I just realised that the following articles are completly tied to the recent decision to cut jobs by GM in North America. They are moving their factories off shore and investing heavily on ramping operations abroad. It is only a matter of time before the GM's Shreveport, Louisiana plant will also be listed for closure. This is suppose to be the new world of economic efficiency but I can't get over how many families' lives are being devastated. Here are the articles: New York Times COMPANY NEWS; GENERAL MOTORS TO BUY OUT SOUTH AFRICAN AUTOMAKER Published: January 22, 2004 To gain greater access to a growing market, General Motors has agreed to buy the 51 percent of Delta Motor Corporation, a South African automaker, that it does not already own. Delta sold about 40,000 vehicles last year. The purchase, which would restore G.M.'s control of a former unit, depends on government approval, G.M. said. The transaction price was not disclosed. South African auto sales rose 5.3 percent last year to a seven-year high of 368,454. Delta sells cars and trucks from G.M.'s Opel European unit and from its Japanese affiliate, Isuzu Motors. The company is based in Port Elizabeth. DETROIT (April 6, 2005) - General Motors today announced the next step in the global expansion of HUMMER. Starting late in 2006 a global version of the all-new HUMMER H3 will be assembled at the General Motors plant in Struandale, South Africa. The additional volume to be assembled in South Africa is solely dedicated for export to markets in Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. When South African assembly begins in late-2006, it will involve components originally produced in GM's Shreveport, Louisiana plant. The new assembly operation in South Africa will focus on the implementation of revised content - such as right-hand drive - exclusively for H3s sold outside North America.

Subject: Another reason From: David E.. To: Mik Date Posted: Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 17:21:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: for $1500 health care costs is the drug and medical benefits offered retired employees.

Subject: Re: Another reason From: Poyetas To: David E.. Date Posted: Mon, Nov 28, 2005 at 09:04:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Mik raises a good point, how are Toyota's health care costs per car less than those of GM's if their both in North America? If the answer is retired employees (i'm assuming GM has more pension obligations than Toyota in the US), than the number Krugman stated is misleading. But I cannot imagine Krugman doing something like that. Maybe I'm just naive. One stat however that seems to stick is the healthcare cost per capita. If this is true than Krugman is right, American corporations are at a competitive disadvantage.

Subject: Time to leave? From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 03:15:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayCover.cfm?url=/images/20051126/20051126issuecovUS400.jpg

Subject: Surely From: Terri To: Yann Date Posted: Fri, Nov 25, 2005 at 16:33:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: We can begin to leave Iraq now and finish over 6 months, letting a mobile strike force remain in a country near by to limit any overt fighting.

Subject: In Give and Take of Evolution From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 12:49:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/science/22isla.html?ex=1290315600&en=989f86914882c2bb&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 22, 2005 In Give and Take of Evolution, a Surprising Contribution From Islands By CARL ZIMMER Islands hold a special place in the hearts of evolutionary biologists. When Charles Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands in 1835, he was stunned by the diversity of birds, which helped guide him to his theory of evolution by natural selection. Beginning in the middle of the last century, the ornithologist Ernst Mayr laid the foundation for the modern understanding of the way new species evolve, arguing that they mainly emerged when populations became geographically isolated. Mayr based his theory on his studies of birds from Pacific islands. Yet islands have generally been considered evolutionary dead ends. After animals and plants emigrated from the mainland, it was believed that they became so specialized for island life that they could not leave. They eventually became extinct, only to be replaced by new arrivals from the mainland. 'They were like baubles of the evolutionary past,' said Christopher E. Filardi, a biologist at the American Museum of Natural History. But Dr. Filardi and Robert Moyle, a colleague at the museum, have found evidence that islands can act as engines of evolution instead of dead ends. Animals can spread from island to island, giving rise to an explosion of new species, and even colonizing the mainland again. The results suggest that conserving biodiversity on islands is vital for the evolution of new species in the future. Dr. Filardi made this discovery by studying a group of Pacific island birds, known as monarch flycatchers, that were among the birds Mayr studied 80 years ago. Dr. Mayr could compare only the anatomy and colors of monarch flycatchers. Dr. Filardi, on the other hand, was able to analyze their DNA. He collected it from some species by going to remote islands, while Dr. Moyle extracted other samples from preserved flycatchers stored at the museum, going back to the 1800's. The scientists identified 13 species that shared a common ancestor in Australia or New Guinea between 2 million and 5.6 million years ago. The descendants of that ancient bird spread thousands of miles to islands as far-flung as Fiji and Hawaii. New species arose along the way, undergoing drastic changes at a rapid rate. In one lineage, the monarch flycatchers tripled their body size in less than a million years. 'This stuff can happen really fast,' Dr. Filardi said. This evolutionary wave returned to its origins when flycatchers from the Solomon Islands colonized Australia and New Guinea. Dr. Filardi and Dr. Moyle published their results in the Nov. 10 issue of Nature. 'Many aspects of island bird evolution are going to have to be rewritten,' said Jon Fjeldsa, an ornithologist at the University of Copenhagen. Other recent studies suggest that islands may also be engines of evolution for many other animals and perhaps even plants. In the June issue of The Journal of Biogeography, for example, Kirsten Nicholson of Washington University and her colleagues published a study of lizards that live in Central and South America. The team demonstrated that 123 mainland species are the descendants of an ancestor that lived in the West Indies. 'I have a feeling that in the next 10 years we're going to see a lot more of this,' Dr. Filardi said. Today monarch flycatchers and other island species are under serious threat from habitat loss and from rats and other animals introduced by humans. Rising seas from global warming could destroy some islands altogether. Dr. Filardi argues that the new findings make preserving island biodiversity even more urgent, because islands may be an important source of new biodiversity. 'It's the potential that the earth has to reinvent itself in the future,' he said. 'Islands may have more to do with that than we ever thought.'

Subject: Twilight by the Sea From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 12:38:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/theater/reviews/22seas.html November 22, 2005 Twilight by the Sea With Talking Lizards By BEN BRANTLEY Let's play 'Name That Play.' I'll give you a plot synopsis; you tell me the title of the agreeably acted, audience-friendly and finger-slender revival that opened on Broadway last night at the Booth Theater. Here goes: An elderly couple is on a waterside vacation. He's a curmudgeon, ready to settle down into a perpetual nap; she's an eternal pixie who keeps prodding him to live, live, live. But then unexpected, potentially hostile visitors enter the picture, bringing the old spouses' feelings about love, mortality and human existence into sharp, redemptive focus. Gotcha! The sentimental comedy in question is not Ernest Thompson's 'On Golden Pond,' which opened and closed on Broadway earlier this year. It's 'On Golden Sea' - I mean, 'Seascape,' Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize winner from 1975, which has been given a comfy new production by Lincoln Center Theater, directed by Mark Lamos and starring George Grizzard and Frances Sternhagen. Now comfy is not a word often associated with the author of discomfiting depictions of matrimony like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'A Delicate Balance.' Nor is the sugar-sprinkling Mr. Thompson a writer who naturally springs to mind in association with the bile-dispensing Mr. Albee. Yet Mr. Lamos's production of 'Seascape' exudes a misty, down-home charm that does indeed evoke Mr. Thompson's crowd pleaser about the twilight years of a devoted husband and wife. Of course, this may have something to do with the presence of the ever-vital Ms. Sternhagen, who put on old-lady makeup to play Ethel in the first Broadway production of 'On Golden Pond' 26 years ago. Parallels are also heightened by the casting of performers who are both in their mid-70's and here wear a shared air of plain-spoken folksiness. Mr. Grizzard's and Ms. Sternhagen's parts were originated in the 1975 production (which ran for only 63 performances) by Barry Nelson and Deborah Kerr, who were then in their mid-50's and urbane, glamorous figures. But it turns out that aging the leading characters in 'Seascape' only underscores elements of sweetness and optimism that were always central to this philosophical comedy and may account in part for its failing to find an audience among sophisticates who wanted to be shocked and disturbed by Mr. Albee. True, the play does feature the surreal inclusion of two human-sized, English-speaking sea lizards, here portrayed by Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller, as well as Mr. Albee's expected lyrical meditations on various brain-churning -ologies (ontology, eschatology, phenomenology). Yet 'Seascape' stands out, even alone, in the Albee canon as a full-length play that finds hope in the shadow of death and tender loving care in the institution of marriage. It is, in a way, the anti-'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' (a work, by the way, that notoriously did not win the Pulitzer). So perhaps this revival will draw theatergoers who stayed away from Anthony Page's superb and all too short-lived production of 'Virginia Woolf' earlier this year. 'Seascape' does not leave you scratching your head in confusion and consternation the way much of Albee does. On the other hand, it does leave you hungry. The plot of 'Seascape' (and plot is a generous word here) is centered on Charlie (Mr. Grizzard) and Nancy (Ms. Sternhagen), who are discovered on a sunny shore (the conventional sand-dune set is by Michael Yeargan) discussing their future and their past. Now that their children are grown, Nancy wants to travel and explore; George just wants to stay home and rest. Their debate is interrupted by the arrival of Leslie (Mr. Weller) and Sarah (Ms. Marvel), fearsome looking, green-gilled amphibians (Catherine Zuber designed the splendid long-tailed costumes), making their maiden exploratory voyage on dry land. And guess what? They can talk. They also turn out to have a comfortably monogamous relationship similar to that of Charlie and Nancy, who wonderingly take it upon themselves, as Charlie puts it, to 'explain evolution to a couple of lizards.' Sounds kind of cute by Albee standards, doesn't it? And Mr. Lamos's production enhances instead of disguises the whiff of whimsical gimmickry. There's just a suggestion of Ma Kettle in Ms. Sternhagen's interpretation that doesn't quite jibe with her character's worldly way with a metaphor and French literary references. Mr. Weller's macho lizard (a role for which Frank Langella won a Tony), while often funny, is also too cartoonish for credibility. But Ms. Marvel, a busy and a versatile New York actress who seems incapable of giving a miscalculated performance, is quite touching as Leslie's she-creature. And her and Mr. Weller's reciprocally protective body language becomes in itself an artful portrait of a marriage. (Credit should presumably be shared for this by Rick Sordelet, the production's movement coordinator.) It is Mr. Grizzard, who played Charlie for Mr. Lamos at the Hartford Stage in 2002, who sounds the depths in this production. A Tony winner for his first-rate work in the 1996 revival of 'A Delicate Balance,' he again poignantly captures the fear that underlies the gruff wryness of Mr. Albee's men. Charlie's sad, marveling reminiscences of boyhood underwater games here become a gorgeous marriage of a playwright's finespun prose and an actor's enriching technique. Such moments occur often enough, at least in the first act, to give 'Seascape' an emotional gravity rarely found on Broadway these days. For the most part, though, this revival is notable for being perfectly likable and, to be honest, forgettable. Even more than the presence of talking lizards, these traits make 'Seascape' a novelty within the body of work of a playwright who is rarely either.

Subject: Europe's Turn to Wrestle With Obesity From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 08:15:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/24/business/worldbusiness/24food.html November 24, 2005 Europe's Turn to Wrestle With Obesity By PAUL MELLER BRUSSELS - Europe's food industry and consumer groups are to submit ideas to the European Union on Thursday on how to confront obesity, urging clear labeling of nutritional hazards and warning against aggressive marketing to children, but also allowing food producers to regulate themselves. Food companies, supermarket chains and consumer groups are expected to present their ideas on handling a health problem that, according to all involved, is becoming as serious in Europe as it is in the United States. The confederation of food and drink industries of the European Union, known by its French acronym CIAA, said it would recommend improving the labeling of foods; setting clear standards for advertising food, especially to children; and working closely with public authorities and consumer groups on nutritional education. 'In a number of countries, including France, there is no such education,' Jean Martin, president of the confederation and an executive at the British-Dutch conglomerate Unilever, said. 'Equipping consumers, and especially parents, with proper information about nutrition will make a powerful contribution' to reducing obesity, he said. The confederation, which includes some of the world's largest food and beverage companies, like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Kraft Foods and Danone, is to propose donating money to scientific research on obesity. 'Unfortunately, the European Union is catching up with the United States,' Mr. Martin said. 'We have to be more scientific about how we tackle obesity.' Advertising aimed at children should follow precise guidelines, the proposal states: 'Marketing directed toward children should not create a sense of urgency, for example, by using words such as 'now' and 'only.' ' Ads should not undermine parental authority, it also states, nor should they encourage children to pester their parents to buy them foods or treats. Consumer groups expressed uneasiness with the self-regulatory nature of the recommendations, but said they were willing to give them a chance. 'Ideally we'd like a ban on advertising food and drinks to children,' said Barbara Gallani, a food policy adviser at the European consumer organization, known by its French initials BEUC. The group, however, is prepared to let industry try to regulate itself. Self-regulation is also the preferred course of action of Europe's commissioner for health and consumer protection, Markos Kyprianou. Ms. Gallani said her group would initially push for voluntary restrictions on ads for products with high fat, sugar and salt content that are aimed at children. Obesity could be reduced if food and beverage companies not only put detailed nutritional information on the backs of products, but also shorter, simpler descriptions on the front, Ms. Gallani said. 'Labeling is not very precise at the moment,' she said. 'Some products don't even have the basic information, such as the amount of protein, carbohydrate and fat listed.'

Subject: Deal That Even Awed Them in Houston From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 07:50:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/business/23place.html?ex=1290402000&en=af94e061d03d0756&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 The Deal That Even Awed Them in Houston By SIMON ROMERO HOUSTON - Texas Genco might lack the flash and fame of Enron, but its low-profile owners have managed to accomplish something rare in this swaggering city: a deal so ambitious in its scale that it has caused jaws to drop in Houston's energy circles while angering and perplexing people who are feeling the sting of surging electricity prices. The buzz in Houston these days is over the $4.9 billion in profit that four elite private equity firms - the Texas Pacific Group, the Blackstone Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Hellman & Friedman - stand to make from selling an electricity company for $5.8 billion. Lured by deregulation of the electricity industry in Texas, the investors acquired the electricity company Texas Genco, which owns several power plants in the Houston area, just last year with $900 million in cash. Now, they are selling it to NRG Energy of Princeton, N.J., for a gain of $5 billion, a flip that will be one of the most lucrative private equity investments in recent memory. 'This part of the deregulation process has transferred billions from ratepayers to investors,' said Clarence L. Johnson, director of regulatory analysis at the Office of Public Utility Counsel, a state agency in Texas created to represent the interests of homeowners and small businesses on utility issues. 'It seems extraordinary, doesn't it?' The investors profited largely by exploiting an obscure part of electricity deregulation here that pegs electricity prices to the price of natural gas. Because Texas Genco fuels some of its plants with relatively cheap coal and nuclear power, its operations become much more lucrative in times of high natural gas prices, like now. The profit from the deal is about half the $9.9 billion that Exxon Mobil, the nation's largest energy company, with 86,000 employees, made in the most recent quarter. Such an outcome from deregulation, which made it perfectly legal for a handful of investors to reap fortunes from their control of Texas Genco, a little-known electricity company with 1,200 employees, has stunned some people in Houston, which has some of the most expensive electricity prices in the country. 'The entire situation is terrible, but this one chapter is obscene,' said Jayne Junkin, an organizer with Houston Acorn, a community group that has criticized the impact of rising electricity prices on low-income families. Ms. Junkin's group recently held a protest at the downtown headquarters of Reliant Energy, Houston's largest electric utility, after the company announced it was raising prices by about 25 percent. Reliant buys its electricity from a statewide power grid supplied by Texas Genco and other generating companies. Electricity prices in Houston, the largest city in Texas, have climbed about 86 percent since the deregulation of the state's electricity industry in 2002. In unusually cool or hot months, when air-conditioning or electric heating are heavily in use, that means monthly energy bills for a three-bedroom home in Houston can easily run $300 to $450. Electricity cooperatives that are not part of the state's deregulated market have increased their rates only 18 percent over the same period, even though most of them also rely on expensive natural gas, according to the southwest regional office of Consumers Union in Austin, Tex. 'Electricity is a basic necessity,' Ms. Junkin of Houston Acorn said. 'This kind of profiteering off the misfortune of others should be illegal.' Advocates of deregulated electricity markets see things differently. Energy analysts say it is possible that the Texas Genco takeover might encourage similar deals in Texas and other deregulated electricity markets around the country. Craig Shere, an analyst at Calyon Securities, attributed this excitement to the 'dark spread,' or the widening difference between coal and natural gas prices over the last year. Natural gas prices have doubled since September 2004, when the investors led by the Texas Pacific Group of Fort Worth bought Texas Genco from CenterPoint Energy. A spokesman for NRG, the company that is buying Texas Genco from the private investors, left little doubt in a telephone interview as to why higher natural gas prices made Texas Genco an attractive asset. 'This puts NRG in an even stronger position to thrive on this volatile natural gas environment,' said Jay Mandel, director of media relations at NRG. David Crane, the chief executive of NRG, also said the acquisition would enhance NRG's geographic reach. Representatives of the four private equity firms involved in the deal declined to comment. Thad Miller, the executive vice president at Texas Genco, which has remained generally silent about the takeover, countered the deal's critics by claiming that deregulation in Texas had encouraged companies to build more power plants to meet growing demand for electricity. Mr. Miller, a former commodities trader at Goldman Sachs who was brought into Texas Genco by Texas Pacific, also said that the size of the deal did not necessarily mean people in Texas would pay more for electricity. And the fact that four investors stand to make a fortune from Texas Genco, Mr. Miller said in a telephone interview, should not cause consumers in Texas to doubt the benefits of deregulation. 'If a baker sells his shop, that doesn't mean the price of bread will go up,' Mr. Miller said. The Texas Genco deal has its origins in the fall of Enron. It was Enron that aggressively pushed in the late 1990's, more than any other company, for Texas to deregulate its electricity industry. At the time, legislators and regulators accepted pegging electricity prices to the price of natural gas, since almost three-quarters of the state's electricity is produced from natural gas. Yet when Enron collapsed three years ago, so did the fortunes of energy companies that had adopted similar strategies. Facing potential ruin and pressure from shareholders, these companies were forced to sell some assets for a song, which is why the investors were able to buy Texas Genco with ease a year ago. The fourfold surge in natural gas prices since deregulation in 2002 made the deal all the more attractive. 'The structure that made this possible is without shame,' said Carol Biedrzycki, executive director of the Texas Ratepayers' Organization to Save Energy, a group that lobbies for less expensive electricity. 'We're creating a new class of poor people who are energy-poor, while devastating prices allow powerful people to become even more powerful.'

Subject: United States Should Look to Japan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 07:46:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opinion/21mon4.html?ex=1290229200&en=ca7b8468204cc25c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 Why the United States Should Look to Japan for Better Schools By BRENT STAPLES The United States will become a second-rate economic power unless it can match the educational performance of its rivals abroad and get more of its students to achieve at the highest levels in math, science and literacy. Virtually every politician, business leader and educator understands this, yet the country has no national plan for reaching the goal. To make matters worse, Americans have remained openly hostile to the idea of importing strategies from the countries that are beating the pants off us in the educational arena. The No Child Left Behind Act, passed four years ago, was supposed to put this problem on the national agenda. Instead, the country has gotten bogged down in a squabble about a part of the law that requires annual testing in the early grades to ensure that the states are closing the achievement gap. The testing debate heated up last month when national math and reading scores showed dismal performance across the board. Lurking behind these test scores, however, are two profoundly important and closely intertwined topics that the United States has yet to even approach: how teachers are trained and how they teach what they teach. These issues get a great deal of attention in high-performing systems abroad - especially in Japan, which stands light years ahead of us in international comparisons. Americans tend to roll their eyes when researchers raise the Japanese comparison. The most common response is that Japanese culture is 'nothing like ours.' Nevertheless, the Japanese system has features that could be fruitfully imitated here, as the education reformers James Stigler and James Hiebert pointed out in their book 'The Teaching Gap,' published in 1999. The book has spawned growing interest in the Japanese teacher-development strategy in which teachers work cooperatively and intensively to improve their methods. This process, known as 'lesson study,' allows teachers to revise and refine lessons that are then shared with others, sometimes through video and sometimes at conventions. In addition to helping novices, this system builds a publicly accessible body of knowledge about what works in the classroom. The lesson-study groups focus on refining methods that improve student understanding. In doing so, the groups go step by step, laying out successful strategies for teaching specific lessons. This reflects the Japanese view that successful teaching is the product of intensive teacher development and self-scrutiny. In America, by contrast, novice teachers are often presumed competent on Day One. They have few opportunities in their careers to watch successful colleagues in action. We also tend to believe that educational change would happen overnight - if only we could find the right formula. This often leaves us prey to fads that put schools on the wrong track. There are two other things that set this country apart from its high-performing peers abroad. One is the American sense that teaching is a skill that people come by naturally. We also have a curriculum that varies widely by region. The countries that are leaving us behind in math and science decide at the national level what students should learn and when. The schools are typically overseen by ministries of education that spend a great deal of time on what might be called educational quality control. The United States, by contrast, has 50 different sets of standards for 50 different states - and within states, the quality of education depends largely on the neighborhood where the student lives. No Child Left Behind was meant to cure this problem by penalizing states that failed to improve student performance, as measured by annual tests. The states have gotten around the new law by setting state standards as low as possible and making state tests easy. This strategy was exposed as fraudulent just last month, when states that had performed so well on their own exams performed dismally on the alternative and more rigorous test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. No Child Left Behind was based on the premise that embarrassing test scores and government sanctions would simply force schools to improve educational outcomes for all students. What has become clear, however, is that school systems and colleges of education have no idea how to generate changes in teaching that would allow students to learn more effectively. Indeed, state systems that have typically filled teaching positions by grabbing any warm body they could find are only just beginning to think about the issue at all. Faced with lagging test scores and pressure from the federal government, some school officials have embraced the dangerous but all-too-common view that millions of children are incapable of high-level learning. This would be seen as heresy in Japan. But it is fundamental to the American system, which was designed in the 19th century to provide rigorous education for only about a fifth of the students, while channeling the rest into farm and factory jobs that no longer exist. The United States will need a radically different mind set to catch up with high-performing competitors abroad. For starters we will need to focus as never before on the process through which teachers are taught to teach. We will also need to drop the arrogance and xenophobia that have blinded us to successful models developed abroad.

Subject: Native Foods Nourish Again From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 07:41:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/dining/23nati.html?ex=1290402000&en=afa582dbae8dcfd1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 Native Foods Nourish Again By KIM SEVERSON Last week, Noland Johnson pulled the season's final crop of tepary beans from the piece of desert he farms on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, about 120 miles southwest of Tucson. The beans look a little like a flattened black-eyed pea. The white ones cook up creamy. The brown ones, which Mr. Johnson prefers, are best simmered like pinto beans. As late as the 1930's, Tohono O'odham farmers grew more than 1.5 million pounds a year and no one in the tribe had ever heard of diabetes. By the time Mr. Johnson got into the game four years ago, an elder would be lucky to find even a pound of the beans, and more than half of the adults in the tribe had the kind of diabetes attributed to poor diet. While researchers investigate the link between traditional desert foods and diabetes prevention, Mr. Johnson grows his beans, pulling down 14,000 pounds this fall. Most will sell for about $2.50 a pound at small stores on the reservation. Mr. Johnson, 31, began farming beans partly as a tribute to his grandfather, who died from complications related to diabetes. He always saves some beans for his grandmother, who likes to simmer the white ones with oxtail. 'I see my grandmother telling her friends, 'Yeah, I can get some beans for you,' ' Mr. Johnson said. 'The elders, they're so glad to see it.' But there are other fans, too. Home cooks pay as much as $9.50 a pound for teparies online. Big-city chefs are in love with the little beans, too, turning them into cassoulet, salads or beds for braised local pork. As American Indians try to reverse decades of physical and cultural erosion, they are turning to the food that once sustained them, and finding allies in the nation's culinary elite and marketing experts. One result is the start of a new sort of native culinary canon that rejects oily fry bread but embraces wild rice from Minnesota, salmon from Alaska and the Northwest, persimmons and papaws from the Southeast, corn from New York, bison from the Great Plains and dozens of squashes, beans, berries and melons. Modern urban menus are beginning to feature three sisters soup, built from the classic Indian trilogy of beans, squash and corn. At the Mitsitam Cafe, opened last year in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, cooks create dishes with roasted salmon, chilies and buffalo meat. At the Cave B Inn, a resort a couple of hours' drive east of Seattle, Fernando Divina, the chef and a co-author of 'Food of the Americas: Native Recipes and Traditions,' uses fresh corn dumplings, local beans, squash and Dungeness crab to augment a sophisticated menu meant to match wines from the resort's vineyards. Smoked whitefish chubs from Lake Superior and sassafras gelée ended up on the table at Savoy restaurant in Manhattan earlier this fall, and later this month pine-roasted venison with black currants and truffled hominy will star at a $100 indigenous foods dinner at the Equinox restaurant in Washington. Native foods encompass hundreds of different cultures. 'There's only now becoming a more pan-Indian sense of what Native food can be,' said the author Louise Erdrich, whose mother was Ojibwa. She writes about tribal food in many of her books and is working on a cookbook with her sister, a pediatrician on the Turtle Mountain Reservation. 'You're talking about evolving a cuisine from a people whose cuisine has been whatever we could get for a long time,' Ms. Erdrich said. American Indian food is the only ethnic cuisine in the nation that has yet to be addressed in the culinary world, said Loretta Barrett Oden, a chef who learned to cook growing up on the Citizen Potawatomi reservation in Oklahoma. 'You can go to most any area of this country and eat Thai or Chinese or Mongolian barbecue, but you can't eat indigenous foods native to the Americas,' said Ms. Oden, who has been traveling the nation filming segments for a 2006 PBS series titled 'Seasoned With Spirit: A Native Cook's Journey.' One item that won't be featured on her show is fry bread, the puffy circles of deep-fried dough that serve as a base for tacos or are eaten simply with sugar or honey and are beloved on Indian reservations. That bread is fast becoming a symbol of all that is wrong with the American Indian diet, which evolved from food that was hunted, grown or gathered to one that relied on federal government commodities, including white flour and lard - the two ingredients in fry bread. In a small town on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the poorest and one of the largest reservations in the country, Larry Pourier, a film producer, is working on a healthier fast food. He is developing a snack bar based on a recipe for wasna, a patty Lakota elders used to fashion from the kidney fat and meat of bison mashed with chokecherries. Over the next couple of months he will add other dried fruits, grains and alternatives to the suet to make a modern snack bar that is high in protein and low in sugar. 'I'm trying to keep it traditional, but in order for it to be successful it has to taste good,' Mr. Pourier said. Eventually, Mr. Pourier and his colleagues at Lakota Express, the economic development company behind the bar, want to manufacture an entire line under the brand Native American Natural Foods. The idea is that products from their tribe and others might be sold in special American Indian food sections, the way kosher, Mexican or Chinese products are grouped in many mainstream grocery stores. 'There are a lot of people trying to figure how to create a Native-based food product and having a real struggle to find market access, whether it's salmon or wild rice or teas or baked goods or corn chips, whatever,' said Mark Tilsen, who helped to found Lakota Express. 'By trying to build a brand, we can provide some market access.' American Indians and Alaska Natives make up only about 1.5 percent of the nation's population, and those people are spread among almost 600 tribes. Even in the largest tribes, knowledge of how to forage and farm traditional food has faded. Efforts like the White Earth Land Recovery Project, which harvests and sells rice from the lakes in northern Minnesota, are helping to keep that knowledge alive. The project, run by Winona LaDuke, is part of an effort by food activists and chefs to save traditional American Indian foods and cooking methods. Mr. Johnson's tepary bean farm has its roots in Native Seeds/SEARCH, a Tucson-based organization that Gary Nabhan, a professor at Northern Arizona University, founded to preserve native plants in the Southwest and northwestern Mexico. Last year, Mr. Nabhan started RAFT, which stands for Renewing America's Food Traditions. The coalition of seven nonprofit food, agricultural and conservation organizations has published a 'red list' of 700 endangered American foods, including heritage turkeys and Louisiana Creole cream cheese. Several dozen items are tied directly to Indian tribes, including wild rice and the tepary, said Makalé Faber, who tends the list as part of her work with Slow Food USA. During the first week of December, members of the RAFT coalition, including the culinary organizations Slow Food and the Chefs Collaborative, will gather at the annual Tohono O'odham Community Action basket makers and food summit at the Heard Museum in Phoenix to discuss how to expand the list of endangered foods and figure out ways to nurture American Indian cuisine in the Southwest. People involved say the evolution won't work without chefs. 'Having people at a high-end restaurant buy some of this makes it available for the rest of the community that it originally came from,' said Patty West, a forager who works at the Northern Arizona University's Center for Sustainable Environments and is an organizer of the December food workshop. John Sharpe, the chef at La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Ariz., devises as much of his menu as he can from local tribal foods. About four times a year, he is lucky enough to get a delivery of Navajo Churro lambs from a small, scrappy breed that was almost extinct. The animals are smaller than most commercial breeds and have very little fat. Mr. Sharpe, who has often paired chops from the lambs with tepary beans, will roast legs from four carcasses he received last week with wild local herbs, and serve them on his Thanksgiving buffet. He also borrows from Hopi traditions, turning tepary beans, roasted corn, a little French mustard and some olive oil into a dip that echoes a traditional Hopi dish. He uses thin Hopi piki bread, made from ground blue corn and cooked like a crepe, for dipping. 'Do the Hopis like it?' asked Mr. Sharpe, who will be at the December workshop. 'They kind of laugh at it, but they love it. They say, 'This is a crazy white man who likes our food.' '

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 06:15:00 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 11/23/05 Australia 14.2 Canada 24.2 Denmark 19.0 France 7.7 Germany 6.1 Hong Kong 8.1 Japan 16.0 Netherlands 9.1 Norway 22.5 Sweden 5.6 Switzerland 15.0 UK 5.7

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 06:12:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 11/23/05 Australia 21.2 Canada 21.4 Denmark 37.6 France 24.1 Germany 22.3 Hong Kong 7.8 Japan 34.4 Netherlands 25.8 Norway 35.1 Sweden 28.2 Switzerland 34.0 UK 17.9

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 06:02:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 11/23/05 S&P Index is 6.0 Large Cap Growth Index is 6.8 Large Cap Value Index is 7.7 Mid Cap Index is 13.4 Small Cap Index is 8.4 Small Cap Value Index is 7.4 Europe Index is 6.5 Pacific Index is 15.5 Energy is 42.6 Health Care is 13.0 Precious Metals 35.0 REIT Index is 13.1 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 1.4 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 06:00:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 11/23/05 Energy 40.5 Financials 7.8 Health Care 6.8 Info Tech 5.6 Materials 0.8 REITs 13.2 Telecoms 4.2 Utilities 14.6

Subject: Back to Basics at Wal-Mart From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 05:41:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/business/23walmart.html November 23, 2005 Back to Basics at Wal-Mart: Spare No Rivals By MICHAEL BARBARO Kind and gentle didn't work for Wal-Mart last holiday - so now it's giving the cutthroat approach another try. The nation's largest retailer, which stumbled after offering higher prices to spare already-weakened competitors - and its image - in 2004, will return to its old self on Friday with a campaign to match rivals' advertised discounts on the day-after Thanksgiving. Wal-Mart's strategy - to lure shoppers away from its competitors' so-called doorbuster deals, offered from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. - is highly unusual, retail analysts said, and could change the competitive landscape on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. 'We have seen these types of promotions before, but never on Black Friday,' said Michael Gatti, executive vice president of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, using the industry nickname for the day after Thanksgiving, when stores traditionally turn a profit for the year. 'It definitely makes a strong statement.' But competitors say they are largely immune to the attack because the vast majority of doorbusters are exclusive to their stores. The plan, they say, could create a world of frustration for shoppers who show up at Wal-Mart at dawn Friday waving circulars from Best Buy, Target and Staples. 'You can't match what you don't have,' said Kathleen Waugh, a spokeswoman for Toys 'R' Us, which said 80 percent of the discounts it will offer on Friday morning are for merchandise that cannot be found at Wal-Mart. Gail Lavielle, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman, estimated that the retailer carries 25 to 30 percent of the products its competitors will discount on Friday. According to early copies of Black Friday circulars, which are posted on unauthorized Web sites, the overlapping merchandise will include a Leapfrog Leapstart Learning Table (at Toys 'R' Us on Friday for $19.99); a Magnavox 42-inch plasma television (at Best Buy for $1,499) and an HP PS 8450 printer (at Staples for $99.98). But plenty of other deals will be impossible to match, like an I/O Magic 16x DVD Burner (for $19.99 at Circuit City); a Plantronics M2500 Bluetooth Headset (at Radio Shack for $9.99); and the Kisses Fondue Set (at J. C. Penney for $8.88). Analysts said Wal-Mart's strategy posed a two-part threat to competitors: it could steal business on Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, and perhaps more important, it could create a perception throughout the season that Wal-Mart was offering better deals. 'Black Friday is about sending a message,' said Jeff Stinson, a retail analyst at FTN Midwest Research. 'It is about establishing a reputation for the rest of the holidays.' That is a lesson Wal-Mart learned the hard way last year, when the retailer refrained from its deepest discounts, only to find itself undercut by competitors, forcing the chain to slash prices on popular products like Elmo after Thanksgiving. It was a mistake that Wal-Mart's chief executive, H. Lee Scott Jr., vowed the chain would not repeat this year. Wal-Mart began its holiday marketing on Nov. 1, two weeks earlier than in 2004, polished its TV advertising - which for the first time features celebrities like Garth Brooks - and will begin selling doorbusters an hour earlier on Friday, at 5 a.m. Mr. Scott said the 2004 prices were guided, in part, by Wal-Mart's desire to be seen as a 'gentler' company, after it waged a bruising price war with chains like Toys 'R' Us and KB Toys in 2003. 'I would rather be accused of driving people out of business than getting fired because we don't have any sales,' he said in an interview before the price-matching strategy was announced. Wal-Mart has offered to match prices from competitors for years, but this is the first time it will aggressively encourage shoppers to bring in its rivals' circulars and obtain discounts on a single day. The discount chain, which did not mention the price matching on its circulars for Friday, plans to advertise the campaign heavily on television and in newspapers over the next two days. 'We are actively going after this,' said Ms. Lavielle, the Wal-Mart spokeswoman. The retailer will match prices only on products advertised in a local competitor's printed circulars for Nov. 25. Competing doorbuster prices will be matched only from 5 a.m. until 11 a.m., to discourage consumers from shopping elsewhere before heading to a local Wal-Mart on Friday. Ernest Speranza, the chief marketing officer at KB Toys, a chain that filed for bankruptcy last year in part because its prices were undercut by Wal-Mart, said the new campaign was 'very defensive' and could backfire. 'It goes against their logo of low prices always,' he said. 'If you are telling me you have low prices always, now what does it mean, that you have low prices some of the time and when a competitor beats you, you will match it?' Mr. Speranza, a former Toys 'R' Us executive, said that when Toys 'R' Us tried promoting price matching to build a reputation for low prices, consumers largely rejected the campaign. 'They said, 'It is telling us prices aren't so low' ' after all, he recalled. KB Toys, Mr. Speranza added, is not worried about Wal-Mart's strategy because many of its doorbusters cannot be found at Wal-Mart. Dave Perron, executive vice president for merchandising at Staples, said the overlap between products his chain plans to discount Friday and those Wal-Mart carries 'is not a meaningful part of the business,' adding, 'We are well positioned.' The big question, executives and analysts said, is whether consumers will bother flipping through circulars over the next two days looking for deals they can match up with a product at Wal-Mart, rather than just show up at 6 a.m. for the deal that captures their imagination. In a nation full of bargain hunters, one thing is clear, said Mr. Stinson, the analyst: 'People will compare those circulars.'

Subject: Paul Krugman on Denial and Deception From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 05:14:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ Paul Krugman in Money Talks: Denial and Deception Here's Paul Krugman in Money Talks with a blast from the past, and a thought about the present. Krugman asks 'Why now? Why has the question of whether we were misled into war sprung into the forefront of our political debate, more than two years after it became clear that there were no W.M.D.?': Denial and Deception, Revisited, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: I’m trying not to write too much about the Iraq war these days. It’s an issue I’m passionate about, and there was a long time when I felt I had to speak out, even though I have no special expertise in national security, because it seemed that so few people in major news organizations were willing to say the obvious. But now there are many voices talking about how we got into this disastrous war and how we might get out, so by and large it makes sense for me to focus more on the economic issues The Times originally hired me to cover. There is one question about Iraq, however, on which I think I can shed some light: Why now? Why has the question of whether we were misled into war sprung into the forefront of our political debate, more than two years after it became clear that there were no W.M.D.? Part of the answer is that some new information has emerged about how the White House misrepresented the intelligence it had. But the truth is that by the summer of 2003 there was ample evidence that the administration had deliberately misled the public to promote a war it wanted. So why didn’t the public read and hear more about this evidence until very recently? The answer, I’m afraid, is that the polls led the discussion, rather than following it. With some honorable exceptions, politicians and the news media weren’t willing to take the issue on until President Bush had already been politically wounded by the failure of his Social Security plans and his hapless response to Hurricane Katrina – and a majority of the public had already come to the conclusion that we were misled into war. And I’m sorry to say that I saw it coming. What follows is a column I published in The Times on June 24, 2003, under the headline “Denial and Deception.” I think the piece speaks for itself. DENIAL AND DECEPTION (June 24, 2003): Politics is full of ironies. On the White House Web site, George W. Bush's speech from Oct. 7, 2002 — in which he made the case for war with Iraq – bears the headline ''Denial and Deception.'' Indeed. There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious. About the deception: Leaks from professional intelligence analysts, who are furious over the way their work was abused, have given us a far more complete picture of how America went to war. Thanks to reporting by my colleague Nicholas Kristof, other reports in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and a magisterial article by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman in The New Republic, we now know that top officials, including Mr. Bush, sought to convey an impression about the Iraqi threat that was not supported by actual intelligence reports. In particular, there was never any evidence linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda; yet administration officials repeatedly suggested the existence of a link. Supposed evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear program was thoroughly debunked by the administration's own experts; yet administration officials continued to cite that evidence and warn of Iraq's nuclear threat. And yet the political and media establishment is in denial, finding excuses for the administration's efforts to mislead both Congress and the public. For example, some commentators have suggested that Mr. Bush should be let off the hook as long as there is some interpretation of his prewar statements that is technically true. Really? We're not talking about a business dispute that hinges on the fine print of the contract; we're talking about the most solemn decision a nation can make. If Mr. Bush's speeches gave the nation a misleading impression about the case for war, close textual analysis showing that he didn't literally say what he seemed to be saying is no excuse. On the contrary, it suggests that he knew that his case couldn't stand close scrutiny. Consider, for example, what Mr. Bush said in his ''denial and deception'' speech about the supposed Saddam-Osama link: that there were ''high-level contacts that go back a decade.'' In fact, intelligence agencies knew of tentative contacts between Saddam and an infant Al Qaeda in the early 1990's, but found no good evidence of a continuing relationship. So Mr. Bush made what sounded like an assertion of an ongoing relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, but phrased it cagily – suggesting that he or his speechwriter knew full well that his case was shaky. Other commentators suggest that Mr. Bush may have sincerely believed, despite the lack of evidence, that Saddam was working with Osama and developing nuclear weapons. Actually, that's unlikely: why did he use such evasive wording if he didn't know that he was improving on the truth? In any case, however, somebody was at fault. If top administration officials somehow failed to apprise Mr. Bush of intelligence reports refuting key pieces of his case against Iraq, they weren't doing their jobs. And Mr. Bush should be the first person to demand their resignations. So why are so many people making excuses for Mr. Bush and his officials? Part of the answer, of course, is raw partisanship. One important difference between our current scandal and the Watergate affair is that it's almost impossible now to imagine a Republican senator asking, ''What did the president know, and when did he know it?'' But even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications. After all, suppose that a politician – or a journalist – admits to himself that Mr. Bush bamboozled the nation into war. Well, launching a war on false pretenses is, to say the least, a breach of trust. So if you admit to yourself that such a thing happened, you have a moral obligation to demand accountability – and to do so not only in the face of a powerful, ruthless political machine but in the face of a country not yet ready to believe that its leaders have exploited 9/11 for political gain. It's a scary prospect. Yet if we can't find people willing to take the risk – to face the truth and act on it – what will happen to our democracy?

Subject: Tempore ducetur longo fortasse cicatrix From: Pancho Villa To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 09:49:07 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: 'Why now? Why has the question of whether we were misled into war sprung into the forefront of our political debate, more than two years after it became clear that there were no W.M.D.?'

Subject: Re: Tempore ducetur longo fortasse cicatrix From: stuart munro To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 18:29:15 (EST) Email Address: stuart-munro@clear.net.nz Message: Because now Bush's star has fallen. Even Friedman has had a crack at him. Bush has finally found out the one thing he really enjoys, and should pursue that ahead of his political career. Or, as the saying goes 'On yer bike'

Subject: Immature Connecticut Warbler From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 05:05:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5719&u=4|1|... Immature Connecticut Warbler New York City-Central Park Lake.

Subject: Black-throated Green Warbler From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 24, 2005 at 05:05:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=4795&u=133|6|... Black-throated Green Warbler New York City--Central Park--Wildflower Meadow.

Subject: Northern Cardinal Eating an Apple Core From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 20:32:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5357&u=17|5|... Northern Cardinal Eating an Apple Core New York City--Central Park, The Loch.

Subject: Northern Cardinal in a Snowbank From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 20:31:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5079&u=178|20|... Northern Cardinal in a Snowbank New York City--Central Park, The Oven.

Subject: American Kestrel in Flight From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 20:29:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.calvorn.com/gallery/photo.php?photo=5877&u=99|13|... American Kestrel in Flight Floyd Bennet Field.

Subject: Theory and Practice From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 13:28:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Whether there is a crisis that may be caused by faulty fiscal policy is always worth discusssing, but cannot be know for investment purposes. So, we must separate the discussions to an extent to be both theoretical and practical. There is right now a truly impressive international bull market in stocks that we should closely attend to.

Subject: Kung Pao? No, Gong Bao From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 13:12:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/dining/23gong.html?ex=1290402000&en=c030c7e7ce2a2096&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 23, 2005 Kung Pao? No, Gong Bao, and Nix the Nuts By HOWARD W. FRENCH GUIYANG, China IT is 7:30 on a Sunday night, and business is booming at Guixi, a large and popular downtown food emporium here. In smoke-filled private rooms, boisterous men vie to best each other in downing shots of fiery mao-tai, the rice liquor that is this city's most famous product. In the big open dining room, filled with large round tables where extended families gather, including beaming nanas and cavorting children, there is scarcely an empty seat in the house. What brings many diners to this restaurant is its famous gong bao jiding, a dish whose perfume wafts through the air, distinctive even over the smell of tobacco smoke. As it is spoken here, the name of the recipe, one of China's best-known chicken dishes, would mean little to most Americans. Yet it or something very much inspired by it - kung pao chicken - is one of the most commonly ordered items in Chinese restaurants across the United States. Guizhou province in south-central China is the ancestral home of the dish, and one visit to Guixi, one of Guiyang's most famous restaurants, makes clear that where this popular concoction is concerned pronunciation was not the only thing lost in translation during its migration around the globe. Informed for the first time that something called kung pao chicken is widely eaten in the United States, the restaurant's veteran chef, Wang Xingyun, who was dressed in a white smock, dingy from hours of work with cleaver and wok, expressed his skepticism with the lifting of one weary eyebrow. 'Whatever they are eating there is certainly not authentic,' he said. Of course Mr. Wang, a stickler for ingredients and for technique who has been preparing meals built around the dish for over 30 years, says much the same even about what passes for kung pao chicken in Sichuan, the province right next door, where it is almost equally popular and where the dish began its journey across the ocean to America. 'Nowadays it's a mess,' Chef Wang announced, leading a visitor on a tour of his busy kitchen. ''Everyone says they can make our food, but they don't even understand its origins.' Zhang Tao, the publisher of Z-Survey, a popular series of guidebooks for restaurants in China, said that confusion about technique and the mangling of dishes can travel both ways, as can even an occasional improvement on the original. 'If an Italian went to an Italian restaurant in Chengdu, I don't think his expectations would be so high,' said Mr. Zhang, who attended DePauw University in Indiana. But Americans who are just learning that there is more than one kind of Chinese food - from Sichuan to Chaozhou to Hunan - have to remember that provincial rivalries also exist here. Just as Memphis cooks consider their ribs superior to ones barbecued in Kansas City, gong bao is a dish in which civic pride is never far from the plate. Dicing ginger and chives on a cutting board, then heating his wok on a stove whose intense, shooting flames looked like a furnace blast, Mr. Wang demonstrated what he insisted was the genuine item. The master chef repeatedly placed a heap of chopped chicken into the wok ever so briefly, only to remove it, adding a new seasoning and repeating the process. The technique is a subtle cooking by accretion, whose theatrics, built around quick handiwork with the wok, is a hallmark of an authentic Chinese kitchen. 'Gong bao jiding demands very particular materials,' he said. 'Sichuan chefs use the chicken breast, which is wrong. The real thing must have the leg meat of young chickens.' Chest meat, he asserted, is too stringy, whereas the drumstick of a young chicken is 'delicate and easy to chew.' The demonstration continued with a similar disquisition on peppers, which, once again, Mr. Wang said, Sichuan's more famous chefs, who use dry pepper, get all wrong. 'It must be fresh zi ba pepper, and it must be from Huaxi district in Guiyang, which ensures that it is spicy and has a good aroma,' he specified. Finally, he came to the light, brownish sauce. 'Sichuan chefs use a bean sauce, but we use a sweet sauce, and that's a big difference,' Mr. Wang said. 'After the leg meat is chopped, a little fermented rice soup should be added. Authentic gong bao jiding should carry a little aroma of litchi. A little sweetness is a must.' That cooks in the next province can get a relatively simple dish so wrong, according to one of Guiyang's best chefs, provides an instructive hint of just how far American versions of this dish, and many others, may have strayed from their origins. The commonly accepted story here is that gong bao jiding was named for a palace guard, or 'gong bao,' in the late 19th century, who went on to become a provincial governor. 'Last but not least, authentic gong bao jiding should have absolutely no peanuts,' Mr. Wang said sternly. Unlike Sichuan or American versions, the dish was indeed peanut-free. 'One must not be even slightly careless in the choice of materials,' the chef added. Of course, they forgot to tell the cooks in Sichuan that. 'We were not even taught to add peanuts, as it's so natural to do so,' said Li Wanming, a Sichuan chef who is vice president of a food company in Chengdu, the provincial capital. 'People who order the dish would feel strange if there's no peanuts in it. Peanuts make the dish more crisp and fragrant, and that's very important.'

Subject: Interest Rates From: Poyetas To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 10:13:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: (Previous Message) (Next Message) (Next Thread) (View Entire Thread) (Message List) Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 05:50:38 (EST) Original: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 12:37:52 (EST) Posted by: Poyetas Recipient: Emma Email Address: Not Provided Browser Type: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050321 Firefox/1.0.2 IP Address: Decode-OC.WKO.W!.WJ! Subject: Re: Interest Rates Message: Agreed Emma, I don't really think that interest rates will skyrocket in the future because I don't believe that the current economic status is sustainable. Something will have to give. Deficits, Iraq, Medicare will all have to be altered. Unfortunatelly, politics leads economics, we need to pray that Republicans (at least the extreme idealogues)do not have so much power into the future.

Subject: Re: Interest Rates From: Emma To: Poyetas Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 10:14:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Yes; I would agree completely, but I am sure Medicare benefits will not be cut since the supporting voting bloc for Medicare is simply and happily too powerful.

Subject: Capital account vs higher energy? From: Pete Weis To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:34:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: We've talked about America's dependency on Asian central banks returning surplus trade dollars by purchasing US treasuries to help fund our current account deficit. It's interesting to note that rising imported energy costs have a double negative effect on the US balance of payments. 1) Higher energy costs increase the current account deficit as the US imports most of its energy needs. 2) Higher energy costs force our Asian creditors to divert more of their surplus trade dollars to pay for the rising costs of their imported energy rather than pumping them back into the US economy. As energy costs rise this situation gets worse - does it not? This seems to be yet another way treasurey yields might rise and lending rates along with them.

Subject: Re: Capital account vs higher energy? From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 12:26:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Given the fluid ways in which every developed economy and stock market has adjusted to the strong dollar this year, I do not fear a change in value of the dollar any longer. I am watchful, but neither do I know of a reason Asian central bankers and investors will stop purchasing American debt for some while. I wish we had better fiscal policy, do I ever, but I sense no near cause for concern.

Subject: Could you help me? From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:20:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: In his recent paper, J. Stiglitz (http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/stiglitz64/English, Nov. 2005) says: 'But the real problem for Greenspan’s legacy concerns what happened to the American economy in the last five years, for which he bears heavy responsibility. Greenspan supported the tax cuts of 2001 with the most specious of arguments – that unless something was done about America’s soaring fiscal surpluses, the national debt would be totally paid off within, say, ten to fifteen years. According to Greenspan, immediate action needed to be taken to avert this looming disaster, which would impede the Fed’s ability to conduct monetary policy! It says a great deal about the gullibility of financial markets that they took this argument seriously. More accurately, tax cuts were what Wall Street wanted, and financial professionals were willing to accept any argument that served that purpose. Of course, if, say, by 2008 the disappearing national debt really did appear to pose an imminent danger, Congress would have happily obliged in cutting taxes or increasing expenditures.' Please WHY this would be a 'looming disaster' or an 'imminent danger'. Please use simple words, I am not an expert! Thanking you in anticipation.

Subject: Re: Could you help me? From: Pete Weis To: Yann Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:58:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: To draw a parallel: The Bush administration used a fear of a real threat (global terrorism) by emphasizing that Iraq and Saddam were an 'imminent' threat to the lives of Americans, and by invading Iraq has made the global terrorist threat much worse by alienating moderate moslems and Arabs in the process. Greenspan used a real threat (an out-of-control fiscal deficit) and supported the tax cuts with the 'specious of argument' that lowering taxes (mostly for well off Americans) would eventually reduce the fiscal deficit somehow (trickle down?). Reagan appointed Greenspan and this whole idea reminds one of Reaganomics (refered to as 'voodoo economics' by Bush 'read-my-lips' senior) - 'cut taxes, increase defense spending and balance the budget'.

Subject: Re: Could you help me? From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 11:44:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The concern Alan Greenspan raised about the surplus and the threat that the national debt might be paid off is foolish almost beyond explanation. Many institutions hold American Treasury debt against obligations such as pensions or insurance payments. An absence of Treasury debt would force institutions to buy other investment-grade debt. So what? Of all the foolish remarks possible....

Subject: Re: Could you help me? From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 11:48:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Right you are Emma. I read this piece too quickly and read fiscal deficit (which is what Greenspan has been warning about recently) instead of fiscal surplus. I should read more carefully!!!!

Subject: Re: Could you help me? From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 12:17:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: No; I have long been especially annoyed about the idea that the surplus would become Godzilla and goggle up Missouri and Kansas.

Subject: Africa's Brand of Democracy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 07:20:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/23/international/africa/23uganda.html November 23, 2005 By Fits and Starts, Africa's Brand of Democracy Emerges By MARC LACEY KAMPALA, Uganda - One way of judging the repressive nature of an African president is by standing in the center of that leader's capital city and calling him awful names. By that measure, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda could be worse. He is being called a dictator, a thug, a power-hungry autocrat and even harsher things than that these days, and for the most part he is taking it, not trying to round up or eliminate all those who dare speak ill of him, which has been done in this country in the past. On top of that, Mr. Museveni has been rather adept during his 19 years in power at rebuilding Uganda's tattered economy. He has won widespread praise for his early and activist leadership when it comes to combating AIDS. An erudite man, he speaks passionately of his desire for a modern, robust and, most of all, peaceful Uganda and he sounds very much as if he means it. But Mr. Museveni, billed during President Clinton's administration as one of Africa's new generation of enlightened, democratic leaders, has proved himself something far less grand than that. He and others like him - notably, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Paul Kagame of Rwanda - have disappointed those who were hoping for Western-style democracy to emerge in full flower in 21st-century Africa. But if they have fallen short of that goal - a naïve one, they say - they have succeeded in holding together troubled countries with undeveloped democratic institutions and traditions. If that has occasionally meant resorting to ugly and authoritarian methods, so be it, they say. That's African-style democracy, something the West would not understand. With a long tradition of tyrants in its midst, Africa does seem to have improved its leadership, even as television images from the eastern precincts of the continent recently seem to show a region in crisis. Mr. Museveni, however flawed, is nothing like the murderous Idi Amin or even Milton Obote, another Ugandan strongman of the past. Mr. Meles, Ethiopia's hard-line prime minister, is a far cry from the dictator he ousted, Mengistu Haile Mariam. Mr. Kagame, despite his tight grip on his country, did quell the ethnic slaughter in 1994 that was orchestrated by the government he replaced. But such leaders, promoted by Washington and other Western capitals as Africa's saviors, are increasingly seen as mere mortals. 'I don't think Museveni was ever the leader the world thought he was,' said Proscovia Salaamu Musumba, deputy president of the Forum for Democratic Change, a major Ugandan opposition group. 'It was an illusion.' The corruption is less blatant than it was with their predecessors, most here agree, the jailing of opponents far less prevalent. 'They are better than the ones before, but in their burning desire to remain in power they are the same,' said Ted Dagne, an Africa analyst with the Congressional Research Service in Washington. In what he called 'a policy blunder from which we have yet to recover,' American policy on Africa has focused too much on personalities, Mr. Dagne said. Perhaps the most prominent, and ambiguous, of those personalities is Mr. Museveni. While Uganda is preparing to hold its first multiparty presidential elections since he came to power 20 years ago, the government jailed the country's main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, last week, accusing him of treason. Mr. Besigye returned to Uganda from exile last month to huge enthusiastic crowds and declared himself a candidate for the 2006 elections. Now he is off the campaign trail and in Kampala's maximum security prison. Uganda's press, feisty and independent, frequently earns the wrath of the president, which happens in democracies the world over. But Mr. Museveni sometimes oversteps. His government has demanded that The Monitor, an independent paper, apologize and retract an article suggesting that Mr. Museveni offered the job of army chief to his younger brother, who declined, before settling on someone else. Government sanctions loom if the paper does not comply. The government has also put pressure on the paper to fire a reporter, Andrew Mwenda, who already faces sedition and other charges for reports that got under Mr. Museveni's skin. The police also entered the paper's printing plant the other night, objecting to an advertisement raising money for Mr. Besigye's legal defense. But Uganda at least has an independent press, a far cry from Eritrea, where reporters are in jail or in hiding and no voice other than that of President Isaias Afwerki is heard. He, too, was once one of Washington's favorite sons. African presidencies are no longer the lifetime positions they once were. In Kenya, Mwai Kibaki defeated the ruling party in 2002. In another display, 15 former African heads of state convened in Mali several months back to discuss the important role that retired leaders can play improving Africa from outside of government. Mr. Museveni should be on the verge of joining that group. But with his second and supposedly last term coming to a close, he pushed to have constitutional limits on his tenure lifted, allowing him to run again in elections next year. The question remains whether there is such a thing as African democracy. It's not a complete oxymoron. Rigging elections, while still part of the landscape, is becoming a cause for embarrassment, done surreptitiously. Putting up with criticism and dissent is increasingly seen as part of the job. For every leader who clings to power, there are others who go when it's time to go. Africa's heads of state do face extraordinary challenges, such as the scores or even hundreds of ethnic or tribal groups within their borders, as well as long histories with violent struggle. They have earned the right to define democracy for themselves and their countries - so long as they don't scrap democracy in the process. 'I believe he has been and still is a new generation of leader,' said John Nagenda, a top adviser to Mr. Museveni. 'But the almighty Americans are not going to decide the type of democracy in Uganda, no matter what they label him.'

Subject: Before Memoirs, He Wrote A's, B's, From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 07:12:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/nyregion/16mccourt.html?ex=1289797200&en=3c0f09a963598681&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 16, 2005 Before Memoirs, He Wrote A's, B's, C's, D's and F's By ELISSA GOOTMAN When Susan Jane Gilman's parents picked up a hitchhiker years ago because he was wearing a Stuyvesant High School T-shirt, they were rewarded with this advice for their Stuyvesant-bound daughter: 'Tell her to take Frank McCourt's creative writing class.' And so Ms. Gilman became one of thousands of New York City public school students who, over the years, came to know Frank McCourt not as the Frank McCourt, of 'Angela's Ashes' and the Pulitzer Prize, but as Mr. McCourt ('Frank' only behind his back) of Classroom 205. Long before Mr. McCourt became a literary figure, he was somebody's high school English teacher. In his new memoir, 'Teacher Man,' published by Scribner, Mr. McCourt recalls the successes (asserting control by eating a bologna sandwich hurled across the classroom, or introducing students to literary criticism through nursery rhymes) and travails (patronizing supervisors, grading fatigue and parent-teacher conferences) of three decades in the city's public schools. Of course, Mr. McCourt is not the only one who remembers those years. How, after all, could Joshua M. Price, now 37 and a linguistic anthropologist, forget belting out 'Finnegan's Wake' and other Irish drinking songs at the beginning of a creative writing class? How could Zorikh Lequidre, also 37, forget his teacher's positively poetic response - 'I see no rivulets of repentance rolling down your cheeks' - to students who apologized for coming to class without their homework? Maureen McSherry, 40, who prefers the term 'admirer' to 'groupie' when describing her relationship with her former teacher, even praised the way he doled out criticism. 'He used my autobiography as an example of how not to write an autobiography,' she said, 'but did it in a way that was charming and didn't sting.' Monday evening, some of Mr. McCourt's students - among them professors, lawyers, entrepreneurs and quite a few writers - gathered at Stuyvesant, in Lower Manhattan, for a reading by Mr. McCourt at a school fund-raiser ($60 a person for admission, hors d'oeuvres and a signed book). There was Edward Newman, 41, who said that as an assistant United States attorney he thinks daily of Mr. McCourt's calls for simple, clear language. There was Gerry Seidman, 46, a technology and business consultant who said he first heard the word 'consultant' uttered aloud by Mr. McCourt, who had one day groused after school that, sick of teaching, this was what he would become. 'I said, 'What are you going to consult in?' ' said Mr. Seidman, his curls now gray. 'He said: 'Oh, it doesn't matter. I'll just consult.' ' Stuyvesant, a cherished jewel of the school system, has always had its fair share of exceptional, even beloved, teachers. Usually, those teachers savor fame only vicariously, when their students, say, win the Nobel Prize (Dr. Richard Axel, class of 1963) or appear in 'Charlie's Angels' (Lucy Liu, class of 1986). Mr. McCourt, 75, who started substitute teaching at Stuyvesant in 1968, after years at some of the city's lower-performing and vocational schools, turned the tables, leaving his students to do the double-takes at Barnes & Noble. Of course, not all of Mr. McCourt's students idolized him. Some acknowledged that their memories of his class were hazy and that they fully appreciated his talents only in retrospect, after his publishing successes. His acerbic manner was not always welcome, and one former student described his class as 'easy.' But not Sam Marchiano, 38, who remembers the way Mr. McCourt would start class by asking students what they had for dinner the night before. It was a lesson on the importance of detail that Ms. Marchiano, now a sportscaster, took to heart while describing her former teacher, down to the emerald green Shetland sweater he wore as he paced the room reciting Hemingway. 'I was a bit obsessed with him,' she offered, 'but in a good way.' Anastasia Tasoulis Broikos, who routinely skipped chemistry class to sit in on Mr. McCourt's lessons, had to wait until 'Angela's Ashes' came out to hear the conclusion of a riveting tale that he finished telling on a day when she had an exam. 'All these years later, I still remember the suspense, and desperately wanting to know what happened,' said Ms. Broikos, class of 1986. Ms. Gilman, 41, said that as a student she used to dream of one day dedicating a book to Mr. McCourt so that he could 'share in the glory,' a notion that now makes her belt out a self-mocking, 'Ha!' When Ms. Gilman's second book, 'Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress,' made the New York Times best-seller list this year, Mr. McCourt was the first person she called. 'He'd get kids who had been in chemistry, algebra, French and earth science coming in,' Ms. Gilman said. 'Everybody was so conditioned to absorb facts, memorize facts and parrot out facts that he wanted to shake us up.' In a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut, Mr. McCourt acknowledged that if a friend had not told him about an opening at Stuyvesant, where disciplinary problems were virtually nonexistent and supervisors gave him tremendous latitude, his public school teaching career would have most likely ended years earlier. He lamented the onslaught of gadgets that today's educators have to contend with, saying, 'If I were a teacher now I'd have a sign that says, 'If you have a cellphone, I'm going to step on it,' ' and likened politicians' efforts to improve education to 'interfering with a couple in the bedroom.' 'Teachers are treated like the downstairs maid,' he said. 'If there's a panel on television on education and the schools, do you ever see a teacher? No. Chancellors, politicians, someone from a think tank.' In fact, Mr. McCourt said that while he had been 'scribbling' memories since his earliest days as a teacher at McKee Vocational and Technical High School on Staten Island, it was only after he retired from Stuyvesant in 1987 that he was able to write in earnest. 'The books, the notes, the paperwork, the names that you have to memorize, the individual problems, and to read all this stuff that you take home, it's overwhelming,' he said. In recent years, Mr. McCourt has found himself once again inundated, and among the culprits are some familiar names. 'Now they're all writing, they're all sending me manuscripts, and it's driving me crazy,' he said. Then he chuckled, adding, ' 'If he can do it, why can't I?' is what they're saying to themselves.'

Subject: Storyteller Who Honed His Stories From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 07:02:33 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/books/15kaku.html?ex=1289710800&en=978d073ff57bbbcd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 A Storyteller Who Honed His Stories By MICHIKO KAKUTANI Before writing 'Angela's Ashes' (1996), his best-selling memoir about his impoverished childhood in Ireland, Frank McCourt spent three decades teaching in New York City, conducting, by his count, at least 33,000 classes and instructing some 12,000 students. He taught days and nights and summers. He taught basic English to immigrants and creative writing to the college-bound. He taught in vocational schools, where he was reprimanded for 'giving kids ideas they shouldn't have,' and he taught at the elite Stuyvesant High School, where he encouraged his writing students to study restaurant reviews, cookbooks and folk tales, as well as poems and novels. As Mr. McCourt's new book 'Teacher Man' reveals, those years as a schoolteacher served as the crucible for his own literary career: they gave him not only the confidence and emotional wisdom to write about his own life, but also a forum for telling and retelling and polishing his stories. Just as his father regaled the young Frankie with stories about Irish history and mythical Irish heroes, so Mr. McCourt regaled his teenage students with stories about his own youth - about being so poor he had only one shirt to wear to school, about a rich woman offering to buy his baby brother from his parents, about his mother bargaining with pawnshop owners for their meager possessions. In short, the stories that Mr. McCourt told his students - often in lieu of traditional lessons in grammar and composition - would become a kind of rough draft for 'Angela's Ashes.' A collage of memories about teaching intercut with recollections about his childhood in Ireland and his early years in New York City, 'Teacher Man' is a lumpy grab bag of a book. It lacks the emotional magic of 'Angela's Ashes' and it lacks that earlier volume's intimately observed characters and tactile conjuring of time and place. On the other hand, 'Teacher Man' possesses considerably more charm than Mr. McCourt's last book ' 'Tis' (1999), a sour, resentment-filled and oddly perfunctory account of his years in America. Because 'Teacher Man' retraces ground covered by these two earlier books, there is something vaguely familiar about many of its stories. At times the reader gets the sense that the author is simply going through his notebooks, trying to figure out a way to mine - and repackage - old material, while interpolating it with some newer reminiscences. Certainly the freshest portions of this volume deal with Mr. McCourt's actual experiences in the classroom and his encounters with particular students - encounters that have more of the flavor of the old high school television series 'Room 222' than 'Boston Public.' Kids are rowdy, inattentive and hostile, but there are no guns or real violence. Drugs don't make much of an appearance; neither, for that matter, do gangs. Many of the stories Mr. McCourt tells about individual students fall into the heart-warming category. Serena, a 15-year-old girl whom the author introduces to Shakespeare, leaves school because her mother has been arrested and she has been sent to Georgia to live with her grandmother. Eventually a classmate receives a letter from Serena, who says to tell Mr. McCourt that she 'gonna finish high school and go to college and teach little kids': 'Not big kids like us because we just a great pain but little kids that don't talk back.' Another student, Ken, the son of Korean immigrants, enrages his ambitious father when he decides to go to Stanford, instead of Harvard or M.I.T. as his father had hoped. 'He appeared at my classroom door a few days before Christmas and told me I had helped him get through the last year of high school,' Mr. McCourt writes. 'At one time he had a dream of going into a dark alleyway with his father and only one of them would come out. He'd be the one, of course, but out there in Stanford, he began to think about his father and what it was like coming from Korea, working day and night selling fruit and vegetables when he knew barely enough English to get through the day, hanging on, desperate for his children to get the education he never had in Korea, that you couldn't even dream of in Korea.' Although Mr. McCourt occasionally exhorts himself to be a stricter teacher - 'Tighten up. Organize. Focus.' - he tends to fall back into his unorthodox teaching methods: telling stories, comparing fairy tales with television shows, encouraging his students to free-associate about poems, urging them to relate literature to their lives. 'Whenever a lesson sagged,' he writes, 'whenever their minds wandered, when too many asked for the pass, I fell back on the 'dinner interrogation' ' - that is, an inquisition into what they ate for dinner the night before, what their family members talked about at the table, and who prepared the food and cleaned up. It's an exercise in observation and family dynamics, of course - a lesson to his students that 'you are your material.' It's a lesson that Mr. McCourt, himself, put to dazzling use in 'Angela's Ashes' - and a lesson he tries to resurrect, with less success in this tepid new book.

Subject: Adjusting Markets and Economies From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 14:23:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Every developed country stock market is positive in domestic currency, with few not up over 20%. I attribute the gains both to stock prices adjusting to the strong dollar and to economic adjustments to the rise in raw resource prices. But, I cannot find another such seeming adjustment.

Subject: A Rollicking Bull Market From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 13:12:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Right now, by the way, there is a rollicking international bull market in stocks, and American large cap stocks are gradually gaining. The international bull market in domestic currency stock prices is as broad and strong as any I can recall. European stock are up over 21% in domestic currencies, Pacific stocks are up over 29%. Emerging market stocks are up over 23% in dollars. Interesting how little notice :)

Subject: A Hedge Fund for Anyone From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 08:53:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/business/22place.html?ex=1290315600&en=b5af2671e995ab89&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 22, 2005 A Hedge Fund for Anyone With $10,000 By RIVA D. ATLAS For as little as $10,000, you, too, can invest in a hedge fund - or, to be precise, in a mutual fund run by a hedge fund manager. In the latest sign that the elite world of hedge funds is going increasingly mainstream, J. P. Morgan Chase is marketing a new mutual fund, the Highbridge Statistical Market Neutral fund, which will be overseen by Highbridge Capital Management, the $9 billion hedge fund firm it acquired last year. Morgan expects the fund will appeal to less wealthy investors who could not otherwise invest in a hedge fund. It is the latest example of how hedge funds, lightly regulated investment partnerships that were once exclusively the province of millionaires, have trickled down to the merely affluent. More and more investors - from individuals to huge pension funds - have been persuaded that hedge funds can be an alternative to a lackluster stock market. Assets in these partnerships have ballooned in recent years, climbing to $1.1 trillion. And investment banks are offering the less wealthy a side-door entrance, by lowering the minimum investment required to invest in funds that in turn invest in pools of hedge funds, known as funds of funds. With the new Highbridge mutual fund, J. P. Morgan has made it even easier for individual investors to have access to the talents of an investment team at a top-performing hedge fund firm. Still, the bank may have a tough sales job, given the mutual fund's high fees, and the uneven track record that similar mutual funds have had in recent years. 'We are offering individual investors the jewel in our crown,' said Glenn R. Dubin, the co-founder of Highbridge, who notes that the investment team that will manage the new mutual fund has turned in the best performance this year of nine teams at Highbridge's flagship hedge fund, the $6 billion Highbridge Capital Corporation. The new fund will be managed by a team that includes experts in mathematics and computer science who have built complex computer models for Highbridge over the last three years, indicating which stocks to buy or sell. Highbridge typically requires a minimum investment of $10 million for the fund, and annual fees of 2 percent of assets and 25 percent of any profits, according to the U. S. Offshore Funds Directory, which lists the performance of hedge funds. In contrast, the new Highbridge mutual fund will require a relatively modest investment of $10,000, and while the fees are still steep at 1.95 percent annually or more, the mutual fund's managers will not take a share of any of the profits. J. P. Morgan Chase filed a prospectus for the fund on Friday. Highbridge is joining a growing pool of mutual funds that have adopted hedging strategies - including making bets against certain stocks to balance bets that other bunches of stocks will go up. These funds, which have $13 billion in assets, have returned 3.4 percent on average through October, according to Morningstar. That comfortably beats the 1 percent return for the Lehman Brothers Aggregate bond index and the Standard & Poor's 500 for the same period. (Given the stability these funds seek they often use bond markets as a proxy.) But over the longer term, results have been less stellar. Last year, for example, these funds rose 5.4 percent, ahead of the 4.3 percent return of the bond market but less than half the return of the S.& P. index. And over the last five years, these funds have returned just 5.3 percent, failing to beat the Lehman bond index. 'Performance of these funds has been nothing to get excited about,' said Dan McNeela, an analyst with Morningstar. Under the circumstances, 'there are reasons to be skeptical and wait and see how a new fund performs.' Mr. McNeela is also cautious because fees on such mutual funds can be steep. The Highbridge fund carries expenses of 1.95 percent (or 2.45 percent, if an investor wants to defer an upfront marketing fee of 5.25 percent of assets). The average fund investing in stocks of United States companies has expenses of 1.4 percent, according to Morningstar. Then there are the trading costs - Highbridge expects to turn over the stocks in its portfolio more than six times each year. This has also been a rough year for hedge funds, which are surpassing the stock market over all but have lost money in 4 of the last 10 months, according to Hedge Fund Research, a Chicago firm that tracks hedge fund performance. But hedge funds in general still possess a powerful allure, as many have had strong showings since the stock market's collapse five years ago. Highbridge Capital, for example, rose 27 percent in 2000, a year when the S.& P. fell more than 9 percent, according to the offshore directory. That fund has earned positive returns, frequently in the double digits, every year but one since it was founded in late 1992, according to the offshore funds' directory. But more recently, hedge funds have faltered, leaving some investors to worry that too much competition has made it hard for these managers to make money. Through the middle of November hedge funds had returned 5.7 percent, according to an index kept by Hedge Fund Research. That is ahead of the S.& P. 500 return of 1.05 percent through that date, but below these funds' recent pace. To its credit, Highbridge has rebounded from some bumps earlier this year, after a collapse in the market for convertible securities, which are a hybrid of stocks and bonds. Highbridge's main hedge fund was down 3 percent through April. The fund is now showing a gain of more than 3 percent for the year, according to a person briefed on the results who declined to speak for attribution citing regulatory restrictions on marketing by hedge funds. (Because of these restrictions, there are no performance figures listed on the new mutual fund's prospectus.) 'In the face of what happened in convertible arbitrage this year, Highbridge's team showed how good they are in managing risk,' one of the skills that investors look for in a hedge fund, said James E. Staley, who oversees asset management globally for J. P. Morgan. Mutual fund analysts said that investors might want to wait and see how the fund does. 'There is something to be said for a consistent return, but unless you have an intimate understanding of hedge funds, it's better to go to school on someone else's money,' said Roy Weitz, publisher of the Web site Fundalarm.com.

Subject: Abolishing the Poll Tax Again From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 08:36:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/19/opinion/19wed2.html?ex=1287374400&en=8cc52ad499fb8e81&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss October 19, 2005 Abolishing the Poll Tax Again Critics of Georgia's new voter-identification law, which forces many citizens to pay $20 or more for the documentation necessary to vote, have called it a modern-day poll tax, intended to keep blacks and poor people from voting. A federal judge supported these claims yesterday and blocked the law from taking effect. Instead of continuing to defend the statute in court, Georgia should remove this throwback to the days of Jim Crow from its lawbooks. Georgia Republicans, who get few votes from African-American voters, pushed a bill through the Legislature this year imposing the nation's toughest voter-identification requirements. When it was passed, most of the state's black legislators walked out of the Capitol. Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., urged the governor to veto it. Under the new law, voters with driver's licenses were not inconvenienced. But it put up huge obstacles for voters without licenses, who are disproportionately poor and black. Most of them would have to get official state picture-identification cards and pay processing fees of $20 or more. Incredibly - beyond the cost imposed on such voters - there was not a single office in Atlanta where the identification cards were for sale. Republicans claimed the law was intended to prevent fraud, but that was just a pretext. According to Georgia's secretary of state, Cathy Cox, in recent years there have been no documented cases of fraud through voter impersonation. There have been complaints about the misuse of absentee ballots, Ms. Cox says, but the new law actually loosened the antifraud protections that apply to them. Clearly, Georgia Republicans supported the law because they believed that making it harder for blacks and poor people to vote would help their electoral chances. The League of Women Voters of Georgia, the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights and voting rights groups sued. In a lengthy and hard-hitting opinion, Judge Harold Murphy of Federal District Court enjoined the state from enforcing the law. He relied in part on the 24th Amendment, which banned the old racist requirement that citizens pay poll taxes before being allowed to vote in federal elections. At least one Georgia state senator is vowing to appeal, if necessary, all the way to the Supreme Court. That would send an ugly message about the state of American democracy. In the civil rights era, Southern states had to be told again and again by federal courts not to try to stop their black citizens from voting. It is shameful that in 2005, Georgia needs to be told again.

Subject: G.M. Shop Floors From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 07:00:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/business/22workers.html?ex=1290315600&en=cf34f2b67834da1e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 22, 2005 Mix of Shock and Resignation on G.M. Shop Floors Set to Close By JEREMY W. PETERS LANSING, Mich. - When Dan Fairbanks received word from General Motors early Monday morning that his plant had been tagged for closing next year, there were few people in the factory to tell. About two-thirds of the 300 hourly employees at the Lansing Craft Center, where Mr. Fairbanks is the president of a local chapter of the United Automobile Workers, are temporarily laid off. In fact, they have not worked for most of the year. The Lansing Craft Center is still scheduled to ratchet up production early next month but will close for good sometime next year. 'There are going to be some casualties, and we are one of them,' Mr. Fairbanks said. In many ways, the plant is symbolic of the problems facing General Motors. The automaker slowed production there to a trickle as demand for the vehicle it produces, the $40,000 high-performance Chevrolet SSR pickup truck, failed to keep pace with capacity. Although most employees do not come to work, under their union contract G.M. is still required to pay them. A cold drizzle fell in a mainly empty parking lot at the center as this city took in the news that G.M. would close all or part of 12 operations in North America. Here in Lansing, where two of those plants are situated, the automaker's cuts will be deep. Still, G.M. employs thousands of people in the area at four plants and is currently building a new factory, with modern equipment. The plants that will remain open will provide some cushion for workers who do not take buyouts. On Monday, G.M. workers across the country met the news of the plant closings and the job cuts with a mixture of shock, resignation and frustration at the company's management. 'There's a lot of people who rely on G.M., especially in this town,' said Michael McCoy, 52, a production worker at the Lansing Metal Center with 30 years at the company. The metal center, a sprawling industrial complex across the street from the craft center that makes sheet metal parts for various vehicles, is also scheduled to close. About the time the G.M. corporate headquarters in Detroit informed union officials at the craft center of the closing next year, Mr. McCoy and his co-workers on the morning shift at the metal center were summoned to the shop floor by their union chairman and told the news. Art Baker, the chairman of the local auto workers union that represents the 950 hourly workers at the metal center, said he learned of G.M.'s decision just 15 minutes before he told employees. 'It was not the expectation that General Motors was going to get lean and mean,' Mr. Baker said. 'It was a real shock.' The union called the job cuts and plant closings 'extremely disappointing, unfair and unfortunate.' The union's president, Ron Gettelfinger, and its vice president, Richard Shoemaker, said in a statement that for workers, 'hope is diminished, the future is unclear and communities are less stable.' In Oklahoma, Georgia and other states where G.M. is closing its only plants, G.M. workers will have fewer options than their counterparts in Lansing for jobs that offer such high pay and generous benefits. 'I was awakened out of my sleep and told the plant was closing,' said Tammy Andrews, 35, a line worker at the General Motors assembly plant in Doraville, Ga., just outside Atlanta. 'I'm going to cry when I go home tonight.' Many of the plants that will close, like Doraville Assembly and the Lansing Metal Center, are more than 50 years old and date back to an era when G.M. held a commanding share of the American car market. As Asian competitors with lower labor costs and vehicles that many Americans consider more desirable have cut G.M.'s market share down to about a quarter of all American vehicles, the automaker has grappled to regain its competitiveness. Closing under-used plants and trimming its work force is one way it hopes to do that. For cities like Lansing and Flint, Mich., that have for decades looked to the American auto industry to provide much of their livelihood, G.M.'s downsizing means the end of an era in which generations of families could depend on steady work at a car company and a generous retirement plan after 30 years of service. 'It used to be our kids would come in here and follow us, but that's not the trend anymore,' Mr. McCoy said. 'I just think it'd be nice if General Motors could get everything together, get it fixed and get going again.' Alvin Jones, 59, a line worker at the metal plant, has 40 years of experience but said he resented the idea of taking a retirement buyout. 'Once you take the buyout, what's going to be left for you to do?' he asked. Mr. Jones moved to Lansing from the South in the mid-1960's to take a job with G.M. that he assumed would be his as long as he wanted to work. Throughout his four decades at G.M., Mr. Jones said he had seen the domestic auto industry at some of its highest and lowest points. As he stood outside the Lansing metal plant on Monday and absorbed the news his plant would be closed, he said, 'I've never seen it this bad, and I've been around for a lot of years.' Daniel Crane, 27, who installs glass on minivans at the Doraville plant, criticized G.M. for not making cars that sell well. 'Who buys a minivan?' he asked. 'G.M.'s not coming out with a product anybody wants.' As news of billion-dollar losses, job cuts and benefit reductions has rolled out of G.M. with alarming regularity this year, some workers said they saw the writing on the wall well before Monday. 'Everybody in the G.M. system is trying to speculate on where they stand,' said Mr. Fairbanks, the Lansing union president. 'A total surprise? No. Not with the way things are going.'

Subject: A Model Fight Against Malaria From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 06:10:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/opinion/22tue4.html?ex=1290315600&en=c97f731068ec1a3a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 22, 2005 A Model Fight Against Malaria This month the rains come to southern Africa, and with them, death from malaria. In Zambia, though, where 30,000 people die a year of malaria, almost all of them children, things are about to change. With the help of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Zambia is embarking on a campaign to cut malaria deaths by 75 percent over three years. Most of the money will come from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But the project was organized by the Gates Foundation, which has recently made several huge donations to speed the development of a malaria vaccine and better medicines and insecticides. The foundation's donation to the Zambia program is only $35 million. But that is because there is no mystery and no enormous expense to fighting malaria. Everyone knows what is effective - providing insecticide-treated nets for people to sleep under, spraying the insides of houses with insecticide, giving drugs prophylactically to pregnant women, and replacing ineffective medicines with new ones that cure the disease. These things work, and they are cheap. South Africa has proved that with a business-financed project to eradicate malaria in selected regions. But Zambia will be the first test on a national scale. The Gates Foundation chose it because it was already doing the right things, and malaria deaths have dropped in the last few years. But Zambia did not have the money and technical expertise to do it nationally. Success will be measured over a few years, but the next few months will tell whether the government is doing the job to reach its goal of covering 80 percent of the population - how many districts are being sprayed, and whether effective medicines are getting to people who need them. If all goes well, Zambia will show the world how cost-effective fighting malaria can be.

Subject: Where Is Wal-Mart's Fancy Stuff? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 06:09:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/business/21ecom.html November 21, 2005 Where Is Wal-Mart's Fancy Stuff? Try Online By BOB TEDESCHI Sometime soon, somewhere in the country, an aspiring groom will go down on bended knee, present a ribboned blue box to his sweetheart and watch as she beholds the yellow diamond ring on which he spent $10,000. And unless his fiancée has a highly refined sense of irony, somewhere in that gentleman's mind he'll be hoping she doesn't ask where he got it. Walmart.com has broken through its own glass ceiling, selling high-priced platinum and diamond jewelry, cashmere sweaters and other goods designed to appeal more to the Tiffany crowd than to the bargain hunters who browse the company's terrestrial stores. The question is why, and the answer is straightforward: Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, with 1.3 million workers and nearly $300 billion in annual revenue, is reaching out to more affluent shoppers. With disappointing sales of late and its stock price lagging, it has begun displaying more fashionable clothes and more upscale home furnishings in its stores. Over the last few weeks, it has added luxury items to its Web site as a test. The online store still caters overwhelmingly to buyers' appetite for low-cost deals, from $18 six-packs of boxer shorts to $15 roller-skate kits, just as its stores do. But now, if you look hard, you can also find a Hyundai 60-inch plasma TV with a built-in digital tuner for $7,688, a gift basket of 1,000 fine chocolates for $248 and 100 percent cashmere scarves for $98.88. And, sure enough, right there along with the $520 Keepsake Majestic 7/8-carat diamond ring ('was $600'); the $229 Keepsake Tapestry ¼-carat diamond, 14-karat yellow-gold ring; and the $13.12 sterling silver cubic zirconia ring ('was $17.97') you can find the 1¾-carat, fancy-yellow-grade diamond, 18-karat white gold ring ('IGI Certified') for $9,988. Wal-Mart will not say how many of those beauties it has sold. 'This is us being very aggressive in trying to understand if someone is willing to buy from us at that price point,' said Raul Vazquez, vice president of marketing at Walmart.com, referring to the 1¾-carat diamond ring. Analysts said that Wal-Mart was also grappling with a familiar predicament for online merchants: The cost of selling cheap goods. 'A lot of retailers have found that they're not so sure they want all those mainstream customers on their site,' said Carrie Johnson, a retail analyst with Forrester Research. 'They buy fewer items, they need more help with orders and they're harder to satisfy.' In contrast, Ms. Johnson said, 'the wealthy, time-strapped consumers are looking pretty good right now.' Wal-Mart's dot-com division has sold upscale merchandise in the past and has long been a testing ground for items the company might like to carry in its stores. But that role has assumed more prominence in recent months as Wal-Mart has expanded its assortment of upscale items in an attempt to win back upper-middle-class consumers it has lost to Target, among others. Walmart.com is an ideal place to test such items, Mr. Vazquez said. 'We've been able to prove some assortments in areas like holiday décor, fitness equipment and toys would sell,' he said. 'Some are just categories the stores haven't tried because of limited shelf space, so not all of them are higher price points.' Higher-priced goods, though, have often been the place where Walmart.com's corporate buyers have migrated. The company has a policy of carrying a different assortment of goods online than offline, so the Web site will not divert sales from Wal-Mart stores. And although Walmart.com is steadfastly focused on selling all the pricey items it carries - as opposed to letting them collect dust in the name of corporate experimentation - Mr. Vazquez admits the 1¾-carat diamond ring may represent a little hucksterism as well. 'We want to change the perception that customers have about Wal-Mart,' he said. 'At times you have to do something dramatic to get customers' attention. That's what the ring is meant to do.' Walmart.com certainly does not lack for attention. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, an Internet research firm, more than 16 million people visited Walmart.com last month, or nearly 11 percent of the active Internet audience in the United States. The average visitor spent nearly 14 minutes on the site during each visit. By contrast, 130 million customers visit Wal-Mart stores each week in the United States. Some e-commerce executives say they believe sites are often too shy about selling high-priced goods. 'I think it's a terrible mistake not to have one or two 'money is no object' products on a site,' said Bill Schubart, the chief executive of Resolution Inc., which, among other things, helps media companies (including The New York Times Company) sell videos and other goods online. Mr. Schubart said one of his clients, which he would not identify, 'on a whim wrapped together all of their classic foreign films and charged $5,000 for them, with the goal of selling five.' 'In a short period of time, they sold 54,' he said. He added: 'Consumers use this to say, 'I bought this gift for you because I'm so rich that money is no object to me and I care about you a great deal, so here's this British telephone booth.' It doesn't work for everybody, but it works for a large number of people.' Companies can only misfire by selling items that are not related to their overall brand message, Mr. Schubart said. In that context, Walmart.com should be fine as long as it convinces customers that a $10,000 ring is a bargain. (Indeed, late last week, the ring was sold out, although Walmart.com did not say how many were offered.) Wal-Mart's policy of testing goods on its Web site for placement in stores, meanwhile, is not an approach embraced by all retailers. Some merchants contend that the Web site experience is far different from that of the stores, so it makes little sense to apply intelligence from one area to the other. Take Federated Department Stores. The company, which owns Macy's and Bloomingdale's, among others, stocks each store differently, depending on the attributes of the local customers. It does not use company Web sites to test goods. 'Customers behave a little differently online than in the stores,' Jim Sluzewski, a Federated spokesman, said. 'Shopping in stores is a full sensory experience. So if you're testing something for stores, you'd want to test it in the in-store environment.'

Subject: Meditations on the Commonplace From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 06:07:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/books/review/20goodyear.html?ex=1290142800&en=de4f5305556f2d52&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 Meditations on the Commonplace By DANA GOODYEAR For more than a year after her death, and maybe even now, the poet Jane Kenyon's study was a scene from a still-life: typewriter, wood stove and kindling, volumes of Chekhov, Bishop, Keats. A picture of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, whose work Kenyon translated, to her own immense poetic gain. Photographs of her husband, the poet Donald Hall; of her bohemian parents, whom she left behind in Michigan when she moved with Hall to his ancestral home, a New Hampshire farmhouse. One object was anachronistic: the sampler made by a friend, the writer Alice Mattison, which in Kenyon's lifetime had hung above her bed, needle-pointed with the words 'You're going to live.' She did not. Kenyon died of leukemia in the spring of 1995, at the age of 47, 15 months after receiving her diagnosis. Her illness and death are the subjects of Hall's extraordinary collection of poems 'Without,' published three years later. 'Without' is wretched and exuberant, and painful to read. Left alone in the landscape they inhabited together for more than two decades - the landscape that figured in so many of Kenyon's poems - he writes letters to her, in verse: Buttercups circle the planks of the old wellhead this May while your silken gardener's body withers or moulds in the Proctor graveyard. . . . I carried myself like an egg at Abigail's birthday party a week after you died, as three-year-olds bounced uproarious on a mattress. It is hard to fathom why Hall, having written so exemplary a treatise on loss, would want to write that book again. In 'The Best Day the Worst Day,' a new memoir, he hits the same nail, but the observations that previously had the sharp, clear ring of a fresh truth now fall with a thud. The dulling of effect is not, I think, due to the passage of time: the memoir, with its log of failed treatments - 'a dreary continuous landscape of drips, injections and pills' - is full of anguish. And it is clear that he is still deeply involved in the drama of their shared life. The book weaves in episodes from the preleukemia era, telling of their meeting in an Ann Arbor classroom (she was his student, he was 19 years older and recently divorced), their move to New England, her depression, his own cancer, their poetic rivalries and triumphs. Rather, 'The Best Day the Worst Day' feels rehashed because Hall, despite being a prolific writer of prose (memoirs, essays, children's books), is first a poet, and has already committed the best, most telling details to his poems: Kenyon's sardonic nickname for the jewel he gave her, 'Please Don't Die'; his thumbing down the lids of her brown eyes; her burial in a white salwar kameez. Yet Hall's redeeming and sometimes reckless candor makes possible a few new discoveries. He admits, for example, that his first feeling upon learning of Kenyon's disease was 'something like the enthusiasm of engagement: Look what we've got ourselves into now!' The reason for this memoir's publication is probably the fact that it has been 10 years since Kenyon died, and the publishing industry loves an anniversary. (It, and the reading public, also love a dead poet, as if dying, particularly dying young, indicated the seriousness of a poet's commitment to the art.) The way Kenyon died - in physical agony, and not by her own hand - as well as the way she handled death in her poems (though about her own illness there is only 'The Sick Wife') - have spared her the cultish fascination that attaches to our other Lady Lazaruses. But nonetheless, and happily, the popularity of her work has surged in the past decade. (There are 60,000 copies in print of her posthumous collection 'Otherwise: New & Selected Poems.') And so we now have 'Simply Lasting: Writers on Jane Kenyon,' a collection of personal reminiscences, critical readings and reviews. It is a kind of belated festschrift, complete with analyses of Kenyon's diction and identification of 'libidinal adhesion' in her work. The effort feels strained. Kenyon's intentionally quiet life - she loved cats, peonies and long walks with her dog, and she wrote every day - is repeatedly evoked. It sounds quieter with every telling. To borrow a notion from Stanley Kunitz - another poet who has translated Akhmatova and spent a lot of time in the garden - it is the job of poetry (not friends) to make a myth out of life. Jane Kenyon wrote very good short lyric poems that masqueraded as meditations on the commonplace, and the poems themselves - her six books have now been gathered in one new volume, 'Collected Poems' - are the best argument for her place in history. The consensus opinion about Kenyon is that she was a middling poet who got better under the influence of Hall and Akhmatova, and finally, with her death waiting secretly in the wings, became great. I'm not sure. Kenyon was an inconsistent poet, and her poems, sometimes depleted and without charge, show how quick the trip from limpid to limp can be. (She knew it: 'I went to Ann Arbor, helped my mother put on a yard sale, came home and wrote a poem called 'Yard Sale.' Boredom!' she wrote to Mattison.) But from the outset - her first book, 'From Room to Room' was published in 1978 - she was also capable of devastating clarity. In one poem, a tree, planted 80 years before and wrecked by a storm, is cut down; its limbs fall 'like someone abandoning a conviction.' When the buzz saw stops, the house is left 'quiet / as a face paralyzed by strokes.' Kenyon upheld Pound's idea that 'the natural object is always the adequate symbol,' a principle that yielded brilliant lines like these, from her third book, 'Let Evening Come' (1990): Like a mad red brain the involute rhubarb leaf thinks its way up through loam. And this, the entirety of 'Not Writing,' from her fourth collection: A wasp rises to its papery nest under the eaves where it daubs at the gray shape, but seems unable to enter its own house. In her last five years, Kenyon wrote a number of poems that were deep, transparent and luminous. She found unpretentious metaphors and continued to refine her plainspoken style, which, as Hall once said, 'was a glass of water - a hundred-proof glass of water.' I imagine this style will be perpetuated, in the works of kindred poets like Susan Minot and Deborah Garrison. Under the circumstances - married to an established poet, her former teacher, no less - it is a measure of Kenyon's artistic courage that she became a poet at all. As Wendell Berry writes, she was 'a poet who had set up shop smack in the middle of another poet's subject.' Her response to comments like that was to evoke Mt. Kearsarge, which she could see from her writing desk: 'That mountain treats everybody the same.'

Subject: Vie for Linguistic Superiority From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 15:38:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/international/21scrabble.html?ex=1290229200&en=93d5f2fe82c13361&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 Scrabble Kings Vie for Linguistic Superiority By ALAN COWELL LONDON - In the end, the zobo and the ogive could not quite triumph over the qanat and the euripi on Sunday, and thus the contender was birsled - Scottish dialect for scorched or toasted. It was with such linguistic acrobatics that the eighth World Scrabble Championships came to an end in a north London hotel, when Adam Logan, a 30-year-old mathematician from Canada, scored 465 points to beat Pakorn Nemitrmansuk, a 30-year-old architect from Thailand, with 426 points in the final game of a playoff. Over four days of triple-letter scores and usages involving q's without u's, like qanat, and qi, it had been a time of abstruse words, canny tactics and high tension for 102 contenders from more than 40 countries from Australia to Zambia, including the United States. It was a time, too, when language divorced itself from meaning in the competition for the $15,000 winner's prize. 'For the purpose of the game, the meaning of the word is not important,' said Leslie Charles, the national champion of Trinidad and Tobago, who sat in a hotel ballroom where the final best-of-five playoff was relayed on wide television screens from a smaller room where the two players were closeted with their racks, tiles and 25-minute timer clocks. 'It's important for our own development to know the meaning,' said Mr. Charles, 61, a former teacher and accountant. But in the game, all that counts is whether words figure on a list of the official compendium of legitimate words. (There are over 108,553 acceptable words with up to eight characters - just for starters, according to the contest organizers.) Indeed, the previous champion, Panupol Sujjayakorn, a 21-year-old Thai university student, was said to have won two years ago with an encyclopedic memory of the list but without a broad knowledge of spoken English. 'If it's in the book and it has a meaning, it's acceptable,' Mr. Charles said. So what makes a champion? 'It takes a lot of commitment to the game,' he said. 'It's not just something you just get up and say you will play. You have a lot of preparation to do. You have to keep in training.' Amy Byrne, an adjudicator from Edinburgh who sat among the audience for the finals, said that many words not familiar to non-Scrabblers were listed and that their meanings were explained in either the Chambers English dictionary or the Merriam Webster Collegiate dictionary from the United States. In the finals, she said, euripi, Mr. Logan's opening word, was the plural of a word meaning an arm of the sea with strong currents. Zobo, she explained to a non-Scrabbling outsider, was a form of Himalayan cattle. Ogive was an S shape used in architecture or mathematics. And qanat, she said, was an irrigation channel. 'We all know that one!' she exclaimed with a fond smile. Mr. Logan triumphed with a straight 3-0 victory over Mr. Nemitrmansuk in the final playoff. It had been a challenging fight. During the contest, Mr. Logan said, when he was going for one particularly high-voltage triple-letter-score, triple-word-score word, he was so tense that 'my hands were shaking and it was difficult to get the letters on the board' - passions perhaps not familiar to the average parlor player. But then, average parlor players do not habitually hit scores in the mid- to high hundreds: historically, the highest recorded score in a single game is 1,049, the organizers of the contest here said. Sartorially, the contest had few of the trappings of world sporting finals - no fancy uniforms or drum majorettes and an audience that, apart from players, numbered but few, though more were thought to have watched on a Webcast. Indeed, fleece jackets, baseball caps, denim and sneakers seemed popular apparel for contestants, locked before the finals in three, heads-bowed days during which each of them played 24 one-on-one games. With 51 games under way in a ballroom, the tournament played out to the sibilant rustling of tiles being gently shaken in Scrabble bags and occasional calls of 'challenge, please' for particularly unknown words. The organizers also sold Scrabble T-shirts with slogans like 'Cheeky not geeky' and 'funky not geeky,' which, one way or another, spoke for themselves. The world championships have been played since 1991, but the game itself dates from 1931, when an American architect, Alfred Butts, devised a game called Lexico and was said to have determined the values assigned to each letter by studying the front page of The New York Times. Like Scrabble, Lexico had letter tiles and racks, but no board. Scrabble was introduced in 1948. These days it is produced in 27 languages, according to Mattel Inc., which owns the non-American rights to the game. (Hasbro owns the American version.) More than 100 million games have been sold in 121 countries around the world. People come to tournament Scrabble for different reasons, of course. Parlor players may find that public holidays and slow weekends are enough to inspire a game. But Mark Kenas, a 52-year-old antiques dealer from Wisconsin who was one of 15 listed American contestants, said he had been so angered by the outcome of the last two elections in the United States that 'I had to do something about that anger and I could immerse myself in Scrabble rather than start a revolution.' What makes a good player, said John O'Laughlin, a 25-year-old computer programmer also from Wisconsin, is that 'you have to have a good memory.' 'You have to have had math,' he said. 'You don't have to have a good vocabulary. It's a mathematical game. It's more like poker or backgammon.' Nonetheless, said a London cabdriver, dropping off a passenger at the hotel where the contest was held, 'The loser could say the reason he lost was that he was lost for words.'

Subject: Man, a Plan and a Scanner From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 11:53:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/business/21harvard.html?ex=1290229200&en=86f7d416af4055cd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 At Harvard, a Man, a Plan and a Scanner By KATIE HAFNER Twenty years ago, when Sidney Verba became director of the Harvard University Library, he thought there was a good chance he would enjoy a placid transition into retirement. Placid is not the word Mr. Verba would use to describe his life now. 'Challenging' or 'exciting' would better fit the bill, he said, choosing his words carefully. Mr. Verba is overseeing the university's partnership with Google, which plans to create searchable digital copies of entire collections - tens of millions of books - at five leading research libraries. The partnership is part of the controversial Google Book Search Library Project, which has provoked lawsuits by publishers and writers' groups that accuse Google of violating copyrights by scanning the books into Google's search database without the permission of the copyright holders. The University of Michigan, Stanford University, the New York Public Library and Oxford University have also signed on with the Google project, which expects to scan 15 million books from the libraries. For Mr. Verba, the decision to support Google's plan was not easy or obvious. He has a unique perspective on the legal and intellectual debate because his various professional roles connect him to every aspect of the creation and use of books. 'It's been dominating my life for the last year and a half,' said Mr. Verba, a prominent political scientist who has been a professor at Harvard for more than 30 years. Even now, he is cautious about the implications of the ambitious project. Until two years ago, the congenial and energetic Mr. Verba was chairman of the board of Harvard University Press. And in that position, he witnessed mounting anxiety about the future of publishing, especially with the advent of digital texts. 'Scanning the whole text makes publishers very nervous,' he said. 'I have sympathy with that. They have to be assured there will be security, that no one will hack in and steal contents, or sell it to someone.' And as the author or co-author of 18 books, he understands the worry that Google's digitization project might cause writers over loss of income or control of their work. Many of his own books are still in print. But as a librarian and a teacher, he argues that the digital project will meet the needs of students who gravitate to the Internet - and Google in particular - to conduct their research. And he says he believes the project will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world. He was taken aback when Google was sued, first in September by a group of authors, then last month by five major publishers. 'It's become much more controversial than I would have expected,' Mr. Verba said. 'I was surprised by the vehemence.' For the time being, Harvard has confined the scanning of its collections largely to books in the public domain and limited the initial scanning to about 40,000 volumes. But it hopes eventually to scan copyrighted books as well, depending on the outcome of the legal dispute. 'The thing that consoles me,' Mr. Verba said, 'is Google's notion of showing only the snippets, which have everything to do with what's in the book, but nothing to do with reading the book.' Google's search of copyrighted works in the library collections allows users to see a limited amount of text surrounding the relevant search term. But to make those snippets freely available on the Web, the books must be scanned in their entirety into Google's database to create a searchable index, which the lawsuits claim violates the fair use provision of copyright law. Mr. Verba says he believes that showing small excerpts helps direct readers to books they would not know about otherwise, and could help spur sales. Patricia Schroeder, the former Colorado congresswoman who is president and chief executive of the Association of American Publishers, which is suing Google on behalf of the five publishers, has a far less sanguine view. 'Look, people should be able to search all this stuff, but it should be the author's choice and not Google's,' Ms. Schroeder said. 'You can't have a corporation just come in and say, 'We're going to do this and it's good for you.' ' But as an educator, Mr. Verba has watched his students shun libraries in favor of search engines and other electronic resources. In his courses, Mr. Verba has cast a skeptical eye on student papers thick with URL's in the bibliography. 'Everyone with a teenage kid is worried that the younger generation may believe that all knowledge is on Google,' said Mr. Verba, who said he nagged his own students to use library books. 'But what this does,' he said, referring to the Google project, 'is take you to Google, which takes you to the library.' Yet when Sheryl Sandberg, a Google executive, first visited Harvard two years ago and put forth the idea of digitizing millions of books spread out over Harvard's more than 90 libraries, Mr. Verba was skeptical. The sheer magnitude of the task seemed staggering. James Hilton, the interim university librarian at the University of Michigan, for example, said that he asked his staff a year ago to estimate how long it would take to digitize the library's seven million volumes. The answer was more than a 1,000 years. Then Google came along and offered hope that the project could be done within a decade. 'We are among the most aggressive of libraries doing their own digitizing,' Mr. Hilton said. 'Google thinks they'll be able to do it in six.' As for Harvard's own back-of-the-envelope calculations, 'it would be incredibly expensive beyond anything we could imagine funding,' Mr. Verba said. 'I didn't think it could be done by anyone, including Google.' One of his main concerns was the physical vulnerability of some of the older volumes. As custodian of his institution's materials, he worried that the physical handling of the books could damage them. But he said he was impressed by Google's technical competence and the ambitious scope of the project. Still, he wanted to see more details, especially about the protection of the books themselves. He told Google to come back after it had worked out those fine points. Google did return, some nine months later, details in hand. 'It was clear they had done their homework,' said Mr. Verba, who was careful not to talk about parts of the project that fall under a nondisclosure agreement. 'They had designed a very efficient means of doing the digitization, in a nondamaging, cost-efficient way. And they were willing to invest a large amount of money.' Although Google will not disclose its investment, outsiders have speculated that the company is spending more than $200 million on the entire project. Google has also cultivated an aura of mystery around its proprietary book-scanning technology. Susan Wojcicki, Google's vice president for product management, who is overseeing the Google Book Search project, said the company had built its own scanners, which capture the image of the page using optical character recognition technology. The scanning for Harvard's collection, she said, is taking place at Harvard's book depositories. Some Google watchers think the company has developed an advanced page-turning scanning technology while others think Google's scanners are more conventional, having workers turn the pages at hundreds of scanners. Crain's Detroit Business reported last month that Google had leased a 40,000-square-foot warehouse in Ann Arbor to digitize the University of Michigan books. Nathan Tyler, a Google spokesman, said Google was looking to expand its scanning facilities for Michigan, but did not have anything to announce. 'It's a fascinating time, and very confusing,' Mr. Verba said of the copyright controversy. 'And if you ask me if I have a clear view of fair use, the answer is no. It's all up in the air.' Another concern for the plaintiffs in the lawsuits is the second digital copy that Google gives to the libraries as part of each agreement. But Mr. Verba maintains that those second copies will be used only for archiving and preservation, in keeping with a research library's charter. 'We think and hope it is legally the appropriate approach,' Mr. Verba said of the Google project. 'But we're taking it day by day.'

Subject: Endangering Yellowstone's Grizzlies From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 09:22:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opinion/21mon2.html?ex=1290229200&en=f27f7a7537dad760&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 Endangering Yellowstone's Grizzlies The recovery of the grizzly bear population in the greater Yellowstone region is a triumph of human restraint. Thirty years ago, after a long period of mismanagement, the bears were listed as a threatened species. Now, their numbers have risen from perhaps as few as 200 to perhaps as many as 600. That has led the Interior Department to consider removing them from the endangered species list - a proposal that has split the conservation world. The National Wildlife Federation, for instance, believes that the original goals of protecting the bears have been met. But other groups - including the Natural Resources Defense Council - believe the bears should still be protected. We agree. If grizzlies are removed from the endangered species list, they will come under the protection of a management plan developed by the three states that surround Yellowstone. Given those states' historic hostility to large predators, the fact that the plan calls for a resumption of hunting is worrisome. But much more important is the danger that it might open up a good deal of the grizzlies' already-diminished range to commercial exploitation. The fate of the grizzlies should remind us all how effective the Endangered Species Act really is and why it is worth safeguarding it from legislative assault. But it should also remind us that there is still no effective legal protection for animals that have recovered in numbers but are still threatened by the pressure of human activity.

Subject: Planned Cut in Medicare Fees From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 09:07:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/national/20docs.html?ex=1290142800&en=1bfbb0d5d6d6f63f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 Doctors Objecting to Planned Cut in Medicare Fees By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is headed for a clash with the nation's doctors over a federal plan to cut their Medicare fees by 4.4 percent next year, even as the government tries to measure the quality of care they provide. Doctors say that if the cut occurs, some physicians will be less willing to accept new Medicare patients. Administration officials said that on Monday they would publish a final rule cutting 4.4 percent from the amount paid to doctors for each service provided to Medicare patients in 2006. They said the cut was required by a formula in the Medicare law. But doctors pointed out that President Bush had not proposed any specific legislation to avert the cut. In a report to Congress in April, Medicare's trustees said the formula would produce cuts totaling roughly 25 percent from 2006 to 2011, while doctors' costs are expected to rise 15 percent. Administration officials said any increase in doctors' fees would lead to steeper increases in premiums charged to beneficiaries. Moreover, they said, doctors often respond to such cuts by performing more services, so their income does not necessarily fall. Finally, the administration said, doctors should not be paid more unless they cooperate with a federal effort to measure the quality of care they provide. 'Medicare needs to encourage and reward efficiency and high-quality care, not simply pay for more services,' said Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Doctors said it was absurd for Medicare to cut their fees at a time when their costs were rising. The effects of such cuts will be compounded, they said, because many private insurers and some state Medicaid programs link their payment rates to the Medicare fee schedule. Dr. Duane M. Cady, chairman of the American Medical Association, said: 'Physicians cannot absorb the pending draconian cuts. A recent A.M.A. survey indicates that if the cuts begin on Jan. 1, more than one-third of physicians would decrease the number of new Medicare patients they accept.' Medicare uses a complex formula to pay doctors. The formula sets goals for spending, called 'allowed expenditures.' The goals are updated each year to reflect economic growth and other factors. If spending repeatedly exceeds the goals, Medicare reduces the fees that would otherwise be paid in later years. In 2005, the Bush administration estimates, payments under the fee schedule will total $93.3 billion, far exceeding the goal of $80.4 billion. Lawmakers of both parties have introduced bills to prevent the cuts, but they are far from agreement. A budget bill passed by the Senate would give doctors an increase of 1 percent next year. House members are considering proposals for a freeze or a small increase. For months, the administration took no public position on proposals to stop the cuts scheduled for 2006 and later years. Any Medicare legislation could reignite debate over the new prescription drug benefit, and the White House told Congress it wanted to avoid that. At a hearing this week, Dr. McClellan, the Medicare administrator, offered to work with Congress on the problem. But he said, 'We don't have a specific legislative proposal.' The administration recently announced a 'voluntary reporting program' under which doctors will report clinical data intended to gauge the quality of care provided to Medicare patients. The government will use 36 measures, like the percentage of heart attack patients who receive aspirin and certain blood pressure drugs, known as beta-blockers, when they arrive at a hospital. The administration said it would 'provide feedback to physicians on their level of performance.' The American Medical Association expressed 'strong objections' to the program, saying that many of the 36 measures were invalid or inappropriate for doctors' offices. Dr. Cyril M. Hetsko, a trustee of the association, said paying doctors for their performance might be a desirable goal. But he added, 'Depending on how the program is set up, it could have the unintended effect of reducing payments to doctors with black and Hispanic patients in inner-city neighborhoods, while rewarding doctors with healthy, better-motivated patients in affluent suburbs.' Some lawmakers are also skeptical. 'This type of pay-for-performance program will give government bureaucrats more say over what's good treatment,' said Representative Charlie Norwood, Republican of Georgia. Representative John Shadegg, Republican of Arizona, said he feared that 'a government bureaucrat will decide what performance we pay for.' Dr. Stephen C. Albrecht, a family doctor in Olympia, Wash., said 20 percent of his patients were on Medicare. If payments are cut next year, he said, it would be 'economic nonsense' for him to continue participating in the program. In the past, Congress has sometimes given doctors a reprieve for one or two years. But the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas, said he wanted a permanent, systematic change, not another short-term fix. 'I will not support simply pouring more taxpayer dollars year after year into a system that is broken,' Mr. Barton said.

Subject: The Fate of Women of Genius From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 08:53:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/03/08/home/gordon-fate.html September 13, 1981 The Fate of Women of Genius By MARY GORDON Virginia Woolf foresaw with clarity the responses to ''A Room of One's Own.'' She wrote in her diary in 1929: ''I forecast, then, that I shall get no criticism, except of the evasive jocular kind ... that the press will be kind & talk of its charm, & sprightliness; also I shall be attacked for a feminist & hinted at for a sapphist ... I shall get a good many letters from young women. I am afraid it will not be taken seriously. ... It is a trifle, I shall say; so it is, but I wrote it with ardour and conviction. ... You feel the creature arching its back & galloping on, though as usual much is watery & flimsy & pitched in too high a voice.'' As usual, Woolf's standards for herself were mercilessly high. A trifle? Hardly. Yet it is easy to see why it was, by some critics, so perceived. Originally given as lectures at Newnham and Girton colleges, ''A Room of One's Own'' was published in October 1929 at a time when feminist writing was so little in vogue as to be effectively moribund, when the Feminist Movement, connected as it had come to be almost exclusively with female suffrage, considered its work finished. October 1929. It is astonishing to contemplate that ''A Room of One's Own'' fell into the hands of the London literary public at the same time that Wall Street investors were leaping from their windows in despair. Understandably, the political attentions of intellectuals were turned not to the problems of women but to economic and world crisis. The name of Mussolini is spoken by Woolf in this essay, but his presence is peripheral; it is eclipsed by his spiritual brother the college beadle, chasing women from lawns, forbidding them the library. ''A Room of One's Own'' opened Woolf up to the charges - snobbery, estheticism - by that time habitually laid at the Bloomsbury gate by the generation that came of age in the late Twenties. To an extent, the accusations are just: Woolf is concerned with the fate of women of genius, not with that of ordinary women; her plea is that we create a world in which Shakespeare's sister might survive her gift, not one in which a miner's wife can have her rights to property; Woolf's passion is for literature, not for universal justice. The thesis of ''A Room of One's Own '' - women must have money and privacy in order to write - is inevitably connected to questions of class: ''Genius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people.'' The words are hard; how infuriating they must have been to, say, a D.H. Lawrence. But Woolf is firm. Genius needs freedom; it cannot flower if it is encumbered by fear, or rancor, or dependency, and without money freedom is impossible. And the money cannot be earned; it must come to the writer in the form of a windfall or a legacy, or it will bring with it attachments, obligations. Woolf's sense of the writer's vocation is religious in its intensity. The clarity of heart and spirit that she attributes to writers like Shakespeare and Jane Austen, who have expressed their genius ''whole and entire,'' demands a radical lack of self and ego that might be required of a saint. Yet the writer cannot, for Woolf, work to be rid of the self; the writer must be born into a world which never allows grievances to appear, or must be born of a soul made of stuff that will not bear the impress of resentment. When the writer's personal grievances intrude, the art is muddied, cracked. It is the fault Woolf finds with Charlotte Bronte: ''The woman who wrote those pages (of ''Jane Eyre'') had more genius in her than Jane Austen; but if one reads them over and marks that jerk in them, that indignation, one sees that she will never get her genius expressed whole and entire. ... She will write in a rage where she should write calmly. She will write foolishly where she should write wisely. She will write of herself where she should write of her characters.'' Serenity, selflessness, freedom from rage: the words recall the mystics' counsels. Yet, unlike the mystics, with their dualistic bias. Woolf finds the body good, the senses delightful: they feed, they do not distract, the spirit. ''One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well,'' she insists. Her joy in sensual satisfaction is magnificently expressed in her description of lunch at an Oxbridge men's college; it is one of the immortal meals in literature. Of its aftermath, she writes: ''No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Vandyck is of the company ... how good life seemed, how sweet its rewards, how trivial this grudge or that grievance, how admirable friendship and the society of one's kind, as, lighting a good cigarette, one sank among the cushions in the window seat.'' Woolf says that we who live after the First World War have lost something beautiful, some necessary grace. We do not hum under our breaths; we are cats without tails; we are encumbered by our anger, our sense of doom, more important, perhaps, by our sexual selfconsciousness. The war destroyed illusions, particularly for men. Women have, for Woolf (how unrealistically hopeful her illusion), given up their roles as ''looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.'' Therefore men are angry; Woolf sees this anger in everything she reads about women when she begins her quest to discover why women are so poor (their college serves stringy beef, custard and prunes), why so few women have written. The first question has an easy answer: women are poor because, instead of making money, they have had children. The second question is far more complex, and Woolf's attempt to answer it leads her to history. She reads the lives of women and concludes that if a woman were to have written, she would have had to overcome an enormous array of circumstances. Women were betrothed in their cradles; they were married at 15; they bore a dozen children, many of those children died, and they went on bearing children. Moreover, they were uneducated; they had no privacy; even Jane Austen had to write in the common sitting room and hide her work under blotting paper so as not to be discovered. Yet even when they were freed from the practical impediments imposed upon their sex, they could not write because they had no tradition to follow. No sentence had been shaped, by long labor, to express the experience of women. ''It is useless to go to the great men writers for help,'' Woolf writes, ''however much one may go to them for pleasure. ... (They) never helped a woman yet, though she may have learnt a few tricks of them and adapted them to her use.'' Of all women writers, only Jane Austen found a sentence to fit her. The shapely sentence; it is another necessary legacy, the lack of which makes every woman writer parvenue. For Woolf is certain that the experience of men and the experience of women are extremely different, and they need different sentences to contain the shapes of their experience. Women's writing has, in addition, been impoverished by the limited access women have had to life; what could the writing of George Eliot have been like, Woolf wonders, had Miss Evans fought in the Crimea; what would the work of Tolstoy have been had he lived in seclusion in a suburb with a woman not his wife? Yet the hiddenness, the anonymity of women's lives has endowed them with a great beauty, and the challenge Woolf gives to women writers is to capture these lives in all their variety: ''All these minutely obscure lives remain to be recorded, I said ... and went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life, whether from the women at the street corners with their arms akimbo ... or from the violet-sellers and the match-sellers and the old crones stationed under doorways: or from drifting girls whose faces, like waves in sun and cloud, signal the coming of men and women. ... Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the everchanging and turning world of gloves and shoes and stuffs swaying up and d own among the faint scents that come through chemists' bot of dress material over a floor of pseudo-marble .'' This is, indeed, a challenge whose proportions are heroic. The novelist imagined by Woolf, a young woman named Mary Carmichael who has money and privacy, has not met it in her first book, ''Life's Adventure,'' despite the heartening sentences ''Chloe liked Olivia. They shared a laboratory together.'' Miss Carmichael is a good novelist: she writes with spirit; she has many new and interesting things to say. But she is not a genius. Given her tradition, how can she be but ''awkward ... and without the unconscious bearing of long descent which makes the least turn of the pen of a Thackeray or a Lamb delightful to the ear.'' Woolf lays down ''Life's Adventure'' with disappointment, saying ''she will be a poet ... in another hundred years' time.'' She turns to the window and sees a man and a woman getting into a taxi. This sight she finds so immensely attractive, so profoundly soothing, that it reminds her how unnatural it is to think of the sexes as separate, how natural to think of them as cooperating with one another. And it leads her to speculate that, just as there are two sexes in the natural world, there must be two sexes in the mind, and that it is their union that is responsible for creation. She recalls Coleridge's idea that a great mind is androgynous: ''Coleridge certainly did not mean ... that it is a mind that has any special sympathy with women; a mind that takes up their cause or devotes itself to their interpretation. Perhaps the androgynous mind is less apt to make these distinctions than the single-sexed mind. He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided.'' The androgynous mind must be a pure vessel - we are back, once more, to the important idea of purity - for the transmission of reality, ''what remains over when the skin of the day has been cast into the hedge ... what is left of past time and of our loves and hates.'' But it is particularly difficult for a modern to transmit reality. Modern women are frustrated and angry, their experience is limited; modern men are obsessed with the letter ''I''; their writing is full of self-conscious indecency, self-conscious virility. It is essentially sterile. Thus, unless men and women can be androgynous in mind, literature itself will be permanently flawed. And this is the reason for Woolf's own for women. It is not that she wants women to write better than men : ''All this pitting of sex against sex ... all this claiming of superiority and imparting of inferiority, belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are 'sides,' and it is ... of the utmost importance to walk up to a platform and receive from the hands of the Headmaster himself a highly ornamental pot.'' It is to encourage writing of genius, to discourage flawed work that Woolf is so insistent upon money and privacy for women. And by whom are these works to be created? By Shakespeare's sister, the imaginary woman invented by Woolf, who killed herself because of the frustration of unexpressed genius. ''If we face the fact ... that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the ... dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down,'' Woolf says. Was it the body of Shakespeare's sister that Virginia Woolf laid down when she walked into the river? The tone of ''A Room of One's Own'' discourages the speculation. It is an exalted tone, an inspired tone; there is nothing petty in it, and nothing of the merely personal. Human happiness, the happiness of writers - questions by which we, in our age, seem enthralled - do not enter these pages. What is important, what is essential, is that works of genius be created. In that writers' unhappiness interferes with their creation, one should be concerned with the happiness of writers. The important thing is that they must express reality; they must express their genius, not themselves. They must illuminate their own souls, but they must not allow the souls to get in the way of reality. For pitted against reality, against the great tradition of immortal literature, the self is puny; it is of no interest. The tone of ''A Room of One's Own'' is exalted, but it is also conversational. A human voice provides its music, a voice of great charm. It came to be written because Virginia Woolf was asked to lecture at women's colleges on the subject of Women and Fiction. Her interest in the subject was vital. She had felt cheated in her education, and felt the cheat for all those who had gone before her - she was as angry, in some ways, as Charlotte Bronte. But there was another reason for the writing of this book. When one thinks of that reason, one sees Virginia Woolf not for the moment the Olympian virgin of the early portrait, or the august woman of letters of the late ones, but the woman in one of the snapshots. Her legs are crossed; there is a dog at her feet. She looks friendly; she may be approachable. It is November 6, 1929. She is writing to her friend G. Lowes Dickinson, explaining the reasons for ''A Room of One's Own'': ''I wanted to encourage the young women - they seem to get fearfully depressed.''

Subject: Women and Fiction From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 07:19:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/12/17/specials/woolf-room.html November 10, 1929 Virginia Woolf Discusses Women and Fiction By LOUIS KRONENBERGER A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN By Virginia Woolf Asked to speak at Cambridge before college women on the subject 'Women and Florition' - for this was a lecture before it was a book - Mrs. Woolf confessed that the subject could encompass a great: Women and fiction might mean ... women and what they are like; or it might mean women and the fiction that they write; or it might mean women and the fiction that is written about them; or it might mean that somehow all three are inextricably mixed together ... But on reflection she saw that all she could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point - a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of women and the true nature of fiction unsolved. Having so clearly indicated her argument, Mrs. Woolf even more clearly proceeds to maintain and illuminate it. And in the course of doing so she manages, however much she may pretend to limit her theme, to say a good deal about the true nature of women and of fiction. She says little that has not been said before; indeed, she sets out to prove a point that most intelligent people accept as truistic; but seldom has the point been driven home more cogently or embellished with wittier comment. With the inherent taste of a novelist Mrs. Woolf chooses to speak through an 'I' who is and yet is not herself and to enforce her argument through incident: lunch in a men's college, dinner in a women's college, a view of London from an upstairs window, a ramble among the books in her own library. This slightly fictional setting tends to impersonalize Mrs. Woolf's attitude at the same time that it gives artificial personality to her remarks and breaks up a purely historical analysis with running comment - and with, it must be admitted, some highly irrelevant passages of description. What Mrs. Woolf has traced, of course, are the reasons for the very limited achievements among women novelists through the centuries. Why did they fail? They failed because they were not financially independent; they failed because they were not intellectually free; they failed because they were denied the fullest worldly experience. Mrs. Woolf imagines what would have happened to a hypothetical sister of Shakespeare (who possessed all his genius) because she lived in the eighteenth century; she insists that, whatever her gifts, no woman in that age of wife-beating could have written the plays. She shows what did happen in the nineteenth century to the Brontes and George Eliot because they lacked full participation in life; even George Eliot, the 'emancipated' woman, lived with a man prosaically in St. John's Wood, while Tolstoy roamed the world and lived with gypsies; and 'War and Peace' was as impossible for a woman to write then as 'Lear' three centuries before. But even within the limits of their own possibilities in past times, Mrs. Woolf continues, women did not find themselves because they wrote in deference to masculine standards or in angry defiance of them: One has only to skim those old forgotten novels by women ... to divine that the writer was meeting criticism; she was saying this by the way of aggression, or that by the way of conciliation. She was admitting that she was 'only a woman' or protesting that she was 'not as good as a man.' ... It does not matter what it was; she was thinking of something other than the thing itself. Thus the woman writer was corrupted by an alien standard of art; and Emily Bronte or George Eliot, writing in the accepted masculine style of their times, wrote by that much the worse. Only an exceptional Jane Austen wrote entirely as a woman, so that with less genius than Emily Bronte she achieved greater success. Today, Mrs. Woolf continues, there is danger from another source. The woman novelist is nowadays sex-conscious; and the artist can no more be sex-conscious than sex-inhibited. The great creative mind must be androgynous; and Mrs. Woolf interprets Coleridge's famous definition to mean, not sympathetic with the other sex (which effects a creative division) but harmoniously bisexual in comprehension (which affects a creative fusion). Thus Mrs. Woolf has traced the position of the woman writer through the centuries, wittily finishing it off with contrasting pictures of men's lives and women's lives even today. We have summarized baldly, whereas Mrs. Woolf speaks for her sex with as much fancy as logic, as much wit as knowledge, and with the imagination of a true novelist. And she speaks for it well. Moreover, she escapes from an attitude of conventional feminism by really arguing in this book not for women but for artists. For, of course, all artists, whatever their sex, need, 500 pounds a year an a room on their own. It is only because women have had them so much less frequently than men that a special plea for them has a special force. In making that plea Mrs. Woolf sometimes partly evades an issue. We cannot tell how much better Dickens would have written had he not struggled, or Meredith had he not wearily read manuscript for Chapman & Hall, or Balzac had he not sought feverishly to discharge heavy debts; but we do know that lacking means and intellectual freedom these men succeeded where women failed. We cannot tell how much better Hawthorne would have written, or Flaubert, or Hardy, had their experiences been more cosmopolitan; but we do know that great knowledge of the world is not necessary for great art. The premium mobile mist be genius itself. Jane Austen knew nobody and George Sand knew everybody, and Jane Austen was by far the greater and there you have it. But in spite of a theme that is pretty self-evident and conclusions that are not always definitive, this book, the distillation of the crystalline mind, so gaily and freshly and yet forcefully written, says something. Many of the best things are said in passing - flashes of insight, succinct bits of criticism, the significant touches which always mark the writer who knows a great deal more than the one thing he is commissioned to discuss. Occasionally Mrs. Woolf is not above sacrificing the truth to wit, or impartial judgment to a tempting thrust. But nearly always, even at her most informal, she maintains an unfaltering poise, and permeates this book with that individual set of literary and critical values so clearly enunciated in 'The Common Reader.'

Subject: Yellowstone Grizzly From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 06:47:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/national/16grizzly.html November 16, 2005 Yellowstone Grizzly May Lose Endangered Status By JIM ROBBINS HELENA, Mont. - The Yellowstone grizzly bear, one of the first and most controversial animals to be protected by the Endangered Species Act, is fully recovered, and it is time to remove the stringent safeguards it has had for three decades, federal officials said Tuesday. The number of bears in the wild landscape that has Yellowstone National Park at its core has risen to more than 600 from a low of 200 to 300 in the 1970's. 'This has been a very long process,' Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said after the department announced it would publish a proposed delisting of the animal in the Federal Register on Thursday. 'People involved in the effort felt strongly the time had come to acknowledge recovery of the bear.' The Interior Department plans to issue a decision after a 90-day public comment period. If delisting occurs, it will probably happen no sooner than mid-2006, the agency said. The job of managing an unlisted bear would fall to state wildlife agencies and the National Park Service. It is considered very likely that the states would allow the animal to be hunted. Federal grizzly bear biologists in Montana say that years of research shows that the bear population around Yellowstone is robust. 'It's probably one of the most studied mammals in the world,' said Chuck Schwartz, head of the federal Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team in Bozeman, Mont., which has primary responsibility for studying the Yellowstone bear. Conservation groups are divided. The delisting is supported by the National Wildlife Federation, the nation's largest conservation group. 'We have reached all of the recovery targets and exceeded them for a number of years,' said Thomas M. France, head of the group's Northern Rockies office in Missoula, Mont. One of the main goals in the recovery plan required that there be a minimum of 15 sows, or female bears, with cubs each year to assure successful reproduction. 'We're now seeing more than 40 sows with cubs,' Mr. France said. Other conservation groups, however, including the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, oppose delisting. While the number of bears is healthy, they say, some of the bears' critical food sources, like the white bark pine nut, are in steep decline, which could force the bear to leave the park in search of food. And removing protection, they say, would not allow the federal Fish and Wildlife Service to halt development in crucial grizzly habitat. 'If you don't protect the habitat, it doesn't matter how many bears you have - you'll lose them,' said Lance F. Craighead, executive director of the Craighead Environmental Research Institute in Bozeman, who maps grizzly bear habitat. In the 1960's, the Yellowstone bears were hurt by habitat loss. But they were driven to the brink of extinction when the Park Service closed garbage dumps where bears fed. Bears that refused to return to a natural regimen were shot, and from 1969 to 1971, the Park Service killed more than 200 bears, reducing them to perilously low levels and resulting in their listing as threatened.

Subject: United States Should Look to Japan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 06:41:47 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/opinion/21mon4.html?ex=1290229200&en=ca7b8468204cc25c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 Why the United States Should Look to Japan for Better Schools By BRENT STAPLES The United States will become a second-rate economic power unless it can match the educational performance of its rivals abroad and get more of its students to achieve at the highest levels in math, science and literacy. Virtually every politician, business leader and educator understands this, yet the country has no national plan for reaching the goal. To make matters worse, Americans have remained openly hostile to the idea of importing strategies from the countries that are beating the pants off us in the educational arena. The No Child Left Behind Act, passed four years ago, was supposed to put this problem on the national agenda. Instead, the country has gotten bogged down in a squabble about a part of the law that requires annual testing in the early grades to ensure that the states are closing the achievement gap. The testing debate heated up last month when national math and reading scores showed dismal performance across the board. Lurking behind these test scores, however, are two profoundly important and closely intertwined topics that the United States has yet to even approach: how teachers are trained and how they teach what they teach. These issues get a great deal of attention in high-performing systems abroad - especially in Japan, which stands light years ahead of us in international comparisons. Americans tend to roll their eyes when researchers raise the Japanese comparison. The most common response is that Japanese culture is 'nothing like ours.' Nevertheless, the Japanese system has features that could be fruitfully imitated here, as the education reformers James Stigler and James Hiebert pointed out in their book 'The Teaching Gap,' published in 1999. The book has spawned growing interest in the Japanese teacher-development strategy in which teachers work cooperatively and intensively to improve their methods. This process, known as 'lesson study,' allows teachers to revise and refine lessons that are then shared with others, sometimes through video and sometimes at conventions. In addition to helping novices, this system builds a publicly accessible body of knowledge about what works in the classroom. The lesson-study groups focus on refining methods that improve student understanding. In doing so, the groups go step by step, laying out successful strategies for teaching specific lessons. This reflects the Japanese view that successful teaching is the product of intensive teacher development and self-scrutiny. In America, by contrast, novice teachers are often presumed competent on Day One. They have few opportunities in their careers to watch successful colleagues in action. We also tend to believe that educational change would happen overnight - if only we could find the right formula. This often leaves us prey to fads that put schools on the wrong track. There are two other things that set this country apart from its high-performing peers abroad. One is the American sense that teaching is a skill that people come by naturally. We also have a curriculum that varies widely by region. The countries that are leaving us behind in math and science decide at the national level what students should learn and when. The schools are typically overseen by ministries of education that spend a great deal of time on what might be called educational quality control. The United States, by contrast, has 50 different sets of standards for 50 different states - and within states, the quality of education depends largely on the neighborhood where the student lives. No Child Left Behind was meant to cure this problem by penalizing states that failed to improve student performance, as measured by annual tests. The states have gotten around the new law by setting state standards as low as possible and making state tests easy. This strategy was exposed as fraudulent just last month, when states that had performed so well on their own exams performed dismally on the alternative and more rigorous test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. No Child Left Behind was based on the premise that embarrassing test scores and government sanctions would simply force schools to improve educational outcomes for all students. What has become clear, however, is that school systems and colleges of education have no idea how to generate changes in teaching that would allow students to learn more effectively. Indeed, state systems that have typically filled teaching positions by grabbing any warm body they could find are only just beginning to think about the issue at all. Faced with lagging test scores and pressure from the federal government, some school officials have embraced the dangerous but all-too-common view that millions of children are incapable of high-level learning. This would be seen as heresy in Japan. But it is fundamental to the American system, which was designed in the 19th century to provide rigorous education for only about a fifth of the students, while channeling the rest into farm and factory jobs that no longer exist. The United States will need a radically different mind set to catch up with high-performing competitors abroad. For starters we will need to focus as never before on the process through which teachers are taught to teach. We will also need to drop the arrogance and xenophobia that have blinded us to successful models developed abroad.

Subject: Chinese Leader From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 06:24:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/international/asia/21prexy.html?ex=1290229200&en=6a29f163dcdb27a3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 21, 2005 Chinese Leader Gives President a Mixed Message By DAVID E. SANGER and JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING - In a day of polite but tense encounters, President Hu Jintao of China told President Bush on Sunday that he was willing to move more quickly to ease economic differences with the United States, but he gave no ground on increasing political freedoms. Although American officials described the leaders as more comfortable with each other on Sunday than in any previous encounter, Mr. Hu made clear, by his words and his government's actions, that he had no intention of giving in to American pressure. Even during Mr. Bush's visit, there were reports of new moves against dissidents and other activists. American officials said none of the human rights cases on a list President Bush gave to Mr. Hu at their first meeting this year had been resolved by the time Mr. Bush stepped into the Great Hall of the People on Sunday morning. He had met with the Chinese leader in New York in September, when world leaders gathered for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. By afternoon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meeting with reporters, acknowledged that China appeared to have put dissidents under house arrest or detained them in advance of the trip. She said the issue was being raised 'quite vociferously with the Chinese government.' Meeting with reporters in the evening, Mr. Bush said his talks had amounted to a 'good, frank discussion,' but he seemed unsatisfied. He chose his words about Mr. Hu carefully and repeated that the relationship with China was 'complex,' though later he added that it is 'good, vibrant, strong.' 'China is a trading partner, and we expect the trade with China to be fair,' he said. 'We expect our people to be treated fairly here in this important country.' On economic issues that are of major concern to American businesses - letting market forces set the value of the undervalued Chinese currency and protecting intellectual property from rampant piracy in China - Mr. Bush made marginal progress. He secured a public statement from Mr. Hu that he would 'unswervingly press ahead' to ease a $200 billion annual trade surplus that wildly outstrips anything Mr. Bush's father faced with Japan in the late 1980's. But Mr. Hu set no schedule for further currency moves, which are politically unpopular in China because they would make Chinese goods less competitive abroad. An American participant in the meetings said it was clear that 'no Chinese leader was going to act immediately under the pressure' of a request from a foreign leader. Mr. Bush attended a service early Sunday morning at a state-sanctioned Protestant church near Tiananmen Square, saying afterward, 'My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly.' But religious activists in Beijing complained that dozens of Christians who had wanted to worship alongside Mr. Bush had been turned away or detained by Chinese security forces. Christians in Shanghai and several other cities said the police had detained people who belong to underground churches to prevent them from staging demonstrations for greater religious freedom during Mr. Bush's visit. Dozens of political activists, including Bao Tong, a former senior Communist Party official who has become an outspoken critic of one-party rule, and Hu Jia, who has pressed for greater action to combat AIDS, were forbidden to leave their homes or use their telephones while Mr. Bush was in Beijing, according to people close to Mr. Bao and Mr. Hu who said they could not be identified because of possible retaliation by the Chinese government. Mr. Bush, as he has through much of his trip to Asia, continued to focus attention on Iraq. Meeting with reporters, he talked at length about the arguments that have consumed Washington in his absence, saying that members of the House or Senate who oppose his approach to Iraq have a right to dissent but also 'a responsibility to provide a credible alternative.' 'Leaving prematurely will have terrible consequences, for our own security and for the Iraqi people,' he said, applauding Congress for voting down last week a resolution supporting immediate withdrawal. 'And that's not going to happen so long as I'm president.' If finding a way out of Iraq is an immediate problem for Mr. Bush, dealing with China's increasingly assertive tone on economic and military issues, and with Mr. Hu's quiet resistance to Washington's calls for political liberalization, are challenges that will last far beyond his presidency. After a day of talks that began with a 90-minute meeting inside the Great Hall of the People, Mr. Bush emerged with little progress to report beyond a $4 billion deal for China to buy 70 Boeing aircraft. Even that agreement seemed highly preliminary. One person with detailed knowledge of the negotiations said the actual contract, including the price tag for each aircraft, was still being discussed. He declined to be identified because of the commercial sensitivity of the pending contract. That strongly suggested that the deal had been announced ahead of time to provide an upbeat note for the White House during Mr. Bush's visit. Mr. Bush seemed tense during much of the day. When a reporter asked him about that later, he said, 'Have you ever heard of jet lag?' After ending his brief meeting with reporters, the president turned around and tried to go out a door that was locked. Turning back to reporters, he said, joking: 'I was trying to escape. It didn't work.' But if he lagged at times during the day, he seemed renewed after going mountain biking on Sunday afternoon. He had more company than on his usual weekend forays in Washington. He took his Trek bicycle out with the Chinese athletes training for the 2008 Olympics. 'It is clear that I couldn't make the Chinese cycling team,' Mr. Bush told reporters tonight, although his hosts did let him take the lead. American officials had set low expectations for what Mr. Bush might accomplish beyond deepening his relationship with Mr. Hu, a man he had expected would embrace reforms more quickly than his predecessor, Jiang Zemin. But while administration officials emphasized that they felt that the two men had begun to develop a personal chemistry that made it easier to grapple with trade, currency and geopolitical problems, none of that comity was on public display. Mr. Hu, who almost never interacts with either the Chinese or the foreign news media, declined what a Bush administration official described as a request to take questions from reporters after their meeting. The Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, attributed Mr. Hu's silence to his visitor's tight schedule, though Mr. Bush managed to hold news conferences with the prime minister of Japan and the president of South Korea last week. On Sunday, Mr. Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao detailed for Mr. Bush steps they were taking to curb the theft of movies, software and similar goods, emphasizing that they believed that those moves were necessary to develop the Chinese economy. United States officials have expressed frustration that while Mr. Hu and his predecessors have made similar commitments before, progress has been maddeningly slow. Had Mr. Bush stepped a few hundred yards away from his meetings in the Great Hall of the People and into the shops off Tiananmen Square - a place he avoided being photographed, American officials said, because of the still raw memories of protesters being shot there in 1989 - he could have paid the equivalent of a few dollars for the DVD's of several current American movies and what appeared to be a working copy of the Microsoft Windows XP operating system. On the status of Taiwan, Mr. Hu would brook no compromise. 'We will by no means tolerate Taiwan independence,' he told Mr. Bush, at a moment the administration has been wary of China's missile buildup along the coast opposite Taiwan. The Chinese also appeared to completely rebuff efforts by the administration to win some concessions on human rights issues. None of the journalists, business leaders or political dissidents who the United States has claimed were unjustly imprisoned or persecuted by Chinese authorities were released. China often makes at least modest concessions on human rights ahead of a presidential visit. But Mr. Hu, who has led a concerted and sustained crackdown on intellectual and news media freedoms since he took power in 2002, has shown little inclination to make the kinds of gestures that his predecessors did. Asked if the Chinese were trying to send Washington a message, Ms. Rice said: 'I don't think this has anything to do with particular Chinese attitudes of this leadership. I expect that this leadership will understand, as the former leadership did, that these are issues of concern to the president, concern to Americans, and that we'll keep pressing on human rights.' Mr. Bush said that he and Mr. Hu had also discussed strategies for handling the potential outbreak of avian flu and the long-running talks on nuclear disarmament for North Korea.

Subject: 'Change in Direction' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 06:15:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/politics/17text-murtha.html November 17, 2005 Murtha Calls for a 'Change in Direction' REP. MURTHA: I just spoke to the Democratic Caucus and told them my feelings about the war. And I started out by saying the war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It's a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of the members of Congress. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq. But it's time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region. General Casey said, in a September 2005 hearing, the perception of occupation in Iraq is a major driving force behind the insurgency. General Abizaid said, on the same date, reducing the size of visibility of the coalition forces in Iraq is a part of our counterinsurgency strategy. For two and a half years, I've been concerned about U.S. policy and the plan in Iraq. I've addressed my concerns with the administration and the Pentagon, and I've spoken out in public about my concerns. The main reason for going to war has been discredited. A few days before the start of the war, I was in Kuwait. The military drew a line -- a red line around Baghdad, and they said when U.S. forces cross that line, they will be attacked by the Iraqis with weapons of mass destruction. And I believed it, and they believed it. But the U.S. forces -- the commander said, they were prepared. They said they had well-trained forces with the appropriate protective gear. Now, let me tell you we've spent more money on intelligence than any -- than all the countries in the world put together and more on intelligence than most countries' GDP. And when they said it's a world intelligence failure, it's a U.S. intelligence failure. It's a U.S. failure, and it's a failure in the way the intelligence was used. I've been visiting our wounded troops at Bethesda and Walter Reed, as some of you know, almost every week since the beginning of the war. And what demoralizes them is not the criticism; what demoralizes them is going to war with not enough troops and equipment to make the transition to peace. The devastation caused by IEDs is what they're concerned about, being deployed to Iraq when their homes have been ravaged by hurricanes -- and you've seen these stories about some of the people's whose homes were destroyed, and they were deployed to Iraq after it -- being on their second or third deployment, leaving their families behind without a network of support. The threat by terrorism is real, but we have other threats that cannot be ignored. We must prepare to face all these threats. The future of our military is at risk. Our military and their families are stretched thin. Many say the Army's broken. Some of our troops are on their third deployment. Recruitment is down even as the military's lowered its standards. They expect to take 20 percent Category 4, which is the lowest category, which they said they'd never take, but they've been forced to do that, to try to meet a reduced quota. Defense budgets are being cut. Personnel costs are skyrocketing, particularly in health care. Choices will have to be made, and we cannot allow promises we have made to our military families in terms of service benefits, in terms of their health care, to be negotiated away. Procurement programs that ensure our military dominance cannot be negotiated away. We must be prepared. The war in Iraq has caused huge shortfalls in our bases at home. I've been to three bases in the United States, and each one of them were short of things they need to train the people going to Iraq. Much of our ground equipment is worn out. And I've told the COs -- (inaudible) -- you better get in the business of rehabilitating equipment because we're not going to be able to buy any new equipment because the money's not going to be there. George Washington said to be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace. We don't want somebody to miscalculate down the road. It takes us 18 years to put a weapon system in the arsenal. And I don't know what the threat is, nobody knows what the threat is, but we better make sure we have what's necessary to preserve our peace. We must rebuild our Army. Our deficit is growing out of control. The director of the Congressional Budget Office recently admitted to being terrified about the deficit in the coming decades. In other words, where's the money going to come from for defense? I voted against every tax cut -- every tax cut I voted against. My wife says, 'You shouldn't say that.' I believe that when we voted for these tax cuts, you can't have a war, you can't have a tragedy like we had, the hurricanes, and then not have a huge deficit, which is going to increase interest rates and could cause real problems. This is the first prolonged war we've ever fought with three years of tax cuts without full mobilization of American industry and without a draft. On the college campuses they always ask me about a draft: You're for a draft. I say yeah, there's only two of us voted for it, so you don't have to worry too much about it. The burden of this war has not been shared equally. The military and their families are shouldering the burden. Our military has been fighting this war in Iraq for over two and a half years. Our military has accomplished its mission and done its duty. Our military captured Saddam Hussein, captured or killed his closest associates. But the war continues to intensify. Deaths and injuries are growing, and over 2,079 in confirmed American deaths, over 15,500 have been seriously injured -- half of them returned to duty, and it's estimated over 50,000 will suffer from what I call battle fatigue. And there have been reports that at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. I just recently visited Anbar province in Iraq in order to assess the conditions on the ground. And last May -- last May -- we put in the emergency supplemental spending bill -- Moran amendment -- which was accepted in conference, which required the secretary of Defense to submit a quarterly report about the -- and accurately measure the stability and security in Iraq. Now -- we've now received two reports. So I've just come back from Iraq, and I looked at the next report. I'm disturbed by the findings in the key indicator areas. Oil production and energy production are below prewar level. You remember they said that was going to pay for the war, and it's proved to (be) below prewar level. Our reconstruction efforts have been crippled by security situations. Only $9 billion of $18 billion appropriated for reconstruction has been spent. And I said on the floor of the House, when they passed the $87 billion, the $18 billion was the most important part of it because you got to get people back to work, you got to get electricity, you got to get water! Unemployment is 60 percent. Now, they tell you in the United States it's less than that, so it may be 40 percent. But in Iraq, they told me it's 60 percent when I was there. Clean water is scarce, and they only spent $500 million of the $2.2 billion appropriated for water projects. And most importantly -- this is the most important point -- incidents have increased from 150 to a week to over 700 in the last year. Instead of attacks going down over a time when addition of more troops -- when we had addition of more troops, attacks have grown dramatically. Since the revelation of Abu Ghraib, American casualties have doubled. You look at the timeline. You'll see one per day average before Abu Ghraib. After Abu Ghraib, you'll see two a day -- two killed per day because of the dramatic impact that Abu Ghraib had on what we were doing in -- and the department -- the State Department reported in 2004, right before they quit putting the reports out, that -- they indicated a sharp increase in global terrorism. I said over a year ago now, the military and the administration agrees now that Iraq cannot be won militarily. I said two years ago, the key to progress in Iraq is Iraqitize, internationalize and energize. Now, we have a packet for you where I sent a letter to the president in September, and I got an answer back from assistant secretary of Defense five months later. I believe the same today. They don't want input. They only want to criticize. They -- Bush One was the opposite; Bush One might not like the criticism and constructive suggestions, but he listened to what we had to say. I believe that and I have concluded the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq is impeding this progress. Our troops have become the primary target of the insurgency. They are united against U.S. forces, and we have become a catalyst for violence. U.S. troops are the common enemy of the Sunnis, the Saddamists and the foreign jihadists. And let me tell you, they haven't captured any in this latest activity, so this idea that they're coming in from outside, we still think there's only 7 percent. I believe with the U.S. troop redeployment the Iraqi security forces will be incentivized to take control. A poll recently conducted -- this is a British poll reported in The Washington Times -- over 80 percent of Iraqis are strongly opposed to the presence of coalition forces, and about 45 percent of Iraqi population believe attacks against American troops are justified. I believe we need to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis. I believe before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for mid-December, the Iraqi people and the emerging government must be put on notice. The United States will immediately redeploy -- immediately redeploy. No schedule which can be changed, nothing that's controlled by the Iraqis, this is an immediate redeployment of our American forces because they have become the target. All of Iraq must know that Iraq is free -- free from a United States occupation, and I believe this will send a signal to the Sunnis to join the political process. My experience in a guerrilla war says that until you find out where they are, until the public is willing to tell you where the insurgent is, you're not going to win this war, and Vietnam was the same way. If you have an operation -- a military operation and you tell the Sunnis because the families are in jeopardy, they -- or you tell the Iraqis, then they are going to tell the insurgents, because they're worried about their families. My plan calls for immediate redeployment of U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces, to create a quick reaction force in the region, to create an over-the-horizon presence of Marines, and to diplomatically pursue security and stability in Iraq. Now let me personalize this thing for you. I go out to the hospitals every week. One of my first visits, two young women. One was 22 or 23, had two children, lost her husband. One was 19. And they both went out to the hospitals to tell the people out there how happy they were -- or how happy they should be to be alive. In other words, they were reaching out because they felt their husbands had done their duty, but they wanted to tell them that they were so fortunate, even though they were wounded, to be alive. I have a young fellow in my district who was blinded and he lost his foot. They did everything they could for him at Walter Reed, then they sent him home. His father was in jail. He had nobody at home. Imagine this. A young kid that age, 22, 23 years old, goes home to nobody. VA did everything they could do to help him. He was reaching out. So they sent him -- to make sure that he was a blind, they sent him to Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins started sending bills. Then the collection agency started sending bills. Well, when I found out about it, you could imagine they stopped the collection agency and Walter Reed finally paid the bill. But imagine, a young person being blinded, without a foot, and he's getting bills from a collection agency. I saw a young soldier who lost two legs and an arm, and his dad was pushing him around. I go to the mental ward; you know what they say to me? They got battle fatigue. You know what they say? 'We don't get nothing. We get nothing. We're just as bruised, just as injured as everybody else, but we don't even get a Purple Heart. We get nothing. We get shunted aside. We get looked at as if there's something wrong with us.' Saw a young woman from Notre Dame. Basketball player, right- handed, lost her right hand. You know what she's worried about? She's worried about her husband because he lost weight worrying about her. These are great people. These soldiers and people who are serving, they're marvelous people. I saw a Seabee lying there with three children. His mother and his wife were there. He was paralyzed from the neck down. There were 18 of them killed in this one mortar attack. And they were all crying because they knew what it would be like in the future. I saw a Marine rubbing his boy's hand. He was a Marine in Vietnam, and his son had just come back from Iraq. And he said he wanted his brother to come home. That's what the father said, because the kid couldn't speak. He was in a coma. He kept rubbing his hand. He didn't want to come home. I told him the Marine Corps would get him home. I had one other kid, lost both his hands. Blinded. I was praising him, saying how proud we were of him and how much we appreciate his service to the country. 'Anything I can do for you?' His mother said get me a -- 'Get him a Purple Heart.' I said, 'What do you mean, get him a Purple Heart?' He had been wounded in taking care of bomblets, these bomblets that they drop that they have to dismantle. He had been wounded and lost both his hands. The kid behind him was killed. His mother said, 'Because they're friendly bomblets, they wouldn't give him a Purple Heart.' I met with the commandant. I said, 'If you don't give him a Purple Heart, I'll give him one of mine.' And they gave him a Purple Heart. Let me tell you something. We're charged -- Congress is charged with sending our sons and daughters into battle, and it's our responsibility, our obligation to speak out for them. That's why I'm speaking out. Our military's done everything that has been asked of them. U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily; it's time to bring the troops home.

Subject: Paul Krugman: Time to Leave From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 05:59:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ November 21, 2005 Paul Krugman: Time to Leave By Mark Thoma Krugman delves into politics this week and concludes that Representative John Murtha is right: Time to Leave, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...Representative John Murtha's speech calling for a quick departure from Iraq was full of passion, but it was also serious and specific in a way rarely seen on the other side of the debate. President Bush and his apologists speak in vague generalities about staying the course... But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water. Mr. Murtha - a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America's fighting men and women - argued that our presence in Iraq is making things worse, not better. Meanwhile, the war is destroying the military he loves. ... I'd add that the war is also destroying America's moral authority. When Mr. Bush speaks of human rights, the world thinks of Abu Ghraib. ... When administration officials talk of spreading freedom, the world thinks about ... much of Iraq ... ruled by theocrats and their militias. Some administration officials accused Mr. Murtha of undermining the troops and giving comfort to the enemy. But that sort of thing no longer works, now that the administration has lost the public's trust. Instead, defenders of our current policy have had to make a substantive argument: we can't leave Iraq now, because a civil war will break out... But the real question is ... When, exactly, would be a good time to leave Iraq? ...[W]e're not going to stay in Iraq until we achieve victory, ... At most, we'll stay until the American military can take no more. Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices - higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived draft - that might have made a long-term commitment ... possible. Instead, the war has been fought on borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is running out. With some military units on their third tour of duty..., the superb volunteer army that Mr. Bush inherited is in increasing danger of ... collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of the officer corps in the early 1970's. So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The question... is whether it makes sense to keep the war going for another year or two, which is all the time we realistically have. ... And there's a good case to be made that our departure will actually improve matters. As Mr. Murtha pointed out..., the insurgency derives much of its support from the perception that it's resisting a foreign occupier. Once we're gone, the odds are that Iraqis, who don't have a tradition of religious extremism, will turn on fanatical foreigners like Zarqawi. The only way to justify staying in Iraq is to make the case that stretching the U.S. army to its breaking point will buy time for something good to happen. I don't think you can make that case convincingly. So Mr. Murtha is right: it's time to leave.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: Time to Leave From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 18:27:05 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I am at times strongly against Krugman speaking politics after all he is an economist first. This time, however, the story given by Krugman is so logical, that I cannot in my mind make a retort. Even if I try step outside any liberal thoughts I may have. Perhaps, as an argument, much of the battle going on in Iraq is now between Iraqis, but again the US Military won't be able to stop their centuries of infighting. So I can't see any argument against what Krugman has just stated. I would really like to see someone post an argument to this article. Please tell me there is something that Krugman has overlooked, or a presumption that is flawed. I cannot be, that the situation and solution can be this obvious, yet the US government chooses not to address the argument put forward by Murtha.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman: Time to Leave From: Emma To: Mik Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 20:01:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: You are a gem; I understand completely.

Subject: Urbanite-Peasant Legal Differences From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 08:14:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/03/international/asia/03china.html?ex=1288674000&en=f7e0f9028bbf9644&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 3, 2005 China to Drop Urbanite-Peasant Legal Differences By JOSEPH KAHN BEIJING - China plans to abolish legal distinctions between urban residents and peasants in 11 provinces as the government tries to slow the country's surging wealth gap and reduce social unrest, state media said Wednesday. Under an experimental program, local governments in those provinces will allow peasants to register as urban residents and to have the same rights to housing, education, medical care and social security that city dwellers have. If carried out as advertised, the program would eliminate a cornerstone of the population control policies begun by Mao in the 1950's. The system of residence permits, known as hukou, ties every person to a locale and once made travel difficult without permission. In practice, the system has been fading away for more than a decade. An estimated 200 million peasants have left the countryside to live in urban areas, some of them full time. Their access to urban services varies widely depending on local rules and the kind of employment they find. In today's market-oriented economy, the once-comprehensive socialist benefits bestowed on urban residents carry far less weight. Most people rely on their own resources, or those of their employers, to pay for health care, housing and schooling. Even so, the system of residence permits has been a fixture of social and political culture in Communist China and a prominent symbol of the government's control of daily life. Its elimination could be regarded as an advance in human rights, some specialists said. 'This is an old-style way of managing a huge country and no longer makes sense with a market economy,' said Qin Hui, a historian at Qinghua University in Beijing. 'If it's really going away, it is a significant turning point.' Mr. Qin said he expected that even if the system disappeared, local governments would retain administrative control over their populations. They would still set conditions on registration for urban residents and prevent the growth of slums. 'The cities will become places where the relatively well off live,' he said. 'Beijing is not going to look like New Delhi, or even like Bangkok.' Economic forces have eroded population controls in recent years. Shenzhen emerged from rice fields in the early 1980's to become one of China's most prosperous metropolitan areas, and nearly all of its 10 million residents were born elsewhere. Shanghai began the concept of a 'blue card' for qualified migrant workers in the mid-1990's, giving them full access to housing and city services if they met criteria. The central government declared that it intended to drop the residency permit system at the 16th Communist Party Congress in 2002, and has made incremental changes since. An episode in 2003, when Sun Zhigang, a college-educated migrant in Guangdong Province, was beaten to death in police custody after being detained on suspicion of vagrancy, gave impetus to changing the system. His death caused nationwide outrage and led to the abolition of vagrancy laws. 'We knew it was a dead duck after they abolished the custody and repatriation system' or vagrancy law, said Nicolas Becquelin, a researcher for Human Rights in China based in Hong Kong. 'The police had no power to enforce the hukou laws.' Doing away with the residency system also fits the political agenda of President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who have tried to demonstrate that they are more attentive to people left behind in China's economic boom. The market-oriented economy has produced enormous wealth but also generated major social cleavages. In the past several years, peasants and migrant workers have led an upsurge in protests over corruption, land grabs and environmental degradation. Long term, Mr. Becquelin said, urbanization remains an enormous administrative challenge for China and one that the government is unlikely to entrust to the market. 'I think you'll see a situation where the largest cities retain very tight controls, while medium cities are a little looser and newer small cities have more freedom,' he said. The 11 major provinces involved in the latest move include Guangdong, Fujian and Liaoning. China has 23 provinces. Articles about the change in several state-run publications suggested, though, that the Public Security Bureau, the nation's police bureaucracy, remained deeply wary of the change and may slow its progression.

Subject: Reflections of a Restless China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:59:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/arts/dance/08joyc.html?ei=5070&en=7fcc98505141c024&ex=1120622400&emc=eta1&pagewanted=all&position= February 8, 2005 In Modern Dance, Reflections of a Restless China in Flux By ANNA KISSELGOFF In a country where the arts are expected to support government policy rather than exist primarily as independent forms, China's still-young and rapidly expanding modern dance has a distinct advantage. It is a wordless means of individual expression, especially open to ambiguity and interpretation. When the Beijing Modern Dance Company, founded in 1995, makes its New York debut tonight at the Joyce Theater, with 'Rear Light,' a piece choreographed to music from 'The Wall,' the 1979 rock album by Pink Floyd, viewers will certainly spot the general aura of alienation. It may be less easy to agree about specifics. The sight of young people placed 'up against the wall' and of crime-scene body silhouettes painted on the floor as well as dancing that veers between turbulence and regimentation may all evoke the 1989 repression of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Yet there is also an intimate male-female duet and a wild disco scene, usually with audience participation onstage. For Willy Tsao, the company's Hong Kong-born artistic director, this disco episode is not just a release but also a critique of mindless youth. 'It shows a wild bunch of kids enjoying themselves,' Mr. Tsao said. 'They don't know what's going on around them. They hide from the truth.' Any recent visitor to China who has run into the night life in Shanghai and Beijing or seen the pop art in official museums that portrays Maoists and punk rockers side by side will understand that artists who do not want a return to the past may also be unhappy with China's rediscovery of materialist values. An allegorical transposition of the original tale about an alienated rock star in the 1982 movie version of 'The Wall,' 'Rear Light' is at a far remove from a realistic dance about peasants in the fields that was included in the 1991 United States debut of the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, the seedbed of Chinese contemporary dance. Reflecting a society in flux, professional modern dance has spread beyond Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai to attract budding choreographers in universities in other provinces. True to the essence of modern dance anywhere, it is no longer limited to one kind of movement idiom or aesthetic. Interviewed by phone during the company's current United States tour, Mr. Tsao said that Li Han-zhong and Ma Bo, the husband-and-wife team who choreographed 'Rear Light,' tend toward 'very angry pieces.' But 'Rear Light,' he insisted, is one of those works whose meaning changes with its viewer. He agreed that the body silhouettes refer to people who have been killed. 'But these things happen anywhere,' he said. 'People were killed in Yugoslavia and are killed in Iraq.' Mr. Tsao is aware that not all, especially in the West, will accept this wider view. The point he wishes to make is that it would be right to read 'a yearning for individuality and free expression' into such works. 'Dancers are not afraid to say that they are not satisfied,' he added, 'and they say it through the body.' For Ralph Samuelson, director of the New York-based Asian Cultural Council, which has helped finance training and teaching for Chinese modern dancers and choreographers both in the United States and in China, 'China is very different from what it was.' Yet, he added, there are three subjects that are taboo there in modern dance: sex, attacks on political leaders and violence. Mr. Tsao said that the line was drawn at nudity and direct criticism of Chinese leaders. But like Mr. Samuelson, he notes that much has changed since the Guangdong Modern Dance Company, China's first professional modern-dance company, was formed in 1990. It was a carefully prepared birth, sparked by the 1986 visit of Yang Mei-qi, head of the Guangdong Dance Academy, to the American Dance Festival at its summer home at Duke University in Durham, N.C. The festival, through its International Choreographers Workshop, played a major role in helping Ms. Yang organize a three-year program (1987-90) to train dancers and nurture new choreographers. Mr. Tsao, who advised the Guangdong company until 1998 and is now its overall director, said the training struck local cultural officials as too American. Looking back on these beginnings, Charles Reinhart, the American Dance Festival's director, remains adamant about the project's goal. 'Our whole point was not to come in like the Soviet balletmasters did in China and say, this is our 'Swan Lake,' copy it,' he said. 'The idea was to provide them with modern dance training and let them run with it to develop their own genius.' The first generation in the Guangdong troupe spawned China's leading modern-dance choreographers in a remarkably short time. They include Shen Wei, highly acclaimed on the international festival circuit and based in New York. 'The seeds in modern dance creativity have grown so fast in China that we have come full circle,' Mr. Reinhart said, referring to Mr. Shen. 'You could say that one of the most talented choreographers in America today is Chinese.' Mr. Samuelson said that in the 1980's Chinese choreographers didn't want to go home but 'now mostly they do.' Guangdong alumni include Wang Mei, who heads the modern dance program at the Beijing Dance Academy, and Jin Xing, who showed indisputable talent when he choreographed for American Dance Festival students in the 1980's and early 90's. In 1995 the Beijing Cultural Bureau asked him to become the Beijing Modern Dance Company's first artistic director - just after he underwent a sex change to become China's most publicized transsexual. Retaining the same name as a woman, Ms. Jin now choreographs for her own company in Shanghai. A major figure in fostering interest in modern dance is Mr. Tsao, who is choreographer for his City Contemporary Dance Company in Hong Kong and who is credited by American observers with donating his own money to the Guangdong and Beijing companies. 'Willy saved the companies,' Mr. Samuelson said. 'They couldn't sustain themselves.' Whether Mr. Tsao's taste influences these companies is open to debate. Americans can judge for themselves when the Kennedy Center presents the Guangdong, Beijing and Hong Kong companies on the same program in October. 'I have apartments in three cities,' Mr. Tsao said. There is no question that he has fostered the growth of different choreographers both in the companies and in the annual dance festival he established in Beijing in 1999 and moved to Guangzhou last year. 'If it is only one type of modern dance, it will be a failure,' he said. 'Chinese modern dancers are finding a new language. I don't see that in Europe and America. 'In the second year of our festival, students from seven colleges asked to present their choreography. It was amateurish, but it opened a door. In 2003 we had 18 universities participating, with many painting and literature students. A computer science student formed a company, the Young Crops Society, after he choreographed for the festival. His works were very calm and quiet, like a computer.' Mr. Tsao sees greater freedom in the fact that arts financing is being cut back on the provincial and municipal levels. The Beijing troupe is mainly underwritten by corporations, he said. Mr. Tsao said the company's status as an independent group without subsidy left it free of censorship. 'No government official came to see the work we are presenting now in the United States,' he said. After Mr. Tsao succeeded Ms. Jin as artistic director in Beijing in 1999, he said, 'I had to spend time on radio talk shows, explaining modern dance.' Government officials suggested he present works that were 'traditional and Chinese.' 'My response,' he said, 'is that modern dance is not a cultural trait. If you have a sense of freedom, Chinese modern dance can come of age. If the perception is that you have only to create something different from the West, that is a limitation.'

Subject: Windows on the Many Chinese Revolutions From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:58:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9501EEDD1038F931A35754C0A9629C8B63&fta=y July 2, 2004 Windows on the Many Chinese Revolutions, Political and Personal By HOLLAND COTTER Few new worlds are brave. Even those that come with a plan, an ideal, some kind of vision thing, are cautious, expedient, accident-prone affairs, cruising from crisis to crisis, consolidating nuggets of political and cultural power and letting everything else, including the past, fall where it may, often on the trash heap. That's one impression generated by the several exhibitions of photography from China that have converged in Manhattan this summer. A large survey of contemporary Chinese work at the International Center of Photography and Asia Society sets the tone, with images by a generation of young artists who are watching an urbanized, digitalized, McDonald's-ized culture lurch into being before their eyes. But other shows contribute valuable information. A two-part exhibition at China Institute and a pocket-size archival display at the International Center of Photography together look back to an older China in the grip of different but no less shocking revolutions. And in an outstanding New York solo debut in a Chelsea gallery, the Beijing-based photographer Hai Bo weaves cultural and personal history together with a sadness so profound and restrained as to seem heroic. Cultural history is the focus of ''China and the Chinese in Early Photographs'' at the International Center of Photography, a contextualizing footnote to the contemporary survey. It includes portraits of Manchu nobility, their imperial days numbered, by the late-19th-century Scottish photographer John Thomson, as well as shots of landscapes that emulated, with peculiarly glassy serenity, ink-and-brush painting. This was the China Europeans wanted; these pictures were for them, though at least one odd-duck entry was intended for Chinese eyes. It is a photographic facsimile, dated 1842, of the document known as the Treaty of Nanjing, signed that year by China and Britain after China's defeat in the First Opium War. The agreement forced China to open ports to Western trade. And to further sharpen the humiliation, British authorities sent a photographic copy of the treaty to the Chinese government as evidence of the powers of Western technology. The chronological story picks up in the two-part ''China Fast Forward: Photographs of Daily Life, 1917-2002'' at China Institute, or at least in one of the shows installed there, a selection of pictures by the American social scientist Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968). The earliest picture is from 1917. By then the Qing dynasty was gone, replaced by a republican government, but a centuries-old social structure and a predominantly agricultural economy were more or less intact. Gamble, a Princeton-trained heir to the Proctor & Gamble fortune, arrived in China with an agenda, a utopian Christian capitalist belief that an application of science and religion might lift a backward culture up. It is Gamble the scientist who shines forth in the show, which is organized by Nancy Jervis, vice president of China Institute, and has been seen in various versions and different places, including China, in the past 15 years. Gamble was an avid statistician, a connoisseur of quantity: he knew, for a given year, how many rickshaws there were in Beijing, how many ounces of opium had been confiscated and burned, and what percentage of women had bound feet. To supplement his fact-finding, he took pictures. A few he used in books he published; most he stored away. Some 5,000 negatives were found in a closet after his death. Prints made from 57 of them are in the show, and they're wonderful. In line with Gamble's omnivorous appetite, the range of subjects is wide: nobles, peasants and pilgrims; coffin makers and silk-weavers; Yangtze River boatmen; university students in Panama hats; Taoist priests. Gamble gave equal attention to productivity and poverty and had no interest in the fantasy of a ''timeless Orient.'' He saw activity and change everywhere, and documented it. He was in Beijing in 1919 when word came that European powers had handed Chinese territory over to Japan, and he photographed the protests that followed this betrayal, culminating in the great demonstrations that turned into the generation-defining May Fourth Movement. And just as he acknowledged the emergence of a new China, he recognized an old China on the wane. His 1918 picture of a wealthy dowager, swathed in silk, feet bound, cigarette holder clamped between her lips, is a classic embodiment of an antique culture that Maoism and Western modernism would sweep away. The second show at China Institute, ''Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change,'' considers the consequences of that sweep. Organized by Gu Zheng, a Shanghai-based photographer, for the Bates College Museum of Art in Lewiston, Me., it includes seven photographers with distinct approaches to an immense theme. One, Liu Xiaodi, in his ''Village'' series from the late 1970's, focused on rural peasants, extolled by Mao as the spiritual elite of his ''People's China.'' This old-time orthodoxy is undercut, however, in another series, Zhang Xinmin's ''Besiege the City by the Country'' (1998). While the title refers to a strategy for a peasant revolution, it is applied to images of peasants who have migrated by the millions to cities, looking for work, only to find themselves on the lowest rung of the socio-economic ladder. Once social role models for a China-to-be, they are victims of the China that is. Jiang Jian takes this subject in a different direction in tender 1999 color portraits of peasant families in their homes. But Zhou Hai's pictures of industrial workers caught in an inferno of smoke and grime return to other realities. A young man haloed with steam and staring defiantly at the camera could be the advance guard of a new proletarian revolution in a country every bit as explosive as it was in Gamble's day. In fact, the only predictable thing at present is a continuing hybridity, evident in Luo Yongjin's photographs of new architecture in wild Chinese-Internationalist styles, and in a panoramic shot by Zhou Ming of Shanghai, with its Disneyesque skyline and boomtown energy from which at least some residents are in retreat. These Shanghailanders are themselves subjects of photographs by Lu Yuanmin: sepia-toned portraits of middle-class residents who have made their apartments into sealed environments to which manageable doses of past and present are admitted. Indeed, following a decade of extroverted work, many Chinese artists are looking inward. One is Mr. Hai, 42, who is seen both at Max Protetch in Chelsea and in ''Between Past and Future,'' the survey at the International Center of Photography. To the survey he contributes much-noticed older work. It include pairs of photographs of family and friends, with one picture taken during the Cultural Revolution and the other, of the same sitters, or those who survive, 20 years later. Although the work clearly has a political edge, time and memory are its real subjects, as they are of the recent work at Protetch. His series titled ''Dusk'' (2002) literally resurrects the past by combining pictures from years ago in new, triptych-style formats. In one example, two head shots of the artist's aged, bedridden grandmother are followed by a coppery image of a landscape at sunset, a view she regularly saw from her window at the end of her life. The pictures date from 1993, the year she died, but were assembled as a unit two years ago, as were others of Mr. Hai's father and son. The expressive dynamic here, at once valedictory and restorative, reappears in a quartet of pictures titled ''Four Seasons'' (2003), in which the artist himself is seen as a diminutive figure seated under a magnificent tree in a park. The series riffs on the Taoist theme of mutability that suffuses classical Chinese painting: the tree changes appearance from picture to picture; the seated figure remains constant, though with each change of season he has aged. Characteristically for this artist, the series also has specific autobiographical content. The park is the one in which Mr. Hai played as a child; it is also where his brother accidentally drowned. And the memory of private tragedy haunts these pictures just as surely as the public tragedy haunts the group portraits, real and reconstructed, from the Cultural Revolution. In fact, public and private meet in almost all of the most interesting Chinese photography concentrated in New York this summer, work that both engages with the brilliant, volatile, dangerous history it is part of and creates a morally incisive world of its own. To do the first requires breadth of vision; to do the second requires courage of a quiet, generous kind.

Subject: Puppets Help Evoke China's History From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:54:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/01/theater/reviews/01cath.html?ex=1288501200&en=6080e7f94dad292f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 1, 2005 Puppets Help Evoke China's History of Love and War By MARGO JEFFERSON For Marco Polo in the 13th century as for Ezra Pound in the 20th, China was 'Cathay,' a land of mythic wonders. For the American-born director and writer Ping Chong, to visit China and make theater in the West meant exploring myth and history, joining Asian and Western traditions. The result is 'Cathay: Three Tales of China,' playing at the New Victory Theater through Nov. 13. It is enchanting. 'Cathay' is a collaboration with China's Shaanxi Folk Art Theater. Mr. Chong is well known for his ingenious blend of film, theater and graphic art. Here, working with the director Liang Jun and a superb design team, he adds nine puppeteers and various puppets to the mix. Instead of a curtain onstage, we see a screen with the imposing look of marble. Dark wood divides it into panels. Once the lights go down, different panels will become settings for the action: traders, horses and camels trudging along the Silk Road; the jewel-toned opulence and cruel intrigue of a medieval court; World War II devastation; and the sleek efficiencies of a 21st-century hotel. But our first encounter is with two enormous animal statues, bronze-colored with winged heads and bright blue eyes. We hear their loud, grumbling voices. They've guarded the royal tomb for centuries; they're bored. What happened to the old days, they complain, 'the enchantment of splendors past' in the Tang dynasty, when they were important? The stage goes dark, and the 'The Emperor and the Lady' begins. It is a tale of love, greed and rebellion that ends in tragedy. Two circles light up on opposite sides of the panel. The emperor is inside one, wearing robes of gold and black brocade. His discreetly elegant prime minister is inside the other. Above them is a long rectangle of deep blue sky, a full blue moon and a branch with just four leaves. The panels serve as puppet stages. But they could be small movie screens, too, given the variety of line, shape and perspective. When the chamber of the emperor's beloved lady, Yang, appears, it is shaped like a fan. The colors are lustrous pinks, and blues, pale yellow and coral with a touch of strawberry. The second tale, 'Little Worm,' takes us into a world of pale grays. This is the countryside of ponds and reeds, frogs, water buffalo and huts. Families anxiously watch the sky for Japanese planes. Mr. Chong uses shadow puppets and digital animation up to the moment the Japanese attack. Then the animation becomes newsreel images. We see plunging airplanes, fire, soldiers turning guns and bayonets on unarmed people. It is shattering. The third tale 'New,' brings us to an ultramodern hotel in China. Each floor is named after a dynasty, and women who would once have schemed to win an emperor's favor scheme to win a promotion from the hotel manager. I won't reveal the ties that bind this tale to the other two. I will say that the result is charming, but also poignant. Mr. Chong is a theatrical magician with heart and an acute sense of history.

Subject: Land South of the Clouds From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:54:02 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/07/arts/design/07clou.html?ex=1289019600&en=53b6bc59ba9cdc76&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 7, 2005 Native Eyes on a Land South of the Clouds By ERIK ECKHOLM He was herding goats high up the creases of sacred Mount Kawagebo when the morning light seemed right, recalled Ananzhu, an ethnic Tibetan from an isolated village of southern China. So he took out his camera. The scene he captured that day, of an emerald lake beneath two conical, ice-capped peaks, was both stunning and layered with meanings. Ananzhu (he has only one name) was carrying a camera provided by the United States-based Nature Conservancy as part of a Photovoice project. More than 250 people from 60 villages in northern Yunnan province, all from ethnic minorities, have been given a way to document, through their own eyes, their cultures and surroundings. His alpine scene is one of some 45 photographs from the project now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in 'Voices From South of the Clouds' (a reference to Yunnan, Chinese for 'south of the clouds'). The exhibition is in the small Akeley gallery, behind the African mammals, and runs until March 12. Ananzhu was one of three village photographers the conservancy brought to New York last week for a cultural celebration. The pictures provide a record of endangered traditions and landscapes but the main goal, said Ann McBride Norton, a conservancy adviser in Asia who organized the project, is to give a voice to northern Yunnan's diverse peoples. The region's myriad ethnic groups - including many people who are illiterate and do not even speak Chinese - are facing surges in tourism, road-building and investment. The conservancy is working with local officials to promote environmentally benign development, an idea with shallow roots in economically booming China. With some of the last unspoiled remnants in all of China, Yunnan is not only ethnically but also biologically rich, a 'hot spot' for plant species including 162 species of rhododendron that sprinkle the hillsides with pink flowers each spring. Helping indigenous people to document themselves with photographs is a longtime technique of anthropologists. The Natural History museum was drawn to the Yunnan pictures because they capture the nexus between culture and environment, said Eleanor Sterling, co-curator of the show and director of the museum's center for biodiversity and conservation. And crucially, she said, 'the photos were spectacular.' In starting the project, Ms. Norton drew inspiration and advice from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, where the photographer Wendy Ewald has been a pioneer in the combined use of cameras and writing as a way to stimulate learning and community awareness in schools and elsewhere. 'Photography is a pretty democratic art form,' noted Katy Hyde, director of the Literacy Through Photography program at the Duke center. For the Yunnan project, the Eastman Kodak Company donated point-and-shoot cameras (a model that sells for $7 in China). In short training sessions, villagers were taught how to use them and, rather than being told what makes a good picture, they were shown multitudes of photographs and encouraged to discuss what they liked and why. They are provided with one roll of film each month, along with the results of the previous month's effort. They are asked to provide background information on the pictures that is sometimes quite revealing. In the case of his mountain scene, Ananzhu, 41, wrote that when he saw the same spot as a child, the lake was much smaller. 'The glacier is shrinking and the lake is growing, and we don't know why,' he said in an interview. When his picture was displayed in his home village of Yubeng, elders were prompted to tell children the sacred meaning of the pictured valley: the meeting place of the war gods of Mount Kawagebo. Several of the fledgling photographers turned out to have a particularly good eye. Hong Zhengyong's image of a girl in distinctive ethnic dress slaughtering a chicken amid dazzling yellow fields, for example, is one of several in the exhibition with classic diagonals and symmetries. Mr. Hong, 28, mainly photographed his father, one of the last great Yi shamans, performing healing rituals and animal sacrifices. 'I worry that the knowledge will be lost,' he said in New York. He documented the rituals just in time: his father recently died. Some of the pictures celebrate scenic splendors and participants, including Ananzhu, said they did not fully appreciate the beauty around them until they saw it in a photograph. Others document hardships: children collecting firewood, or writing their homework on the side of a basket as they accompany their parents to farm plots. The caption to a picture of a Tibetan woman milking a yak in a blizzard says, 'Even in wintertime we have to go out to get milk.' After touring New York, the villagers said they were impressed but not overawed. The buildings are very tall, said Ananzhu. 'But even the tallest building,' he noted, 'is not as high as our lowest mountain.'

Subject: Brazil Weighs Costs and Benefits From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:51:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/americas/20amazon.html?ex=1290142800&en=3c2a7fa515e7d177&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 20, 2005 Brazil Weighs Costs and Benefits of Alliance With China By LARRY ROHTER PAQUIÇAMBA, Brazil - Here at the great bend of the mighty Xingu River, the Brazilian government is pushing to construct a dam that could end up being the world's second-largest, generating huge amounts of hydroelectric power. But the main beneficiaries of the project are not likely to be the Indian tribes or other local residents, but instead a government halfway across the world, in China. To satisfy the appetite of a rapidly growing industrial base, state-owned Chinese companies have begun involving themselves in mining projects in the eastern Amazon, ranging from aluminum and steel to nickel and copper. Processing each of those materials requires large amounts of electricity, and the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, intent on forming what he calls 'a strategic alliance' with China, is eager to perform that task. Meanwhile, the river dwellers whose lives will be disrupted by the dam predict it will cause extensive environmental damage and encourage an influx of poor settlers seeking jobs that will not exist. They also complain that they will not receive the power they have long been demanding of the government and will be forced to move. 'If this thing is built, then Lord help us,' said José Carlos Arara, a leader of an Indian settlement perched above the river. 'The Chinese are way over there. But we are right here, at the gateway of the dam without water, medical care or electricity, and rather than help us, our government wants to make things worse. If it were up to us, this dam would never be constructed.' Officials in Brasília, however, promise that the project, named Belo Monte after the site where it is to be built, will control the flow of the river so as to minimize its impact on the nine tribal groups that live here. They also say that because Brazil cannot afford not to build the dam, they will pay whatever price is necessary to placate the skeptics here. 'This is an important public works for a country like ours, which needs to take better advantage of its energy potential,' Márcio Zimmerman, director of planning and development for the Ministry of Mines and Energy, said in a phone interview. 'The north is a region that is in the process of industrialization and development, and hydroelectric power is a long-term source of energy that is cheap and renewable.' In its original form, the Belo Monte project dates to the 1970's, when it was presented as a solution to predicted energy shortages in the southern, industrialized part of Brazil. But environmental, human rights and indigenous groups opposed the plan from the start, in part because of its huge eventual costs, in the billions of dollars. The groups fought it in the courts and in Congress, and by the time the previous government left office in 2002, a court ruling appeared to have shelved Belo Monte for good. But Mr. da Silva and his leftist Workers' Party came to power promising a battery of social initiatives, including a 'Light for Everyone' program meant to bring electricity to poor and remote rural areas like this. Sensing an opportunity, proponents of Belo Monte dusted off the project and persuaded Mr. da Silva to make it a priority. 'There was dereliction in not building hydroelectric projects' in the previous government, Mr. da Silva said recently. 'With the projects that are under way, we can permanently guarantee' supplies of energy to consumers 'for 5, 6 or even 10 years down the line.' But in partnership with China, Brazil is also committed to large industrial projects in the Amazon that will consume huge amounts of electricity and employ relatively few people. Among them are a pair of large plants that will process bauxite, the raw material used to make aluminum, near Belém, the capital of Pará State in the eastern Amazon. A Chinese company is planning to build a steel mill in São Luis, at the eastern edge of the Amazon, as part of a venture with a Brazilian company. In a separate project, a Brazilian company is already building another steel mill near Belém to meet the demand that is anticipated from the Chinese and American markets. The iron ore for those projects comes from Carajas, south of here, which has the world's largest reserves. Copper to supply China and other markets is being extracted from the area, and building a copper smelter nearby is being discussed. 'Everything in the Amazon that is electricity-intensive has a big Chinese component and is getting strong official support, even though the main beneficiary will clearly be China, rather than Brazil,' said Mr. Pinto, who wrote the book 'Hydroelectric Projects in the Amazon.' 'Not only are the Chinese going to be investing a minimal amount themselves, but they will also be shifting the resulting pollution problems to the Amazon.' Mr. da Silva's government, mired in a corruption scandal that threatens his chances of being re-elected next year, is so eager to move ahead on the dam that in July it persuaded Congress to authorize the project, ignoring a requirement to confer with communities that would be affected. Opponents are challenging that action in the courts. 'Even though the Brazilian constitution says that we are supposed to be consulted, no one came to talk with us,' said Manuel Juruna, the leader of the main community here. 'We want them to know that for all of the indigenous peoples of the Xingu, this project can only destroy our traditional way of life by driving away fish, drying up our hunting areas and bringing in its place nothing but hardship and suffering.' In Brazil's industrialized south, little mention has been made of the dam's connection to Mr. da Silva's broader strategy of strengthening economic and political ties with China. That policy is coming under increasing criticism, especially in São Paulo, the nation's business capital, on the grounds that Brazil's national interests are being sacrificed.

Subject: India and China Take On the World From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:34:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/business/worldbusiness/08infosys.html?ex=1289106000&en=71da55f20d9e39c9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 8, 2005 India and China Take On the World and Each Other By HOWARD W. FRENCH SHANGHAI - For years, the rapid growth of China and India has been based on business with the developed world, and has often meant taking business away from Western industries. Now, companies in the two largest emerging economies in the world are beginning to hunt intensively for business in each other's markets. In recent months, a giant company in one country has announced ambitious expansion plans in the other. India-China trade had already been growing at a phenomenal rate, reaching $13.6 billion last year - a sevenfold increase from 1998. Companies have said their new investments are critical strategic moves aimed at profiting from the other country's rapid rise. But also driving the boom in investment has been the shortage of talent in crucial sectors in both countries. The strengths of each are remarkably different: China is an industrial powerhouse in the making, while India has placed its bets more heavily on services. Nowhere can this trend be seen more clearly than in information technology, where India is already perceived as a global leader. China is vowing to catch up. Infosys Technologies, the software and information services giant in India, for example, recently announced plans to invest $65 million to expand its business in China. Infosys plans to hire 2,000 computer specialists over the next two years and to construct corporate campuses in Shanghai and Hangzhou to accommodate even more workers. Infosys has not previously made an investment in China of that size and scope and, experts say, it presages similar moves by other Indian technology companies. 'We are going to use China as a global development center, as much as we do India,' said Saikumar Shamanna, head of human resources development for Infosys in China. He said the company would seek business with multinational corporations in China and also with China's own emerging multinationals. 'Today, options for people are increasing in India so rapidly,' Mr. Shamanna said, 'that hiring has become a matter of who's willing to overpay the most. When you look at the numbers of engineering graduates coming out of the Chinese universities, this becomes a very attractive place for us.' India's information technology sector is growing so quickly that wages in some areas are increasing by 25 percent a year, making qualified graduates from the country's best schools scarce. China produces 400,000 engineering graduates each year, many of them in computer studies, and expansion by Indian companies into China is aimed, in part, at wooing them. Infosys, based in Bangalore, the capital of India's computer services industry, has risen from obscurity in the last few years to become one of the world's top computer outsourcing companies, mostly by providing software services to large corporations in the United States and elsewhere in the West. Infosys's plans to expand in China have been mirrored by those of several other big Indian companies that also specialize in computer services and outsourcing, like Tata Consulting, Wipro and Satyam Computer Services. This year, Satyam announced its plans to build a major campus in Beijing. Another Indian company, NIIT, has recently expanded in China, creating more than 125 centers around the country where it teaches programming and other computing skills. On the Chinese side, the drive to explore the Indian market is being led by corporate giants, like Huawei Technologies, a networking equipment manufacturer that competes with Cisco Systems of San Jose, Calif. 'Since we are a company whose business is based largely on globalization, we felt we had to be in India,' said Huang Ji, the chief executive of Huawei's operations in India; Huawei has recently hired 700 Indian software specialists. 'In recent years, Chinese companies have been doing research on software on a small scale, and things are still not very standardized. In India, lots of companies have reached a very high level already, and we would like to learn from them.' The Chinese government still plays an important role in the creation of companies, and as the value of the computer services and software sectors rises, Chinese officials have been searching for training and investment opportunities in India. As a result, Infosys, for example, recently accepted 100 interns from China at a corporate campus in Mysore, India. The Chinese province of Jiangsu also recently announced plans to recruit as many as 400 software engineers from India to help it start a provincial information technology industry. Since starting modestly in China in 2003, Infosys has outgrown three office buildings in Pudong. It is constructing a new campus in Pudong. An official with Infosys said he expected rapid expansion with the potential for tens of thousands of employees spread around China in the near future. On a recent visit to Infosys's headquarters, many of the new hires from China - most of them recruited from its best universities - could be seen taking training classes in English. For now, Indian companies enjoy a lead in cross-border investments. A stiff challenge for them remains, however: how to break into the Chinese corporate market, where outsourcing of information services is less established than in most developed economies, and where a strong bias in favor of working with Chinese partners remains in force. Goods manufactured in China have become ubiquitous in the Indian marketplace, bringing down the prices of many products and forcing some Indian producers out of business. The future of the economic relationship of the two nations will depend in part on the openness of the Chinese. 'Chinese companies are not really used to business-process outsourcing,' said James Lin, chief executive of Infosys China. 'It's going to take a little more time. We tell them that if you want to be a truly globalized business, we can help you.'

Subject: Re: India and China Take On the World From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 20:43:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Now this is an interesting article. Thanks

Subject: Re: India and China Take On the World From: Emma To: Mik Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 20:03:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Remember, China is vastly complex.

Subject: Bush, in Beijing, Faces a Partner From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:31:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/international/asia/20prexy.html November 20, 2005 Bush, in Beijing, Faces a Partner Now on the Rise By JOSEPH KAHN and DAVID E. SANGER BEIJING - President Bush began a one-day visit here on Sunday with a first set of meetings with President Hu Jintao of China to defuse a host of tensions, even as many in Beijing argue that he will be able to apply little true pressure on the world's fastest-rising power. In a brief exchange of prepared comments after conferring at the Great Hall of the People on the edge of Tiananmen Square, Mr. Bush and Mr. Hu committed themselves to improving their relationship, but also staked out their positions in clear terms. Mr. Hu said he intended to gradually achieve balanced trade between China and the United States, a statement that made it clear that the record trade surpluses that Beijing enjoys would be a part of the economic landscape for some time to come. He said China was willing to step up its protection on intellectual property rights and help on counterterrorism, but he reiterated that on Taiwan, he would brook no compromise. 'We will by no means tolerate Taiwan independence,' he told Mr. Bush, at a moment the administration has been wary of China's missile buildup along the coast opposite Taiwan. Mr. Bush spoke quickly, his voice tight. He thanked China for 'taking the lead' in disarmament talks with North Korea, and noted that the North Koreans had agreed in principle to give up their nuclear weapons and programs. 'The United States expects them to honor that commitment,' he said, and without reference to specific human rights concerns he said 'we encourage the Chinese to continue to make a historic transition to greater freedom.' In their remarks, neither leader made reference to Iraq, but a defiant-sounding Mr. Bush, stopping at Osan Air Base south of Seoul before arriving in Beijing on Saturday, told cheering American troops, 'We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory that our brave troops have fought for.' Those remarks came just hours after a raucous debate over Iraq strategy unfolded in the House of Representatives. But in a sign of how much Iraq has dominated Mr. Bush's weeklong tour of Asia, he only vaguely alluded to North Korea in his forceful half-hour speech, delivered just 48 miles from the militarized border between the Koreas, where he stopped on his way to Beijing. Nor did he mention the stockpile of suspected nuclear weapons that the North boasts about and that the C.I.A. believes has expanded since the war in Iraq began. China is the key player in Mr. Bush's effort to find a diplomatic way to entice North Korea to give up those weapons. Mr. Bush arrived in Beijing amid evidence that China has little intention of speeding the decontrol of its currency, which Mr. Bush has said fuels the country's trade surplus, or of curtailing its crackdown on the media and on academic and religious freedoms. On Sunday morning, he underscored his concerns about China's crackdown on religion by attending a service at the Gangwashi Church, one of the few state-approved and state-monitored congregations in the country. That visit was a highly symbolic one: His huge motorcade - more than 50 cars - took him to the church, off an alley near Tiananmen Square. He took part in a traditional Protestant service and signed the guest book with the words, 'May God bless the Christians of China.' The church was carefully selected - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went there earlier this year - and emerging from it, Mr. Bush chose his words carefully: 'You know, it wasn't all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society. My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly. A healthy society is a society that welcomes all faiths and gives people a chance to express themselves through worship with the Almighty.' White House officials on the trip say that the Chinese government rejected the idea of a joint news conference for the two leaders, eliminating any chance that Mr. Hu would have to answer questions about the pace of democratization. In a measure of the wariness felt by the Chinese, the government said that it could only guarantee television coverage for Mr. Bush's visit when he goes bicycling with Olympic athletes on Sunday. Mr. Hu may soon face an American audience. He said he would travel to the United States early next year for a previously scheduled visit that was postponed by Hurricane Katrina. Aboard Air Force One, Michael Green, head of Asian affairs for the National Security Council, said Saturday, 'We've made it clear to our Chinese hosts that the president's message is one that is positive about U.S.-China relations and should be heard by all Chinese citizens - just as when President Hu comes to the United States, his message is heard in full by the American people.' The state-controlled media in China ignored Mr. Bush's speech in Kyoto, Japan, on Wednesday, in which he cited Taiwan's democracy as a model for the mainland and argued that China was discovering 'that once the door to freedom is opened even a crack, it cannot be closed.' That critique was relatively muted compared to the days when Mr. Bush spoke of China as a 'strategic competitor.' Officials from both countries now describe relations as stable, even warm, arguing that the two powers now manage their differences pragmatically. Mr. Bush and Mr. Hu appear at least temporarily in sync on how to handle Taiwan and North Korea, Bush administration officials and Chinese analysts said. 'I think the president has an optimistic view about how China is moving,' Mr. Green said last week. If so, that may be in part because an ebbing debate within the Bush administration about whether the United States should try to contain China's economic and military reach. Foreign policy experts in China argue that even some neoconservatives in the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have come to accept China's rising economic and political influence as a fact that Washington must learn to manage rather than challenge. Senior policy aides in the administration also say the differences between the countries seem easier to address now than at any time in Mr. Bush's presidency. But officials caution that festering economic and political tensions could still severely strain bilateral ties. In what appeared to be an effort to calm economic anxieties, the Chinese have agreed to purchase 70 Boeing 737 airliners, Mr. Green said as Mr. Bush arrived in Beijing on Saturday evening. Neither the Boeing Company nor the Chinese government made a formal announcement of the deal, however, and similar promises have been made during other presidential visits, only to be altered after the visit. Stephen J. Hadley, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, tried to quell expectations for the trip by declaring in Washington last week that Mr. Bush sought no 'deliverables' to bring home, a phrase that apparently embraced both diplomatic and economic achievements, including an accord for China to let its currency float more quickly. He is unlikely to get any: in the days before Mr. Bush arrived, the Chinese police detained or arrested religious leaders. There is no sign that Beijing intends to release anyone on the list of human rights cases Mr. Bush gave to Mr. Hu in September, when they met in New York. Although Mr. Bush said in Kyoto that market-oriented economic policies would eventually lead to political freedoms in China, the country has moved in the opposite direction under Mr. Hu. Since taking control of the Communist Party in late 2002, he has jailed journalists, rights activists and lawyers, and put tighter controls on the news media and on many outspoken intellectuals. Human rights groups and others devoted to the rule of law, environmental awareness and other causes have been harassed or shut down. Chinese dissidents fear that the situation will only get worse after Mr. Bush's trip, when the leadership feels less pressure. Another source of tension is China's currency policy. Under heavy American pressure, China dropped a fixed peg between its currency, the yuan, and the dollar in July. But it allows only minuscule daily swings in the currency values, far less than the administration says is necessary to correct a growing trade imbalance. Chinese officials argue that manufacturers have paper-thin profit margins in a competitive export environment. Officials fear that anything other than incremental currency moves could threaten stability.

Subject: A Cold War China Policy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:27:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/opinion/19sat2.html?ex=1290056400&en=f4a96e4606d9f43a&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 19, 2005 A Cold War China Policy President Bush probably won't mention the word 'containment' when he visits China this weekend. But his hosts can surely be excused for wondering whether his administration is now trying to revive that cold war anti-Soviet strategy and apply it to the very different circumstances of today's complex relationship between Washington and Beijing. China's headlong economic advance presents real challenges to American policy makers, like potentially destabilizing trade and currency imbalances and a growing competition for scarce global energy supplies. But China poses no obvious military threat to the United States at this time. In the one area of potential future conflict, Taiwan, tensions have notably eased in recent months. Yet for the past few months, the Bush administration has been going out of its way to build up its military ties with countries surrounding China. India and Japan are the two most troubling examples. Washington has pressed ahead with an ill-advised initiative to share civilian nuclear technology with India, despite that country's refusal to abide by the restrictions of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And it has actively encouraged an already worrisomely nationalist Japanese government to shed postwar restraints on its military and embrace more ambitious regional security goals. Washington has also taken steps to strengthen military cooperation with Vietnam and Indonesia. Mr. Bush's stopover in Mongolia on Monday will likewise be aimed at cementing a new security partnership. The risk is that this neo-containment policy could become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading China to start throwing its own military and economic weight around to break out of the containment trap. Asia's great challenge at the start of the 21st century is to find ways to adjust to an economically stronger China without falling into the destructive military rivalries of the past. That, not a new version of containment, should be the central concern right now for the United States, and for Japan and India as well.

Subject: Ports Get Big Push in China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:22:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/11/10/business/IHT-10transcol10.html November 10, 2005 Ports Get Big Push in China By DAVID LAGUE - International Herald Tribune From the time that Macquarie Bank in May listed an Asian infrastructure fund in Singapore, it was clear that China would be a top priority for the company's aggressive deal makers. Macquarie, Australia's biggest investment bank by market capitalization, has gained a global reputation for taking lucrative stakes in transport infrastructure including rail, toll roads, tunnels, shipping and airports. China desperately needs investment and management skills to overcome serious bottlenecks in the country's transportation network that threaten future growth. Macquarie now plans to use its first major transport infrastructure investment in China as a springboard for future expansion. On Oct. 24, the Macquarie International Infrastructure fund announced that it would spend $93 million for a 38 percent stake in Changshu Xinghua Port, or CXP, on the Yangtze River, about 90 kilometers, or 55 miles, upstream from Shanghai. Changshu was the first Chinese port with majority foreign ownership. It is the port farthest upriver from Shanghai that can handle ships as big as 50,000 dead-weight metric tons. To secure the stake, the fund bought 40 percent of Singapore Changshu Development, which in turn owns 95 percent of the port. The port operator and developer, Pan United, which is listed in Singapore, will remain the majority shareholder in Singapore Changshu Development. The fund said it expected the economic activity and growth in the region to ensure average returns of about 13 percent over five years, according to a statement to the Singapore Stock Exchange. 'CXP's large hinterland with its strong steel and forestry industries is expected to benefit from robust Chinese and global trade through necessitating increased future water cargo transport through the port,' said Gregory Osborne, managing director of the Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund, or MIIF. 'Through CXP, MIIF intends to establish its presence in China, allowing opportunities for future investments in the region.' Robust earnings from investments in transport infrastructure in Europe, North America, Australia and other Asian markets, including Japan and South Korea, have been a major factor in the Macquarie group's strong profit in recent years. Analysts generally expect no shortage of future investment targets in China. 'There is huge potential, but it is a question of finding the right investment,' said Jonathan Beard, managing director of GHK Hong Kong, a logistics consultancy. A major attraction for investors in China's transport infrastructure, Beard and other analysts said, is the priority that the Chinese authorities have given to improving efficiency of cargo handling. 'China has a lot of cargo, and the government is committed to getting it in and out,' Beard said, 'even if that means domestic operators have to be exposed to foreign competition.' Forecasts prepared for Chinese Ministry of Commerce show that exports this year are expected to rise 20 percent, to $745 billion, while imports will increase 18 percent, to $655 billion. With the economy expected to continue expanding at about 9 percent, China's ports are forecast to handle 25 percent more cargo over the next five years according to senior government officials. The communications minister, Zhang Chunxian, said at a shipping conference in Shanghai this month that annual cargo throughput at all ports would reach a combined 5 billion metric tons by 2010, compared with 4.1 billion last year. Ports are also expected to handle more than twice as many containers, up to 130 million TEUs, or 20-foot equivalent units, each year by 2010. Hutchison Whampoa, the world's biggest port operator, is also increasing its stake in China. The company announced on Wednesday that it would build more container terminals in Shenzhen, the world's fourth-busiest container port.

Subject: Cross-Pollination of India and China From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 05:21:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/iht/2005/11/10/international/IHT-10letter.html November 10, 2005 The Cross-Pollination of India and China By HOWARD W. FRENCH - International Herald Tribune In its early years, globalization often seemed like something handed down from above. The rich countries of the world, led by the United States, foisted their rules and their advice on the poor, and their products were sure to follow. Who was globalized and who was not could be judged with a quick scan of the horizon for McDonalds and Starbucks signs, Levis jeans, Windows-equipped computers, or for that matter, American banks and insurance companies. With the rise of China and India, however, old patterns are giving way to new ones. Until recently, the world's two most populous countries had stood back to back, their gazes locked firmly on the United States for just about everything, from the direction of the global economy, to the creation of standards, to the enforcement of a certain order. Above all, they looked to America as a source of technology, capital and profits. Both clearly saw their links to the United States' economy, the world's largest and richest, as the secret to their own growth. In its next incarnation, globalization will be more about interpenetration. China selling an endless flotilla of its manufactures to the rich countries, or Indian outsourcers winning jobs in everything from customer service to tax accounting to online help with homework, is hardly news any more. In its most momentous form, however, interpenetration means that the world's emerging economic powers will begin to globalize each other, creating new sectors in each other's markets, infusing each other with capital, and drawing on each other's giant pools of talent. Recent word of huge new investments by India and China in each other's booming economies - most specifically in their red-hot information technology sectors - may just presage the dawn of this moment, one in which the giants of the developing world finally and truly discover each other. The harbinger of this trend is Infosys Technologies, the Indian software and business service outsourcing giant that made waves in China recently with a $65 million investment to build large new research and training campuses in Shanghai and Hangzhou. Immediate plans call for the company to hire 2,000 Chinese engineers to begin writing business application software and providing back office consulting services in the Chinese market. But in this case, to focus on the short term is clearly only to see the tip of the iceberg. Infosys is ramping up in China for the medium term when it already foresees the possibility of tens of thousands of employees, not just servicing the big Western corporations that are its mainstay at present, but introducing many thousands of Chinese companies to the benefits of outsourcing. 'We are going to use China as a global development center, as much as we do India,' said Saikumar Shamanna, head of human resources development for China at Infosys. And in this, Infosys is anything but alone. Suddenly, many Indian companies, from large, well known ones like Tata and Wipro to much smaller outfits, are scrambling to establish a foothold in China, where they aim to tap this country's rich engineering talent to write software or get into the market for other computer services. The Indian thrust is being matched by a newfound Chinese interest in India's market, as well. One of China's leading companies, Huawei, a big networking equipment manufacturer, for one, has set up a campus in Bangalore to tap Indian software talent and more broadly to study how India has become a force in software development in such a short period of time. Regional business analysts say the obvious appeal of specific sectors, like information technology, in which each Asian giant has clear strengths, should not obscure a general background of rich opportunity. Together, the two countries boast a middle class of perhaps 400 million people that is growing fast. Already, China has over 100 million Internet users and 350 million cellphone users. No slouch itself, India's mobile phone market has recently been increasing at a clip of 2.5 million users per month. In a new report, 'How India, China Redefine the Tech World Order,' Forrester Research, a technology consulting group says, 'Over the next five years, nearly 40 percent of all PCs and a significant share of all cellphones sold worldwide will be in India and China.' The report claims that immature markets in consumer hardware, software and services 'have room for double-digit growth for the next 20 years.' Indeed, once the process of discovery is consolidated, it is hard to imagine it doing anything but picking up pace. India's need for engineers today is pulling it into the Chinese economy. With its fast-aging population, believe it or not, China may need labor tomorrow, and the country's emerging industrial giants may find India, with its younger workforce, irresistible. If one places any stock in the notion of creative destruction, what could be more disruptive to the global status quo? With more than 2.3 billion people between them, agreement between India and China on almost any standard makes that item an instant contender for global standard status. What does this mean in practical terms? That the successor to a ubiquitous product like Microsoft Office could very well be Chinese. (Indeed, a company called Wuxi Evermore Software recently sent me an advanced prototype.) It could mean that the mobile phone standards of the future are decided jointly in Asia, and not in Europe or the United States. It could mean Indian employees in the back offices of rising Chinese corporations, implementing business systems devised not by Oracle or IBM, but by Indian companies like Wipro or Satyam. And it could also soon mean Chinese managers running production lines in factories in an India that will need far more industry than it has at present in order to lift hundreds of millions of people out of dire poverty. What it clearly means already is the day when a cozy club of the rich - the United States, the strongest economies of Western Europe, and Japan - sets the pace for the rest of the world, passing out instructions and assigning grades, is fast drawing to a close.

Subject: Bush in China From: Mik To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 02:07:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'BEIJING (AP) - President Bush called on China on Sunday to expand religious, political and social freedoms and urged steps to reduce Beijing's huge trade surplus with the United States.' Now that was a perfect waste of time. Oh and uhmmm yeah, 'President Hu Jintao promised steps to resolve economic frictions.' what ever the hell that means.

Subject: A New Kind of Birdsong From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 16:19:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02wing.html?ex=1280635200&en=776f57e7c281bab7&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss August 2, 2005 A New Kind of Birdsong: Music on the Wing in the Forests of Ecuador By CARL ZIMMER Richard Prum, a Yale ornithologist, was hiking through an Ecuadorean forest 18 years ago when he had one of the strangest experiences an ornithologist can have. He watched a bird sing with its wings. Dr. Prum was observing a male club-winged manakin. The tiny red-headed bird was hopping acrobatically from branch to branch in order to attract female manakins. And from time to time, the male would wave its wings over its back. Each time the manakin produced a loud, clear tone that sounded as if it came from a violin. 'I was just utterly stunned,' Dr. Prum said. 'There's literally no bird in the world that does anything that prepares you for it. It's totally unique.' Ever since, Dr. Prum has wondered how the club-winged manakin managed this feat. Now he and a former student, Kimberly Bostwick of Cornell University, believe they have solved the mystery. Club-winged manakins rake their feathers back and forth over one another, using an acoustic trick that allows crickets to sing. While the technique is common among insects, it has never been documented before in vertebrates. The noise-making skill of manakins first came to the attention of naturalists in the 1800's. The club-winged manakin belongs to the manakin family (Pipridae), which includes about 40 species, many of which have peculiarly shaped feathers that allowed them to make sounds. In many species the males use the noises during their courtship displays. 'Some of them pop like a firecracker, and there a couple that make whooshing noises in flight,' Dr. Prum said. Charles Darwin was fascinated by manakins. He believed they were a compelling example of how females could cause evolutionary change simply by the influence of their mating preferences - a process he called sexual selection. If female birds had a preference for males with large tails, for example, males with larger tails would be more successful at reproducing. Darwin argued that the peacock's tail had evolved this way. On the other hand, if females were attracted to noisy males, the males would evolve adaptations that made them noisier - as in the case of manakins. Biologists have documented the effect of sexual selection in a wide range of animals. Dr. Prum has dedicated much of his career to studying it in manakins. His research shows that wing sounds evolved independently in many manakin lineages. 'Mechanical sounds probably evolved a bunch of times in manakins,' Dr. Prum said. The club-winged manakin, with its unique ability to produce musical sounds, was the most extreme example of sexual selection in manakins. Dr. Bostwick began to study how manakins make their various noises in 1995, when she joined Dr. Prum's lab as a graduate student. In 1997, she traveled to South America to film the birds. On that trip, she saw her first live club-winged manakin. 'I was just blown away by what an odd, odd thing it was,' she said. When Dr. Bostwick returned home, she played her films in slow motion to analyze the manakin wing movements. But the club-wing manakin moved so quickly that its wings were nothing but a blur. 'How that motion created that sound was a black box,' Dr. Bostwick said. Over the next few years, this ornithological black box continued to puzzle Dr. Bostwick and Dr. Prum. Dr. Bostwick found a few clues by poring over the preserved club-winged manakins Dr. Prum had brought back from his 1987 trip. She noticed that one feather on each wing had a peculiar feature: its central vane had a series of ridges - seven on average. The club-winged manakin's wing muscles were also remarkably large. 'They were like little Popeyes, with big bulging muscles,' Dr. Bostwick said. The clues began to come together in 2002 when Dr. Bostwick returned to Ecuador with a new digital camera that could record 1,000 frames a second, over 30 times faster than her previous model. She made new films of the club-winged manakin, and when she returned home she found that she could finally see what the bird's wings were doing. It turns out that when the bird raises its wings over its back, it shakes them back and forth over 100 times a second. This alone would be a remarkable accomplishment for a bird. Hummingbirds typically flap their wings only 50 times a second. But the club-winged manakin's fast shaking alone could not produce the bird's sounds. Its wings produce tones at a frequency of around 1,400 cycles a second - about 14 times faster than it shakes its wings. 'We had to have some kind of frequency multiplier,' Dr. Prum said. Dr. Bostwick traveled to New York to study the manakin collection at the American Museum of Natural History. 'I spent a lot of time playing with the feathers,' she said. She noticed that next to the strangely ridged feather was another feather with a stiff, curved tip. She realized that each time a manakin shook its wings, its tip rakes across the ridges of the neighboring feather like a spoon moving across a washboard. Each time it hit a ridge, the tip produced a sound. The tip would strike each ridge twice - once as the feathers collided and once as they moved apart again. Dr. Bostwick realized that this raking movement allowed a wing to produce 14 sounds during each shake. As a result, a bird could shaking its wings 100 times a second could produce a sound with a frequency of 1,400 cycles a second. 'All the questions that hadn't made any sense just clicked into place,' Dr. Bostwick said. This sort of spoon-and-washboard anatomy is unknown in any other vertebrate, but it is well known in insects. Crickets, for example, have ridges on their wings that act like a pick and file when the insects rub their wings together. 'The convergence is simply stunning,' said Dr. Ronald Hoy, a Cornell expert on insect sounds. Dr. Bostwick and Dr. Prum reported their findings in the July 29 issue of the journal Science. The ornithologists plan to test their hypothesis with new experiments. On her next trip to Ecuador, Dr. Bostwick hopes to catch a male club-winged manakin and clip off the raking tip on each wing (a harmless procedure). 'I should be able to completely silence the bird,' she predicted. Dr. Bostwick argues that the new research underscores just how powerful sexual selection can be. The mating preferences of female birds can produce not only the peacock's tail or the rooster's crow, but also feathers with microscopic adaptations that let them sing like crickets. 'Darwin would have loved it if he had known,' Dr. Bostwick said.

Subject: Bonds and Stocks From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 15:50:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Euro central bankers have been projecting an immediate interest rate increase, though I would wish for waiting. The Euro bank mandate is inflation control, and not inflation control tempered by growth maintenence. But, investors have been waiting for an increase and there should be little stock market impact. Again, notice how impressive the adjustment process has been. Remember that the Federal Reserve has steadily raised short term interest rates these 16 months and the American stock market has gradually and nicely gained through the period while the economy has grown well even though emplyoment gains are too limited.

Subject: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Poyetas To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 13:07:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Hi there, I was just interested in the mechanics of long term interest rates. How are they calculated? How does the bank, for example, conclude what the rate on a 30yr mortgage is? I've always learned that interest rates are set by supply and demand, but also through the Fed's adjustment of the overnight bank clearing rate. I can't understand, however, how this relates over the long term. Another method would be to look at what the coupon rate would be on a long-term t-bill and work from there based on added risk. Can anyone help?? Thanks again!

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Pete Weis To: Poyetas Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 14:29:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'I was just interested in the mechanics of long term interest rates.' Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke have been puzzling over the same 'conundrum'!

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 15:43:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The question is what investors perceive as long term inflation. Obviously the current remarkably low long term interest indicate that investors expect inflation to be low through the coming years, rightly or wrongly. Central bankers are thought to be concerned with limiting inflation, and capable of doing so.

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 16:33:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Investor's concern (or lack of concern) with future inflation is a factor when it comes to interest rates but it's much more than that.

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 18:44:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: With bonds, the only question I would ever ask is what sort of near or long term inflation risk is there? I might buy long term bonds for a speculative run in the near term even if I though inflation would in time become a problem, but that is tricky timing. No; what I care about are relative inflation projections. Of course interest rates are still low enough and taxes on interest present enough of a penalty that conservative stocks are desirable to many investors, but there is obviously buying of long term bonds nonetheless.

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 22:17:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'With bonds, the only question I would ever ask is what sort of near or long term inflation risk is there?' Emma. You are not specifying what sort of bonds we are talking about here, but the original question which began this thread involved mortgage rates. So when we think of the supply of mortgage money we have to consider mortgage securities, much of which is packaged by GSE's. So default risk is also a factor when it comes to the rate on bonds supplied by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and any higher level of default risk will require higher rates on mortgage securities to offset that. We are seeing corporate bonds with rising rates as default risks rise (GM and Ford are prime examples). Also we are very dependent on foreign central banks to cycle surplus trade dollars back into US treasury purchases to support our considerable current account deficit. Recently they have been reducing their purchases and the 10yr has risen from around 4% to 4.5%. If they continue to reduce their treasurey purchases we will see rates go higher. Also we have a federal government in greater and greater need for borrowed money and this puts pressure on rates to go up. So it's much, much more than perceived inflation by investors.

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 06:54:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Another point is, I do not care to fight the Federal Reserve and have no current desire for bonds though I am thoroughly impressed at how low long term interest rates are. Well, national bonds in New Zealand can be a nice exception.

Subject: Re: Long Term Interest Rates - Question From: Terri To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 13:02:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Remember, right now there is a rollicking international bull market in stocks and American large cap stocks are again making gains.

Subject: Interest Rates From: Terri To: Poyetas Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 15:41:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Each morning and through the day, bonds trade in Europe and about the world. All sorts of bonds are always trading, and trading prices are recorded. So, the price of a 10 year Treasury bond can be gained with every trade through the day. All that may differ in actually buying or selling a bond is the sales charge or bid and asked spread.

Subject: Re: Interest Rates From: Poyetas To: Terri Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 11:40:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Ahhhh Pete, I must say I do enjoy reading your postings. The reason I asked the original question was to confirm how unsure we really are as to how long term interest rates work. So why do we keep on referring to them when exhibiting confidence in the economy? (as has been done many times on this blog). God knows what we will look like 30 years from now. I think L.T. interest rates are driven more by the demand for long term securities. This demand has increased because banks need to match their liability timing as many people took on new mortgages during this housing bubble. Also foreign banks have a seemingly endless appetite for US debt. All these factors have kept LT interest rates down. Once the bubble bursts, these rates will rise dramatically. Add to this the inflationary pressures of increasing energy costs and no alternate energy program to speak of, it may just be a matter of time before the bond market crashes.

Subject: Re: Interest Rates From: Emma To: Poyetas Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 12:37:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: A fine reason to own stocks and avoid long term bonds for now, but the Federal Reserve will be able to contain inflation and I doubt there will be all that much more of a decline in bond prices in this cycle of Fed tightenings.

Subject: Re: Interest Rates From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 05:50:38 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Agreed Emma, I don't really think that interest rates will skyrocket in the future because I don't believe that the current economic status is sustainable. Something will have to give. Deficits, Iraq, Medicare will all have to be altered. Unfortunatelly, politics leads economics, we need to pray that Republicans (at least the extreme idealogues)do not have so much power into the future.

Subject: Re: Interest Rates From: Emma To: Poyetas Date Posted: Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 10:12:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Yes; I would agree completely, but I am sure Medicare benefits will not be cut since the supporting voting bloc for Medicare is simply and happily too powerful.

Subject: Energy From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 10:05:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Oh, I just realised, why hasn't the rise in energy prices internationally led to recessions in any developed economy? Why are economies holding so well from Australia to Sweden, even with a strong dollar which accentuates the rising prices of oil and gas?

Subject: Economic Adjustment From: Emma To: Terri Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 11:46:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Mark Thoma suggests the question, how has America avoided a recession through this energy price shock? I too would broaden the question to why has no developed economy gone to recession as oil and gas prices have increases sharply along with an increase in the value of the dollar? what sort of adjustment processes are occurring in developed economies? Should we expect then that American manufacturing is adjusting even as we are so concerned?

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 22:23:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: How are Adelphi, GM and Ford adjusting? And will we get through 2006-2007 without recession as the housing market continues to cool?

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 09:20:15 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Toyota and Honda are doing quite well and producing here, and Americans are buying care, and there is no sign of recession nor has there been in any other developed country in which housing has boomed and cooled. Why should we fret about Adelphi in particular, or at all?

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 10:28:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'Why should we fret about Adelphi in particular, or at all?' Sorry, I meant auto parts supplier Delphi. My point though, regards how higher energy and materials costs have affected some of the largest US manufacturers. Detroit and many businesses throughout the US who depend on US auto manufacturers will also suffer. I believe that the housing market (and the heavy borrowing associated with it) has a lot more to to do with what ever weathering the US economy has managed during the last 5 years than anything else. We need to be folks who do not see the glass as half full or half empty but realize that the glass is at the mid level and has a leak in the bottom.

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Nov 22, 2005 at 11:29:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I agree, but the real estate market has many components, and just as I am pleased by what they have contributed these last 5 years I do not perceive more than a limited sector downturn. There will in time be a broad slowing in the economy but I only know I find no near term sign of slowing.

Subject: Economic Growth From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 09:51:32 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Should we be bemoaning quite so much a different labor market structure in the European Union or Japan? Japan alone by the way should provoke special interest. Has Japan recovered from the malaise of a decade and more? How? At what cost?

Subject: Economic Adjustment From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 09:11:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: What appears to be happening is a remarkable example of international economic adjustment, or possibly a reflection of such an adjustment. In response to the pronounced strengthening of the dollar and relatively attractive valuations of stocks in developed markets abroad, stock prices have compensated by rising sharply almost everywhere. Differences in local immediate market conditions have mattered less than what investors perceive as adjustment potential as international economic conditions change. Wow.

Subject: Investing From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 08:51:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: There is a remarkable international bull stock market that is barely being noticed for some reason or other, possibly because the dollar is so strong and American stocks have lagged. But, I could not be more impressed. International stocks have adjusted to the strenght of the dollar or weakness in domestic currencies, and to nice valuations. Wow.

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 08:48:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 11/18/05 Australia 14.2 Canada 19.7 Denmark 17.6 France 5.6 Germany 4.0 Hong Kong 6.5 Japan 15.7 Netherlands 7.6 Norway 19.9 Sweden 3.6 Switzerland 14.4 UK 4.4

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 08:44:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 11/18/05 Australia 22.4 Canada 19.0 Denmark 36.9 France 22.6 Germany 20.7 Hong Kong 6.2 Japan 34.7 Netherlands 24.9 Norway 33.1 Sweden 28.0 Switzerland 32.9 UK 17.0

Subject: Grasping the Depth of Time From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 07:55:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/23/opinion/23tue3.html?ex=1282449600&en=55ae46551ab20405&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss August 23, 2005 Grasping the Depth of Time as a First Step in Understanding Evolution By VERLYN KLINKENBORG Last month a team of paleontologists announced that it had found several fossilized dinosaur embryos that were 190 million years old - some 90 million years older than any dinosaur embryos found so far. Those kinds of numbers are always a little daunting. Ever since I was a boy in a public elementary school in Iowa, I've been learning to face the eons and eons that are embedded in the universe around us. I know the numbers as they stand at present, and I know what they mean, in a roughly comparative way. The universe is perhaps 14 billion years old. Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. The oldest hominid fossils are between 6 million and 7 million years old. The oldest distinctly modern human fossils are about 160,000 years old. The truth of these numbers has the same effect on me as watching the night sky in the high desert. It fills me with a sense of nonspecific immensity. I don't think I'm alone in this. One of the most powerful limits to the human imagination is our inability to grasp, in a truly intuitive way, the depths of terrestrial and cosmological time. That inability is hardly surprising because our own lives are so very short in comparison. It's hard enough to come to terms with the brief scale of human history. But the difficulty of comprehending what time is on an evolutionary scale, I think, is a major impediment to understanding evolution. It's been approximately 3.5 billion years since primeval life first originated on this planet. That is not an unimaginable number in itself, if you're thinking of simple, discrete units like dollars or grains of sand. But 3.5 billion years of biological history is different. All those years have really passed, moment by moment, one by one. They encompass an actual, already lived reality, encompassing all the lives of all the organisms that have come and gone in that time. That expanse of time defines the realm of biological possibility in which life in its extraordinary diversity has evolved. It is time that has allowed the making of us. The idea of such quantities of time is extremely new. Humans began to understand the true scale of geological time in the early 19th century. The probable depth of cosmological time and the extent of the history of the human species have come to light only within our own lifetimes. That is a lot to absorb and, not surprisingly, many people refuse to absorb it. Nearly every attack on evolution - whether it is called intelligent design or plain creationism, synonyms for the same faith-based rejection of evolution - ultimately requires a foreshortening of cosmological, geological and biological time. Humans feel much more content imagining a world of more human proportions, with a shorter time scale and a simple narrative sense of cause and effect. But what we prefer to believe makes no difference. The fact that life on Earth has arrived at a point where it is possible for humans to have beliefs is due to the steady ticking away of eons and the trial and error of natural selection. Evolution is a robust theory, in the scientific sense, that has been tested and confirmed again and again. Intelligent design is not a theory at all, as scientists understand the word, but a well-financed political and religious campaign to muddy science. Its basic proposition - the intervention of a designer, a k a God - cannot be tested. It has no evidence to offer, and its assumptions that humans were divinely created are the same as its conclusions. Its objections to evolution are based on syllogistic reasoning and a highly selective treatment of the physical evidence. Accepting the fact of evolution does not necessarily mean discarding a personal faith in God. But accepting intelligent design means discarding science. Much has been made of a 2004 poll showing that some 45 percent of Americans believe that the Earth - and humans with it - was created as described in the book of Genesis, and within the past 10,000 years. This isn't a triumph of faith. It's a failure of education. The purpose of the campaign for intelligent design is to deepen that failure. To present the arguments of intelligent design as part of a debate over evolution is nonsense. From the scientific perspective, there is no debate. But even the illusion of a debate is a sorry victory for antievolutionists, a public relations victory based, as so many have been in recent years, on ignorance and obfuscation. The essential, but often well-disguised, purpose of intelligent design, is to preserve the myth of a separate, divine creation for humans in the belief that only that can explain who we are. But there is a destructive hubris, a fearful arrogance, in that myth. It sets us apart from nature, except to dominate it. It misses both the grace and the moral depth of knowing that humans have only the same stake, the same right, in the Earth as every other creature that has ever lived here. There is a righteousness - a responsibility - in the deep, ancestral origins we share with all of life.

Subject: The Grandeur of Evolution From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 07:48:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/19/opinion/19sat4.html?ex=1290056400&en=db06bdf48c502b42&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 19, 2005 The Grandeur of Evolution in a New Exhibition Called 'Darwin' By VERLYN KLINKENBORG In the summer of 1868, Charles Darwin and his family visited the poet Alfred Tennyson and his family on the Isle of Wight. The visit - and the visitor's ideas - troubled Tennyson. 'What I want,' he later told a friend, 'is an assurance of immortality.' This was an astute remark. Many of Darwin's readers, then and now, have tried to find ways to reconcile a divine creator with the clearly secular implications of Darwin's theory of evolution. As often as not, the effort is less a search for a first cause than a plea for assurances of immortality. Tennyson recognized that Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species,' which was published in 1859, offered no such promises. What bothered Tennyson wasn't merely the possible loss of eternity. It was also the central observation that underlies Darwin's theory: the fact, first noticed by Malthus, that every species on the planet, including humans, produces far more offspring in each generation than nature can support. Coming as late as we do - nearly a century and a half after Darwin's 'Origin' - we have the luxury of seeing at a glance what Darwin saw: that the pressure of so much excess population is a harsh but efficient test of the value of accidental variations in any species. We can say, with Thomas Huxley, 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!' But, of course, Darwin did not simply think of it. He prepared for years to be ready to think of it when he did. It is one thing to see the logic in evolution, as stated on the page. It is something entirely different to have pieced together such an astonishingly powerful theory - a word that, as scientists use it, means an explanation of the facts as we know them - from the details of nature itself. The new exhibition called 'Darwin' at the American Museum of Natural History portrays the making of the man and the scientist, and it reminds us how well and how fully evolution explains the life around us. It also captures the way Darwin's theory opened an entirely new window in the human imagination. It is possible to say, in fact, that humans did not begin to understand their place in nature until 1859. I found myself wondering, oddly, what it must have been like to be alive at such a revolutionary moment. But we live in a moment that is no less revolutionary. 'Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound,' Darwin wrote. In our time - the DNA era - the mechanisms of those laws have been revealed in ways that Darwin could only dream of, and in ways that confirm the essentials of his theory beyond a shadow of a doubt. This exhibition is useful, too, in reminding us that the controversy over evolution - over a true understanding of the human place in nature - has been more or less constant since 1859, though it has reached a peak of political absurdity only in our own time. The basic objections to evolution - the ones trumpeted by the proponents of so-called intelligent design - are essentially the ones Darwin described in the sixth chapter of 'Origin.' They have been given a new language, and new examples have been adduced. But Darwin did a surprisingly good job of forestalling his critics. He showed that most of the objections to his theory, then as now, were based on a misunderstanding of the evidence or the nature of his argument, or were owing simply to the fact that so much remains to be discovered about the workings of life on Earth. One comes away from this exhibition with a reawakened sense of Darwin's characteristic honesty and his extraordinary powers as an observer, qualities that are as much an attribute of the scientist as of the man. Darwin presented the strongest, most detailed argument and evidence for evolution that he could. He also carefully presented the strongest objections to his theory that he could. Under a century and a half of close examination, his theory has grown more and more solid - with refinements, of course. Under the kind of scrutiny that Darwin bestowed on himself, the notion of intelligent design vanishes in a puff of smoke like the bunkum it is. 'I do not attack Moses,' Darwin once wrote, 'and I think Moses can take care of himself.' But the problem is not Moses, or Jesus or God. It is humanity itself. To the extent that the furor over evolution represents a cultural crisis in America - and only in America - it is a crisis of credulity, not faith, a crisis rooted in neglect and ignorance. To lose the assurance of immortality is a serious thing, if it were ever ours to have. At the end of the 'Origin' Darwin famously wrote, 'There is a grandeur in this view of life.' There is also an apologia in that phrase. He knew how hard it would be for us to see ourselves truly.

Subject: Make an Iguana Turn Green From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 06:21:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/18/arts/design/18darw.html?ex=1289970000&en=12879d59a3a52caa&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 18, 2005 Enough to Make an Iguana Turn Green: Darwin's Ideas By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN DURING the years in which Charles Darwin was working on his revolutionary book, 'On the Origin of Species,' and later, with more intensity, in the 1860's, when controversy raged over his ideas, the naturalist was plagued with bouts of gastric trauma, sometimes accompanied by severe eczema. The illness was never diagnosed, and various hypotheses about a tropical parasite, picked up during Darwin's five years traversing the world aboard the HMS Beagle, have not been widely accepted. At the very least, though, one could guess from Darwin's suffering the toll it took to spend more than 20 years scrutinizing specimens of bone, feather and leaf, meticulously chronicling habitats and behaviors and creating a theory that tried to explain the entire development of the animal and plant kingdoms. That theory has become so familiar, it is easy to forget how bizarre and shocking it really is; it still inspires some with outrage and disbelief. The strangeness of that theory also does not really emerge in the sweeping new exhibition devoted to Darwin's life and ideas at the American Museum of Natural History (which opens tomorrow and will be on view until May 29, before traveling to science museums in Boston, Chicago, Toronto and London). Instead, this show, with almost too much propriety, makes Darwin's theory of evolution seem - well, almost natural. That is both a virtue and a flaw: the theory becomes clear but not its revolutionary character. The exhibition is billed as the 'broadest and most complete collection ever assembled of specimens, artifacts, original manuscripts and memorabilia related to Darwin.' By the time one works through it, it has so successfully given a sense of the theory's explanatory power that the exhibition can seem too small for its subject rather than too large. But it should be seen. Curated by Niles Eldredge, a Darwin scholar and curator of the museum's division of paleontology, the exhibition offers a habitat of Darwiniana. It is handsomely populated with animals (even live ones), orchids, fossils, films, interactive video screens and historical documents and objects, some on loan from Down House, Darwin's longtime home in England; the Natural History Museum in London (which will present the exhibition in 2008-9); and Cambridge University Library. And for the most part, the elements cohabit in extraordinary harmony, recounting the course of a life and the evolution of its ideas. Two live Galápagos tortoises, each weighing nearly 50 pounds, welcome the viewers into the exhibition, which also includes live Argentinian horned frogs and a green iguana - all displayed in glass-enclosed habitats resembling the ones Darwin believed led to the animals' distinctive coloring and character. There is a cartoon a classmate drew of the aspiring naturalist mounted on a giant beetle waving a butterfly net; a letter to his father in which Darwin, at age 22, pleaded to be allowed to join the crew of the Beagle as the ship's naturalist; and scanned images of Darwin's herbarium sheets showing leaves and stems collected during that voyage. Notebooks in which Darwin's ideas about evolution began to coalesce are here, as is - in a sure sign of canonization - a replica of Darwin's studio, complete with his walking stick and microscope. But the exhibition actually domesticates Darwin and his theory. Think, instead, of the theory's daring. Darwin was asserting that over the course of millenniums, miraculous bodily organs have taken shape out of prehistoric crudities, species have changed their characters and turned into completely different creatures, and human beings have come into existence, all because of accidental events and the brute forces of nature. Chance, in league with danger, created both the eye and the orchid, the ocelot and the man. Now imagine asserting these ideas when no one knew anything about genetic inheritance or mutation. Darwin's digestive discomfort makes sense; in a way, so do contemporary discomforts with his work. In an 1844 letter on display, Darwin said that beginning to write about his ideas was 'like confessing a murder.' He did not publish them for well over a decade, until he was spurred by the prospect of competition, when a young novice naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, sent Darwin a letter that eerily echoed some of his long-gestating ideas. After generously sharing some credit and helping to arrange for simultaneous publication of their primary ideas in 1858, Darwin set to work on his magnum opus, 'On the Origin of Species.' In its sheer accumulation of objects and displays, the exhibition gives a sense of the wealth of information and experience Darwin himself had to sift through. It is shaped chronologically, as a journey through Darwin's life, punctuated with clear texts that highlight the connection between the objects on display and the ideas taking shape. The voyage on the Beagle, for example, offered a panorama of the natural world, through which Darwin peered, prodding, probing, describing everything he saw. Why did some extinct species seem to resemble those that took their place? Why did similar environments sometimes include very different species? What relationship was there between a place and the animals that lived there? The Galápagos Islands presented a kind of astounding laboratory. Creatures on one island developed isolated from those on another, the accidents of habitat somehow producing birds and tortoises with different colorations or shapes. Darwin surmised that such variation developed out of common ancestry, an idea that would, he said, 'undermine the stability of Species,' challenging the notion that species possessed eternal stability. Darwin was indefatigable, obsessed and all too aware that his ideas were cutting close to the spiritual and cultural home that had been constructed by religious belief. His wife, Emma, worried that the Darwins might not, given their different religious perspectives, be spending eternity in the same place; Charles shed tears over their differences. But he also instructed Emma in another document, that if he were to die before finishing his work, 500 pounds could be set aside from his estate to ensure its compilation and continuation. Both worlds were shaken when Annie, one of the 10 children they were to have, died when she was 10. A writing box, preserved by her parents, is filled with the girl's treasures; instead of fossils and beetles, there are neatly wound embroidery thread, a quill pen, and - added later - her father's chart chronicling her tuberculosis and a drawn map of her grave. Darwin was shattered by the death of his 'poor, dear, dear child,' though in his universe, death had a very different meaning than it did in Emma's. But he must have hung on to aspects of her world. The term, 'natural selection,' after all, almost personifies nature, as if there were some force selectively working toward an end. The terminology had a religious cast, as Darwin well knew, but the implications of his ideas, as his illness attests, were far more unsettling. The exhibition, in fact, falls short in not showing just how provocative and revolutionary Darwin's theory is. The introductory section, about the world before Darwin, shows an astonishing collection of skeletons from the museum's collection in a curiosity cabinet that displays each species with its own set of bones and shape - a collection of representative models. A counterpart reflecting Darwin's theory could have also been shown, reordering the creatures, or perhaps a Darwinian 'tree' could have displayed the species branching out from each other as they evolved. The theory is also made to seem too invulnerable, particularly toward the exhibition's end, where recent views about evolution are surveyed and recent evidence for the theory presented. Perhaps in reaction to the various attempts to get notions of 'intelligent design' taken seriously in science classrooms the exhibition ends up minimizing scientific questions about the theory as well. 'For 150 years,' the wall text states, 'the theory of evolution by natural selection has not been seriously challenged by any other scientific explanation.' But the point would have been even stronger had the museum acknowledged that Darwin's theory has indeed been subject to scientific modification, and still is. The exhibition does not draw attention to these issues, though Mr. Eldredge's own biography on the museum's Web site points out that he was one of the scientists (including Stephen Jay Gould) 'challenging Darwin's premise that evolution occurs gradually,' asserting instead that it occurs in spurts with long periods of stasis. Doesn't this modify the idea of the 'survival of the fittest' in an important way? It would have been worth pointing out, too, why this modification was proposed: the fossil record doesn't provide the plentiful examples of continuous evolution that Darwin's theory predicts. If examples like that - about the evolution of Evolution - had been included with more discussion, one of the crucial aspects of a scientific theory would have been illustrated: that it is subject to change and modification, that the pressures of ever-increasing knowledge have the power to kill off some ideas while permitting others to flourish. Such a theory is continually evolving, rather than eternally comforting - which can itself induce vertigo.

Subject: REITS From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 06:17:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The Vanguard REIT index has a price earning ratio of 35.7, a return on equity of 8.7% and an earnings growth rate of negative -6.0%. The Vanguard large company index has a price earning ratio of 17.4, a return on equity of 18.4% and an earnings growth rate of 13.2%. The REIT index seems to be awfully expensive, nonetheless the index continues to hold :)

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 05:59:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 11/18/05 S&P Index is 4.6 Large Cap Growth Index is 5.4 Large Cap Value Index is 6.0 Mid Cap Index is 11.5 Small Cap Index is 6.6 Small Cap Value Index is 5.7 Europe Index is 4.9 Pacific Index is 14.6 Energy is 38.0 Health Care is 12.1 Precious Metals 33.6 REIT Index is 10.8 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 1.1 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.7

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 05:57:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 11/18/05 Energy 35.5 Financials 5.6 Health Care 6.8 Info Tech 4.2 Materials -0.1 REITs 10.9 Telecoms 2.7 Utilities 13.1

Subject: Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 20:46:54 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: Friday, November 11, 2005 Is central bank independence all it’s cracked up to be? By Joseph Stiglitz Alan Greenspan attained an almost iconic status as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board. So, as his term draws to a close and his mantle of infallibility is passed on to his successor, it is worth examining whether his legacy will measure up and what we can expect from the new Fed chief, Ben Bernanke. Few central bank governors have the kind of hagiography lavished upon them, especially in their lifetime, that Greenspan has had. But what makes for a great central bank governor in our modern societies, great institutions or great individuals? In economics, we seldom have a clearly defined counterfactual: Would the economy have performed even better or a little differently if someone else had been at the helm? We can’t know, but there is little doubt that those “managing” the economy receive more credit than they deserve, if sometimes less blame. Many forces behind the boom of the 1990’s, including advances in technology, were set in motion before Bill Clinton took office (just as the legacy of President George W. Bush’s deficits will be felt long after he leaves). So Greenspan cannot be given credit for the boom. But, while no central bank governor can ensure economic prosperity, mismanagement can cause enormous harm. Many of America’s post-World War II recessions were caused by the Fed hiking interest rates too fast and too far. There is little doubt that Greenspan had great moments, when one could at least imagine a less deft governor doing the “wrong” thing with disastrous consequences. One such moment was the stock market crash of 1987. Perhaps another occurred in 1998, when the Fed lowered interest rates in the face of what appeared to be an impending global financial crisis. These successes, combined with the 1990’s boom and the seeming durability of price stability, reinforced Greenspan’s exalted status. But they also led many to forget less successful moments. The Fed failed to avert the economic downturn of 1990, and a reading of Greenspan’s testimony to Congress during that period makes clear that the basic nature of the economy’s problems was not well understood. But the real problem for Greenspan’s legacy concerns what happened to the American economy in the last five years, for which he bears heavy responsibility. Greenspan supported the tax cuts of 2001 with the most specious of arguments – that unless something was done about America’s soaring fiscal surpluses, the national debt would be totally paid off within, say, ten to fifteen years. According to Greenspan, immediate action needed to be taken to avert this looming disaster, which would impede the Fed’s ability to conduct monetary policy! It says a great deal about the gullibility of financial markets that they took this argument seriously. More accurately, tax cuts were what Wall Street wanted, and financial professionals were willing to accept any argument that served that purpose. Of course, if, say, by 2008 the disappearing national debt really did appear to pose an imminent danger, Congress would have happily obliged in cutting taxes or increasing expenditures. Greenspan’s irresponsible support of that tax cut was critical to its passage. The fault was not only in the magnitude of the tax cut, but also in its design; by directing the cuts at upper-income Americans, it provided little economic stimulus. But soaring deficits did not return the economy to full employment, so the Fed did what it had to do – cut interest rates. Lower interest rates worked, but not so much because they boosted investment, but because they led households to refinance their mortgages, and fueled a bubble in housing prices. In short, as Greenspan departs, he leaves behind an American economy burdened with high household and government debt and fragile balance sheets – a legacy that is already contributing to global financial instability. It is still not clear what led Greenspan to support the tax cut. Was it a massive economic misjudgment, or was he currying favor with the Bush administration? The most likely explanation is a combination of the two, for he and Bush were pursuing the same “starve the beast” political strategy, which calls for tax cuts to be used to reduce revenues, thereby forcing the public sector to be downsized. The traditional argument for an independent central bank is that politicians can’t be trusted to conduct monetary and macroeconomic policy. Neither, evidently, can central bank governors, at least when they opine in areas outside their immediate responsibility. Greenspan was as enthusiastic for a policy that led to soaring deficits as any politician; but the fig leaf of being “above politics” gave credence to that policy, engendering support from some who otherwise would have questioned its economic wisdom. This, then, is Greenspan’s second legacy: growing doubt about central bank independence. Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. Unemployment harms workers, while the lower interest rates needed to generate more jobs may lead to higher inflation, which especially harms those with nominal assets whose value is eroded. Such fundamental issues cannot be relegated to technocrats, particularly when those technocrats place the interests of one segment of society above others. Indeed, Greenspan’s political stances were so thinly disguised as professional wisdom that his tenure exposed the dubiousness of the very notion of an independent central bank and a non-partisan central banker. Unfortunately, many countries have committed themselves to precisely this illusion, and it may be a long time before they take heed of Greenspan’s most important lesson. Stressing the new Fed chief’s “professionalism” may only delay the moment when this lesson is learned again. Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is Professor of Economics at Columbia University and was Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to President Clinton and Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank. His most recent book is The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World’s Most Prosperous Decade. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2005\11\11\story_11-11-2005_pg5_23

Subject: Writing About Health Insurance From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 14:15:08 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/11/paul_krugman_ke.html November 18, 2005 Paul Krugman Keeps on Writing About Health Insurance Here is today's installment: A Private Obsession - New York Times : By PAUL KRUGMAN: 'Lots of things in life are complicated.' So declared Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, in response to the mass confusion as registration for the new Medicare drug benefit began. But the complexity of the program - which has reduced some retirees to tears as they try to make what may be life-or-death decisions - is far greater than necessary. One reason the drug benefit is so confusing is that older Americans can't simply sign up with Medicare, as they can for other benefits. They must, instead, choose from a baffling array of plans offered by private middlemen. Why? Here's a parallel. Earlier this year Senator Rick Santorum introduced a bill that would have forced the National Weather Service to limit the weather information directly available to the public. Although he didn't say so explicitly, he wanted the service to funnel that information through private forecasters instead. Mr. Santorum's bill didn't go anywhere. But it was a classic attempt to force gratuitous privatization: involving private corporations in the delivery of public services even when those corporations have no useful role to play. The Medicare drug benefit is an example of gratuitous privatization on a grand scale. Here's some background: the elderly have long been offered a choice between standard Medicare, in which the government pays medical bills directly, and plans in which the government pays a middleman, like an H.M.O., to deliver health care. The theory was that the private sector would find innovative ways to lower costs while providing better care. The theory was wrong. A number of studies have found that managed-care plans, which have much higher administrative costs than government-managed Medicare, end up costing the system money, not saving it. But privatization, once promoted as a way to save money, has become a goal in itself. The 2003 bill that established the prescription drug benefit also locked in large subsidies for managed care. And on drug coverage, the 2003 bill went even further: rather than merely subsidizing private plans, it made them mandatory. To receive the drug benefit, one must sign up with a plan offered by a private company. As people are discovering, the result is a deeply confusing system because the competing private plans differ in ways that are very hard to assess. The peculiar structure of the drug benefit, with its huge gap in coverage - the famous 'doughnut hole' I wrote about last week - adds to the confusion. Many better-off retirees have relied on Medigap policies to cover gaps in traditional Medicare, including prescription drugs. But that straightforward approach, which would make it relatively easy to compare drug plans, can't be used to fill the doughnut hole because Medigap policies are no longer allowed to cover drugs. The only way to get some coverage in the gap is as part of a package in which you pay extra - a lot extra - to one of the private drug plans delivering the basic benefit. And because this coverage is bundled with other aspects of the plans, it's very difficult to figure out which plans offer the best deal. But confusion isn't the only, or even the main, reason why the privatization of drug benefits is bad for America. The real problem is that we'll end up spending too much and getting too little. Everything we know about health economics indicates that private drug plans will have much higher administrative costs than would have been incurred if Medicare had administered the benefit directly. It's also clear that the private plans will spend large sums on marketing rather than on medicine. I have nothing against Don Shula, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, who is promoting a drug plan offered by Humana. But do we really want people choosing drug plans based on which one hires the most persuasive celebrity? Last but not least, competing private drug plans will have less clout in negotiating lower drug prices than Medicare as a whole would have. And the law explicitly forbids Medicare from intervening to help the private plans negotiate better deals. Last week I explained that the Medicare drug bill was devised by people who don't believe in a positive role for government. An insistence on gratuitous privatization is a byproduct of the same ideology. And the result of that ideology is a piece of legislation so bad it's almost surreal.

Subject: Psychiatry's Gadfly From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 12:55:28 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/15prof.html?ex=1289710800&en=0809aed2c67f43b9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 A Self-Effacing Scholar Is Psychiatry's Gadfly By BENEDICT CAREY His mother in Ireland is entirely unaware of his international reputation, as far as he can tell. His neighbors in the hamlet of Porthaethwy, on an island off the coast of Wales, are equally oblivious, or indifferent. His wife, who knows too well the furor he has caused, says simply, 'How could you be right and everyone else wrong?' Dr. David Healy, a psychiatrist at the University of Cardiff and a vocal critic of his profession's overselling of psychiatric drugs, has achieved a rare kind of scientific celebrity: he is internationally known as both a scholar and a pariah. In 1997 he established himself as a leading historian of modern psychiatry with the book 'The Antidepressant Era.' Around the same time, he became more prominent for insisting in news media interviews and scientific papers that antidepressants could increase the risk of suicide, an unpopular position among his psychiatric colleagues, most of whom denied any link. By 2004, British and American drug regulators, responding in part to Dr. Healy and other critics, issued strong warnings that the drugs could cause suicidal thinking and behavior in some children and adolescents. But Dr. Healy went still further, accusing academic psychiatry of being complicit, wittingly or not, with the pharmaceutical industry in portraying many drugs as more effective and safer than the data showed. He regularly gets invitations to lecture around the world. But virtually none of his colleagues publicly take his side, at least not in North America. 'It's strange. I don't even know about friends, what they think about me,' Dr. Healy said in New York, as he waited for a flight after giving a lecture at Columbia. 'You don't really know who you can trust.' Because of his controversial views, Dr. Healy has lost at least one job opportunity, at the University of Toronto in 2001. In some circles, his name has become so radioactive that it shuts down discussion altogether. 'People have called it the Healy effect,' said Dr. Jane Garland, chief of the Mood and Anxiety Disorders Clinic at British Columbia Children's Hospital in Vancouver, who shares some of Dr. Healy's concerns about drug risks. 'If you even raise the same issues he does, you're classified as being with David Healy and that makes people very reluctant to talk. He has become very isolated.' Some colleagues have called him reckless, a false martyr whose grandstanding in the news media has driven away patients who need help. But they cannot dismiss him entirely. And for those who wish to understand what it takes to defy a scientific fraternity without entirely losing one's standing - or nerve - he has become a case study. Self-effacing on the surface, so soft-spoken he is sometimes barely audible, Dr. Healy, 51, seems far too agreeable to be a rabble-rouser. He acknowledges that antidepressants often work well, and he prescribes them in his own practice. He has consulted with drug makers, considers himself a part of the psychiatric establishment, and says that at least initially, he had no interest in shaking up the status quo. But when challenged, his voice quickens and his tone hardens. 'He has this humility, maybe it's a family thing, but intellectually, I think he enjoys a duel,' said Vera Sharav, a patient advocate who is president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection and a close ally. 'And he has been stabbed in the back so often he just won't back down.' In a pretrial hearing several years ago, for a suit against Pfizer, maker of the antidepressant Zoloft, Dr. John Davis, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, took issue with Dr. Healy's testimony. 'The lawyers on both sides were very skillful, very smart,' Dr. Davis said, 'but in the middle of my presentation - it wasn't a court trial, but a hearing - Dr. Healy got so incensed he got up, edged the plaintiff's lawyer out of the way and cross-examined me himself.' Dr. Healy, he said, 'couldn't sit there and let someone else do it; he wanted to come for me directly.' But Dr. Davis, who does not himself accept drug company money, said he still respected Dr. Healy as a researcher. Betrayals - small and large - seem to fuel Dr. Healy's sense of mission. In New York several years ago, while poring through Pfizer documents, he found a handwritten note that described a conversation between a drug company employee and an old friend and colleague. Its subject was 'the Healy problem.' Dr. Healy froze, he recalled. He had gone to school with this psychiatrist, had known him for 20 years. When he called his friend to ask about the note, he said, the other psychiatrist shrugged it off. Through freedom of information requests and other methods, Dr. Healy has hoarded a variety of e-mail messages and other correspondence on 'the Healy problem.' He hands out copies at talks as evidence of a whisper campaign that he said started in the late 1990's, after he testified on behalf of plaintiffs suing Eli Lilly, maker of Prozac. 'After that I was no longer invited to speak at professional association events, and I started seeing these things written about me,' he said. Snubs followed slights. The job offer at Toronto's prestigious Center for Addiction and Mental Health, which came with a substantial pay increase, fell through. A raise he believes he was due years ago from Britain's National Health Service was delayed, he said. And there were accusations that his legal consulting fees, which he says have been about $40,000 a year since 1997, were affecting his scientific judgment. 'Fees for an expert witness cannot be made contingent on the outcome of a case, but Healy is a repeat player in these legal actions, and future opportunities depend on past performance and a credible, predictable testimony,' Dr. James Coyne of the University of Pennsylvania wrote in a recent article in The American Journal of Bioethics: 'Lessons in Conflict of Interest: The Construction of the Martyrdom of David Healy and the Dilemma of Bioethics.' Dr. Healy bristles at this criticism and says that his views, which he aired in scientific papers before consulting with lawyers, have cost him more in lost salary than he has earned as an expert witness. In about 9 of 10 cases he evaluated, he said, he concluded that the drug did not contribute to violent behavior. Yet such verbal assaults, some from former colleagues and others from drug companies and leading psychiatrists, have worked to fuse the man and his mission so that the two are now hard to separate. 'He takes these things personally, and I would too,' said Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto who is working with Dr. Healy on a book. 'But it's not a matter of ego: he is offended because he believes that the field is not listening to the science.' David Healy grew up with two sisters in Raheny, a suburb of Dublin, where his father worked as a civil servant in the health department and his mother ran the household. It was the 1950's, and Raheny was then a solidly middle-class community north of Dublin, on the working man's side of the tracks. After determining that he would probably not become a professional athlete, the boy became a committed student, strongly drawn to science, as his father had been. He graduated with high honors in medicine from University College in Dublin, and later worked in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland, conducting basic research on serotonin, a brain chemical linked to mood. Dr. Healy later joined the psychiatry department at Cambridge University in England as a research associate before moving to Wales, where he is now a psychiatrist in the North Wales department of psychological medicine and a professor at the University of Cardiff. He soon became familiar with isolation. He sat at his desk in the dead quiet from 8 p.m. to midnight, on an island off an island, and wrote without tiring: over the last 15 years he has published more than 100 scientific papers and more than a dozen books on the history of psychiatric drug development. 'I work at night because there is absolutely nothing going on where I live,' he said. It was the reaction of two of his patients to Prozac in the early 1990's, Dr. Healy has written, that led him to question its safety. In 1990, Harvard researchers had reported several cases of suicidal thinking in patients on the drugs. But an analysis by the Food and Drug Administration found no evidence of increased risk, and psychiatrists largely ignored advocates who insisted the risk was real. After completing his own analysis, Dr. Healy came to agree with the critics, and he wrote letters to British drug regulators urging them to review the data related to suicide. By 2003, the BBC had reported on his objections; GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of Paxil, had come forward with unpublished data showing an increase in irritability and suicidal thinking in some minors on the drug; and British regulators began investigating the entire class of drugs. Drug company researchers and some psychiatrists moved quickly to deflate what they saw as overblown concern over drugs that they said had helped avert suicide in many severely depressed people. In 2004, Pfizer wrote a 50-page letter to the F.D.A. challengingDr. Healy's analysis, including his extrapolation from a small number of uncertain cases. The American Psychiatric Association publicly took issue with the new warnings on suicide risk. And many psychiatrists said publicly that denouncing the drugs would drive away people who needed them. Dr. Healy held his ground. He had, his friends and colleagues say, absolute confidence that he knew the topic as well as anyone. He concedes that no one knows what effect the F.D.A. warning will have. But this uncertainty, he says, is all the more reason that medical journals, professional groups like the psychiatric association, and drug regulators should make raw data from clinical trials public. 'It wouldn't take much to bring a change. People don't realize the power they have,' Dr. Healy said. As for Dr. Healy himself, he says he will continue to write and practice, traveling to lecture several times a year. He will also continue to follow his own scientific instincts, regardless of whom he offends. A new book, written with Dr. Shorter, is likely to alienate psychiatry's critics by defending one of psychiatry's most controversial treatments, electroshock therapy.

Subject: Letter to the White Man From: Setanta To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 11:29:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: don't know where this was originally published or even who wrote it. its a beautiful piece which eloquently shows the quiet dignity and search for understanding a defeated nation holds. hope you enjoy reading it as much as i did. 'many moons ago chief seattle wrote: Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country. There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame. Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better. Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us. To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people. Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness. It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter. A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see. We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone. Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds. '

Subject: Re: Letter to the White Man From: Emma To: Setanta Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 13:09:17 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Always thought provoking comments.

Subject: One-Stop Furniture Shopping From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 11:05:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/garden/17furniture.html November 17, 2005 One-Stop Furniture Shopping By BRADFORD McKEE BY no accident, most of the furniture Jan Blythe has bought over the past three years has come from one store, Bassett Furniture Direct, near her home in Charlotte, N.C. Unlike the old-fashioned, often family-owned stores that sell many brands of sofas and tables, the Bassett store sells just one brand: Bassett's own. 'I don't even go anywhere else,' said Ms. Blythe, 49, who owns an accounting firm. She admits to feeling a bit lost when shopping around for furniture, confronted with a variety of makes and models at old-fashioned Main Street stores. 'I started looking at the independent dealers, and it's very overwhelming,' Ms. Blythe said. 'Number one, they don't have the service' to explain their broad product offerings, she said. 'It's so frustrating.' Big-name manufacturers like Bassett, Thomasville, Lane, Broyhill and Ashley, among others, are rearranging the retail furniture business and becoming retailers themselves. Like Ethan Allen and La-Z-Boy long before them, the manufacturers are opening single-brand stores across the country, where they typically license their products to individual store owners to sell exclusively. This retail arrangement eliminates the middleman, the fickle third-party retailer. It also gets rid of the competition, capturing the shopper in an enormous showroom where the displays and details of the brand's products are closely controlled. And it gives manufacturers control over the diplomatic details of delivery. Ethan Allen was among the pioneers of the concept in the early 1960's that is catching on anew - and swiftly - among American furniture manufacturers as no-name furniture imports from Asia have begun to match the quality and beat the prices of brands in the United States. In 2004, sales at manufacturers' dedicated stores made up 8.4 percent of all furniture sales, up from 6.8 percent of sales in 2002, said Jerry Epperson, a furniture industry analyst at the investment banking firm of Mann, Armistead & Epperson. Bassett began opening its stores in 1997 and by 2000, it had 57. The company opened stores at 17 sites in 2005, and now has 128 stores, which account for 73 percent of sales. Ashley Furniture Industries, which began opening its Ashley Home stores in 1997, has 210 stores nationwide, 50 of which it has opened in the past year, said Ron Wanek, Ashley's chairman. 'It's very difficult for the independent retailer to do a very good job,' Mr. Wanek said. 'They don't know how to professionally lay out a store and select the merchandise and do the advertising and have a good computer system.' Most manufacturers selling their own brands today are relatively new at retail. In 1994, one of the top 10 furniture stores ranked by the trade magazine Furniture Today sold only a single brand: IKEA. Last year, 5 of the top 10 sold through single-brand stores: Ethan Allen, IKEA, La-Z-Boy, Ashley and American Signature. 'Most manufacturers don't make very good retailers, and it takes most of them time to learn what's involved,' Mr. Epperson said. They are determined to learn, however. The editor in chief of Furniture Today, Ray Allegrezza, said: 'Some of the larger manufacturers have said, 'We've got to find a way to control our own destiny.' They're doing it at retail but running a risk of alienating the base of retailers who have been with you all along.' Some independent retailers turned on Bassett and stopped carrying the brand after they learned the manufacturer was likely to compete with them, said Robert H. Spilman Jr., president and chief executive of Bassett Furniture Industries in Bassett, Va. Mr. Spilman said Bassett opened its stores to begin competing with the 'increasing amount of sophistication' in the home furnishings business, brought on by stores like Crate & Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Pottery Barn and West Elm. 'It's been a painful process,' Mr. Spilman said, but he added that the company began to rebound recently with slight sales gains. Yet some traditional retailers have joined the manufacturers and begun opening their own single-brand stores. After 28 years, Steve Kloss closed his St. Louis area store, Kloss Furniture, where he sold 40 brands, in April 2004 to open single-brand stores. He now operates four Broyhill stores, four Lane stores and three Thomasville stores (all brands owned by Furniture Brands International). Mr. Kloss said he opened the single-brand stores in part because the corporate connection helped him bring in the best value in furniture imports from Asia. He also believes furniture shoppers, usually women, are most comfortable with familiar brands, and that it is easier to train salespeople to sell a single brand rather than 40. Like many newer single-brand stores, Mr. Kloss employs design consultants who can help hesitant shoppers and build a relationship with them. 'We get a happier customer and we get a bigger ticket' when design consultants step in, he said. Recently, he sent a designer to the home of Ray and Susan Hereford, in Swansea, Ill., to help with decorating ideas. 'We said O.K., with some trepidation,' Mr. Hereford said. The Herefords spent about $20,000 for a leather chair and ottoman, a computer cabinet, an entertainment center, a sectional sofa, a chaise longue, and some chairs and tables, all bought from one of Mr. Kloss's Thomasville stores. 'I spent more money than I planned to,' Mr. Hereford said. The pieces were 'not something I would have picked out,' he said, laughing. 'But I was very happy' with the designer's choices, he said. With designers on staff, stores with corporate backing can simulate the familiar style of service found in traditional furniture stores, usually at no extra charge. At the Bassett store, Ms. Blythe said, she bonded with a design consultant, Tina Robinson, who helped ease much of her decorating confusion after visiting Ms. Blythe's home and suggesting a plan. Following that plan over three years, Ms. Blythe has furnished her home, which she describes as having 'a warm, lodge-y look,' with new sofas, chairs and a breakfast nook. 'I've wasted so much money and time before, picking up this and that,' Ms. Blythe said. 'By the time you're ready for the next thing, you're in another store talking to another woman, and she gets you going on a whole other thing.' Ms. Robinson used a space-planning program to bring together Ms. Blythe's rooms on a computer screen, an expense most independent store dealers say they can't maintain. Increasingly, shoppers also can see their favorite chairs on the screen in custom fabrics. At Storehouse Furniture in Gaithersburg, Md., Jack Mackler and Norman Graber were able to see how a sleek armchair would look upholstered with a patterned burgundy chenille before paying for it. 'It allows you to say, hmm, what would this fabric look like?' said Mr. Mackler, a chiropractor. 'All of a sudden you can see it. You're not imagining it.' Storehouse, owned by the Rowe Companies, which also owns the Rowe Furniture brand, represents a kind of third way of sales, beyond the single-brand strategy and the independent dealership. Storehouse carries Rowe, but it also has pieces by Mitchell Gold and Barcalounger, promoting them all under the Storehouse private label. Still, locally and regionally owned furniture stores, with their variety of products, accounted for about 21 percent of sales - the largest share - among various types of furniture retailers in 2002, said Mr. Epperson, the industry analyst. Sharon Runkles, a customer of Gladhill Furniture in Middletown, Md., said she likes the store's 'small-town feel.' 'We have purchased furniture at Bassett,' said Ms. Runkles of Boonsboro, Md. 'I like going to the Gladhill store better. I like the variety. There's more to choose from.'

Subject: I Vant to Drink Your Vatts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 10:39:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/garden/17vampire.html November 17, 2005 I Vant to Drink Your Vatts By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON — Households across the land are infested with vampires. That's what energy experts call those gizmos with two sharp teeth that dig into a wall socket and suck juice all night long. All day long, too, and all year long. Most people assume that when they turn off the television set it stops drawing power. But that's not how most TV's (and VCR's and other electronic devices) work. They remain ever in standby mode, silently sipping energy to the tune of 1,000 kilowatt hours a year per household, awaiting the signal to roar into action. 'As a country we pay $1 billion a year to power our TV's and VCR's while they're turned off,' said Maria T. Vargas, a spokeswoman for the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, which sets voluntary standards for energy use, and grants its ratings to the most efficient products. There are billions of vampires in the United States, drawing more than enough current in the typical house to light a 100-watt light bulb 24/7, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, a research arm of the Energy Department. These silent energy users include the chargers for devices that run on batteries, like cellphones, iPods and personal digital assistants, and all the devices around the house that have adapters because they run on direct current, like answering machines. Some have both batteries and steady power use, like cordless phones. Experts call all those adapters 'wall warts.' Many deliver in direct current only half as much energy as they suck out of the wall; the rest is wasted. Vampires and wall warts are only part of the problem. DSL or cable modems, among other things, are increasingly likely to be left on around the clock. A computer left on continuously can draw nearly as much power as an efficient refrigerator - 70 to 250 watts, depending on the model and how it is used. It's not that hard to engineer a more energy-aware computer: Dell introduced one in 2004 that drew 1.4 watts in 'sleep' mode and just under one watt when 'off.' But energy-efficient design is not necessarily rewarded in the marketplace, where people who are shopping for the latest shiny electronic device are unlikely to put its energy consumption rate while 'off' topmost on a list of considerations. Energy efficiency experts say the answer lies instead in industry-wide standards, which would require manufacturers to build appliances with low consumption when in standby. Just about everyone supports such a move. President Bush early on announced that electric devices purchased by the federal government would need to meet a standby consumption standard. Congress is pushing forward, too. This summer it passed a bill to set testing protocols for measuring energy use, clearing the way for nationwide consumption standards. The Energy Department held a meeting this week to discuss developing the standards. California has already adopted its own, to take effect in 2006. Among the worst vampires are big-screen televisions, mainly because of satellite and cable boxes, which can draw up to 30 watts when turned off, experts say. Indeed, the words 'off' and 'on' no longer seem to apply; a better word might be 'idling.' 'They won't even say 'off' now; they'll say 'power,' ' noted Alan K. Meier, a senior energy analyst at the International Energy Agency, a consortium based in Paris. 'My washing machine draws five watts even when there's no sign of intelligent life.' One culprit is the microchip, whose presence is revealed by a 'soft button' instead of a switch. Microchips are generally an improvement over mechanical controls because they are more durable and sophisticated. They also help reduce the size and weight of consumer products. But they require a continuous trickle of electricity. Energy experts say it would be simple to cut that trickle in half - not by running around the house unplugging everything in sight, which would require much resetting of clocks, but by engineering products differently. It doesn't cost much to make a more efficient device: sometimes just 50 cents a unit, they say. But consumers don't consider invisible energy use - 'there's no labeling of power use in 'standby,' ' Mr. Meier said, and 'no way for people to recognize what a low-standby device is' - making government-imposed energy efficiency the best hope, he said. The Energy Department would be in charge of setting standby mode standards that would apply to all consumer products sold in the United States. 'Things may be a small step for each individual consumer,' said Douglas Faulkner, the acting assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, 'but they can add up across the country.' The Energy Star program, whose labels on electronics help consumers comparison shop, has announced that it will not rate a product that fails its standby mode requirements (consumers in the market for VCR's, among other things, can see how they rate at energystar.gov). 'Consumers are buying more electronics, and there are more consumers,' Mr. Faulkner said. 'So the amount used by these devices is going up.' All the more reason to make each item as energy efficient as possible.

Subject: The Pen Gets a Whole Lot Mightier From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 10:37:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/technology/circuits/17pogue.html November 17, 2005 The Pen Gets a Whole Lot Mightier By David Pogue THE holiday season may be a time for love, hope and all that jazz. But let's face it: for millions of Americans, a big part of it is getting new toys. Sometimes, 'toys' means playthings for grownups, like iPods and flat-screen TV sets. But for the younger crowd, 'toys' still means toys. And one toy in particular, though it's been available for only a month, already appears high on the 'hottest toys' lists prepared by eBay, Toys 'R' Us and others: a $100 educational gadget called the Fly Pentop Computer. There's something a little odd about the term 'pentop computer.' Terms like laptop, palmtop and desktop tell you where you use the computer - but you don't use the Fly on top of a pen. Instead, the Fly is a pen - a fat ballpoint pen. (The company says that its focus groups found the term 'pentop computer' infinitely sexier than 'pen computer.' Nobody ever said consumers are logical.) The Fly is so fat because it contains an AAA battery, a computer chip, a speaker and, mounted half an inch from the ballpoint tip, a tiny camera. For all of its educational, interactive tricks, the Fly pen requires special paper whose surface is imprinted with nearly invisible micro-dots. As you write, the pen always knows where it is on the page, thanks to those dot patterns and the camera that watches them go by. Logitech and other companies sell exactly the same technology to adults, but it's never caught on. Those pens simply store what you write - not as text, but just as a frozen graphic - and later transfer it to a Windows computer. But Fly's maker, LeapFrog (maker of LeapPad, the popular interactive book reader), has much greater ambitions. In its incarnation, which is aimed at 'tweens' (8 to 14 years old), no PC is required or desired; instead, you get crisp, instantaneous audio feedback from the pen's speaker. STAGGERING possibilities await a pen that can read software right off the page as it moves, and the Fly package comes with a sparkling sampler. For example, as you tap countries on a world map, the pen pronounces their capitals or plays their national anthems. On a glossy, fold-out mini-poster of a disc jockey's setup, you can tap buttons to get music samples, or tap turntables to produce record-scratching sounds; then you can record your own compositions or compete, memory-game style, against other players. There's even a sheet of stickers that, when tapped, produce appropriate sound effects. (For my two elementary-schoolers, the belching mouth alone was good for 20 minutes of hilarity.) The Fly also comes with something called Fly Open Paper: a sheaf of blank pages that permit a much more free-form range of creative activities. You indicate which program you want by writing its initials in a circle. For example, in Notepad mode (draw an N in a circle), you can write up to three block-letter words at a time; the pen then reads back what you've written. In Scheduler (circled S), you can write 'Tuesday 3:45 P.M. student council'; at the specified time, the pen will turn itself on and speak the appointment's name. Then there's the Calculator (circled C), which is for nerds what 'Pinocchio' is to wooden puppets. As you draw a set of calculator buttons, they come to life, speaking their own names when tapped and announcing the mathematical results ('one hundred sixty-nine, square root, equals thirteen'). Fly Tones (circled FT) is an unforgettable demonstration for both parents and children. You draw a piano keyboard, complete with black keys if you like - and then you can play it. You can even draw and operate buttons that change the instrument sound, adjust the tempo, record and play, and so on. Talk about brainstorming on a napkin! These starter programs are stored in a white plastic cap on top of the pen. But the Fly can accommodate additional cartridges - sold separately, of course ($25 to $35 each). Each comes with appropriate pads, sheaves or books of the specially printed paper. There are hits and misses among these add-ons (which include Spanish, math and spelling), but the good ones break some interesting new ground. Fly Through Math, for example, is dedicated to multiplication and division. You write the digits of a math problem into the squares of the included graph paper. Like a watchful parent or teacher, the Fly's little voice-over elf comments immediately when, for example, you forget to carry the 1 or misplace a decimal point. This in-problem feedback is far more helpful than a computer program that just tells you that your final answer is wrong. Then there's Fly Through Tests. From a Web site (flypentop.com), your sixth- through eighth-grader can download multiple-choice quizzes in PDF format that correspond to the chapters of specific popular published textbooks (math, science or social studies). You print them onto the blank paper that comes with this cartridge, and voilà: instant interactive tests, specific to the textbook you're using in class. Fly isn't solely about academics. The original software cartridge includes games, jokes and even Easter eggs (secret features). You can also buy kits like Flyball (interactive baseball cards that let you manage a team), Fly Journal (a lockable diary with daily writing prompts) and Fly Friends (girlie activities pertaining to shopping, fashion and boys). The Fly is a very unusual and highly engaging educational tool. There are, however, some flies in the ointment. Sometimes the Fly speaks your written words perfectly; other times, you wonder if the little camera needs a tiny contact lens. I filled an entire sheet of Fly paper trying to get it to recognize my block-lettered 'LUNCH WITH STEVE,' but it never did stop pronouncing the middle word as 'W dot.' Then there's the learning problem - not the academics, which have obviously been professionally prepared, but learning the pen itself. Each cartridge and activity seems to require a different approach. For example, after you've memorized the 10 different circled-letter codes of the Fly-paper activities - not an especially easy task to begin with - you never use that method again in any other activity. Making choices from a menu is also clumsy, since you can't actually see the menu. You have to wait for the pen to read off your choices; when it says the one you want, you draw a check mark on the page. Turns out God invented computer screens for a reason. The company acknowledges these 1.0 glitches, and promises improvements in future versions. But even now, three things are for sure. First, the Fly offers the same kind of interactive, child-driven experience as, say, the LeapPad, but it's infinitely more compact and portable. Second, you can't imagine how engaging the Fly is until you witness it in a young person's hands; my young test Flyers were so hooked, they tolerated an amazing number of frustrating glitches. And finally, when it comes to children's technology, a sort of post-educational age has dawned. Last year, Americans bought only one-third as much educational software as they did in 2000. Once highflying children's software companies have dwindled or disappeared. The magazine once called Children's Software Review is now named Children's Technology Review, and over half of its coverage now is dedicated to entertainment titles (for Game Boy, PlayStation and the like) that have no educational component. In that light, it's encouraging to see a company spend $100 million - and refine numerous new technologies along the way - to create an educational tool for children. It's even more encouraging to see how well it succeeds in most of its teaching missions. And it's positively uplifting to see, if those 'hottest gift' lists are any indication, that the effort will soon be rewarded by parents and children who know a good thing when they see it.

Subject: An Opportunity to Consider From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:49:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/business/17scene.html November 17, 2005 An Opportunity to Consider if Homeowners Get Too Many Breaks By HAL R. VARIAN THE President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform struggled long and hard to come up with some economically sensible and politically feasible ways to reform the tax code. The report, available at www.taxreformpanel.gov/final-report/, offers several interesting ideas. Some, like simplifying the crazy quilt of tax-deferred savings plans, are relatively noncontroversial. But proposals like eliminating the federal deduction for state and local taxes are much more contentious. In the next few years, however, more and more families will be forced to pay the alternative minimum tax, which also limits deductions for state and local taxes. The panel's recommendation in this area may yet turn out to be the lesser of two evils from the taxpayers' point of view. Certainly the panel's least popular suggestion is to limit the mortgage interest deduction. Under current law, homeowners can deduct interest on mortgages of up to $1.1 million, but the panel proposed that this cap be significantly reduced and that the deduction be replaced with a 15 percent tax credit. A change of this sort would probably have a significant impact on housing values, particularly at the high end, and therefore would be unpopular with homeowners. Neither party wants to alienate solid middle-class voters, so this suggestion has not been greeted with enthusiasm in Washington. But many economists would argue that the panel's proposal does not go far enough. It would make a lot of sense to eliminate the housing mortgage deduction entirely. The truth of the matter is that housing is highly subsidized in this country and we would probably be better off if the tax treatment of housing were brought more into line with that of other assets. How is housing subsidized? Let me count the ways. First, there is the mortgage interest deduction. Second, the deduction for property taxes. Third, the capital gains exclusion, which allows couples to exclude $500,000 in capital gains as often as once every two years. Fourth, the deduction for points on mortgage loans. Fifth, the deduction of up to $100,000 on home equity loans. And there are many more tax breaks, among them home office deductions. There are also more subtle ways that housing investment is favored by the tax system. The most fundamental subsidy is that homeowners are not taxed on the implicit rent they receive from their housing investment. Think of it this way. Suppose you buy a house outright, so there is no mortgage to complicate the analysis. If you rent the house out to someone else, you owe tax on the rental payments you receive. If you live in the house, you are effectively renting it to yourself, but no taxes are due on the transaction. Put another way, if you invest $500,000 in the bank, you have to pay taxes on the interest you earn. But if you invest $500,000 in a house, which you live in, you don't have to pay taxes on the rent you save. True, you have to pay a local property tax on your house's value. But property taxes are used to support local services like schools, roads and fire departments, which also enhance the value of a house. Effectively, when you buy a house you are purchasing a bundle of local services, and the price you pay for these amenities is your property tax. Sure, homeownership is a good thing from society's point of view. Areas with high rates of homeownership tend to be good places to live - but it is hard to disentangle cause and effect in such statements. Even if one thinks that homeownership deserves some subsidy, does it really deserve as much as it gets? An excessive subsidy on one asset means that less will be invested in other assets. The money put into building those huge villas on the hillside could have been put into factories, office buildings and schools. Investment in physical capital and human capital makes the economy as a whole more productive, unlike investment in housing. Given the huge subsidies to housing, it is likely that we as a country have overinvested in this area. Cutting back some of those subsidies would be good economic policy. That being said, I hasten to add that this is unlikely to happen anytime soon. People have put substantial amounts of their wealth into housing in large part because it has been so highly subsidized. The housing tax subsidy has been built into housing prices, to some degree, and cutting back could lead to painful capital losses on home values. If you give a lollipop to a baby, it may make him smile, but you will pay dearly for that smile if you try to take the candy away. The best thing to do is to distract the baby with other sweets, while you gradually extricate the lollipop from that sticky hand. That is pretty much what the tax panel has proposed: it offers reduced tax rates on other forms of investment, along with the mortgage interest credit, to make cutting housing subsidies less painful. Carefully tuned policies of this sort may be a politically palatable way to reduce housing subsidies. But I'm not holding my breath. Hal R. Varian is a professor of business, economics and information management at the University of California, Berkeley.

Subject: Public TV From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:47:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/business/media/16cnd-broadcast.html November 15, 2005 Report Says Ex-Chief of Public TV Violated Federal Law By STEPHEN LABATON WASHINGTON - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias. A scathing report by the corporation's inspector general described a dysfunctional organization that violated the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the corporation and was written to insulate programming decisions from politics. The corporation received $400 million this year from Congress to finance an array of programs on public television and radio, although its future financing has come under heavy criticism, particularly from conservative lawmakers. Its board is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The corporation's former chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who was ousted from the board two weeks ago when it was presented in a closed session with the details of the report, has said he sought to enforce a provision of the Public Broadcasting Act meant to ensure objectivity and balance in programming. But the report said that in the process, Mr. Tomlinson repeatedly crossed statutory boundaries that set up the corporation as a 'heat shield' to protect public radio and television from political interference. The report said he violated federal law by being heavily involved in getting more than $4 million for a program featuring the conservative editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal. It said he imposed a 'political test' to recruit a new president. And it said his decision to hire Republican consultants to defeat legislation violated contracting rules. Mr. Tomlinson, in a statement distributed with the report, rejected its conclusions. He said that any suggestion that he violated his duties or the law 'is malicious and irresponsible' and that the inspector general had opted 'for politics over good judgment.' 'Unfortunately, the Inspector General's preconceived and unjustified findings will only help to maintain the status quo and other reformers will be discouraged from seeking change,' said Mr. Tomlinson, who has repeatedly defended his decisions as part of an effort to restore balance to programming. 'Regrettably, as a result, balance and objectivity will not come soon to elements of public broadcasting.' While some of the details under investigation were disclosed in a news article last May, the inspector general's report is the first official conclusion that Mr. Tomlinson violated both the law and the corporation's own rules. The report is also the first detailed and official inside look at the dynamics of the corporation as some of its career staff have struggled with conservative Republicans appointees seeking to change its direction. The author of the report, Kenneth A. Konz, was hired by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the 1990's to be its inspector general after retiring from the federal government, where he had served as a deputy inspector general at the Environmental Protection Agency. No sanctions or further action against Mr. Tomlinson will follow from the report's findings, Mr. Konz said. But some broadcasting officials fear it may be used to attack the corporation's budget, which is already in jeopardy as lawmakers look for money to help pay for rebuilding the Gulf Coast and starting an avian flu inoculation program. The report said that Mr. Tomlinson violated federal law by promoting 'The Journal Editorial Report' and said he had 'admonished C.P.B. senior executive staff not to interfere with his deal to bring a balancing program' to public broadcasting. The board is prohibited from getting involved in programming decisions, but the investigators found that Mr. Tomlinson had pushed hard for the program, even as some staff officials at the corporation raised concerns over its cost. An e-mail from around the same time shows that he threatened to withhold some money to public broadcasting 'in a New York minute' if public broadcasting did not balance its lineup. The investigators found evidence that 'political tests' were a major criteria used by Mr. Tomlinson in recruiting the corporation's new president, Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee and former senior State Department official. According to the report, she was given the job after being promoted for it by an unidentified official at the White House. Investigators found e-mail messages between Mr. Tomlinson and the White House that, while 'cryptic' in nature, 'gives the appearance that the former chairman was strongly motivated by political considerations in filling the president/C.E.O. position.' The corporation's presidency, its senior staff job, has historically been reserved for a nonpartisan expert in public broadcasting. The report said Mr. Tomlinson defended his decision to hire a candidate with strong political ties because of the need to build relationships with Congress for future funding requests. Ms. Harrison disputed suggestions that she was motivated by politics. 'Only actions will dispel critics who believe I have a political agenda, which I do not have,' Ms. Harrison said in an interview today. 'I want to define my tenure in as open a way as I can.' She said that excellence, creativity and quality are as important in programming as objectivity and balance. The report said politics might have been involved in other personnel decisions. In one case, a candidate to become the senior vice president for corporate and public affairs was asked by a board member about her political contributions in the last election. Another official was given a particular job title at the corporation at the request of the White House, the report said The report said Mr. Tomlinson's decision to hire two Republican consultants to help the corporation in its lobbying efforts against public broadcasting legislation last year was 'not handled in accordance with C.P.B.'s contracting procedures.' The inspector general criticized another contract with a researcher to monitor the 'Now' program, when its host was Bill Moyers, because it was signed by Mr. Tomlinson without informing the board and without board authorization. The report said that a White House official, Mary C. Andrews, worked on a plan by the corporation to create a new office of ombudsmen to promote balance in programming. Ms. Andrews had been hired by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at the time but was still on the White House payroll. It said her efforts 'appeared to be advisory in nature and she did not provide the ombudsmen with guidelines on how to operate or interfere with their functioning.' But it also found that the decision to sign contracts with two ombudsmen 'does not appear to comply with established C.P.B. procurement processes.' Following a board meeting this morning at which the corporation adopted a series of resolutions to impose tighter financial controls, Mr. Tomlinson's successor as chairman, Cheryl Halpern, met with senior lawmakers in hopes of blunting any political fallout. But the report poses its own problems for Ms. Halpern, a Republican fund-raiser, and the rest of the board, which for many months supported Mr. Tomlinson's broader efforts at objectivity. 'Our review found an organizational environment that allowed the former chairman and other C.P.B. executives to operate without appropriate checks and balances,' the report said. It ascribed the problems, in part to the 'culture of C.P.B.' Ms. Halpern headed the board's audit committee under Mr. Tomlinson, and she raised concerns among executives at National Public Radio for criticizing its coverage of the Middle East. She was also Mr. Tomlinson's choice to succeed her, in part, he has said, because of her continued commitment to end any programming bias. The report questioned a severance package for the corporation's former president, Kathleen A. Cox, who was forced to resign abruptly last April after a series of disagreements with Mr. Tomlinson. According to the report, the package was more than three times her annual compensation, and Mr. Tomlinson structured its payouts over a period of years so that the lump sum would not be disclosed on publicly available tax records. In a statement attached to the report, Ms. Cox named other board members aside from Mr. Tomlinson who she said were involved in some of the decisions criticized by the inspector general. Ms. Cox said she was forced to resign after Mr. Tomlinson told her that she was 'not political enough' for the job The report came in response to requests by two senior Democratic lawmakers, Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin and John Dingell of Michigan. Their request followed an article in The New York Times last May that described the contract to monitor the 'Now' Show, the plan to hire Ms. Harrison, the role played by Mr. Tomlinson in promoting 'The Journal Editorial Report,' and Ms. Andrews role in the creation of the office of ombudsman. Mr. Tomlinson remains the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises all American government-broadcasting programs overseas. The inspector general of the State Department is examining accusations there of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees by Mr. Tomlinson. In a recent letter, Senator Chris Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, asked President Bush to consider ordering Mr. Tomlinson to step down from the board of governors until that investigation was completed.

Subject: Memo to Poor Countries From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:46:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/opinion/11fri1.html November 11, 2005 Memo to Poor Countries: Stand Fast Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, put it bluntly after the collapse of the latest round of trade talks in London and Geneva this week: unless the European Union finally stops dithering and cuts farm subsidies to help farmers in poor countries, the negotiations to open up trade in manufactured goods and services - to help big companies in Europe and America - would take 'not one month, two months, one year or two years.' The talks, he said, 'just won't move.' For Mr. Amorim, and the other negotiators from developing countries that have been run over by the rich world in trade talks for the past 50 years, this page has two words: Stand fast. Do not give a single additional concession until the European Union cuts its farm subsidies. It's better to let the talks collapse and send the big guns home empty-handed than to be fooled again by Europe's hypocritical blather about free trade when clearly its countries, led by France, believe in free trade only when it suits their narrow interests. For the last half-century, the World Trade Organization and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, have aggressively dismantled barriers against trade in industrial goods and services, areas in which rich countries in Europe, along with the United States and Japan, hold a comparative advantage. But when it comes to areas where poor countries could flourish, like textiles and agriculture, it has been a different story. The developed world funnels nearly $1 billion a day in subsidies to its farmers; that encourages overproduction, which drives down prices. Poor nations' farmers cannot compete with subsidized products. Four years ago, in Doha, Qatar, poor countries finally won a promise that Europe, Japan and America would slash agricultural subsidies, in addition to further liberalizing world trade in services and manufactured goods. The United States has stepped up to the plate. Last month, the United States trade representative, Robert Portman, made a substantial offer: the United States will slash allowable farm subsidies by 60 percent if Europe and Japan cut their subsidies by 83 percent. There's a difference in the numbers because European countries and Japan have higher subsidies. Europe has refused, with the French, as usual, leading the way and swearing to block any final agreement that goes beyond Europe's anemic offer of a handful of lame cuts. Then the European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, actually had the gall to ask poor countries to make further cuts in industrial tariffs and services. If the European Union is truly going to refuse to make right a half-century of trade-distorting subsidies, which have helped the rich at the expense of the poor, then there's an easy answer: the talks should just not move.

Subject: Re: Memo to Poor Countries From: stuart munro To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 08:22:46 (EST) Email Address: stuart-munro@clear.net.nz Message: Well it will be fine if it works. NZ & Australia are still bitter about US protectionism over lamb imports - the industry is vanishingly small in the US, but a big deal in Australasia. EU & US protectionism has cut NZ sheep numbers from 66 million to under 40 miliion over the last 10-15 years. On the third world note though - cost of agricultural produce in China is a fraction of many other countries, a matter of refined technique, favorable climate & cheap labor. It might not be western style agriculture that won if Doha got through.

Subject: Re: Memo to Poor Countries From: Emma To: stuart munro Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 12:46:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Interesting slant. Look to American apple products, and they come from where? Where, is increasingly China. Whole Foods by the way is a treasure of international foods.

Subject: A Timetable From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:42:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/opinion/17thu1.html November 17, 2005 A Timetable for Mr. Bush No matter how the White House chooses to spin it, the United States Senate cast a vote of no confidence this week on the war in Iraq. And about time. The actual content of the resolution, passed on a vote of 79 to 19, was meaningless. The Senate asked the administration to provide regular reports on progress in Iraq, and took the position that next year should be 'a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty.' It was a desperate - but toothless - cry of election-bound lawmakers to be let off the hook for a disastrous military quagmire. Republican leaders, who supported the proposal, argued that the vote was a repudiation of a Democratic motion to set possible withdrawal deadlines for American troops. But the proposal would never have gone to the floor if members of President Bush's party had not felt the need to go on the record, somehow, as expressing their own impatience with the situation. The ultimate Iraqi nightmare, which continually seems to be drawing closer, is a violent fracturing of the country in which the Kurdish north and Arab Shiite southeast break away, leaving the west, dominated by Arab Sunnis, an impoverished no man's land and a breeding ground for international terrorism. While this page was completely wrong in our presumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we - and virtually everyone outside the Bush administration - warned about this danger from the beginning. Only loyalists who had bought the fantasy about dancing Iraqis throwing flowers before American tanks dismissed it as unlikely. The consequences of such a breakup would be endless and awful: civil war, the persecution of minority populations in the new states, an alliance between the Shiites and Iran, and a complete breakdown of American moral and military influence in the Middle East. No one wants that to happen, but Americans must ask themselves every day whether the troops who are risking their lives in Iraq are doing anything more than postponing the inevitable. The one frail hope for a better outcome lies with the ongoing struggle to create a democratic central government in Iraq. We are encouraged by the high participation in elections, including the enormous increase in the number of Sunni voters in the last balloting, and by the declared willingness of leading Iraqi officials and sectional politicians to make political concessions to keep the country patched together. It is very possible that most of the voters are simply casting ballots on behalf of supremacy for their own religious or ethnic factions, and that the officials are only going through the motions, hoping to keep the United States minimally satisfied while they move toward their own self-serving goals. But at this moment, both the people and their leaders are clearing at least the lowest possible bar for measuring their progress. A precipitous withdrawal at this point would be counterproductive. And while a timetable is certainly an option, the people who need deadlines are the Iraqis. Their government must be put on notice that the United States expects Iraq to show speedy, measurable progress in taking control of its own security, and that it must demonstrate that it is not just stalling for time when it comes to guaranteeing democracy and human rights. The current constitution is unsatisfactory. It shortchanges the Sunni minority and fails to provide Iraqi women the guarantee that they will not wind up worse off under the new government than they were under Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi leaders have promised to change it after next month's elections. Washington needs to carefully scrutinize how quickly and how fully they honor that promise. The Shiite-dominated government will be getting an early test of its commitment to building a just and inclusive society in how it responds to this week's horrifying allegations that policemen who are members of a powerful Shiite militia have been abducting Sunni Arab men and torturing them in a secret prison in the heart of Baghdad. President Bush has lost the confidence of the American people, and his own party, when it comes to handling Iraq. If he wants to win it back, he must come up with a very clear road map for what he expects, both politically and militarily, from the Iraqi government. If the Iraqis fail to meet those goals, he must demonstrate that the price of equivocation is American withdrawal. If the president fails, the American public has a timetable of its own. Elections for the House and the Senate are less than a year away.

Subject: Paul Krugman: A Private Obsession From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:19:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/ November 18, 2005 Paul Krugman: A Private Obsession By Mark Thoma Paul Krugman continues his series on health care. In this column, he examines the way in which the drive for privatization has resulted in confusion and higher costs. He starts by taking a look at the new Medicare plan: A Private Obsession, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: 'Lots of things in life are complicated.' So declared Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, in response to the mass confusion as registration for the new Medicare drug benefit began. ... But why is the new drug benefit so complicated and confusing? One reason the drug benefit is so confusing is that older Americans can't simply sign up with Medicare... They must, instead, choose from a baffling array of plans offered by private middlemen. ... What caused that? The Medicare drug benefit is an example of gratuitous privatization on a grand scale. Here's some background: the elderly have long been offered a choice between standard Medicare, in which the government pays medical bills directly, and plans in which the government pays a middleman, like an H.M.O., to deliver health care. The theory was that the private sector would find innovative ways to lower costs while providing better care. Did competition from the private sector work as theory suggested? The theory was wrong. A number of studies have found that managed-care plans, which have much higher administrative costs than government-managed Medicare, end up costing the system money, not saving it. ... If it costs more, why continue down this road? [P]rivatization, once promoted as a way to save money, has become a goal in itself. The 2003 bill that established the prescription drug benefit also ... went even further: ... To receive the drug benefit, one must sign up with a plan offered by a private company. As people are discovering, the result is a deeply confusing system because the competing private plans differ in ways that are very hard to assess. The peculiar structure of the drug benefit, with its huge gap in coverage - the famous 'doughnut hole' I wrote about last week - adds to the confusion. When I posted excerpts from your last column, some people claimed in comments that it is possible to cover the doughnut hole. Is it? Many better-off retirees have relied on Medigap policies to cover gaps ... But that straightforward approach, which would make it relatively easy to compare drug plans, can't be used to fill the doughnut hole because Medigap policies are no longer allowed to cover drugs. The only way to get some coverage in the gap is as part of a package in which you pay extra - a lot extra - to one of the private drug plans delivering the basic benefit. ... It sounds as though your main objection is that there are too many plans and they can't be directly compared due to inherent confusions built into the system. Won't the private sector work this out over time as the market process moves to deliver information more efficiently through advertising and other means? [C]onfusion isn't the only, or even the main, reason why the privatization of drug benefits is bad for America. ... Everything we know about health economics indicates that private drug plans will have much higher administrative costs than would have been incurred if Medicare had administered the benefit directly. It's also clear that the private plans will spend large sums on marketing rather than on medicine. I have nothing against Don Shula, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins... But do we really want people choosing drug plans based on which one hires the most persuasive celebrity? ... Are there any other benefits besides lower administrative costs from delivering the benefit directly through Medicare? [C]ompeting private drug plans will have less clout in negotiating lower drug prices than Medicare as a whole would have. And the law explicitly forbids Medicare from intervening to help the private plans negotiate better deals. Who designed such a system? Last week I explained that the Medicare drug bill was devised by people who don't believe in a positive role for government. An insistence on gratuitous privatization is a byproduct of the same ideology. And the result of that ideology is a piece of legislation so bad it's almost surreal. I, along with almost all economists, believe in competitive markets. I believe in markets so much I want to fix the broken ones. There is market failure in the provision of health care and no amount of adherence to an ideology will make them work.

Subject: Bobby, a link for the archive... From: Auros To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 14:45:14 (EST) Email Address: rmharman@auros.org Message: I haven't seen the CampusProgress.org interview show up yet... It's a pretty good one. Campus Progress interview www.illwillpress.com/sml.html

Subject: Guess the link got pasted wrong... From: Auros To: Auros Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 12:46:01 (EST) Email Address: rmharman@auros.org Message: Whoa, how did that wrong link get in there? When I tried to copy the link, it must not've taken, and the previous thing I had copied stayed in the clipboard buffer. The correct link is: http://www.campusprogress.org/features/641/five-minutes-with-paul-krugman

Subject: Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress From: Terri To: Auros Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 05:37:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/11/paul_krugman_ta.html#comments November 12, 2005 Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress They say: CampusProgress.org | Five Minutes With: Paul Krugman: Q: What prompted you to write your November 4th column “Defending Imperial Nudity?”.... A: We finally reached a point where a lot of people are starting to acknowledge the obvious, which is that we were deliberately hyped into war, and a lot of defenses are coming up. People are still trying to pretend that nothing happened and it all made sense, and I felt that it was time to find a way to play how ridiculous that is. Q: I get the feeling that we’re living in a really good political satire. A: Yeah, or a really tawdry political novel. If you tried to make this stuff up, nobody would dare – they’d say that it’s ridiculous. Q: You’ve written economics textbooks before. If you had to imagine writing another textbook thirty years from now characterizing economic policy under various presidents, how would you talk about the Bush administration? A: Well, the answer is that there is no policy. What’s interesting about it is that there’s no sign that anybody’s actually thinking about “well, how do we run this economy?” Everything becomes an excuse to do pre-set things instead of an actual response to an event or a real problem. So, the idea was “we’re going to cut taxes on capital income, as opposed to earned income” and whatever happened became a reason to do that.... Q: Having been a strong proponent of globalization whose enthusiasm on the subject seems to have waned a bit, can you talk about where you stand now and how you think it might be most productive for students who work on this issue to talk about it? A: If you aren’t a little bit tortured about globalization, you’re not paying attention. I got into economics nearly 30 years ago, in grad school. At the time, development was too depressing as a field – there were no success stories. The club of rich countries had closed in the late 1880s, and there really was no way forward. The very good news is that there has been a lot of upward movement in select parts of the third world. All of that is based on exports, on the opportunities presented by globalization. You can’t be against globalization in general if you support third world countries making their way up in the world. The downside is that there have by no means been success stories across the board. On the one side, you clearly have some of the most vulnerable people in our own society that have been paying the price, and a lot of developing countries have been following the advice from Washington on globalization, and things have gone very badly. It’s a very mixed picture. What I want to hear is not “let’s rally against globalization,” but “let’s try to fix it.” It’s easy enough to say, but where’s the political constituency for that? Anyone who thinks of globalization as a great unambiguous evil hasn’t been paying attention. Anyone who thinks it’s a total good hasn’t been following things that have been happening in places like Argentina. Q: I recently got good health insurance for the first time in a while, and I can safely say how what a relief it is. Clearly the US lags well behind other industrialized nations in terms of our numbers of uninsured. Can we make the move to universal coverage? A: There are two questions there: one is economics, one is politics. The economics is really straight forward. Some kind of national health insurance financed out of a mandatory premium on all wages, a tax, however you want to do it – is clearly the dominant system. The US system is a patchwork with big gaps in it, Medicare, Medicaid, employer based coverage, it’s a mess. It’s the wonder of the world. We get worse results at greater cost than anyone else. We have enormous bureaucracy and administrative expenses basically because private insurers and lots of other players in the system are spending lots of money trying not to cover people. Now, politics, the trouble is, how do you do that? How do we achieve some approximation to a national healthcare system, given the political realities? The funny thing is, happy majorities in the American public, according to polls, favor guaranteed healthcare for everybody, so we’re not talking about something where the public is against the idea. What we’re talking about is a very powerful set of interests and a very powerful set of ideologues in Washington, who have managed to intimidate the politicians. That’s a really hard thing to get through.... Q: Obviously journalism isn’t your only or even your primary job. It seems like that lets you be more independent and more risk taking. A: Very much so. There was a long period, from September 2001 until early 2004 when I felt like I was really alone among prominent commentators in saying “hey, we’re being lied to, these people are not defending us, they’re lying to us a lot.” I think had I been worried about a journalistic career, about “will the Times keep me?” I would have been much more inhibited. But, the fact is, if the Times had given into pressure and gotten rid of me, my life actually would have improved in a lot of ways. Personally, it would be easier. Still, I don’t think it would be good if every op-ed columnist was like me. Journalism is a craft and there are things I can’t do. I can’t do investigative reporting, I can’t play Carl Bernstein....

Subject: Cultural Territories of America From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 06:33:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/books/16jeff.html?ex=1289797200&en=18db17b739e63fa2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 16, 2005 Remapping the Cultural Territories of America By MARGO JEFFERSON The Believer is a monthly magazine as smartly designed as the comics we call graphic novels. It is filled with what was once labeled new journalism and is now called experimental or creative nonfiction. So I was drawn to the September issue, advertising as it did an essay about 'cultural criticism as experimental fiction' by Greg Bottoms. As it turned out, the subject was George W. S. Trow, a founder of National Lampoon and a staff writer at The New Yorker for some 20 years. But a Believer essay flings a wide net. This one included references to 'WASP civilization,' Gertrude Stein, Donald Barthelme and Gap jeans. I started thinking about those who had helped pioneer this bold and eccentric tradition of creative nonfiction, which uses many voices and techniques: storytelling, from the monologue to the novel; analysis, historical and literary; travel writing; reflection and confession. I thought of that forgotten poet Vachel Lindsay and his wonderful 1915 book, 'The Art of the Moving Picture'; of the novelist and biographer Thomas Beer, whose 'Mauve Decade' (1926) reads like a satiric historical novel about the 1890's. I also thought of two women, Constance Rourke and Zora Neale Hurston, whose cultural obsessions match those of critics today. They were out to remap the cultural territories; shift the boundaries that separated folk, popular and high art; explore the American character (what we now call the national psyche). I'll save Lindsay and Beer for another time because Rourke and Hurston are cultural cousins. They did some of their best work in the late 1920's and 30's. Both had scholarly training, though neither had a Ph.D. Rourke was a historian drawn to myth and legend; Hurston an anthropologist drawn to fiction and theater. Rourke was white, Hurston black. But in the end, their investigations linked them as surely as DNA tests have linked the white and black descendants of Thomas Jefferson. They began in what I'll call separate but equal neighborhoods. Rourke wrote about white cultural myths and traditions, iconic figures from Paul Bunyan to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Hurston wrote about the roots and characteristics of black American culture: language, folklore, music and dance, the will to improvise. Imagination helped them vault past intellectual barriers put up by other critics and scholars. Hurston exploded claims that black America lacked a past, a coherent body of social and artistic practices that make up a civilization. Rourke's greatest book, 'American Humor' (1931), erased the notion that American culture was deficient because it lacked Europe's stable and polished lineage. It begins: 'Toward evening of a midsummer day at the latter end of the eighteenth century a traveler was seen descending a steep red road into a fertile Carolina valley. He carried a staff and walked with a wide, fast, sprawling gait, his tall shadow cutting across the lengthening shadows of the trees. His head was crouched, his back long; a heavy pack lay across his shoulders.' It's the beginning of a story - the story of an American type, the Yankee peddler with his shrewd talk and deadpan delivery. By the time she has fully drawn his portrait, we can see that his descendants include Johnny Carson and Bill Maher. Then she goes on to the extravagant Southwest frontiersman (think of the young Elvis Presley) and the minstrel, with his fables and eccentric rhythms, shifting between black and white masks (think of hip-hop). Rourke is a quiet writer, but her observations can sting. The American, she notes, 'envisages himself as an innocent in relation to other peoples; he showed the enduring conviction during the Great War.' And in most wars that followed, a modern reader can add. A few years after 'American Humor,' Zora Neale Hurston published a series of brilliant essays with titles like 'Characteristics of Negro Expression' and 'Spirituals and Neo-Spirituals.' She laid out some of the principles of black vernacular, from double descriptives like 'low-down' and 'sham-polish' to verbal nouns like 'uglying away.' ('Dissed' is today's best example.) 'Mules and Men' is her 1935 chronicle of black folklore and folk life: storytelling contests and juke joint blues in Florida (where she grew up) and voodoo in New Orleans. We see the process by which folk life becomes the stuff of myth and art. But Hurston never insists that this progression goes from simple to complex. The gospel hymns sung in a Southern church, she observes, are likely to be far more rhythmically complex than those arranged for a choir with classical training. Always theatrical, she frames her tales with the adventures she had while collecting them. (Of her escape from a juke joint fight, she writes: 'Blood was on the floor. I fell out of the door over a man lying on the steps, who either fell himself trying to run or got knocked down.') She narrates in her own vivid standardized English, but speaks black English with the people of Florida and New Orleans. When necessary she lies. One night at a dance, a man tells her that she looks wealthy compared to everyone else. She confides to the reader: 'I mentally cursed the $12.74 dress from Macy's that I had on among all the $1.98 mail-order dresses. I looked about and noted the number of bungalow aprons and even the rolled down paper bags on the heads of several women. I did look different and resolved to fix all that no later than the next morning. ' 'Oh, Ah ain't got doodley squat,' I countered. 'Mah man brought me dis dress de las' time he went to Jacksonville. We wuz sellin' plenty stuff den and makin' good money. Wisht Ah had dat money now.' ' This certainly exposes the issues anthropologists still struggle with: the conflict between being a participant and an observer, the morality of being an outsider passing as an insider. And then, there is the power of the language that she recorded, embellished and reinvented. Here is an excerpt from her version of a curse made famous by Marie Leveau, the queen of hoodoo: 'That the South wind shall scorch their bodies and make them wither and shall not be tempered to them. That the North wind shall freeze their blood and numb their muscles and that it shall not be tempered to them. That the West wind shall blow away their life's breath and will not leave their hair grow, and that their finger nails shall fall off and their bones shall crumble. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, their sight shall fail and their seed dry up so that they shall not multiply.' Both she and Rourke knew, as all cultural critics must, that what Hurston called 'our so-called civilization' is nothing more - or less - than 'the exchange and re-exchange of ideas between groups.'

Subject: Primates Are People, Too From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 06:29:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/books/review/06shreeve.html?ex=1288933200&en=e4ab7a57cc0b41b1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 6, 2005 'Monkeyluv': Primates Are People, Too By JAMIE SHREEVE FOR a span of some dozen years early in his career, Robert M. Sapolsky, a neurologist and primatologist at Stanford University, spent three or four months a year conducting field research on baboons in Kenya. Over time, he developed an intimate appreciation of the nuances in behavior common to these highly social primates and ourselves. But it was lonely work, and Sapolsky found himself writing scads of letters back home, simply in hopes of getting some mail in return. Thus was forged a zeal for writing in a person with no literary pretension but a great deal to write about. While in two of his previous books for a popular audience, Sapolsky focuses on his own research on the neurobiology of stress ('Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers') and his life as a scientist ('A Primate's Memoir'), 'Monkeyluv,' a collection of essays published over the last 10 years in Discover, Natural History, The New Yorker and other magazines, casts a wider net. For the most part, the essays represent what Sapolsky himself describes as 'hit-and-run obsessions' - topics that infect his mind for a couple of months, causing him to research endlessly and drive his poor wife to distraction with monologues on the subject until he eventually writes the obsession out of his system, leaving room for the next one. The result of this strategy is mostly a hit. The collection is organized into three sections, each hinging on some Big Question in natural science: the relative influence of genes and environment in determining behavior; how our brains affect our bodies and vice versa; and the way society shapes the individual. Like any good modern biologist, Sapolsky, a MacArthur 'genius' award winner, relies in his research on the analytical power of reductionism: the more one divides natural phenomena into their constituent parts, and those parts into subparts and so forth, the more one can learn about how nature really works. As the essays in the first section make clear, however, the notion that the genes at the base of this biological hierarchy determine the workings of everything above them is total nonsense. In the nature versus nurture debate, Sapolsky comes down hard against the supremacy of either. As he writes in 'A Gene for Nothing,' for instance, actual genes make up only some 5 percent of the human genome. Among the rest of the DNA are regulatory elements that instruct the genes to turn on and off according to cues from the environment. Thus a gene 'controlling' seasonal mating in a species by making proteins involved in sexual behavior might remain inactive until a warming trend in temperature activates it, whereupon 'everyone starts rutting and ovulating, snorting and pawing at the ground, and generally carrying on.' It isn't genes or the environment that determines behavior. It's the interaction, stupid. If there is a flaw in the first section, it is only that this point is drilled home a bit too frequently. In the subsequent two sections, Sapolsky lets his obsessive curiosity wander amiably from topic to topic without any particular ax to grind. His aggressively vernacular style - two parts favorite campus prof, one part cruise-ship comedian - may appeal to some readers and bother others, but it is his artful articulation of the unlimited ingenuity of nature that will keep them reading. In 'Bugs in the Brain,' he describes a parasite that infects the brains of rats without any effect on their behavior except that they lose their instinctual aversion to the smell of cats and, instead, are drawn to it. Needless to say, such absurdly obliging prey is quickly gobbled up: bad for the rat but great for the parasite, since it can only reproduce inside a cat host. The next generation hitches a ride out on the cat's feces, which are ingested by rats to start the cycle over again. 'This is flabbergasting,' Sapolsky writes. 'This is like someone getting infected with a brain parasite that has no effect whatsoever on the person's thoughts, emotions, S.A.T. scores or television preferences, but, to complete its life cycle, generates an irresistible urge to go to the zoo, scale a fence, and French-kiss' the meanest-looking polar bear. Not surprisingly, Sapolsky's quest for understanding is most compelling when the animal behavior he's reckoning with is our own. Why do rain-forest societies tend to be peaceable and polytheistic, while desert dwellers (and their cultural descendants who dominate the planet) are belligerent and believe in one God? Why does our taste for novel music, food and fashion freeze at an early age? IN most cases, Sapolsky chases after answers to such puzzles with jovial abandon. But his very best essays have a more sober tone. 'Why We Want Their Bodies Back,' which explores the cross-cultural obsession with possessing some mortal remains of the deceased, begins with the aching mystery of two friends who vanished while Sapolsky was still in high school, and his own emotions when a clue to their disappearance emerged 27 years later. 'Nursery Crimes,' the longest essay in the book, investigates the personality disorder called Munchausen's by proxy. A distraught parent, almost always a mother, takes her sick child to the hospital, where in spite of all remedies the child's condition only seems to worsen. What the doctors and nurses do not know, of course, is that the mother is secretly poisoning the child or otherwise inducing symptoms. Sapolsky presents a chilling account of the typical M.B.P. mother - how she wins over the hospital staff with her fortitude, how she is soon taking brownies to the night crew, advising the nurses about their love lives and otherwise working her way into the social fabric of the hospital until everyone becomes an unwitting co-conspirator in her mortally pathological scheme. (The death rate of children so abused is nearly 10 percent.) In this case, where a behavioral phenomenon so utterly violates our deepest assumptions about ourselves both as humans and as animals, Sapolsky's game pursuit of the question 'why' takes us to another emotional level. Most of the essays in 'Monkeyluv' are engaging. This one is a masterpiece.

Subject: Wizard Puts Away Childish Things From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 06:27:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/movies/17pott.html November 17, 2005 The Young Wizard Puts Away Childish Things By MANOHLA DARGIS Childhood ends for Harry Potter, the young wizard with the zigzag scar and phantasmagorical world of troubles, not long after the dragons have roared and the merpeople have screeched their empty threats through broken teeth. And, as in the book 'Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire' on which this latest and happily satisfying film adaptation is based, childhood ends with screams and a final shudder in a graveyard crowded with tombstones and evil. In a scene of startling intensity, one boy dies while another is delivered from the malevolent force that has steadily wended its way through J. K. Rowling's series toward its prey. This is the second time that Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), now 14, has experienced childhood's end, of course, as Ms. Rowling and the directors of all four films have reminded us. Orphaned at 1 by the malevolent wizard Lord Voldemort, Harry has developed over the years, books and films from a sentimental Dickensian figure into a prickly adolescent for whom girls now present almost as serious a problem as the Dark Lord. As those who have cracked the spines of the books know, their genius rests as much in Harry's dual identity as in Ms. Rowling's grasp on the fantastic: at once susceptibly human and wholly alien, a geeky outsider and an awesomely cool kid, Harry holds up a mirror to those who curl up with books and congregate in theaters, taking flight in their imaginations. As did the last film, 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,' the new one opens and ends on an ominous note. In 'Azkaban,' a giant tree whacks a bird out of the air both at the start and at the close; in 'Goblet of Fire,' it's people who get whacked. These poor creatures are not in the novel, but they cleverly bookend 'Azbakan,' setting the stage for the scarier, more dire and serious story immediately to follow, as well as for the darker stories yet to come. If the world of the first two installments, 'Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone' and 'Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,' both directed by the aggressively upbeat Chris Columbus, represented some kind of paradise for the boy wizard, it was a paradise that, we come to see, would soon be lost. The slithering snake and shivering caretaker who inaugurate 'The Goblet of Fire' make it clear that the PG action has been ratcheted up to PG-13. Like his predecessor, Alfonso Cuarón, who brought new beauty and depth to the series, the director Mike Newell embraces the saga's dark side with flair. This time, the story pivots on the Triwizard Tournament, a competition that finds Harry risking life and limb against three young challengers and a litany of more menacing foes. In between feats of derring-do with digitally enhanced dragons, there are dining-room flirtations, schoolyard confrontations and a gaggle of visiting girls who line up like so many Madelines, only to break ranks like La Femme Nikita. There are also the usual growing pains and, somewhat less thrillingly, no small amount of teenage angst. Now 16, Mr. Radcliffe pouts reasonably well, but has yet to develop the skill to make that pouting feel emotionally substantive. This might pose a serious obstacle for the films, but it hasn't yet, largely because watching him and his young co-stars - the excellent Rupert Grint as Ron, the touchingly earnest Emma Watson as Hermione - grow up onscreen has its dividends. Cinema doesn't just immortalize actors, locking them into youth, it also solicits our love in a way that books do not, since it isn't just the characters we fall for, but the actors playing them, too. Mr. Radcliffe isn't an acting titan or even one of the Culkins, but you root for him nonetheless, partly because you want Harry to triumph and partly because there is something poignant about how this actor struggles alongside his character. If the lead attraction remains somewhat unsteady on his feet, one of the constant pleasures of the films, and one of the benefits of the big Hollywood money behind them, has been their pedigreed talent. Among the British sirs, dames and quality hams returning to the series are Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall and Gary Oldman, whose brief appearance is sadly little more than a tease. New to the scene are Miranda Richardson as Rita Skeeter, a snoopy journalist who is mainly on hand to remind us that Harry is no longer a child, and Brendan Gleeson as the latest addition to the Hogwarts staff, Mad-Eye Moody. A man of garrulous temperament and removable parts, including a googly eye that he wears like a pirate's patch, Mad-Eye is a pip. As good as these actors are, nothing prepares you for the malevolent force that is Lord Voldemort and the brilliance of the actor playing him, Ralph Fiennes. Dressed in a flowing black robe that seems to float off his body rather than hang, Mr. Fiennes moves with lissome grace, his smooth white head bobbing like a cork on a sea, his fluttery hands and feet as pale and bright as beacons. For years, the movies have tried to transform this delicate beauty into a heartthrob, but as 'Schindler's List' proved, Mr. Fiennes is an actor for whom a walk on the darker side is not just a pleasure, but liberation. His Voldemort may be the greatest screen performance ever delivered without the benefit of a nose; certainly it's a performance of sublime villainy. Mr. Fiennes enters the film spectacularly, if regrettably late, whooshing into that crowded graveyard like a Butoh dancer from hell. He brings the film to an unsettling close, one that doesn't so much polish off the story as leave it in tatters. That's to the good of the film and the series, since each new story has to satisfy on its own terms as well as prime us for the next installment. If Mr. Cuarón raised the series to a new level with 'Azbakan,' Mr. Newell, best known for ingratiating mainstream fare like 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and best remembered for the bracing likes of 'Donnie Brasco,' manages to keep his contribution at a similarly high level of enthrallment. The gloom and doom may be less poetically realized, but the combination of British eccentricity, fatalism and steady-on pluck remains irresistibly intact.

Subject: American Ingenuity, Irish Residence From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 05:59:34 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/opinion/17thu2.html November 17, 2005 American Ingenuity, Irish Residence The newest expatriates aren't people. They're ideas, and we can't afford to watch them go. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Microsoft had trimmed more than $500 million from its annual tax bill by putting a small subsidiary in Dublin in charge of $16 billion in assets. The game is simple: a company sends intellectual property to a tax-haven country like Ireland and keeps the tax difference on the money it earns. The world is used to seeing manufacturing businesses move to countries where labor is cheaper, like Mexico or China. But profits from software created and designed at Microsoft's headquarters, in Redmond, Wash., should be taxed in America, not Ireland. Unfortunately, outsourcing is extending itself to taxes, in large part because the United States Congress has given businesses the loopholes to do it. That means that America's greatest asset - its intellectual property - could be sent offshore to reduce corporate tax burdens. Microsoft's subsidiary is raking in the dough from licensing fees for copyrighted software, much of it originating in the United States. And what is the subsidiary's legal address? A Dublin law firm that advertises its smarts in turning Ireland into a tax shelter. Microsoft's response is that it pays all taxes required by law. Worldwide, that came to more than $4 billion for the company's last fiscal year. Tax avoidance is a gray area, and exploiting the cracks in the system isn't a crime. But the resulting damage, in terms of bigger budget deficits at home, sure makes it feel as if something is wrong. Microsoft isn't alone. A host of American tech companies have set up shop overseas, both for business and tax purposes. And as for the destinations, they're more than just Ireland; Singapore, for example, also attracts businesses with low corporate rates. But one of Ireland's advantages for tax dodging over, say, Bermuda, is its plausibility as a home for genuine investment because it is a place where foreign corporations have built and staffed offices and plants. Microsoft has 1,100 full-time employees in Ireland, for example, compared with 40,000 in the United States. That means, in a particularly hard-to-swallow twist, that the tax havens encourage companies to send increasingly large chunks of their businesses offshore as well. By pushing more of their jobs and investments overseas, the companies make the tax havens seem more legitimate. American companies' successful hunt for low-tax opportunities overseas has been used as an argument for slashing corporate taxes at home. Maybe we should close the loopholes first, and provide the Treasury Department with the resources it needs to enforce existing law. After that, it's clear that meaningful corporate tax reform is needed. For an economy increasingly based on products with little physical substance - drug recipes, images, sounds, strings of ones and zeroes - it wouldn't take long to lose it all.

Subject: Re: American Ingenuity, Irish Residence From: Setanta To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 11:46:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: good post. the story caused waves over here. people found it hard to believe that an unheard of company (Island one or something like that) was paying Eur300m a year in tax. frankly, its embarrassing that our country looks like some off-shore tax haven like the caymans. the issue is a little complex as ireland is the european headquarters for many american companies. i think in 2003 ireland was the second biggest exporter of software in the world (after the US of course) and all Viagra is made in the Pfizer plant in Co.Cork. indeed computers, chemicals and coca cola are irelands biggest exports. while 95% of the investment is US originated, many european pharmaceuticals are based here too. there have to be stronger rules around transfer pricing, and it needs bilateral will in order to implement these rules.

Subject: Re: American Ingenuity, Irish Residence From: Emma To: Setanta Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 12:42:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I am planning to send all my lectures to Ireland and credit my income to them, there :) I have always wanted to be even more Irish than I am, and I am.

Subject: Re: American Ingenuity, Irish Residence From: Emma To: Emma Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 13:25:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The only problem will be learning the language. Now to take Irish classes :)

Subject: The Great Global Buyout Bubble From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 16:30:54 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13buyout.html?ex=1289538000&en=1f5047b78ed360b1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 13, 2005 The Great Global Buyout Bubble By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN A YEAR ago this week, Henry R. Kravis, the legendary buyout mogul who invented the modern-day private equity industry, gave a rare speech to a group of investors in a ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. In describing how far the business had come, Mr. Kravis, a slight man with a dry wit, recounted how difficult it had been for him to raise $355 million to buy one of his first companies, Houdaille Industries, in 1979. 'The availability of financing was our biggest challenge,' he said. 'Literally, we had to add up the potential capital sources at that time, which consisted of several banks and insurance companies, and one by one go out and raise the money.' Today, he has the opposite problem. Investors have been throwing money at the red-hot leveraged-buyout industry - so much so that Mr. Kravis now has to turn away some of them, rejecting their cash as a mere 'commodity.' Private equity firms, it seems, now own everything: Hertz, Neiman Marcus, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Toys 'R' Us and Warner Music, to name a few. So far this year, buyout firms have spent more than $130 billion gobbling up parts of corporate America. And with more than another $100 billion in unspent money this year still swirling around the industry, there is a lot more buying to be done. The boom isn't limited to America: in Britain buyout firms own so many companies that they now employ 18 percent of the private sector, according to the British Venture Capital Association. The trillion-dollar question is whether these shopaholics are setting themselves up for a giant fall. If the market begins to show even the faintest signs of strain, this bubble may pop, say many financial analysts as well as private equity players themselves. If that happens, the leveraged-buyout boom and bust that Michael Milken led in the 1980's could end up looking like a dress rehearsal for the mess to come. As Mr. Kravis said during his speech: 'Unfortunately, there is a flip side to having access to plentiful capital. It means that too many people without experience in building businesses have too much money.' The numbers tell the story. Over the last three years, private equity firms have had record returns through a series of quick flips, spurred in part by superlow interest rates that allowed them to borrow huge sums of money. As a result, big institutional investors like pension funds have poured $491 billion into the business, according to Thomson Venture Economics, a firm that tracks data for the industry. If you figure that the firms can borrow three to five times that amount - a conservative assumption - the industry has more than $2 trillion in purchasing power. But here's the rub: In the next three years, to reap returns on all those big-name investments they have been making, private equity firms are going to have to sell $500 billion worth of assets. The question is, to whom? Even in the last three years, in as big a bull market as they come, private equity has never sold more than $153.2 billion in a year, according to Freeman & Company. At the same time, the investment firms will have to keep spending. And the low-hanging fruit has already been taken. 'There's no question this is going to end badly for some,' said Colin C. Blaydon, a professor at the Tuck School of Management at Dartmouth and the dean emeritus of its Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship. 'It's almost a classic boom-bust cycle. When you see a big boom, people see the returns, go rushing in, stuff more money in than can be dealt with. Suddenly, something will happen that makes people say: 'Oh, my God! Look at the leverage we've got on these things. Isn't this way too risky? Shouldn't we pull back?' And then the question becomes: Does it crash like a rock or is there an adjustment down over time?' ALREADY, there are reminders that the business can turn ugly overnight. Thomas H. Lee Partners, the Boston private equity firm famed for buying Snapple for $135 million in 1992 and selling it two years later to Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion, recently was badly burned on its investment in Refco, the commodities trader that filed for bankruptcy protection last month. While the setback has hardly sunk the Lee firm, it is an illustration of how risky these investments can be. Firms may have a particularly tough time exiting some of their investments because investors are taking a more skeptical view of initial public offerings backed by private equity. In recent months, several high-profile quick flips have left critics wondering whether buyout firms were using such offerings simply to line their pockets, rather than using the proceeds to support companies. Earlier this year, the Blackstone Group sold a German chemicals company, the Celanese Corporation, to the public after owning it for less than 12 months. The firm quadrupled its money and all of the proceeds from the offering were used to pay out a special dividend to Blackstone. Mr. Kravis's firm, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company, also quadrupled its money by flipping PanAmSat, the satellite company it owned for less than a year. Investor scrutiny of private equity-backed I.P.O.'s forced Warner Music, which is owned by a consortium of buyout firms led by Thomas H. Lee Partners, to scale back its offering significantly: the firms made several last-minute adjustments that kept them from cashing out as much as they had hoped, in part as a way to inspire confidence in the offering. According to Dealogic, which tracks the industry, initial public offerings backed by private equity firms have performed worse than other offerings; the average first-day return for a private-equity-backed I.P.O. this year is 8.3 percent, compared with 13.9 percent for other offerings. Analysts ascribe some of that discrepancy to concern by investors that private equity firms will later cash out of their position, depressing the stock price. Over time, though, that gap often narrows and some private equity offerings have outperformed other offerings. Then there is the issue of sky-high prices that some private equity firms have been willing to pay for acquisitions. According to Standard & Poor's, buyout firms now pay, on average, about eight times a company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization - or Ebitda, a common measure of cash flow - for companies worth more than $1 billion. That is a significant increase from a multiple of about 6.5 only several years ago. Private equity firms have felt comfortable paying more because debt remains so cheap and banks have been willing to allow the firms to add ever-larger amounts of leverage to transactions. But if the debt market turns against them - and it is bound to do so at some point - potential buyers or public investors may not be willing to pay the same prices. In the consumer retail sector, where private equity firms have paid prices of more than 12 times Ebitda during frenzied auctions, selling may be especially tough. Tommy Hilfiger and Dunkin' Brands are both for sale, and some bidders have already left the auction, a sign that the price may be moving too high. 'I'm pessimistic about the economy, interest rates, credit markets, and all that,' said Hamilton E. James, president of the Blackstone Group. 'I feel people are paying prices that are too full. I think some mistakes will be made. We've pulled in our horns a little. We've become more conservative about the types of companies we buy, the prices we pay, the exit multiple assumptions and so on and so forth.' Of course, many people in the industry disagree with the premise that there is a bubble ready to pop. They note that private equity is still only a small part of the mergers-and-acquisitions and I.P.O. market, and they say that if they've done their homework, they will have made the right bet. Even Mr. James, the economic bear, is still bullish on the overall leveraged-buyout market. 'I have no concern about the markets being big enough to accommodate L.B.O. sponsors getting liquidity for their successful, good-quality portfolio companies,' he said. 'The very growth of private equity, don't forget, adds a whole other option: the secondary buyout,' referring to a trend in which private equity firms buy and sell businesses to one another. YOU can't argue with that. But not everyone can make a brilliant bet, and headwinds can make things more difficult. The advent of supersized deals also lurks below the surface. For years, buyout firms focused on businesses worth several billions of dollars at most. Today, flush with cash and under pressure to spend it, private equity firms are splurging on huge businesses like Hertz ($15 billion) or SunGard ($11.3 billion). The Computer Sciences Corporation is being eyed for a $12 billion takeover. But selling those businesses or putting them back in the public markets could be even more difficult because of their size. How will this shake out? Will the bubble pop? For some, absolutely. There will be bankruptcies, restructurings and fire sales. Others, who made the right bets, may be luckier and be able to ride out the bad years. 'In hot markets, you can sell crummy companies,' Mr. James said. 'In less ebullient markets, the really marginal companies take more than their disproportionate share of the pain. That's where you'll see it.'

Subject: Is a Hedge Fund Shakeout Coming? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 16:29:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/business/04view.html?ex=1283486400&en=f49918982c6c2f95&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss September 4, 2005 Is a Hedge Fund Shakeout Coming Soon? This Insider Thinks So By MARK GIMEIN OF all the sectors of the financial universe, the hedge fund world is probably the most secretive and almost certainly the most alluring. Open only to institutions and the wealthy, hedge funds offer sophisticated models of risk, access to the best financial minds and the chance for outsized returns. According to Van Hedge Advisors, hedge fund assets have topped a trillion dollars. The downside, unfortunately, is that occasionally the industry may be subject to catastrophic and unexpected losses. In 1998, many top hedge fund managers lost their shirts. Long Term Capital Management came close to collapse. Just last month, investors were reminded of exactly this kind of possibility with the apparent failure of a $400 million Connecticut hedge fund managed by the Bayou Group. Andrew W. Lo, a finance professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been studying hedge fund failures and risks, and he says that another hedge fund industry shakeout is likely in the near future. Mr. Lo runs a company, AlphaSimplex, that manages a $400 million hedge fund - so he is not looking for a reason to say hedge funds are in trouble. But that is exactly what he's saying, backing it up with powerful data and a couple of unexpected theories. Mr. Lo has been working on the economics of hedge funds since the mid-1990's, but he started thinking seriously about how to measure risk across the industry in 1999, when he was first approached by backers to start his own hedge fund; it opened in 2003. He knew that sophisticated investors would want lots of data about his fund's returns and about the risk level he would assume, so he started looking carefully at the return data provided by other funds. Traditionally, economists have thought that big up-and-down fluctuations in returns indicated risky investments, so many hedge fund investors have hoped to see a pattern of smooth and even returns. But Mr. Lo quickly saw that lots of hedge funds were posting returns that were just too smooth to be realistic. Digging deeper, he found that funds with hard-to-appraise, illiquid investments - like real estate or esoteric interest rate swaps - showed returns that were particularly even. In those cases, he concluded, managers had no way to measure their fluctuations, and simply assumed that their value was going up steadily. The problem, unfortunately, is that those are exactly the kinds of investments that can be subject to big losses in a crisis. In 1998, investors retreated en masse from such investments. Now, in a paper to be published by the University of Chicago, Mr. Lo, working with his graduate students, has come to a disturbing conclusion: that smooth returns, far from proving that hedge funds are safe, may be a warning sign for the industry. (The paper is at http://web.mit.edu/alo/www/Papers/systemic2.pdf.) That doesn't necessarily hold true for every individual fund, but as Mr. Lo shows in his paper, measuring the smoothness of returns gives economists a good way to estimate the level of relatively illiquid investments in the hedge fund world. The approach lets economists measure industrywide liquidity risks without knowing the details of the investments - information that hedge funds just don't give out. By Mr. Lo's measures, hedge fund investments are less liquid now than they have been in 20 years. His work shows that the same pattern of investing preceded the 1998 global hedge fund meltdown and the 1987 stock market crash. But that's not the only reason for worry. He says that crises like that of 1998 may be more predictable than was previously thought - and that another crisis is likely. The 1998 panic is generally thought to have been set off by the Russian government's default on its debt. But Mr. Lo points out that only a minuscule proportion of the world's hedge fund investments were in Russian government bonds. In his paper, he shows that the catastrophic losses of 1998 were preceded by a noticeable series of months of mediocre performance. Mr. Lo argues that while a hedge fund crisis appears to be sudden and to be caused by unforeseen events, the breakdown is only the late stage of the problem. As more hedge funds compete for the same slice of the pie, he says, their managers feel that they have no choice but to 'leverage up,' juicing their returns by borrowing more money to make bigger investments. That, in turn, makes the investments more prone to a sudden credit crisis. Hedge funds that are highly leveraged are vulnerable to having their lenders - banks and big brokerage firms - cut off credit when they think that their money may be at risk. And Mr. Lo thinks that lenders would do exactly that in an industrywide downturn. That would force hedge funds to close out their positions at the worst possible time - the kind of cycle that brought down Long Term Capital Management. Here again, his data suggests that the current situation is serious. His research indicates that the industry may have already entered a period of lower returns that signal a prelude to crisis. He points to a downturn in April that hit virtually every category of hedge fund pursuing every kind of strategy. 'The concern that I and others have is that we're approaching the perfect financial storm where all the arrows line up in one direction,' Mr. Lo said. The more money that is invested in hedge funds, he said, 'the bigger the storm will be.' What might set off a crash is a matter of guesswork. Mr. Lo thinks that an oil-price increase to $100 a barrel, a level predicted by one Goldman Sachs analyst, could do it. Or , he said, a tightening of lending rules at Fannie Mae, the mortgage giant, could set off a 'humongous unwinding' in credit markets. But Mr. Lo, who refers to some of his research as 'measuring how strong the camel's back is and how much straw is already on it,' thinks that the spark could be something much smaller. ALREADY, his work has prompted hedge fund managers and investors to pay more attention to the hidden risks of funds that seem to be performing quite well. Clifford S. Asness, managing principal at AQR Capital Management, a large and successful hedge fund based in Greenwich, Conn., says Mr. Lo's work forces fund managers in general to confront the risks: 'He demonstrates simple models that generally show a winning payoff but occasionally really die.' So what should be done? Mr. Lo sees no way to eliminate the cyclical nature of hedge fund investing, but he says we can learn from the mistakes of funds that fail. He advocates the creation of a financial equivalent of the teams at the National Transportation Safety Board that swoop in to investigate airplane crashes. The nightmare script for Mr. Lo would be a series of collapses of highly leveraged hedge funds that bring down the major banks or brokerage firms that lend to them. That's a possibility that the entire hedge fund industry - secretive and fractious though it is - has a huge interest in avoiding.

Subject: Finding Values From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 12:56:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The problem in investing just now is reasonably high domestic stock prices, high long term bond prices, and high real estate prices. There are relative values, but when assets as a whole are highly prices look for returns that are moderate and less than returns from 1980 to 2000. However, high domestic prices for assets leaves the possibility of relatively attractively priced international assets. From my perspective, this is what professional investors have already understood.

Subject: Paul Krugman the sepaker From: Elizabeth To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 12:43:40 (EST) Email Address: N/A Message: Paul Krugman was kind enough to give a guest lecture at my school (Santa Monica Community College) yesterday. I just wanted to take the time to say what an incredible speaker he is. He engaged the audience and was kind enough to open the floor for questions. I am now a Paul Krugman fan for life.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman the sepaker From: Terri To: Elizabeth Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 12:57:44 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Agreed!

Subject: World's Diminishing Forests From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 12:03:20 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/earth/15forest.html?ex=1289710800&en=f8f16c027c1fdc28&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 China Is Bright Spot in Dark Report on the World's Diminishing Forests By ANDREW C. REVKIN Widespread tree planting in China has slowed the rate at which the earth's forested area is dwindling, but the clearing of tropical forests, much of it in areas never previously cut, continues to grow, according to a new United Nations report. The study was published yesterday by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based in Rome, and is online at fao.org/forestry. 'While good progress is being made in many places, unfortunately forest resources are still being lost or degraded at an alarmingly high rate,' said Hosny El-Lakany, assistant director-general of forestry for the food and agriculture agency. The slowing rate of forest loss is encouraging, some forest experts say, but biologists contend that most acreage gained by plantation forestry contains a fraction of the plant and animal diversity destroyed with virgin forests. Forest cover has generally been expanding in North America, Europe and China and diminishing in the tropics. The report said that worldwide just over 50,000 square miles of forest - an area a bit smaller than New York State - had been cleared or logged annually since 2000. Nearly half of that annual loss affected tracts with no evidence of previous significant human use, the report said. In the report, which compared forest trends over the last five years with those through the 1990's, South America passed Africa in net annual loss of forests (the difference between areas added as plantations and lost through cutting or burning). Much recent clearing in South America has occurred in the southern Amazon basin, where jungle is rapidly being converted to pasture and farmland, especially soybean fields, the report said. Asia has seen an extraordinary turnaround in a decade: it lost about 3,000 square miles of forest a year in the 90's but gained nearly 4,000 annually since 2000, said Mette Loyche Wilkie of the F.A.O. But almost all of that change has occurred because of China's new forest policy, she said. Tropical forests elsewhere in Asia are still being cleared at a rising pace, the report said. Several independent forest experts said the study was a valuable rough estimate of global trends, but cautioned that it was generated using data provided by countries with widely varying track records in monitoring deforestation. 'The F.A.O. is doing the best it can given what the governments are providing,' said Mila Alvarez, who tracks forest trends for World Resources Institute and Global Forest Watch (globalforestwatch.org). She said they and other groups were preparing to develop a way to use satellite imagery to analyze forest changes and to verify government estimates.

Subject: Hypochondriac's Bible From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 12:00:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/health/15case.html November 15, 2005 Merck Manual, the Hypochondriac's Bible By HARRIET BROWN A copy of The Merck Manual of Medical Information has lived on my night table for over 25 years. Sometimes the thick red book tops the bedside pile; other times it's buried under a stack of newer obsessions. But it's always within easy reach for emergencies, bouts of insomnia and ordinary bedtime browsing. My postcollege roommate introduced me to The Merck in 1979. In the beginning, I paged through her copy each time I needed reassurance about some twinge, tingle or suspected tumor. When I realized I was borrowing it every day, I knew it was time to buy my own. The Merck, as we devotees call it, was first published in 1899. It was a little book, only 192 pages, aimed at doctors, pharmacists and, presumably, those in situations that had no doctors or pharmacists. Albert Schweitzer took a copy of it to Africa in 1913; 16 years later, Adm. Richard Byrd hauled one to the South Pole. I hauled my copy mostly to the bathroom, where I would lie in a steaming tub and pore over my symptoms du jour. Sometimes I'd turn pages at random, dipping into chapters like a dowser hunting for water, trusting to intuition and luck to find whatever I was looking for. Back then I read The Merck the way some people go to horror movies, seeking the cathartic release of other people's troubles, the rush of catastrophe averted. I might have problems, but at least I didn't have, say, cardiac tamponade - 'the most serious complication of pericarditis,' according to the book. I didn't have tropical sprue or a pulmonary embolism or, God forbid, Budd-Chiari syndrome. At least, I didn't think I had any of them. I was pretty sure, on the other hand, that I did have hypochondria, or, in the lingo of The Merck, hypochondriasis. When, in my 20's, I learned that I had mitral valve prolapse, I inspected at some length The Merck's line drawing of the heart. This was in the pre-Internet era, when you couldn't just Google a four-color, 3-D rendering of the heart or any other internal organ. There was a diagram of the heart's electric circuitry, a road map more engrossing to me than any terrestrial topography. There was a representation of the left anterior descending artery, the superior vena cava, the atrioventricular node. I studied atrial fibrillation and flutter, sick sinus syndrome and tachycardia. The very words were glorious, Latinate, thrilling in the way they both distanced me from what was going on in my body and deepened my understanding. I learned the fine art of diagnosis from The Merck, too, despite the fact that I never got around to attending med school. To this day, I am known as something of a lay medical expert among my friends and family. They bring me their symptoms; I tell them what to ask their doctors. When I don't have a hunch, I look it up. I am, if I say so myself, very often right. In my 30's, I turned to The Merck whenever my children got sick. I preferred it to the pediatric bible of my generation, Dr. Benjamin Spock's 'Baby and Child Care,' whose prescriptive, often judgmental tone got on my nerves. Even when The Merck led me astray, it seemed better attuned to the situation. Once at 2 in the morning, when my 8-year-old broke out in a blistering rash and spiked a fever of 104, my frantic page-turning prompted me to diagnose smallpox. (I was wrong, obviously; she had Kawasaki syndrome, which in some ways isn't so far off.) On the other hand, The Merck can be frustrating when you're in worried-parent mode. Try looking up a simple stomachache in the index. You'll find a list under stomach that includes 'acid in,' 'arteriovenous malformations in,' 'bleeding in,' 'intubation of,' 'obstruction of' and 'tumors of' but nothing under garden-variety stomach pain. Still, The Merck is more than just a handy reference book. While I can now find online answers to any question that occurs to me (and many that haven't), my copy of The Merck is dog-eared, its front cover curling back, its two-inch-wide spine broken in several places. For one thing, it's a tangible object; its unimaginative chapter headings and small type inspire a bibliophile's affection the way a computer monitor never could. But my attachment goes beyond the merely physical. For me, The Merck is a talisman against the frightening unknown. Pretty much all of the life-shattering ailments that have struck my family and friends have been things I've never heard of. So by worrying about ailments like endocrine neoplasia or Refsum disease, I am actively warding them off, keeping myself and my loved ones safe. Of course, I'm aware this is magical thinking on, say, a 3-year-old's level. Still, so far, so good. It is human nature to want to name things, to put a face on the bogeyman. The scariest thing of all - death - has a name, and it is no less scary for having one. But there's an entry for that, too, in The Merck Manual. And somehow that comforts me.

Subject: Women Take the Upper Hand From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 11:59:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/theater/reviews/14shre.html November 14, 2005 In Classic Battle of the Sexes, Women Take the Upper Hand By PHOEBE HOBAN What could be more apt than the Queen's Company, an all-female acting troupe, tackling Shakespeare's 'Taming of the Shrew,' perhaps the most famous war-of-the-sexes comedy of all time - a play that has over the years caused manifold arguments about whether it is sexist and misogynistic, or cleverly, quite the opposite. But don't be mistaken; just because Petruchio (and every other character) is played by a woman doesn't mean this is a feminist diatribe. Instead, the use of women to play men turns the usual Shakespearean gender-bending - from the ladies dressed as lads (and vice versa) in so many of his plays, and the Elizabethan theatrical tradition of men playing women - on its head. By doing so, the Queen's Company production provides a subtle subtext to Shakespeare's bawdy tale of a wild woman apparently tamed by her sadistic mate, who uses reverse psychology to win her over. (Although the question of who, in the end, has the upper hand is one of the play's most compelling elements.) In this version of 'Taming of the Shrew' there is no question that women rule. Indeed, the company's director, Rebecca Patterson, has reinvented the traditional 'Induction' involving Christopher Sly, replacing it with a quickie modern prologue in which the actress who plays Kate (Carey Urban) lip-syncs the Cyndi Lauper anthem 'Girls Just Want to Have Fun,' as she strips off her red sweat shirt and zips on her Elizabethan bodice. (Not that this foreshadowing is really necessary.) It is a credit to the skills of the cast that you almost immediately forget any gender issues but those central to the play itself: the eight women (many of whom play multiple roles) are entirely convincing as men - and in some cases even quite attractive men. And then there is Queen's Company's coup de grâce: the inflatable doll who plays Bianca (billed in the program by her trade name, 'Little Sweetie Doll'). The Queen's Company, it seems, just wants to have fun, and fun they have, whether it's restructuring text or adding pop musical interludes. Kate's final speech is used twice, partially recited the first time by Petruchio in the opening scene. There is a hilarious dream sequence featuring a routine set to Tina Turner's 'I Don't Wanna Fight.' The madcap wedding has become a multicultural affair, with Indian music and garb. (But the scene in which Petruchio subverts the wedding has been almost completely eliminated.) Virtually all of Bianca's lines have been cut, reducing this secondary female character to not much more than a very funny sex toy _ - her tango with Lucentio is a high point - until she suddenly pipes up at the very end. Samarra, as the handsome, dreadlocked Petruchio, and Natalie Lebert, who plays both Petruchio's long-suffering servant, Grumio, and Lucentio's servant, Tranio, are standouts. Also especially good are Amy Driesler as Lucentio/Cambio, and Karen Berthel, who plays Bianca's suitor, Gremio, as well as several other roles. Beverley Prentice makes a fine Hortensio/Litio. Carey Urban's Kate takes a while to bloom but totally holds her own (literally) by the play's end - when she pins Petruchio to the floor. The Queen's Company's 'Taming' is anything but tame.

Subject: Ireland's Neutrality From: Setanta To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 11:35:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: In the past few weeks several Islamic extremists have accused Ireland of assisting the US in the war on terror. they have further asserted that ireland is as legitimate a target as the US and UK. while the thought that any country should be called a target by those animals sickens me, it got me thinking of the roots of Irish neutrality. Ireland was not neutral in WW1, and lost a lot of it's young men in that senseless slaughter. WW2 is a totally different kettlefish however. It being, perhaps, the only 'justifiable' war in existence. a friend of mine sent this to me. when i compare the dignity this speech exudes to our mealy mouthed moron of a leader, i feel standards of public office have slipped somewhat. Mr. de Valera (1916 Rising vetern, Irish statesman and American citizen) was responding to Mr. Churchill's radio broadcast about Ireland's lack of involvement in the war being at Britian's whim. Not sure when this was broadcast. 'I have here before me the pencilled notes from which I broadcast to you on 3 September 1939. I had so many other things to do on that day that I could not find time to piece them together into a connected statement. From these notes I see that I said that noting the march of events your Government had decided its policy the previous spring, and had announced its decision to the world. The aim of our policy, I said, would to keep our people out of the war. I reminded you of what I had said in the Dail that in our circumstances, with our history and our experience after the last war and with a part of our country still unjustly severed from us; no other policy was possible. Certain newspapers have been very persistent in looking for my answer to Mr. Churchill's recent broadcast. I know the kind of answer I am expected to make. I know the answer that first springs to the lips of every man of Irish blood who heard or read that speech, no matter in what circumstances or in what part of the world he found himself. I know the reply I would have given a quarter of a century ago. But I have deliberately decided that that is not the reply I shall make tonight. I shall strive not to be guilty of adding any fuel to the flames of hatred and passion which, if continued to be fed, promise to burn up whatever is left by the war of decent human feeling in Europe. Allowances can be made for Mr. Churchill's statement, however unworthy, in the first flush of his victory. No such excuse could be found for me in this quieter atmosphere. There are, however some things which it is my duty to say, some things which it is essential to say. I shall try to say them as dispassionately as I can. Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain's necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean Britain's necessity would become a moral code and that when this necessity became sufficiently great, other people's rights were not to count. It is quite true that other great Powers believe in this same code-in their own regard-and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous succession of wars-World War No. I and World War No. 2 and shall it be World War No. 3? Surely Mr. Churchill must see that if his contention be admitted in our regard, a like justification can be framed for similar acts of aggression elsewhere and no small nation adjoining a great Power could ever hope to be permitted to go it own way in peace. It is indeed fortunate that Britain's necessity did not reach the point when Mr. Churchill would have acted. All credit to him that he successfully resisted the temptation which, I have not doubt, may times assailed him in his difficulties and to which I freely admit many leaders might have easily succumbed. It is indeed; hard for the strong to be just to the weak, but acting justly always has its rewards. By resisting his temptation in this instance, Mr. Churchill, instead of adding another horrid chapter to the already bloodstained record of the relations between England and this country, has advanced the cause of international morality an important step-one of the most important, indeed, that can be taken on the road to the establishment of any sure basis for peace. As far as the peoples of these two islands are concerned, it may, perhaps, mark a fresh beginning towards the realisation of that mutual comprehension to which Mr. Churchill has referred for which, I hope, he will not merely pray but work also, as did his predecessor who will yet, I believe, find the honoured place in British history which is due to him, as certainly he will find it in any fair record of the relations between Britain and ourselves. That Mr. Churchill should be irritated when our neutrality stood in the way of what he thought he vitally needed, I understand, but that he or any thinking person in Britain or elsewhere should fail to see the reason for our neutrality, I find it hard to conceive. I would like to put a hypothetical question-it is a question I have put to many Englishmen since the last war. Suppose Germany had won the war, had invaded and occupied England, and that after a long lapse of time and many bitter struggles, she was finally brought to acquiesce in admitting England's right to freedom, and let England go, but not the whole of England, all but, let us say, the six southern counties. These six southern counties, those, let us suppose, commanding the entrance to the narrow seas, Germany had singled out and insisted on holding herself with a view to weakening England as a whole, and maintaining the securing of her own communications through the Straits of Dover. Let us suppose further, that after all this had happened, Germany was engaged in a great war in which she could show that she was on the side of freedom of a number of small nations, would Mr. Churchill as an Englishman who believed that his own nation had as good a right to freedom as any other, not freedom for a part merely, but freedom for the whole-would he, whilst Germany still maintained the partition of his country and occupied six counties of it, would he lead this partitioned England to join with Germany in a crusade? I do not think Mr. Churchill would. Would he think the people of partitioned England an object of shame if they stood neutral in such circumstances? I do not think Mr. Churchill would. Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the War. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliation's, famines, massacres in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but that each time on returning consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul? Mr. Churchill is justly proud of his nation's perseverance against heavy odds. But we in this island are still prouder of our people's perseverance for freedom through all the centuries. We, of our time, have played our part in the perseverance, and we have pledged our selves to the dead generations who have preserved intact for us this glorious heritage, that we, too, will strive to be faithful to the end, and pass on this tradition unblemished. Many a time in the past there appeared little hope except that hope to which Mr. Churchill referred, that by standing fast a time would come when, to quote his own words: '…the tyrant would make some ghastly mistake which would alter the whole balance of the struggle.' I sincerely trust, however, that it is not thus our ultimate unity and freedom will be achieved, though as a younger man I confess I prayed even for that, and indeed at times saw not other. In latter years, I have had a vision of a nobler and better ending, better for both our people and for the future of mankind. For that I have now been long working. I regret that it is not to this nobler purpose that Mr. Churchill is lending his hand rather than, by the abuse of a people who have done him no wrong, trying to find in a crisis like the present excuse for continuing the injustice of the mutilation of our country. I sincerely hope that Mr. Churchill has not deliberately chosen the latter course but, if he has, however regretfully we may say it, we can only say, be it so. Meanwhile, even as a partitioned small nation, we shall go on and strive to play our part in the world continuing unswervingly to work for the cause of true freedom and for peace and understanding.'

Subject: France Is Trying, Discreetly From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 10:35:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/international/europe/16france.html November 16, 2005 France Is Trying, Discreetly, to Integrate Television a Bit By CRAIG S. SMITH PARIS - Audrey Pulvar's posture straightens incrementally as a television producer counts down from five in a broadcast studio here, and at 7:30 p.m. sharp, her image flashes onto screens across the country. 'Bonsoir,' she begins before delivering the day's news on France 3, a state-run channel. But there is something new about the news in France, thanks to Ms. Pulvar. She is black, one of the first minority anchors to appear regularly here on prime-time television and part of a gradual effort to mold the country's communications media into a more representative shape. 'On TV the faces are all white and Gallic, but in the street France is more multicolored,' said Édouard Pellet, a journalist of Algerian descent, who is charged with diversifying on-camera personalities for the state-run television networks. 'We have fallen behind the reality of the country.' France, with a larger proportion of non-European minorities than any of its neighbors, has been locked for decades in what Americans might consider a 1960's-style denial of the increasingly multiethnic makeup of its society. The disparity between the country's monochromatic image of itself and the multicolored reality frustrates young citizens from non-European immigrant backgrounds and has added to their sense of alienation, which was expressed most graphically in the arson attacks that have swept the country this month. President Jacques Chirac, speaking of the unrest, acknowledged the failing when he told the nation on Monday night that he would meet with the heads of the French media to see how they could 'better reflect the French reality of today.' Ms. Pulvar, 34, came to Paris in 2000 to look for work after appearing for six years on television in her native Martinique and was told point-blank that 'the French public is not ready' for a nonwhite face to present the news. Even more junior on-camera jobs were off limits; 'I already have a black and I don't need another one,' one television executive told her. 'There are many minorities on the production side, but in front of the camera was reserved for Caucasians,' Ms. Pulvar said, sitting in a cafe before her broadcast. France is slowly changing. In 2000 an actors' campaign called Collective Equality pushed for diversity and got some attention, though it fizzled with little effect. Ms. Pulvar said she noticed a shift in 2002 when the state television group, France Télévisions, finally gave her a chance at an on-camera job. The next year, large photographs of 13 women, 8 of them of Arab or African origin, were hung on the facade of the National Assembly to represent Marianne, France's idealized embodiment of freedom. But efforts to promote the visibility of minorities have lagged, in part because of the French ideal, enshrined in the Constitution, that all citizens are equal regardless of race or religion. The clause has long been interpreted as prohibiting affirmative action for ethnic minorities, even if such initiatives have been undertaken in less sensitive areas. 'We've adopted a law to help women, a law to help the disabled,' Mr. Pellet said. 'The only sector of society that we haven't dared touch is the ethnic-racial realm, which affects society most deeply.' The gap between the France seen on television and that seen in the streets began to bother even television executives, who could see the rest of the world passing them by. The television network moved Ms. Pulvar to Marseille, where she anchored the news in one of the most right-wing regions of the country. Despite the management's fears, the channel neither lost viewers nor drew letters of protest. The state-run television group has since embarked on a discreet affirmative action program, called the positive action integration plan, tailored to avoid transgressing the country's rules against hiring on the basis of religious or ethnic origin. Because affirmative action on the basis of race or religion is effectively banned, the company keeps no records that could be used to accuse it of hiring people because of their origins. 'We've never written it down anywhere that we hire on the basis of color,' Mr. Pellet said. But he showed a visitor a paper listing the plan's seven points, including diversifying the ethnicity of guests and subjects treated in news and other programming to reflect the 10 percent of the society that is of foreign origin. He declined to hand over a copy. 'No one will accept positive discrimination here,' he said. 'The weight of centuries is against it.' He added that the company was using all the means permitted by the current law to diversify. 'We're doing things quietly,' Mr. Pellet said. 'If we make too much noise it will polarize people; it will become a legal question. Instead of talking, we act.' The group has people in each of its five channels who focus on developing minority talent and broadening the channels' entertainment and editorial content to include minority issues. It has also accelerated the training and recruitment of people of non-European backgrounds, financing, for example, a journalism scholarship at the influential Political Studies Institute of Paris. Of the six people in the program so far, four are members of ethnic minorities. Mr. Pellet says the barrier has been broken, even if the face of French television has not changed very much yet. 'We have to prime the pump first,' he said. 'It takes time.' The television group is negotiating with its unions to allow members of minorities from outside the network to compete for job openings that normally would go only to people already holding contracts. Many people in France remain wary of such efforts, concerned that promoting television personalities based on ethnicity will fragment the audience and deepen prejudices. 'We're not accustomed to seeing someone on television who is different,' said Rachid Arhab, France's most famous minority broadcast journalist, who is ambivalent about affirmative action. 'In the end the public will question their objectivity, saying that 'we can't believe Mourad,' for example, 'because he's speaking for the Arabs.' ' Members of minorities are still few and far between on French television - there are none with their own talk shows, for example, and no prominent on-camera Asians. Even in advertising, minorities are relegated to stereotypes. One current campaign shows black soccer players brandishing bananas in fruit advertisements. Ms. Pulvar said she had seen a television commercial for a sport utility vehicle in Canada that featured a black family and then saw the same commercial in France, but redone with a white family. She says she thinks that the situation will continue to improve but that more must be done to diversify French society. 'Progress in the media is important, but it's not enough,' she said. 'I'll feel the situation has really changed when there are minority ministers in government.'

Subject: Marshes Fight for Their Lives From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 05:04:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/earth/15marsh.html?ex=1289710800&en=debcbd6c82392cec&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 Louisiana's Marshes Fight for Their Lives By CORNELIA DEAN Shea Penland nosed his truck along a mud-covered street, past uprooted trees, cars leaning crazily on fences, torn-off roofs, and piles of ruined furniture, wallboard and shingles - the waterlogged evidence that Hurricane Katrina had been through the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette. Twice, he turned to avoid streets blocked by brick houses apparently torn from their slab foundations and dumped blocks away. Finally, he spotted what he was seeking. 'Look at that,' he said, pointing to what looked like misshaped bowling balls tufted with long strands of yellow grass, seemingly thrown onto the porch and through the gaping doorway of a wrecked brick ranch house. 'Marshballs.' For Dr. Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, these clumps of black mud knitted with roots and fronds are an alarming sight. The marshballs, some as large as a sofa, others as small as a shoebox, had floated from wetlands to the east. Dr. Penland says they are more evidence that after decades of human interference, the marshes of Louisiana are in deep, deep trouble. 'A healthy marsh is pretty resilient,' he said. 'A stressed marsh - storms will physically break the marsh down.' Now, as Louisiana struggles to recover from the storm, scientists like Dr. Penland are studying this marsh wreckage and the marshes themselves for clues to what ails them and how they might recover. The questions are complicated, and the answers turn on a number of factors, including the region's geology, the ways people have engineered the flow of the Mississippi River, and the marsh-killing activities of the oil and gas industry. These issues inevitably lead to a far more difficult question: whether some marshlands, even inhabited marshlands, must be given up to the encroaching Gulf of Mexico. Louisiana marshes are a nursery for many fish caught in the gulf, and they support the state's rich Cajun culture. Much of the nation's oil and gas passes through them. And though hurricane damage to New Orleans and other towns drew more attention, the storms 'have caused a significant loss of wetlands and marshes and massive coastal erosion throughout the entire region,' S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal scientist with the United States Geological Survey, told a Congressional hearing last month. He said some marshy areas east of the Mississippi River lost 25 percent of their land areas in Hurricane Katrina, which came ashore more than 100 miles east of New Orleans. A strong hurricane that approached New Orleans from the south, along the path of the river, would do even more damage, he said. Over the years, scores of scientists have struggled to determine the best way to approach Louisiana's vanishing wetlands. Last week, experts convened by the National Academy of Sciences reported their recommendations in an evaluation of the state's major marsh-restoration proposal. Though they praised most of the plan's major components as scientifically sound, they said that it would reduce annual wetland loss only about 20 percent and that it was time to consider what areas could be preserved and what areas could not. That attitude is anathema to much of the state's business and political establishment, according to Oliver Houck, a professor at the Tulane University School of Law who specializes in environmental issues. He said a large obstacle to confronting wetland loss was what he called the 'destroy and restore' philosophy, the longstanding practice of interfering with the marsh - for flood control, navigation, agriculture, oil or other gain - in hopes that engineering could restore it. That, more or less, has been the history of this coastal region since Europeans made their homes here more than 300 years ago. Coastal Louisiana is constructed of millenniums of mud, sediment carried by the Mississippi and deposited in its delta. The mud under the west side of New Orleans is about 200 feet thick; it compacts and sinks under its own weight. But when the river flowed naturally, regular floods carried silt from the heartland into the marshes, maintaining their elevation. Levees and other flood-control and navigational efforts changed all that. Deprived of nourishing infusions of silt, the marshes began to sink, and this subsidence was accelerated when the petroleum industry began pumping out oil. According to the Geological Survey, since the 1930's Louisiana has lost more than 1,900 square miles of wetland, an area as large as Delaware. Though the loss has slowed since the early 1980's, when a binge of canal-cutting and pipeline construction by the oil industry accelerated it to 40 square miles a year, it has not stopped. Dr. Penland, who has spent almost all of his career studying the coastal islands and marshes of Louisiana, estimates the annual loss at 12 square miles or so; others say 20 or more. The Geological Survey estimates that if things continue as they are, 700 square miles more will vanish by 2050. 'The whole surface is sinking,' said Abby Sallenger, another coastal scientist with the agency. 'It's almost changing before your eyes. It's grassland turning into open water, the ponds turn into lakes.' In theory, sea level rise from global climate change will only make things worse, although things in Louisiana are already so bad, Dr. Penland said, that 'for us that's insignificant.' Many hope controlled diversions of river water into the marshes, one remedy included in the state plan, will help restore the natural balance. Others are doubtful. Mr. Houck cited a project at Caernarvon, on a bend in the river south of Chalmette, where water is diverted into the marsh. After Hurricane Katrina, 'half of that marsh was destroyed outright and half of what remains is iffy,' he said. 'A lot of it came off like hair ripped from someone's head' and probably ended up in Chalmette, he continued. Also, Dr. Penland said, diversion projects small enough to be feasible and locally acceptable are dwarfed by the magnitude of the problem. For example, when scientists at Louisiana State used computer models to study a diversion proposal for Maurepas Swamp, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, they said it would take 50 years to restore 5,000 to 10,000 acres to sustainability. Efforts like that, however valuable, will not be enough, Dr. Penland said. 'We have to not just mirror nature, we have to accelerate the way nature works. The solutions have to be proportional to the problem.' Much of the sediment that enters Mississippi River tributaries never makes it to Louisiana. By some estimates, 80 percent is trapped behind Missouri River dams. Plus, over the years the Louisiana economy has come to depend on the river's being constrained in its channel. Large infusions of fresh water would flood some homes and businesses and alter salt marsh habitats, with potentially harmful effects on commercially important species like oysters. 'We want the dirt without the water,' Dr. Penland said. The only way to get it, he said, is dredging and then transporting the dredged material to the marsh that needs it, possibly through the kind of slurry technology used to move coal. This technology has been in use for decades, but it remains to be seen if these kinds of measures can or will be applied in time. 'There should be bolder, long-term projects for sediment delivery in areas in need than were put forth in the near-term plan,' Robert G. Dean, a coastal engineer at the University of Florida who led the academy panel, said Wednesday at a news conference. The panel also discussed making major changes in the state's coastal geography by diverting enough water flow to cause the river's Birdfoot Delta area to disintegrate, a process that would end up redistributing its sediment along the coast to the west. Or engineers could construct a 'third delta' (the second being the delta of the Atchafalaya River), by diverting it at Donaldsonville, between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and sending it toward the gulf. Though large-scale projects like these offer potentially large benefits, the panel said, they also come with engineering challenges and likely opposition from property owners. As Dr. Dean said Wednesday, progress will require 'tiptoeing through the potential minefield of stakeholders.' They should be involved in decisions as early as possible, scientists involved with the report said. That will particularly be the case, they say, when it comes to deciding which settled areas can be preserved and which must be abandoned, an approach the academy implicitly endorsed even in the title of its report, 'Drawing Louisiana's New Map.' Mr. Houck said it might be possible to 'take major towns and ring them - Houma, Morgan City, Thibodaux, places like that.' But, he went on, 'if we aren't going to draw a line and try to protect every little town, we would have to do some serious people relocation, and that would humanely require compensation.' The alternative, he said, 'is to build the largest levee system in the world' around the entire southern part of the state. 'We'd cut right through the marsh, a Maginot Line - and about as effective, too,' he said, referring to a French line of defense that infamously failed in World War II. Where does this leave Louisiana? 'Doing the things we can do now,' said Dr. Penland, once again behind the wheel of his truck, but this time en route to Port Fourchon, a major oil installation on the coast. 'What was proposed 20 years ago in the beginning of my career is coming around now.' He was heading south on Route 308, a two-lane strip that barely rises above the acres of salt-marsh grass and open water glimmering in the sun. Here and there, the leafless trunk of a dead oak tree rose from the grass. Dr. Penland said these gray skeletons signaled that this wetland was once a freshwater marsh dry enough for a tree to grow. Every now and then, the truck would pass a house or trailer on stilts, marshballs lodged against its steps or under its porch. In places, piles of them had been pushed off the pavement onto the narrow shoulder. The beach at Port Fourchon, or what remains of it, is part of one of the major projects in the state plan. It lost what little remained of its sand in the hurricane, leaving a row of giant plasticized sandbags, perhaps 3 or 4 feet in diameter and 12 feet long, called 'boudin' bags after the local sausage. Behind them, a sharp scarp marked the edge of a marsh, broken and buried under tons of grass and other plant debris. Dr. Penland got out of the truck and looked around. 'I have never seen such an extent of marsh wreckage,' he said. The Port Fourchon effort, which Dr. Penland is leading, involves pumping replacement sand onto the beach and pumping in additional sediment to restore the marsh behind. Similar sediment-pumping efforts in 2004 restored 50 acres of nearby wetland at a cost of about $300,000, Dr. Penland said. 'That's cheap marsh.' But this kind of restoration works only when a marsh 'just needs to be enhanced a bit,' he said, and results are temporary. 'There is no way you are going to fix any piece of coastal real estate forever,' Dr. Penland said. 'That's the hard fact you just have to face.'

Subject: 'Orangutan Heaven and Human Hell' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 05:00:48 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/science/15conv.html?ex=1289710800&en=5432aeb95fd8a922&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 Revealing Behavior in 'Orangutan Heaven and Human Hell' By CONNIE ROGERS People keep asking Carel van Schaik if there is anything left to discover in fieldwork. 'I tell them, 'A lot,' ' said Dr. van Schaik, the Dutch primatologist. 'Look at gorillas. We've been studying them for decades, and we just now have discovered that they use tools. The same is true for orangutans.' In 1992, when Dr. van Schaik began his research in Suaq, a swamp forest in northern Sumatra, orangutans were believed to be the only great ape that lived a largely solitary life foraging for hard-to-find fruit thinly distributed over a large area. Researchers thought they were slow-moving creatures - some even called them boring - that didn't have time to do much but eat. But the orangutans Dr. van Schaik found in Suaq turned all that on its head. More than 100 were gathered together doing things the researchers had never seen in the wild. Dr. van Schaik worked there for seven years and came to the radical conclusion that orangutans were 'every bit as sociable, as technically adept and as culturally capable' as chimpanzees. His new conclusions about how apes - and humans - got to be so smart are detailed in his latest book, 'Among Orangutans: Red Apes and the Rise of Human Culture.' Now a professor of anthropology at the University of Zurich and the director of its Anthropological Institute and Museum, Dr. van Schaik discussed his findings in a recent telephone interview from his office there. Q. What were you looking for in the Suaq swamp? A. We'd been working in a mountainous area in northern Sumatra, and it felt as if we were missing the full picture of orangutan social organization. All higher primates - all of them - live in distinct social units except for the orangutan. That's a strong anomaly, and I wanted to solve it. Q. How was Suaq different from other orangutan habitats? A. It was an extraordinarily productive swamp forest with by far the highest density of orangutans - over twice the record number. The animals were the most sociable we'd ever seen: they hang out together, they're nice to each other, they even share food. Q. But you almost left this orangutan habitat after a year? A. We'd never worked in a place like this, and it was exhausting. To get into the swamp where they were we would wade through water - sometimes chest deep, two hours in, two hours out every day. There were countless species of mosquitoes. It was what I call orangutan heaven and human hell. But then someone noticed that they were poking sticks into tree holes. It sounded like tool use, so we decided to build boardwalks in the swamp, and things got a lot easier. Q. Were orangutans using tools? A. It turned out Suaq had an amazing repertoire of tool use. They shape sticks to get at honey and insects. Then they pick another kind of stick to go after the scrumptious fat-packed seeds of the neesia fruit. One of them figured out that you could unleash the seeds with a stick and that was a big improvement in their diet. Lean times are rare at Suaq, not only because the forest is productive, but because the orangutans can get to so much more food by using tools. So they can afford to be more sociable. Q. How did you discover that the tool use is socially transmitted? A. Well, one way to prove it is to see if the orangutans use tools everywhere the neesia tree exists. This was in the late 90's. Swamps were being clear-cut and drained everywhere, and the civil war in Aceh was spreading. I felt like an anthropologist trying to document a vanishing tribe. It turned out that in the big swamps on one side of a river, the orangutans do use tools, and in the small swamp on the other side, they don't. Neesia trees and orangutans exist in both places. But the animals can't cross the river, so the knowledge hadn't spread. At that point, the penny dropped and I realized their tool use was cultural. Q. So your discovery that the orangutans learned tool use from one another explains 'the rise of human culture' part of your book's subtitle? A. Well, yes. Orangutans split off from the African lineage some 14 million years ago. If both chimps and orangutans make tools, our common great ape ancestor probably had the capacity for culture. Q. I always thought we got smart after we came down from the trees. A. Actually orangutans are the largest arboreal mammal and have no predators up in the trees so they live a very long time - up to 60 years in the wild - and have the slowest life history of any nonhuman mammal including elephants and whales. A slow life history is key to growing a large brain. The other key to intelligence is sociability. Q. Were orangutans more social in the past? A. I guess the rich forest areas that allowed them to live in groups were much more common in the past - they're the ones that are best for rice growing and farming - but there's no way of knowing for sure. Q. If social inputs make you smarter, why aren't monkeys cleverer? A. One thing we know is that being close to others isn't enough. Highly tolerant sociability is important - that you can be relaxed next to others. You need to be able to focus on what your neighbor is doing and not worry about whether he is going to sneak something or beat up on you. It's that kind of social tolerance that is common to all great apes. It's rare in monkeys - except cebus monkeys; they're tool users, long-lived and socially very tolerant. Q. You end your book with a bleak picture of the future of orangutans because of habitat conversion and illegal logging. Since then there's been a devastating tsunami and people need to cut down even more trees to put roofs over their heads. What does the future look like now? A. One way to help people in Sumatra would be to donate wood on a large scale. But things may be better in Borneo. There's a new Indonesian president, and in the last few months it looks as if the government is serious about cracking down on illegal logging. That leaves me more hopeful.

Subject: Acrobatic Ape in Java From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 04:59:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/health/article-page.html?res=9504E3DF103DF936A35751C0A9649C8B63&fta=y February 5, 2002 Acrobatic Ape in Java Is in High-Wire Survival Struggle By MARK DERR Their heads and bare faces fringed by Bozo the Clown hair, high-flying gibbons are often called the greatest acrobats of the animal kingdom. Using their hands like hooks, these small apes swing through the canopies of Southeast Asian rain forests at breakneck speed, often leaping 30 feet between tree limbs. Among the few monogamous primates, gibbons are also great vocalizers: their songs and cries carry more than a mile. Yet nearly all nine species of gibbon are imperiled through much of their range -- none more than the silvery gibbon, named for its distinctive color and found only on the Indonesian island of Java. Experts estimate that in the last 25 years, the number of silvery gibbons has plummeted to fewer than 2,000 and perhaps fewer than 400 from 20,000. The pressure on the surviving animals is enormous, with many barely hanging on in shrinking fragments of forest, said Dr. Don J. Melnick, executive director of the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation and a professor of biology at Columbia University. Dr. Melnick and a team of researchers from the United States and Indonesia recently completed a genetic study of silvery gibbons and found that the species split around 100,000 years ago into two groups or lineages. The researchers have proposed that wildlife officials manage those two lineages separately to let them follow what appears to be a natural evolution that could ultimately lead to a new subspecies or even a new species, though no one can predict how long that may take. That approach will also prevent the loss, through interbreeding, of groups of genes that have evolved and now work together to provide each lineage with unique characteristics, like immunity to certain diseases, Dr. Melnick said. (The Indonesian government, preoccupied with political and economic turmoil, has not acted on the researchers' proposal.) While potentially significant for the long-term survival of silvery gibbons, the research also shows the way genetic, demographic, behavioral and ecological studies are increasingly being used to understand the relationships among groups of animals that have become fragmented and genetically isolated through habitat loss and other human activities. Researchers can then plan ways to overcome those problems in the wild, avoiding costly and largely ineffective captive breeding programs. ''A hidden time bomb in today's world is the loss of genetic diversity within species,'' Dr. Melnick said. His conservation genetics laboratory at the research center -- a joint venture of Columbia, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Garden and the Wildlife Trust -- is working to try to keep that bomb from exploding for more than 100 endangered species, from salamanders and toads to Asian elephants and Java rhinos. Where groups are isolated in dangerously low numbers from other members of their species, the loss of genetic variability through inbreeding becomes a major threat to survival, says Dr. Alan R. Templeton, a professor of biology and genetics at Washington University in St. Louis. Inbred groups can develop dangerous mutations, lose their resistance to infection and disease and easily fall prey to environmental upheaval. Potentially beneficial genetic and behavioral adaptations that appear in the isolated group cannot spread through the species. When isolated groups cannot be linked through protected wildlife corridors, humans must move animals around to try to restore historic gene flows, said Dr. Keith A. Crandall, an assistant professor of zoology at Brigham Young University. Java and other islands of Indonesia present particular problems for such intervention with a number of species. One of the most densely populated islands in the world, with 115 million people, Java has lost 91 percent of its forests, and the expanding population demands ever more land. Protection of forests and animals is poor, conservationists say. ''Keeping land in Java free from development is very difficult,'' Dr. Noviar Andayani, secretary of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at the University of Indonesia, said in a telephone interview from Jakarta. ''With the current economic crisis, there are even more problems.'' Dr. Andayani, Dr. Melnick and three collaborators published their analysis of the silvery gibbons' mitochondrial DNA -- that is, DNA inherited through the mother -- and recommendations for saving the endangered apes in the June 2001 Journal of Conservation Biology. Java's last silvery gibbons are confined to 23 isolated parks and unprotected patches of lowland evergreen rain forests, Dr. Andayani said. Some of those forest fragments hold no more than 10 gibbons, a number that cannot sustain itself. Gibbons are easy prey for people and dogs when they try to cross farms, she added, and an illegal pet trade further depletes their numbers. The more stable of the two silvery gibbon groups, called the western lineage, numbers in the hundreds and lives in and near Gunung Halimun National Park. The central lineage, also in the hundreds, occupies scattered pockets of forests and parks on the east side of the peaks around Gunung Salak, which can rise above 6,000 feet. (Gunung means mountain.) Although the reasons for the initial split between the two lineages are still unknown, the researchers suggest that silvery gibbons find the high montane forests around Gunung Salak inhospitable and refuse to enter them. Dr. Andayani plans more detailed studies of the region to make sure no silvery gibbons live there and to try to determine when and why the area became a barrier. The genetic split in silvery gibbons is ancient enough, at 100,000 years, that the scientists have recommended against a plan to mix the western and central populations unless there is no other way to preserve the species. The researchers propose instead to move animals between forest fragments to increase genetic diversity within the central groups. The plan is to capture young gibbons preparing to leave their families and take them to other carefully selected areas. The decision to link isolated groups of animals requires a complex analysis of how and why their genetic differences arose. Wildlife biologists must determine whether the differences result from natural processes, like shifts in geology or climate, or from human activities, said Dr. Rodney L. Honeycutt, a professor of genetics at Texas A & M. Researchers should also examine whether the isolated group fills a different ecological niche or exhibits unique behavior, Dr. Honeycutt added. If the genetic differences result from human activities or are not very pronounced, a number of experts say, the isolated group should be brought back into the greater species gene pool. But if the genetic split appears to be the result of natural processes or the group shows signs of unique behavioral and ecological adaptations, scientists should avoid interbreeding. And the final decision should emphasize preserving as many animals and as much variability as possible, even if that means losing some unique characteristics. ''Philosophically, what we are trying to do is preserve adaptive diversity,'' said Dr. Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, ''and we have to develop a framework for doing that.'' Many experts agree that the most successful genetic recovery program to date involved the introduction of eight Texas cougars to South Florida in 1995 to alleviate intensive inbreeding that was driving the elusive Florida panther to extinction. Wildlife biologists acknowledge that the panthers remain geographically isolated and will probably require infusions of new genes about every 20 years. But for now they have been revitalized. In recent years the tools for genetic analysis have grown stronger and more complex. Examining DNA, biologists can identify individual animals and their lineage, measure their age and determine whether they are breeding. In 1995, Dr. Templeton, of Washington University, created a computer program to determine genetic relationships among and within species based on an examination of specific haplotypes, clusters of genes that are inherited as a unit. The program helps researchers determine whether groups of animals have become fragmented because of natural forces or human actions, he wrote in the March 2001 issue of the journal Molecular Ecology. It is available to other researchers through Dr. Crandall's Web site at Brigham Young. The program also indicates whether a given group of animals represents hybrids between two distinct species or subspecies and, tracking the spread of specific mutations, reveals the historical movement of animals into new territory, Dr. Templeton said. It also points to ''natural and historical forces that contribute to speciation.'' But if sophisticated genetic studies are to become more than academic records of the path to extinction, scientists say, then officials and people concerned about conservation must commit themselves to preserving land and animals, and scientists and conservationists must find ways to increase legal protection and public support for imperiled animals like the acrobatic silvery gibbon. Providing those ''adorable creatures'' a future in their native habitat, said Dr. Andayani of the University of Indonesia, will also benefit a host of other animals struggling to survive in the vanishing Javan rain forest.

Subject: Terri - Current Accounts and China From: David E.. To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 23:35:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I just read something by William Bernstein that surprised me. He seems to agree with your optimism about funding the deficit. Its a shame that he doesn't explain his optimism so I could feel better. Emerging markets are doing very well with a flood of money looking for assets priced cheaply. My EM investments are priced at about 10 times earnings now, so there is the possibiity of both more growth and higher price earnings ratios. Also there is a high amount of risk - no one knows how smoothly the communists will convert to capitalism. It feels good to have a little bet on a bright emerging market future. The article is a good read - the title is 'Too much capital' and the thrust is that interest rates and returns will be lower in the future as excess capital floods the world. http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/adhoc/coc.htm

Subject: Re: Terri - Current Accounts and China From: Terri To: David E.. Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 10:06:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Thanks :) David Swensen suggest a healthy portion of a portfolio be in emerging markets, in the Vanguard emerging markets index actually. Of course, there is likely to be significant volatility to the index but in time the results should be pleasing since the valuations are attractive. The problem is not like to be China, for Chinese stocks are considered suspect and are relatively cheap. Brazil and Latin America strike me as far less stable. Brazil is my worry.

Subject: Great Thread on Diehard From: David E.. To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 10:51:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Bernstein's prediction of lower and lower future returns has provoked a discussion on the Vanguard Diehard forum. William Bernstein himself posts a couple of comments on this thread. W Bernstein sees low returns and low risk in our future (If hedge fund investing doesnt precipitate a crisis)

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: Terri To: David E.. Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 13:35:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Interesting. Right now however there is a bidding for international assets that makes for investing risk beyond the surface quiet.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: David E.. To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 16:14:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: And the money bidding is money borrowed. Double borrowed when you add to ordinary borrowed, the shifting of risk with derivatives. The only example we have so far of how derivatives will work in a down market is LTCM. Hopefully, the derivative lessons learned are sufficient.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: PIMCO Fan To: David E.. Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 22:54:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'The only example we have so far of how derivatives will work in a down market is LTCM' you are kidding right? Go look at PIMCO, Western Asset Management, Deutsche, all these managers employee derivatives on a daily basis and you haven't seen them blown up. Derivatives can be risky, but when used effectively they DECREASE risk and can reduce a portfolio's volatility. Just because major hedge fund blew up, doesn't mean every other fund will as well.

Subject: Fitch Ratings & Derivatives From: David E.. To: PIMCO Fan Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 11:31:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: link Not only Warren Buffet, but now Fitch Ratings thinks that derivatives are a time bomb.

Subject: Re: Fitch Ratings & Derivatives From: Emma To: David E.. Date Posted: Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 16:04:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Notice my hedge fund post above. I am not comfortable with a lack of volatility, for it can cause institutions to take on more risk than they can deal with if volatility spikes, and complexity of derivatives and related leverage is enough to cause a background concern.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: David E.. To: PIMCO Fan Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 14:34:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I am talking about a serious downturn, like foreign bonds in 1998. I would like to hear about case histories of derivatives behaving as expected in a severe downturn. I am relying on Warren Buffet who has expressed concern about how derivatives will work in a crisis. LTCM complained that its derivatives didnt work because the market didn't work properly. Markets do behave differently in crisis. I am a PIMCO fan myself, reading their observations every month.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: Emma To: David E.. Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 18:21:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: David, the derivates used by PIMCO are the same as Vanguard. Simple futures contracts with no leverage. PIMCO is not using the exotic derivatives that Warren Buffett has discarded but hedge funds often carry along with international banks. Morgan-Chase is the derivative specialist.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: PIMCO Fan To: Emma Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 15:07:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma/Terri, when was the last time you saw the holdings of a hedge fund? How many have you seen? I find it interesting that you characterize all hedge funds as risky, when it appears you don't have any direct access/contact with them. Personally I find the term hedge fund too broad and lumps too many different investment strategies into one group. With that said, many 'hedge funds' use derivatives, but only a fraction of them leverage their portfolios they way you describe. BTW, I have two investments in two seperate hedge fund of funds products. Both funds have over 50 underlying investment managers that employ various strategies such as covertible arbitrage, long-short, market neutral, global macro, event driven, etc.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: Terri To: PIMCO Fan Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 06:08:36 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Derivatives used by PIMCO are simple futures contracts used with no leverage, wholly unlike the derivates that hedge funds use or that banks are newly creating. I am not a fan of PIMCO, however :)

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: Terri To: Terri Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 07:24:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: PIMCO by the way is needlessly expensive, especially for bond funds.

Subject: Re: Great Thread on Diehard From: PIMCO Fan To: Terri Date Posted: Sun, Nov 20, 2005 at 14:50:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: How are they too expensive when they consistently outperform their benchmark? I have no problem paying their higher expense ratios given their excellen track record. I've made a lot more money investing with them than than if I invested my bond portfolio with vanguard's comparable investment option....

Subject: Economic Adjustment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 18:50:19 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I have found Alan Greenspan's assurances in our growing flexibility and adjustment possibilities realistic and of course comforting. The extent to which we have weathered economic shocks from 1994 on has been continually impressive and I find no reason to expect a change in our weathering ability. Though pessimistic analysts have not gotten over the stock market boom in the 1990s, they are more annoyed at the real estate boom these last years. But, we weathered a bear market in stocks quite well, leaving behind an impressive communications infrastructure, and the real estate boom has changed urban landscapes in pleasing ways in city after city and I would guess at a reasonable slowing of the market rather than a crisis slide. As for long term bonds, they have held remarkably. While the dollar has also held remarkably, though why should a decline be too bothersome judging from the way currency value declines are being weathered internationally.

Subject: Bad Money Flow From: Johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 02:34:58 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: But, we weathered a bear market in stocks quite well, leaving behind an impressive communications infrastructure, and the real estate boom has changed urban landscapes in pleasing ways in city after city I am all for the capital allocation to build out new technologies Emma - the comm infrastructure was one - but I had some friends in the fiber business a decade back - and there was a lot of dark fiber sitting around - still is - the companies/industries did not want to cannibalize thier current products/markets - as a technology/future kind of guy - this made me sad. There are so many GOOD technologies, markets, products to develop and deploy that can/will make the world a better place. However I do not see that right now - I would rather all that capital inflow we got coming into the USA go to biotech/nanotech research - or go to getting the whole country on cheap broadband wireless or fiber - I understand the fed has to keep the people working and keep the idle hands busy - but roads to nowhere was good for 1930's idleness - it saddens me that capital goes to wars and roads to nowhere projects when there are so many BETTER pursuits for that capital. You may not have a bridge to alaska, or another b52 for Iraq, or a new corian countertop in your new house - but if you could have nanotech/biotech that made you feel better, younger, live longer, smarter, cured cancer, aids, world hunger, etc etc - I bet you could live without the former - so Emma why are we spending money on roads, wars and houses when there are better allocations of capital? That is what deeply concerns and confuses me about the direction of this administration - they are rehashing what was used in the past - not leading us into the future. Your second point - urban renewal - I already feel too many cities are very car friendly, but pedestrian hell - I like to bicycle and walk - but the city planners are not building our cities with this as goal number 1 - GM had too much lobbying power I guess - hehe. I want to see smaller cities, less people more spread out - I hate the modern cities I visit in the USA - too congested, too stressed - people having road rage everywhere. Also just like you say about revising our DATA and collection methods, we have so many other systems in society that also need updating and revising, government is a good place to start, more representation, less lobbying power, gerrymandering revoked - etc etc. People here talk of markets and how efficient and superior they are - but humans are pack animals - most of my friends follow the alpha male - they don't lead - big companies and lobby power give you certain choices and that is it - no innovation, no cannibalization, nothing to harm the status quo - markets be damned. Our medical system is a perfect example, another system that needs revision and capital going towards that problem - not wars, homes, and roads to nowhere.

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Emma To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 19:55:13 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Curiously, I am not worried about the adjustment of the economy to shock but I am worried about a long term weakening of the economy from faulty fiscal policy. As for monetary policy, I am however completely confident in Ben Bernanke as far as monetary policy goes.

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 09:02:42 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Ummmmmm, I seem to have lost confidence in the Fed altogether. If Greenspan is no good, who is to say that Bernake will be better? Only time will tell but the Fed has been behind the eight-ball for 5 years now. I am interested in seeing how effective the Fed can be in face of massive capital account surpluses which effectively render policy initiatives second rate if it contradicts investor confidence.

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Terri To: Poyetas Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 10:00:25 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: If monetary policy could have been better these last 5 years, you will have to explain how. The only criticism I have is the 50 basis point tightening in May 2000, which seemed needless at the time. But, I understand the Federal Reserve's caution. We have little inflation and low long term interest rates, what more could we wish? Still I am glad the Alan Greenspan will leave the Fed, since I have not cared for his advice on fiscal policy.

Subject: Re: Economic Adjustment From: Poyetas To: Terri Date Posted: Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 11:21:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The first criticism would be of course, Greenspan's meddling in Fiscal policy which led to tax cuts that created much of the mess in the first place. The second would be the Fed's incredible delayed acceptance of the housing bubble, which they helped create by dropping interest rates so low. Thirdly, the fed will have an ever more important role to play in the global economy. American consumption patterns can not continue as is. The United States is running a current account deficit approaching 6 1/4 percent of its GDP this year and over 1.5 percent of world GDP. And to help finance it, the United States pulls in 70 percent of all global capital flows. Clearly, such a large deficit is unsustainable in the long run. The only reason this occurs is because of China artificially propping up the US dollar for export reasons. The Fed will face some tough choices along the 'impossible trinity'. What will it choose? Which policy will dominate? How will the politics play out? Lastly, the most important point is the Fed's lack of independance. It has become politically tainted. There is NO debating this issue. Until this changes I have absolutely no faith in the Fed.

Subject: 'I am not a number, I am a free man!' From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 12:02:00 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3260

Subject: We are all Prisoners in the Village From: Johnny5 To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Thurs, Nov 17, 2005 at 02:15:21 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: So if Paul Krugman is number 6 - They want information and will get it by hook or by crook! What a great show.

Subject: Re: 'I am not a number, I am a free man!' From: Emma To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 17:05:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Surely you are not a number.

Subject: Drug Makers See Sales Decline From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 08:52:43 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/business/14pharma.html?ex=1289624400&en=554604aded1971ea&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 14, 2005 Big Drug Makers See Sales Decline With Their Image By ALEX BERENSON The drug industry's image problems are beginning to hurt pharmaceutical companies where it matters most - at the bottom line. A year after Merck's withdrawal of its arthritis medicine Vioxx led to an industrywide credibility crisis, the Food and Drug Administration is blocking new medicines that might previously have passed muster. Doctors are writing fewer prescriptions for antidepressants and other drugs whose safety has been challenged, like hormone replacement therapies for women in menopause. Meanwhile, insurers and some states are taking advantage of the backlash against the industry to try shifting patients to older, generic drugs, arguing that they work as well as newer and more expensive branded medicines. Overall, prescriptions continue to rise slightly, but an increasing share of prescriptions are going to generic drugs. Also, consumers seem to be less responsive to aggressive drug marketing. 'A lot of the demand that the industry has created over the years has been through promotion, and for that promotion to be effective, there has to be trust,' said Richard Evans, an analyst covering drug stocks at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company. 'That trust has been lost.' In the background, new competitors are forcing the old-line drug giants to struggle to keep pace. Biotechnology companies like Genentech are taking the lead in finding new treatments for cancer, a promising and lucrative field. Executives of the major drug companies say they expect public scrutiny in the wake of problems with Vioxx and other drugs. But they say they are concerned that consumer mistrust has led to unrealistic expectations about drug safety and risks, stunting the development of new medicines. 'I think there is an overall unreasonable expectation right now that there is such a thing as a risk-free drug,' said Sidney Taurel, chief executive of Eli Lilly & Company. The major drug makers remain highly profitable. But at some, including Pfizer and Merck, the largest and third-largest American companies in terms of revenue, sales are stagnant and profits are falling, leading to layoffs and - for the first time in years - cuts in research budgets. In the third quarter, United States sales of prescription drugs fell 3 percent at Bristol-Myers Squibb, 4.5 percent at Johnson & Johnson, and 15 percent at Pfizer. Merck said its overall revenues fell 2 percent despite favorable foreign exchange trends. The companies are reticent concerning details of layoffs, but both Pfizer and Merck have said they are cutting workers. Even Eli Lilly, where United States sales rose about 5 percent in the third quarter, said it has cut about 1,600 employees - almost 4 percent of its work force - so far this year. No one expects a quick end to the crunch, because several top-selling drugs will lose American patent protection by early 2007. They include Norvasc, a blood pressure medicine from Pfizer, and Zocor and Pravachol, cholesterol drugs from Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Together, those three drugs have almost $10 billion in annual United States sales. The drug industry, which is dominated by companies based in this country, is hardly in a full-blown crisis, and layoffs are occurring mainly on the margins of its work force. Pfizer alone will make about $8 billion in profit this year, on sales of about $51 billion, and invest more than $7 billion in research and development - although the company's research spending fell 6 percent in the third quarter of 2005 compared with the same period in 2004, and Pfizer expects it to stay flat or decline in the coming years. Overall, the industry spends more than $30 billion annually on research and development. But for the companies, and for patients who are counting on industry research to produce new treatments for diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, these are trying times. Wall Street has also taken notice of the industry's woes. Shares of Pfizer are near their lowest levels since 1997, closing Friday at $22.43, and a broad index of drug stocks has fallen 25 percent in five years. In contrast, shares of biotechnology companies are soaring. Without new drugs to promote as patents expire, and with the bar set so high by the blockbusters of the last decade, the old-line companies have depended on stopgap measures to protect sales, like reformulating existing drugs so they can be taken once a week instead of once daily. At the same time, they have used consumer advertising to drive patient demand. But those strategies appear to be losing their effectiveness, as consumers become more skeptical and insurers rebel against high prices for drugs that are not therapeutic breakthroughs. For example, in June Pfizer began selling Zmax, an antibiotic that contains the same active medicine as Zithromax, which was introduced in 1992 and lost its patent protection last week. Pfizer calls Zmax a major advance because it is designed to be taken in a single dose, while Zithromax must be taken for up to five days. Both drugs cost about $52 for a course of treatment, according to Pfizer. However, clinical trials show that the convenience of Zmax comes with a side effect: it causes diarrhea in 12 percent of patients, compared with 5 percent for Zithromax. 'Is the public more cynical? Yes,' said Dr. John LaMattina, Pfizer's president of global research. 'There's a perception that we don't bring much to the party.' Consumers have been irritated for years by drug prices in the United States, which are higher than in other industrialized countries. But anger at the industry reached a new pitch in the summer of 2004, with the disclosure that several companies had suppressed the results of clinical trials that showed an increased risk of suicidal thoughts by people taking antidepressants. Then Merck stopped selling Vioxx after a clinical trial showed that the painkiller increased the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Internal Merck documents showed that company executives and scientists were concerned about Vioxx as early as 1997 but rejected plans to conduct a study of the heart risks. Merck has said it acted properly in its handling of Vioxx studies. A poll last month showed that only 9 percent of Americans believed drug companies were generally honest, down from 14 percent in 2004. In contrast, 34 percent of people said they trusted banks, and 39 percent trusted supermarkets. 'The incessant direct-to-consumer advertising on television I think has boomeranged,' said Dr. Marcia Angell, a former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and a frequent industry critic. Dr. LaMattina and other executives say that perception unfairly disregards the billions of dollars that drug companies spend on research each year and the hundreds of important medicines they have discovered since World War II. Even the industry's staunchest defenders agree that it needs to explain risks better. 'We've created an impression with the American public that when a drug is approved, it's perfectly safe,' said Billy Tauzin, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a lobbying organization for brand-name drug companies. 'We have not done a good job about educating the patients of America that all drugs come with significant side effects.' Mr. Tauzin said the industry was 'beginning to make progress and turn things around.' He said it was addressing its image crisis by being more careful with its advertising, by pledging more disclosure of clinical trial results and by working to make low-priced drugs available to poor and uninsured Americans. The industry is counting on research into genetics and the basic mechanisms of cellular behavior to produce genuine breakthroughs in treatment for diseases like diabetes. But executives and outside analysts warn that such a revival will probably not happen before the end of this decade at the earliest. 'Early stage pipelines are very, very full in a lot of companies,' said Mr. Taurel of Lilly, which is the sixth-largest American drug company, and one of the few that is substantially increasing research spending. 'But it will take some time for all of these products to reach the marketplace.' Further, the companies are victims of their own success in some important drug categories, such as diabetes, where existing treatments work well enough to discourage the F.D.A. from approving new drugs if they have significant side effects. Last month, Bristol-Myers Squibb said it might stop research on Pargluva, a new diabetes drug, because the F.D.A. had said it would not approve it without additional clinical trials that might take up to five years. Pargluva is not the only drug the federal regulatory agency has blocked recently. In September, the agency turned down two drugs from Pfizer, a painkiller and an osteoporosis medicine. Last month, it rejected Johnson & Johnson's bid to market a drug to treat premature ejaculation. Before the Vioxx withdrawal, the F.D.A. would probably have approved Pargluva, and the other drugs would have had a better chance, said Les Funtleyder, an analyst with Miller Tabak. Now the agency is taking longer to review drugs and weighing side effects more seriously, he said. 'The F.D.A. has changed,' Mr. Funtleyder said. 'Nobody wants to be on '60 Minutes' ' being asked about why a dangerous drug was approved, he added.

Subject: 'Anne Frank' and 'Hidden Child' From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 07:21:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13devreaux.html November 13, 2005 'Anne Frank' and 'Hidden Child': Telling the Untellable By ELIZABETH DEVEREAUX THE psychologist Henry Greenspan, in his 'On Listening to Holocaust Survivors,' writes of the impossible task of the Holocaust witness and historian. Invoking words traditionally sung at Hanukkah, he asks, 'Who can retell the things that befell us?' Indeed, who can? Who can retell them to children, knowing that the word Holocaust fills in for untellable terrors and unknowable crimes? It is not surprising, really, that Anne Frank has been drafted as the voice of the Holocaust for many readers. Since it was first published in 1947, Anne's diary has sold more than 31 million copies and is assigned reading in schools around the world. Because she was Western European and highly assimilated as well as a prodigiously endowed writer, Anne Frank has readily provoked the imagination of everyone from intellectuals like Bruno Bettelheim and Cynthia Ozick to farm girls in the Midwest. Those who insist that literature uphold triumphant notions about the human spirit can always look to that famous line about, despite everything, believing that people are really good at heart, and use it to trump pages and pages about Anne Frank's terror. The picture-book biography 'Anne Frank' by Josephine Poole, illustrated by Angela Barrett, introduces Anne to an audience too young to read her diary. It stands out immediately for Barrett's touching watercolors, many of them based on published photographs. Sensitively conceived and faithfully rendered, the watercolors bridge the distance between readers and the documentary evidence of Anne's life, as well as the traumatic history that disfigured it. In the background of one particularly affecting composition is an Amsterdam movie house from which Jews have been barred; through its lighted windows, men and women can be seen relaxing, ready to enjoy Norma Shearer in 'Romeo and Juliet.' In the chilly foreground, Anne links arms with one friend and weaves a hand around the waist of a second; the girls in nearly identical coats, each marked with the yellow star, form a tight defensive line. While one girl casts her eyes down, Anne, confronting the reader directly, can almost be seen to be adopting a look of resolve. An outcast already, excluded from Hollywood tragedies, Anne has begun to enact her own tragedies in secrecy. Poole has the more difficult job, in having to lay down words about Anne in the tracks she left behind. She treats Anne biographically, attempting to set her life in historical context. The author outlines the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany before Anne's birth in Frankfurt in 1929, her life before the war, before the family went into hiding. Life in the annex occupies relatively few spreads, and Anne's trail ends pretty much with the arrest of the annex-dwellers in August 1944 (Anne's fate, death by typhus 'in a German concentration camp,' is confined to a single sentence, in the context of Otto Frank's receipt of the news). Poole intelligently presents 'an ordinary little girl, someone you might sit next to in class.' Her portrait includes Anne's moments of 'panic terror,' and the book begins with a particularly wrenching passage from the diary, where Anne imagines the occupants of the annex in an ever-shrinking patch of blue sky, blackening clouds around them looming 'like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, 'Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out!' ' But to the extent that Anne's imagery cannot save her, neither in the world she conjures nor in German-occupied Amsterdam, it overpowers the picture book text. Poole strives to present a balanced picture of Anne but the story she needs to relate is both too terrible and too complex for the accommodations she makes to young readers. Consider, for example, her discussion of German anti-Semitism, starting about 10 years after World War I had ended. Poole writes of 'the Germans' and 'Jews' as if the Germans were monolithic in their behavior; as if the Jews of Germany were not also Germans. She repeats this model when addressing the German occupation of the Netherlands, in talking of 'the Dutch people' and their response to the oppression of 'the Jews.' Does this 'simplification' clarify or unwittingly perpetrate that which it sets out to dismantle? The history is so broadly filtered that it, too, obfuscates the record; one example of such well-meant distortion is, 'Jewish shops had their windows smashed.' Poole generally avoids sentimentality. However, even the very few occasions when she loosens her focus - for example, describing Anne peering out between the curtains at passers-by 'as if she were invisible, in a fairy-tale magic cloak' or declaring Anne's love for Peter to be 'as sweet, and as fragile, as the flowers on the chestnut tree outside the window' - risk sentimentalizing the entire enterprise. For Anne, the 'fairy tale' was not about hiding but liberation: 'The end of the war is so terribly far away, so unreal, like a beautiful fairy tale,' Anne wrote on April 4, 1944, and it was never to become real to her. If we need to soften the blow by misdirecting it even this much, perhaps we should not deliver it at all. To whom, then, can we turn? The picture book 'Hidden Child,' by Isaac Millman, offers an excellent example of storytelling that is truthful, poetic and authentic - it is Millman's own story. Seven years old when the Germans invaded France in 1940, Isaac Sztrymfman was the only child of Polish-Jewish émigrés who made a home in a Jewish neighborhood in Paris. By 1941, Isaac's father had been sent to the notorious 'internment' camp at Pithiviers; the author writes, with characteristically judicious detail, about how his father had prepared himself the night before reporting to the police station. 'He took his green corduroy golf trousers and laid them out neatly with his gray striped jacket, brown cap and Sunday shoes, as if he was getting ready for an important meeting.' The reason for the precision of the author's memory reveals itself: this is the penultimate time he sees his father. The final time will be on a visit to Pithiviers; the image that recurs throughout Millman's memoir, both in the text and in the plentiful full-spread illustrations, is of his father, waving farewell from behind the barbed wire of Pithiviers. His quick-witted mother saved them from a roundup in 1942, and, caught later, saved him from being sent with her to Auschwitz. Strangers, kind and cruel, helped him survive under an assumed name in the French countryside. Dramatic as the events are, the power of Millman's writing arises from understatement. Close observations, not neat conclusions, allow readers to understand the author's experiences. Weigh the emotion compressed in this statement: 'Sometimes, days went by when I didn't think about the war or Mama and Papa.' While photographs anchor the writing, satisfying readers' curiosity about how things - and people really looked, Millman's paintings flow through the book like live memory. His compositions overlap captioned vignettes of scenes both real and imagined. A view of Isaac in free fall, below him an enormous Nazi flag ('I feel as though I'm falling into a deep, dark hole'), abuts images of his imprisonment by Germans. The quasi-collage style permits some images to loom large, as in memory, and others that cannot be escaped, as in the image of the imprisoned father, to resurface. Hauntingly transmitted, this child's experiences, preserved in the memory of the adult Millman, can become the reader's memories.

Subject: Great Big American Voice From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 07:20:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/arts/music/13midg.html?ex=1289538000&en=5d7fbd51ad4efff1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 13, 2005 The End of the Great Big American Voice By ANNE MIDGETTE IN March, Jennifer Wilson, an unknown 39-year-old soprano, suddenly burst onto the international opera scene by jumping in for Jane Eaglen as Brünnhilde in Wagner's 'Götterdämmerung' at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, just a day after singing the same character in a rehearsal of 'Die Walküre.' Artistry aside, this is a stunning athletic feat. Few people today have the vocal heft and stamina to get through even one of these roles, let alone take on both back to back. Ms. Wilson not only sang the killer leading role of the five-hour 'Götterdämmerung,' she also sang it so well, with a huge, beautiful sound and dramatic nuance, that she brought down the house. It was as if a pitcher were called up from the minor leagues and threw two perfect games on two consecutive days. A baseball-like farm system has developed in American opera in recent decades, as more and more young-artist programs have sprouted up around the country. Aspiring singers now follow a career path from a music degree and graduate school to a residency with a smaller house to, ideally, a place in one of the top programs for young artists: the Metropolitan Opera's Lindeman program, the Chicago Lyric Opera's center for American artists, San Francisco's Merola program or the Houston Grand Opera Studio. From there they are theoretically ready for the big leagues. But Ms. Wilson didn't go through the 'minors.' She auditioned dozens of times over 10 or 15 years, but she couldn't even get in. Either her big voice was deemed unwieldy, or she didn't fit people's physical standards, or perhaps they just didn't think she had the goods. So she had been singing in the Washington Opera Chorus. American vocal training has long been bruited as the best in the world and is supposed to be better than ever. Yet there has been no commensurate rise in great new talents. One clear measure of the problem is the system's inability to deal effectively with large voices and talents like Ms. Wilson's. It seems to favor lighter, flexible voices that can perform a wide range of material accurately, rather than the powerful, thrilling, concert-hall-filling voices on which live opera ultimately relies for its survival. 'We want interesting artists,' said Marlena Malas, who teaches at the Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music and is widely regarded as one of the finest teachers in the country. 'Where are they? There must be something wrong with what we're doing that doesn't allow that to come forth.' Gayletha Nichols, who runs the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, concurs. 'I think it's us, somehow,' she said, speaking not of her organization but of the field in general. 'Even in our trying to be more helpful, we're not.' What exactly is being done? It can be hard to talk about. For one thing, talking to singers about vocal technique is like talking to the faithful about religion: views are dearly held, highly charged and difficult to prove. There are fairly objective standards to measure the performance of a young pianist or violinist. But a singer's instrument has to be built at the same time the singer learns to use it, and each teacher might have different criteria for how it is supposed to sound. 'How can you teach voice without talking about the tongue?' asked Sheri Greenawald, a former singer who now runs the Merola program in San Francisco. 'How can you teach singing without talking about elasticity?' asked Ruth Falcon, a New York teacher whose students include the soprano Deborah Voigt. (You can do both, and many teachers do.) Yet in the upper echelons of this fractious field, the one thing people seem to agree on is what's going wrong. In dozens of interviews with singers, teachers and administrators around the country, the same complaints emerged again and again. Young singers are not being taught the fundamentals, in particular, the proper use of breath. Breath support, the coordination of lungs and diaphragm, has long been regarded as the key to singing, the thing that sustains powerful voices in huge auditoriums without a microphone. Without it, it's difficult to hit the proper pitches (particularly the top notes), modulate from soft singing to loud, or even be heard beyond the footlights. The conservatory system where most students start out is self-perpetuating; many of its instructors went right from graduating to teaching without acquiring any stage experience. Many teachers are therefore less accustomed to the acoustics of a big opera house than to the intimacy of a voice studio, where sheer volume can sound alarming - not at all like the smaller-scaled, lighter voices on contemporary CD's (like Cecilia Bartoli's or, worse, Andrea Bocelli's). Big voices also take longer to mature, and by the time they do, those lucky enough to possess them may be considered too old to get a foot in the door. Many competitions, for example, are open only to those in their early 30's or younger. 'A lot of teachers don't understand that big voices don't settle until 35,' said Speight Jenkins, the general manager of the Seattle Opera, which has a reputation in the opera world as a haven for large-scale voices. 'Voice teachers in general do not encourage the unique, the original voice.' Instead, he said, they encourage 'the voice that can hit all the notes and do what is supposed to be done,' but without any particular flair, artistry or distinction. But voice teachers are not solely to blame. Young singers, too, are impatient, and in our 'American Idol' culture, quick fame is more appealing than slow maturation. What's more, the vaunted apprentice programs tend to look for singers they can actually use, in small roles, rather than simply train. However these factors are combined, the result is a preponderance of light, agile voices in young, attractive bodies. They may be pretty to listen to - and certainly to look at - but they are not ultimately as interesting as bigger, more mature voices. Nor do they have the same staying power. Plenty of young American singers have sprung onto the scene only to fizzle within a few years. 'I worry that today many of the people judging singers judge on accomplishment as opposed to talent,' said Stephen Lord, the music director of the Opera Theater of St. Louis and the Boston Lyric Opera, known for his careful work with young artists. 'If someone walks in and can sing every note of 'Marten aller Arten,' ' - a virtuosic soprano aria from Mozart's 'Abduction From the Seraglio' - 'this is seen as the next coming, as opposed to someone young, struggling with physiology, but with more talent. What you see in front of you isn't really the person with the potential for the biggest career.' Big voices may even be actively discouraged. Take the star mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, who said she 'grew up in isolation' studying at the University of Nevada. 'Whenever I ventured out into competitions,' she added, 'people would say: 'Oh, no, you're singing too loud. You're going to ruin your voice.' Well, I've been ruining my voice for almost 30 years.' Encouraged, by contrast, was Sylvia McNair, a light soprano a few years younger than Ms. Zacik, who won the Met audition at 26 and went on to a big career. Today, she is no longer singing opera. Patricia McCaffrey, a former singer now among New York's elite voice teachers, scorns the American conventional wisdom that puts all young singers on a diet of Mozart arias to cultivate lightness and agility. To master those high-lying and florid vocal lines, some singers may have to compress their voices. 'I send my bigger voices to Europe,' she said, 'where they seem not to demand that every singer sing light repertory when they are young. Believe it or not, Mozart is actually bad for some voices.' Vocal training is not only difficult, it is also expensive - for a New York student paying $150 for a private lesson or for a music school trying to provide a full-service vocal program with courses not needed by violinists or trombonists, including language instruction and fully staged opera performance. Richard Elder Adams, the dean of faculty and performance at the Manhattan School, described vocal training as 'the biggest challenge at any music school.' And the schools are dealing with students who came to music relatively late. A concert pianist begins studying the instrument in early childhood; a baritone has to wait until his voice changes. Many gifted young singers first come to music in high school; a gifted violinist the same age may already have performed professionally. 'And yet we expect them in four years to be at the same level,' Mr. Adams said. 'There's no way in an undergraduate program to master everything that needs to be mastered.' But there's a lot of demand, and the more students you accept, the more tuition you take in. 'A lot of conservatories use the vocal department as a cash cow,' Ms. Greenawald said. And so there are large populations of young singers who can't get the individual attention they need. 'They feel lucky that they're in a school of music,' said Diana Hossack, the managing director of the service organization Opera America. 'Too often students just take whatever voice teacher is given to them.' In the past, young singers often worked with their chosen teachers every day. Today, students often choose a school rather than a teacher, or they go to a big-name teacher whose particular method might not be right for them. And the weekly voice lesson is only one component of a schedule that is overfilled with classes, rehearsals, mandatory chorus and other activities. 'One lesson a week is not enough,' said Marilyn Horne, the star mezzo-soprano who now mentors young artists. 'They don't remember.' So the most important component of vocal training, the student-teacher relationship, is often the most arbitrary, or neglected. 'My junior and senior year at the University of Southern California I had three teachers in two years,' said Cynthia Jansen, a mezzo-soprano who is starting a two-year contract with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. 'If you're not somebody who really stands out, you kind of get shuffled through the system. I finished my degree with a decent education and no idea how to sing.' Ms. Jansen found another teacher who, over many years, was able to help her undo the damage. Whether or not one sustains actual vocal harm, it takes a highly self-motivated person to negotiate the conservatory process successfully. Then again, some argue, it takes a highly motivated person to become an artist. 'What's important is for singers to get their feet wet and survive bad teaching,' Ms. Zajick said. 'But that is part of the ability to have a career. People say we're ruining all these voices, but the people that have the ability are not going to let their voices be ruined.' Still, all the help available to young singers today has not made the process any easier. Even the apprentice programs, designed to help develop young professionals, create a sink-or-swim environment. Ms. Jansen, who took part in prestigious programs like the Glimmerglass Opera's and Merola, described Glimmerglass as both 'artistically a wonderful experience' and an 'opera boot camp.' 'Those programs squeeze as much out of you as they possibly can,' she said. 'You start at 9 in the morning and are finished when they say you're finished. It's a survival program. You go through something like that, and you're definitely going to learn about yourself.' Part of the process is input from dozens of different people: directors and voice theaters, coaches and movement teachers, and a new category of professionals, breathing coaches, a field that has sprung up in recent years as voice teachers have ceased to tackle the subject themselves. All of this feedback is designed to help foster individuality, and yet any group program by its very nature places a certain emphasis on conformity. 'Sometimes the black sheep, the odd man out, could very well be the most talented one in the group,' Mr. Lord said. 'They don't fit into a particular mold. That means that perhaps when they get onstage, they won't be like anyone else either.' To their credit, the administrators of the top programs, like Ms. Greenawald in San Francisco, Richard Pearlman and Gianna Rolandi in Chicago, Lenore Rosenberg in New York, or Diane Zola in Houston, recognize the problems and are trying to find ways to accommodate singers with larger voices and less polish. One example is Marjorie Owens, a young soprano who stayed in the Houston Grand Opera program for three years and is moving on to the Chicago Lyric program, part of a deliberate plan on the part of administrators to give her time to develop further. In the past, some singers did perform big roles at an early age. Regina Resnik, another retired star mezzo-soprano who now teaches, made her debut at 20 as a soprano, singing Verdi's Lady Macbeth, a powerhouse role. 'Her voice was pure, steady, easily produced and of lovely quality,' wrote the New York Times critic. 'But I was prepared,' Ms. Resnik said. 'We had more time.' Ms. Resnik had been trained under the watchful eye of a teacher who sent her to intense acting lessons and took her to performances. Before she sang her first 'Fidelio' at the Met, at 22, the conductor Bruno Walter worked with her three times a week for two months to make sure she was ready. That kind of sustained, intense and highly personal attention from a world-class artist simply isn't available to young singers today, despite the best efforts of the farm- team system to provide it. The system isn't even a prerequisite. Mr. Jenkins and Ms. McCaffrey advise young singers to skip the conservatory and get a liberal arts degree, learn languages and study voice on the side. Morris Robinson was an English major and a football star at the Citadel, a military college; today, he sings bass roles at the Met. Some older talents who are deemed to be ready for a career, like Isabel Leonard, a mezzo-soprano currently getting her master's degree from Juilliard, are encouraged to skip the apprentice programs and start performing. For the most important element in learning to be an opera singer is something no training program can offer: on-the-job experience. 'Merola is one of the finest programs in the country,' said Thomas Stewart, the retired star bass-baritone. 'Even if they go into that, what have they got? They still come out unproven.' MR. STEWART and his equally celebrated wife, the mezzo-soprano Evelyn Lear, have established the Emerging Singers Program in Washington, specifically devoted to the bigger voices that are often overlooked by the standard system. It was at a master class that they discovered Jennifer Wilson, who looked 'unprepossessing,' Ms. Lear said, until she opened her mouth and sang 'Dich, teure Halle' from Wagner's 'Tannhäuser.' 'We couldn't believe our ears,' Ms. Lear said. 'We said, 'Where have you been?' ' They quickly helped her get New York management, leading to her professional debut in 2002, in the title role in 'Turandot' at the Connecticut Opera in Hartford, and on to the understudy contracts that led to her star-is-born moment in 'Götterdämmerung.' How are artists made? Ms. Wilson was a pre-law student who chose to attend Cornell because she liked the voice teacher there, then dropped out after that teacher's sudden death. She worked a range of jobs in the Washington area: at Radio Free Europe, singing in a church and finally in the opera chorus. She lived with her mother; learned languages; took lessons in piano, dance and acting; and never stopped studying voice with any teacher she thought could help her. 'I have the equivalent training to someone with a conservatory degree,' she said, calling her Chicago Lyric debut 'the overnight success that took 20 years.' In the end, artistic success depends, as it always has, on intangible factors that no training program can provide. One is luck. Another is stubbornness. 'People who really persevere,' Ms. Zajick said, 'find themselves in lucky places.'

Subject: Getting It All From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 07:13:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13collins.html November 13, 2005 'I Could Do That!' and 'Mama Went to Jail for the Vote': Getting It All By GAIL COLLINS WRITING an engaging children's book about how women got the right to vote is a tricky business. These days, many youngsters are inundated with stories about female empowerment while in the cradle. (When my nephew was a kindergartner, he once asked my sister if men could be in the Senate.) How do you convey what a big deal the suffrage movement was? It's hard to get all worked up about a victory that you never realized needed to be won. There's also the problem of the cast of characters - the qualities of personality a 6-year-old can relate to are not precisely the same ones needed to pull off a prison hunger strike. 'I Could Do That!,' by Linda Arms White, resolves everything rather nicely by telling the story through the little-known figure of Esther McQuigg Morris of Wyoming - the first territory to give women the right to vote. Legend has it that Morris started the ball rolling when she held a tea party in 1869, right before the first election to the territorial legislature, and asked each local candidate to promise to introduce a suffrage bill. White's book begins, in a nice story arc, back in New York with the 6-year-old Esther, watching her mother make tea and deciding 'I could do that.' It follows her as she grows up, announcing that she can take care of her orphaned siblings, run her own dress shop, go West, help deliver babies, and on and on until, after the famous tea incident, she was named justice of the peace, thus becoming the first female judge in the United States. White almost certainly gives Morris more credit than she was due. The lawmakers were probably moved less by her lobbying than by the desire to promote Wyoming, where the odds were about 6 to 1 against any man finding a wife, as a woman-friendly destination. (After Esther got her law, her son Robert sent a letter to a feminist newspaper urging 'girls to come to this higher plain of Human Rights.') But this is quibbling. After all, it is exceedingly difficult to plumb the exact legislative intent of 21 men meeting on the second floor of the Cheyenne post office. White diligently points out, in an author's note, that the tea party story might be apocryphal. She also gives some credit to William Bright, the candidate who actually won the election in Morris's district. His wife was well known as a suffrage advocate and, as White tells her readers, he is alleged to have said that she was actually far better qualified to make laws than he was. In a fairer world, 'I Could Do That!' might have been the story of how the wife of a humble Wyoming saloonkeeper propelled him into state politics and inspired him to give women the franchise. But if the details of Esther Morris's story are hazy, Mrs. Bright's are nonexistent, and as we all know, history belongs to the folks who leave a paper trail. The uncertain details of Esther's life are way less important than the fact that it's possible to assure young readers that the story really happened. That is perhaps the most effective way to make such a remote saga come alive. The lively illustrations by Nancy Carpenter are a big help as well, even if it's a little disappointing that her portrait of Judge Morris on her way to court ignores a newspaper story that reported Esther 'wore a calico gown, worsted breakfast-shawl, green ribbons in her hair and a green necktie.' 'Mama Went to Jail for the Vote,' by Kathleen Karr, takes a different and less successful approach. Although the title character is fictional, Mama has more sharp edges than a weed-whacker. And to comprehend the plot, young readers need a lot of background on women's lot in the early 20th century. The first page introduces a debate over whether a little girl should have to wear bloomers; that is going to require a lot of explanation. Mama is even more of a go-getter than Esther Morris - she not only goes to jail, she rides the white horse in the suffrage parades, gets pelted with eggs, and says things like 'Because women are in chains, daughter!' Papa spends a lot of time at the saloon with the fellows, and you really can't blame him. The book has lovely illustrations by Malene Laugesen, and Susan Elizabeth, the daughter, makes a sympathetic and extremely perky narrator. Older children who can appreciate the fact that Mama's unflappable dignity is supposed to be a little bit funny - and who aren't frightened by the idea of a mother being carted off for six months in the pokey - will get a good idea of some of the details of the final, successful suffrage protests during the World War I era. After all the marching and egg-pelting and handcuffing, there's a happy ending when Mama finally goes off to vote in 1920, armed with 'a good idea of who might make our great country even greater.' I wonder if she picked Warren Harding.

Subject: The President's Veterans Day Attack From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 06:24:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/opinion/l15bush.html The President's Veterans Day Attack To the Editor: While the president is attacking the Democrats for questioning him, our troops in Iraq are stretched to the breaking point. We read about young service members dying on their third tour of duty, the wounded struggling to return to civilian life and others suffering the collapse of their marriages. If the administration truly believes that we must 'stay the course,' then we need a draft to provide the troops to do the job. It is unconscionable to talk about shared sacrifice when a tiny fraction of the population is doing all the sacrificing. It seems to me that it is too late to get it right in Iraq. Our young people in uniform are struggling to do the honorable thing for their country, but their commander in chief seems incapable of doing the honorable thing for them. They have done their share and should get to come home. Anne L. Walsh New Canaan, Conn., Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: President Bush can lash out at critics of his war policies all he wants in an attempt to shore up his approval ratings, but in a war of choice fought by an all-volunteer military, the only opinion poll that ultimately matters is how many people enlist. Peter Lowy Westwood, Mass., Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: You report that President Bush 'continued his effort to cast Iraq as part of a broader struggle against a virulent strain of radical Islam.' The sad fact is that the 'virulent strain of radical Islam' had been suppressed in Iraq. It was the United States' invasion that not only unleashed it, but also opened the door to Al Qaeda operations in Iraq. While the world may be better off without Saddam Hussein in power, the invasion of Iraq has intensified terrorism, not diminished it. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose, Afghanistan remains the world's top heroin producer, and Iraq has become a major training ground for terrorists. Larry Edwards San Diego, Calif., Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: Being critical of the process that got us into Iraq isn't about getting the United States out of Iraq, it's about getting the Bush administration out of the White House. Even if we grant the president's analysis of bin Ladenism, does this mean that we must tolerate the breathtaking incompetence his administration has shown in responding to it? F. X. Flinn Quechee, Vt., Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: Despite the varied arguments that President Bush has tried to shore up support for the war in Iraq, the most damning critique of the decision to go to war in the first place remains the simple fact that more than two and a half years after that war began, he is still having to justify his decision to the American people. Andrew Luks Seattle, Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: It was highly inappropriate and offensive to those of us who have loved ones interred at Arlington National Cemetery for Vice President Dick Cheney to participate in a Veterans Day wreath-laying ceremony there. The Bush administration continues to send others to fight the misconceived conflict in Iraq, a war Mr. Cheney had no small part in starting. But Mr. Cheney avoided Vietnam because, as he said, he had 'other priorities.' Nancy D. Rowles Covington, Ky., Nov. 12, 2005 • To the Editor: On Veterans Day, what this country needed was a series of speeches from our president, vice president and senior staff members on topics related to duty, honor and country. What we didn't need was a collective group of sermons on why it is wrong to disagree with their position or even to question their rationale at all. John P. Bertsch Fernandina Beach, Fla., Nov. 12, 2005

Subject: High European Unemployment From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 05:52:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2005/11/is_high_europea.html#comment-11222671 November 15, 2005 Is High European Unemployment Due to Labor Market Rigidities? By Mark Thoma Recently, a paper by Olivier Blanchard on European Unemployment was posted here and at Brad DeLong's. This paper by James K. Galbraith and Enrique Garcilazo, which arrived through comments (thanks anne) provides countervailing evidence to the claim that high and persistent unemployment rates in Europe are the result of labor market rigidities arising from policies at the national level. Instead, the paper finds that a large amount of the excess unemployment in Europe can be explained by changes common across countries since the Union such as the policies of the European Central Bank and the convergence criteria for the Euro: Unemployment, Inequality and the Policy of Europe: 1984-2000, by James K. Galbraith and Enrique Garcilazo, UTIP WP 25: Abstract: This paper reconsiders the problem of unemployment in Europe ... We employ a panel structure that permits us to separate regional, national and continental influences on European unemployment. Important local effects include the economic growth rate, relative wealth or poverty, and the proportion of young people in the labor force. ... [W]e find that higher pay inequality in Europe is associated with more, not less, unemployment, and the effect is stronger for women and young workers. ... [D]istinctive effects at the national level are few, perhaps indicating that national labor market institutions are not the decisive factor in the determination of European unemployment. Changes in the European macro-environment are picked up by time fixed effects, and these show a striking pan-European rise in unemployment immediately following the introduction of the Maastricht Treaty, though with some encouraging recovery late in the decade. I. Introduction ...[T]he literature on unemployment in Europe tends to concentrate on national characteristics and national unemployment rates. The predisposition is to blame unemployment on labor market “rigidities” -- and then to search for particular culprits, generally in the fields of national unemployment insurance, job protections, and wage compression. Periodic movements to reform national labor markets sweep aside the careful qualifications found in empirical work such as Nickell (1997) and Blanchard and Wolfers (1999), and presuppose that greater wage flexibility is the established cure for European unemployment. ... In a recent paper, Baker, Glyn, Howell and Schmitt (2002) provide a comprehensive review of the national-institutions approach to explaining European unemployment. They find only one robust result, namely that coordinated collective bargaining and (perhaps) union density are associated with less unemployment in Europe. Of course, this interesting finding is inconsistent with the rigidities framework. ... In this paper, we try a different approach. Instead of the nation, our smallest unit of analysis is the region. ... We specify just four regional “labor market” variables that, we find, account significantly for the variation in regional unemployment rates. ... We identify two regional factors that influence the demand for labor. First is the strength of economic growth at any given time – an obvious determinant of construction and investment jobs, and a consequence of the local effects of macroeconomic policies and regional fiscal assistance. The second is a measure ... of the average wage rate of the region relative to the average for Europe as a whole. Our thinking is that regions with higher average wages should tend to have stronger tax bases, more public employment, and also more open (and therefore taxed) employment in services. On the supply side, we also identify two factors. The first is the relative size of the population of very young workers – an obvious measure of the difficult-to-employ. The second is a measure of the inequality of the wage structure. To acquire this measure, we construct, for the first time, a panel of European inequalities at the regional level, comparable both across countries and through time. Our hypothesis that regional pay inequalities should be placed on the supply side of the labor market is an innovation. ... [I]n this analysis we take the regional wage structure as a datum facing individual workers. We consider that this datum affects how long they choose to search for employment. The greater the differential between high and low-paid jobs in the local setting, the longer a rational person will hold out for one of the better jobs, accepting unemployment if necessary. This theoretical position is well-known in neoclassical development economics, ... The general concept, that inequality creates an incentive to search, has not been applied to Europe or to any developed-country setting so far as we know. But there is no compelling reason why it should not be. In practice, we find that pay inequality is a strong determinant especially of cross-sectional variation in European unemployment, ... The time effects are striking for all population groups. They show a sharp rise in unemployment common to all regions beginning in 1993. This is an interesting break-point in view of the introduction of the Maastricht Treaty on European Union at the start of that year. The effect continues through the 1990s, and suggests that a substantial part of European excess unemployment – generally between two and three percentage points–reflects policy conducted at the European level since the Union. In this regard, the monetary policy of the European Central Bank and the convergence criteria for the Euro come to mind as leading suspects.

Subject: Brazilian Consumer Credit From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 05:09:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/worldbusiness/12retail.html?ex=1289451600&en=aa5e0895d11bc114&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 12, 2005 Low-Cost Credit for Low-Cost Items By PAULO PRADA RIO DE JANEIRO - Márcia Regina da Cruz, a 40-year-old janitor and mother of three, decided to splurge. Ms. da Cruz, who lives in São Vicente, a coastal town an hour's bus ride from São Paulo, made a purchase in September equal to one-fifth of her monthly salary. She bought three irons - one for herself and two as gifts for her mother and sister - for 72 reais, or just over $32. 'It was a big purchase,' she said. 'I normally couldn't pay for it.' She could, though, because of a new policy at CompreBem, a supermarket chain owned by Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Brazil's biggest retailer. The plan allows her to pay for the purchase in 10 interest-free monthly installments of about $3.20 a month. Big retailers in Brazil are lowering the bar for what they will sell on credit. Though the country's shops and department stores have long sold big-ticket items on installment plans, Brazilian and multinational retailers, like Wal-Mart Stores and Carrefour of France, have begun offering purchase plans with monthly payments that come to no more than one or two reais - about 45 to 90 cents. The shift is an effort by retailers here to squeeze more spending from the big, but cash-short, bottom of the consumer base in Brazil, South America's biggest economy. Amid a tepid recovery that has yet to blossom into strong, sustained growth in retail demand, vendors are going to new lengths to help low-income Brazilians pay for everything from their weekly rice and beans to inexpensive items like clothes, radios, blenders and other goods. The installments are interest-free until a payment is missed, and then interest of at least 3 percent a month is charged. 'Retailers are trying to wring the very last bit of disposable income from consumers who would like to buy more, but often can't,' says Paulo Francini, an economist at the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo, an influential business organization. Low-income consumers - defined roughly as those earning less than 1,000 reais, or $445, a month - make up nearly half Brazil's population, according to government figures. A recent study by Target Marketing, a consultant group based in São Paulo, found those Brazilians accounted for only 11 percent of all consumer spending, representing annual purchasing power of nearly $54 billion. Manufacturers in recent years have developed new products to better tap that market, introducing low-cost versions of coffees, shampoos, even washing machines. When the Swiss food giant Nestlé discovered recently that some Brazilians give condensed milk as a present - a can retails for 2.30 reais, or $1.02 - the company developed a gift-wrapped version of the product. 'It's not about reaching a new part of the market,' said Ivan Zurita, chief executive of Nestlé's Brazilian operations. 'It is the market.' Brazil's erratic economic history made it a long slog for retailers to reach this market. Expensive credit - Brazil still boasts the highest real interest rates in the world - kept most low-income consumers from seeking loans. And years of runaway inflation meant stores were able to offer few affordable payment plans. But economic changes in the last decade helped curb inflation and laid the groundwork for what many economists believe is a nascent period of prolonged, if modest, growth. After years of stagnation, Brazil's gross domestic product in 2004 grew by 4.9 percent, the quickest clip in a decade, and is expected to grow by more than 3 percent this year. Slower inflation enabled stores to introduce payment plans for retail goods that many consumers once strained to finance - from tennis shoes and televisions, to refrigerators and home computers. So successful was retail credit, especially among the middle class, that price tags in many stores now highlight the cost of the monthly installment, with the total price in much smaller print below. Yet a big portion of the consumer base still struggles with bare necessities. That is why vendors recently began applying their credit plans to low-cost items, too. 'You want to make it easy for even basic purchases,' said João Carlos de Oliveira, president of the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets in São Paulo. The approach was evident one recent Saturday evening at a Wal-Mart in southern Rio. Price tags offer telephones in 12 monthly installments of 3.57 reais. A plug-in electric grill sold for 12 monthly payments of 1.87 reais. Wines, domestic or imported, were offered for three interest-free monthly installments. Wal-Mart and other big retailers use one central tool for such promotions: internal, or 'private label,' credit cards. Because many low-income Brazilians do not have bank accounts, retailers offer their own cards to provide credit to customers unable to meet the conditions for traditional bank cards. With no annual fees and low salary requirements - stores compute card limits using monthly income stubs - the cards offer many consumers their first experience with credit. They also give stores a platform to offer special card-only promotions, which foster user loyalty. At Carrefour, the second-biggest retailer in Brazil, the store card is now used in nearly 40 percent of sales, outpacing cash, checks and bank cards as the most frequent form of payment. Customers with a minimum monthly salary of 150 reais - half Brazil's minimum wage - qualify for the card and can use it for purchases as small as 5 reais. Purchases over 30 reais can also be paid, interest-free, in 5-real installments. Retailers are using the cards to attract those for whom even these requirements are difficult. Pão de Açucar, for instance, has a card it offers customers who were initially denied credit. Though the card cannot be used for payment, it allows customers to take advantage of card-only promotions and creates a tool to track the customer's spending habits. 'We can analyze their spending patterns and calculate a credit level to offer them in the future,' says Hugo Bethlem, executive director of the company's CompreBem and Sendas supermarkets. Brazilian banks want to cash in on the boom, too. Banco Itaú, one of the country's biggest private banks, has signed agreements in the last year to administer cards used by two big retail chains, including Pão de Açúcar. Last year, União de Bancos Brasileiros, or Unibanco, acquired Hipercard, Wal-Mart's private-label card. Now, banks plan to use the cards to offer services - like insurance and personal loans - to Brazil's legions of so-called bank orphans, consumers still foreign to the traditional bank branch. 'There's a huge segment of the population that we can only reach because of their relationships with retail stores,' said Antonio Matias, director of institutional relations at the Brazilian Banking Federation and a vice president at Banco Itaú. Márcio Caldeira, a street vendor, says he rarely uses banks at all. Sitting at the credit desk of a Sendas supermarket in Nova Iguaçu, a bustling, working-class suburb north of Rio, he says he wants a Sendas card to complement three other retail cards he uses to buy things like sodas, that he later sells on the sidewalk. 'Sometimes the little costs add up,' he adds, 'but they make it easier to finance my work.'

Subject: Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 04:59:21 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/15/opinion/15tue1.html?ex=1289710800&en=d341e02990d7c041&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 15, 2005 Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A. Lately, he's gone on the attack, accusing Democrats in Congress of aiding the terrorists. Yesterday in Alaska, Mr. Bush trotted out the same tedious deflection on Iraq that he usually attempts when his back is against the wall: he claims that questioning his actions three years ago is a betrayal of the troops in battle today. It all amounts to one energetic effort at avoidance. But like the W.M.D. reports that started the whole thing, the only problem is that none of it has been true. • Mr. Bush says everyone had the same intelligence he had - Mr. Clinton and his advisers, foreign governments, and members of Congress - and that all of them reached the same conclusions. The only part that is true is that Mr. Bush was working off the same intelligence Mr. Clinton had. But that is scary, not reassuring. The reports about Saddam Hussein's weapons were old, some more than 10 years old. Nothing was fresher than about five years, except reports that later proved to be fanciful. Foreign intelligence services did not have full access to American intelligence. But some had dissenting opinions that were ignored or not shown to top American officials. Congress had nothing close to the president's access to intelligence. The National Intelligence Estimate presented to Congress a few days before the vote on war was sanitized to remove dissent and make conjecture seem like fact. It's hard to imagine what Mr. Bush means when he says everyone reached the same conclusion. There was indeed a widespread belief that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons. But Mr. Clinton looked at the data and concluded that inspections and pressure were working - a view we now know was accurate. France, Russia and Germany said war was not justified. Even Britain admitted later that there had been no new evidence about Iraq, just new politics. The administration had little company in saying that Iraq was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The evidence for this claim was a dubious report about an attempt in 1999 to buy uranium from Niger, later shown to be false, and the infamous aluminum tubes story. That was dismissed at the time by analysts with real expertise. The Bush administration was also alone in making the absurd claim that Iraq was in league with Al Qaeda and somehow connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. That was based on two false tales. One was the supposed trip to Prague by Mohamed Atta, a report that was disputed before the war and came from an unreliable drunk. The other was that Iraq trained Qaeda members in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Before the war, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that this was a deliberate fabrication by an informer. Mr. Bush has said in recent days that the first phase of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation on Iraq found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence. That is true only in the very narrow way the Republicans on the committee insisted on defining pressure: as direct pressure from senior officials to change intelligence. Instead, the Bush administration made what it wanted to hear crystal clear and kept sending reports back to be redone until it got those answers. Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, said in 2003 that there was 'significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection' between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The C.I.A. ombudsman told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the administration's 'hammering' on Iraq intelligence was harder than he had seen in his 32 years at the agency. Mr. Bush and other administration officials say they faithfully reported what they had read. But Vice President Dick Cheney presented the Prague meeting as a fact when even the most supportive analysts considered it highly dubious. The administration has still not acknowledged that tales of Iraq coaching Al Qaeda on chemical warfare were considered false, even at the time they were circulated. Mr. Cheney was not alone. Remember Condoleezza Rice's infamous 'mushroom cloud' comment? And Secretary of State Colin Powell in January 2003, when the rich and powerful met in Davos, Switzerland, and he said, 'Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment needed to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?' Mr. Powell ought to have known the report on 'special equipment'' - the aluminum tubes - was false. And the uranium story was four years old. • The president and his top advisers may very well have sincerely believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But they did not allow the American people, or even Congress, to have the information necessary to make reasoned judgments of their own. It's obvious that the Bush administration misled Americans about Mr. Hussein's weapons and his terrorist connections. We need to know how that happened and why. Mr. Bush said last Friday that he welcomed debate, even in a time of war, but that 'it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began.' We agree, but it is Mr. Bush and his team who are rewriting history.

Subject: Re: Decoding Mr. Bush's Denials From: Poyetas To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 05:39:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Michael Moore was right, The real criminals are the wimps in the CIA and the media who REFUSED to stand up and defend what they knew was wrong. I didn't even need intelligence reports back in 2001. I could smell the deceit from miles away.

Subject: Great Expectations From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 10:32:53 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: 'The bitterness behind the show - that's where spoilt children go' November 1, 2005 Feeling Rich By Robert J. Shiller Who is richer, you or I? As long as we both have enough to live comfortably, it shouldn’t matter much. Many of us try not to let it matter. But sometimes such comparisons gnaw at us. In an era of globalization, with rapid economic growth in some areas and stagnation in others – and with television and the internet allowing us to see how others live – these comparisons are an increasingly important factor in the world economy. The late social psychologist Leon Festinger argued that interpersonal comparisons of success, whatever our moral qualms about them, constitute a fundamental – and thus irrepressible – human drive, one that is present in every society and all social groups. Festinger argued that for any measure of success, whether wealth, ability, or merely personal charm, people tend to be most concerned about comparisons with others whom they see regularly and who are at a similar level of attainment. We tend not to be bothered by people who are either vastly more successful or vastly less successful. We consider them so different from us that we just don’t care. Harvard professor Benjamin Friedman’s important new book The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth details what the feelings generated by these comparisons mean for social harmony and the success of our economies. Friedman argues that comparisons of wealth are more dangerous to a society if it appears that the rich are members of a different race or ethnic group. In that case, the comparisons become politicized, contributing to social conflict and thus tending to reduce economic success. For example, South Korea’s spectacular economic growth in recent decades owes much, according to Friedman, to the country’s ethnic homogeneity, which dampens resentment of others’ relative progress. By contrast, economic development in Sri Lanka, with a standard of living 40 years ago that was similar to that of Korea, was stymied by its Tamil minority’s perception that their opportunities and advancement were blocked by the Sinhalese majority. The resulting ethnic violence has left real per capita income at just one-fifth the level of Korea today. The economist Albert Hirschman once likened a society with recognizably distinct groups to a multilane highway where people are unable to change lanes. If traffic is stalled for hours and no one else is making progress, we tend to relax and accept the situation resignedly. If the traffic then starts moving in another lane, everyone will greet the change with elation. Even if we are still stopped, we sympathize with those getting ahead, imagining that we, too, will soon be moving forward. But if the other lane keeps moving and we do not, our elation is eventually replaced by annoyance and anger. The same is true of economies that are starting to grow rapidly. People must feel that their own social group, however they define it, will eventually benefit. A key insight in Friedman’s book is the fundamental importance of two kinds of comparisons that people make when judging their own success: comparisons with their own (or their own family’s) past experience and comparisons with others that they see around them. When economic growth falters and people no longer see improvement over their past experience, the first comparison becomes more important – and comes to be shared by millions of people. But when the downturn affects distinct groups differently, especially when members of some groups are (rightly or wrongly) perceived as doing better than the others, the second comparison gains significance as well. Consider the rampant anti-Semitism – some of it ultimately genocidal – that arose during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Of course, that is the most extreme example, and Friedman does not show that a decline in economic growth rates necessarily leads to social turmoil. Indeed, many historical episodes of diminished or even negative growth have gone by without any unusual social problems. Historical forces are complex; they defy any simple economic theory. Friedman is right that social comparison drives human anxieties, if not conflict, but this is equally true when economies are growing. In some parts of the world, rising expectations, if unfulfilled, could make the kinds of effects that Friedman describes especially strong. For example, many people in China today feel great psychological pressure to live up to the expectations created by all the talk about their country’s “economic miracle” – and the sight of others in their midst with significant wealth – and they express anxiety about their own individual success. As growth and development in emerging economies like China continues, people will increasingly compare themselves to the richer people in their countries’ urban centers. These countries’ successful people will increasingly compare themselves to people in other countries who are perceived as even more successful. If Festinger and Friedman are right, little can be done about this, because such comparisons are a part of human nature. But, regardless of whether these comparisons occur in an economy that is growing or contracting, the anxiety that they engender clearly represents a potential risk of unrest and instability. So the question is whether anything can be done to minimize that risk. Obviously, a measured pace of economic growth in the developing world – neither so high that it sets the stage for later collapse nor so low that it weakens the public’s sense of solid progress towards a better life – would help ensure social and political stability, thereby fostering further growth. But, perhaps more importantly, people must believe that they live in a society that allows them to change lanes and move ahead faster when the route is clear. Robert J. Shiller is Professor of Economics at Yale University, Director at Macro Securities Research LLC, and author of Irrational Exuberance and The New Financial Order: Risk in the 21st Century http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Commentary/PS-11_1_05_RS.html

Subject: Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it... From: Pancho Villa To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 10:18:14 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: For whom America’s bell tolls J BRADFORD DELONG These days the chairman of President Bush’s council of economic advisers, Ben Bernanke, likes to talk about a “global savings glut” that has produced astonishingly low real interest rates around the world. But that is the wrong way to look at it. America certainly does not have a savings glut. Its savings rate has been distressingly low for decades. Then the Bush administration’s reckless fiscal policy pushed it lower. Falling interest rates in recent years pushed up real estate prices and allowed America’s upper middle class to treat their houses as enormous ATM’s, lowering savings still more. America has a savings deficiency, not a glut. And the rest of the world? A global savings glut would suggest that rebalancing the world economy requires policies to boost America’s savings rate and to increase non-US household consumption. But what the world economy is facing is not a savings glut, but an investment deficiency. Divide the world into three zones: the US, China, and all the rest. Since the mid-’90s, the net current-account surplus of “all the rest” has risen by an amount that one Federal Reserve Bank economist has put at $450 billion a year, not because savings rates have increased, but because investment rates have fallen. Declining investment rates in Japan, the newly-industrialising Asian economies, and Latin America, in that order of importance, have fuelled the flood of savings into US government bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, and US equity-backed loans — the capital-account equivalent of America’s enormous trade deficit. The investment deficiency in Asia relative to rates of a decade ago amounts to an annual shortfall of $400 billion a year, with the decline in investment in Japan— a consequence of more than a decade of economic stagnation — accounting for more than half of the total. Moreover, investment rates in the newly industrialised economies of Asia have never recovered to their pre-1997-8 crisis levels, and investment rates in the rest of Asia outside China have fallen off as well. This would seem to call for a very different set of policies to rebalance the world economy. Yes, the US needs tax hikes to move the federal budget into surplus and policies to boost private savings. But the world needs policies to boost investment in Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. And here we face a difficulty. People like me who have been cheerleaders for international integration in trade and finance, as well as for reductions in tariffs and other barriers, have cited three benefits: -Maximising economic — and also social and cultural — contact between rich and poor nations is the best way we can think of to aid the flow of knowledge about technology and organisation, which is the last best hope for rapid world development. -Lower trade barriers will make locating production in the poor low-wage parts of the world irresistible to those who have access to finance. -Freer capital flows will give poor countries precisely this access, as the greed of investors in rich country leads them to venture into poor regions where capital is scarce. The first reason still holds true. Maximising economic, social, and cultural contact between rich and poor remains both the best way to aid the knowledge flow and the last best hope for rapid world development. But the second and third reasons look shaky. Those with access to finance appear to be capable of resisting the urge to locate production in poor low-wage parts of the world (China aside). Rather than leading rich-country savers to invest their money in poor countries out of greed, liberalisation of capital flows has led poor-country savers to park their money in rich countries out of fear — fear of political instability, macreconomic disturbances, and deficient institutions. Something may well happen in the next several years to radically boost America’s savings rate by making US households feel suddenly poor: tax increases, a real estate crash, rapidly-rising import prices caused by a plummeting dollar, a deep recession, or more than one of the above. It would be nice to believe that when the tide of dollar-denominated securities ebbs, the flows of finance currently directed at America will smoothly shift course and boost investment in Asia. But don’t count on it, especially considering the share of marginal investment in Asia that is aimed, one way or another, at exporting to the American market. Those outside America, especially in Asia, should regard the unstable state of the US macro-economy with grave concern. As the seventeenth-century poet John Donne put it, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls — it tolls for thee.” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1281887,curpg-4.cms

Subject: Foreign Student Enrollment Drops From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:44:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/education/14enroll.html November 14, 2005 Foreign Student Enrollment Drops By ALAN FINDER The number of foreign students enrolled in American universities declined slightly in the 2004-5 academic year, according to a survey to be released today, suggesting that a more significant drop that took place in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in 2001 might be abating. About 565,000 students from foreign countries were studying in undergraduate and graduate programs at American universities, a decline of 1 percent from the previous academic year, according to an annual survey by the Institute of International Education that was financed by the State Department. A survey released by the organization last year showed that foreign student enrollment had declined by 2.4 percent in the 2003-4 academic year, the first decrease in foreign students in three decades. A related survey released last week by the Council of Graduate Schools showed that the number of international students entering American graduate schools increased 1 percent this year. The report was based on a survey of a sample of graduate institutions. University officials have offered several reasons for the drop in foreign students after 2001, including difficulties students have experienced in obtaining visas, especially in scientific and technical fields, and the increased cost of tuition. There has also been more competition from universities in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, as well as a significant expansion in the capacity of universities in India and China. India, with more than 80,000 students, and China, with more than 62,000, send the largest number of students to American universities, the Institute of International Education survey found. Many students from South Korea, Japan, Canada and Taiwan are also enrolled here. A growing number of American students are studying abroad, the institute also reported. The number increased 9.6 percent in the 2003-4 academic year, the institute found, after growing by 8.5 percent the previous year. More than 191,000 Americans are studying for academic credit in international universities, with notable increases in China and India. Foreign students in the United States spend about $13.3 billion in tuition, living expenses and related costs. In many schools they account for the majority of graduate students in science and engineering.

Subject: Vanguard Fund Returns From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:36:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsByName Vanguard Fund Returns 12/31/04 to 11/11/05 S&P Index is 3.4 Large Cap Growth Index is 3.9 Large Cap Value Index is 5.0 Mid Cap Index is 9.7 Small Cap Index is 5.4 Small Cap Value Index is 5.0 Europe Index is 4.9 Pacific Index is 12.7 Energy is 34.5 Health Care is 11.8 Precious Metals 30.4 REIT Index is 9.6 High Yield Corporate Bond Fund is 1.1 Long Term Corporate Bond Fund is 2.3

Subject: Sector Stock Indexes From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:35:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://flagship2.vanguard.com/VGApp/hnw/FundsVIPERByName Sector Stock Indexes 12/31/04 - 11/11/05 Energy 31.4 Financials 5.3 Health Care 6.2 Info Tech 2.3 Materials -2.4 REITs 9.7 Telecoms 1.3 Utilities 11.2

Subject: When Experts Need Experts From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:14:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/10/garden/10old.html?ex=1289278800&en=fb1b185022b87c94&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss November 10, 2005 When Experts Need Experts By JANE GROSS MINNEAPOLIS — Between them, Robert and Rosalie Kane, he a physician and she a social worker, have devoted 60 years to the study of aging, written scores of books and hundreds of journal articles about long-term care and are widely considered among the world's leading experts. Presumably, that would make them better prepared than most of us to care for frail elderly parents, a rite of passage that most of America's 77 million baby boomers will eventually experience, if they haven't already, with all its heartache and hardship. But expertise is no match for the harsh particulars of old age, and what the Kanes and other experts consider a broken long-term care system. Thus the couple, both professors at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, were just as flummoxed as the next person when confronted with the day-to-day reality of tending to their own parents: Ruth Kane, who died in 2002 at the age of 87 of complications following a stroke; Pearl Smolkin, who died a year ago at 89 after a slow descent into dementia; and Max Smolkin, 97, who soldiers on despite blindness and kidney disease. 'The epiphany for us is that all this theory doesn't work, and being prepared doesn't matter,' Dr. Kane said during a recent conversation at their sprawling lakeside Tudor home, full of family photographs going back generations. 'It's technically complex, emotionally taxing, there's not much help out there and panic is the normal reaction. If Rosalie and I can't do it, what chance does the average person have?' Inspired by their own experience, the Kanes want to share what they call 'take home points' with other consumers of long-term care and also galvanize policy makers to overhaul a system designed to treat acute illness rather than chronic conditions, which account for 95 percent of the health care dollars spent on those 65 and over. To that end, Dr. Kane and his sister, Joan West, a retired schoolteacher on Long Island, wrote 'It Shouldn't Be This Way: The Failure of Long-Term Care' (Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), a common-sense book that is part memoir, part guidebook and part call to arms. In addition, the Kanes have formed an organization of more than 600 professionals, including doctors, nurses, educators and even employees of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services who have also been daunted caring for their own relatives. This nascent organization, called Professionals With Personal Experience in Chronic Care, aims to lobby for change in the form and financing of long-term care. The couple also have culled some trade secrets, if you will, from time spent in emergency rooms and intensive care units that agitate the elderly, acute care hospitals that often misunderstand their inter-related conditions, assisted living centers that may promise more than they can deliver, nursing homes where care is often better but at the expense of privacy and quality of life, and private homes where reliable aides can be hard to find and supervise. Dr. Kane's primary piece of advice for adult children is to hew to a structured and deliberate process of decision-making, especially when they are catapulted into a medical crisis, like his mother's 1999 stroke when she was a widow living in Florida. He suggests dividing the process into two parts, first settling on the kind of care - for example, an assisted living center versus a nursing home - and then choosing a vendor, often based on cost and location. Dr. Kane warns that hospital discharge planners have a stake in pressuring families to make quick decisions because of the way they are reimbursed by Medicare. If possible, he suggests hiring an outside advocate, perhaps from among the growing number of geriatric case managers, to help gather information, consider options and resist the time urgency. This is especially important, Dr. Kane said, when relocations are involved, for instance the decision to sell his mother's Florida condominium, move her to a rehabilitation center near his sister on Long Island and later to two different assisted living communities and finally a nursing home. 'You can burn bridges and lose options with each choice,' Dr. Kane said, noting that some families, although not his own, regret selling a home where a parent might have stayed on, despite disease or disability, with adequate assistance. Rosalie Kane's primary suggestion is to seek a multidisciplinary geriatric consultation rather than relying on the advice of a trusted family doctor or a specialist like a cardiologist or oncologist. While not all hospitals have departments of gerontology, those that do pull together doctors, physical and occupational therapists, dieticians, social workers and other professionals who better understand how to manage the cascade of ailments that can overtake a frail elderly person. Ms. Kane's parents, each with an array of medical problems in addition to Mrs. Smolkin's Alzheimer's disease and Mr. Smolkin's blindness, had muddled along in their apartment in Ottawa without such a workup until the final few months of her mother's life. By then, Mrs. Smolkin had lost all interest in eating and drinking, and required hospitalization for dehydration. During that crisis, a team of gerontologists figured out that a treatable problem, an obstructed bile duct, was responsible for Mrs. Smolkin's loss of appetite. But during the two-month hospitalization that followed, she broke a hip, wound up with a bed sore, was put on a catheter because she could not take herself to the bathroom and developed a series of infections associated with being bedridden. Her deterioration required a transfer to a nursing home, where she died after five days. 'An old person is a fragile ecosystem,' Ms. Kane said. 'That calls for being vigilant, assuming nothing and being more sensitive to the side effects of care.' The Kanes, both 65 years old, with three grown daughters and seven grandchildren, began collaborating early in their nomadic academic careers. Together or separately, they have edited scholarly journals for gerontologists, founded departments of geriatrics in medical schools where none existed, studied nursing homes in various countries and evaluated experimental forms of assisted living. Both were long-distance caregivers, with siblings more immediately on the scene; in Dr. Kane's case his sister, Joan, 60, and in Ms. Kane's case one of her two brothers, Robert, 62, a retired real estate lawyer who lives in Canada. Dr. Kane's mother spent the last three years of her life in institutional settings because she no longer had her own home and, Dr. Kane said, 'it would have done in my sister' to take her in. The Smolkins, by contrast, remained in their own apartment, with many relatives nearby to assist them. Now that Mr. Smolkin is widowed, he has live-in help. Dr. Kane's situation was more tumultuous, since his mother had always been a temperamental woman, he said, and her stroke led to an aggressive form of dementia. Over Dr. Kane's objections, her caretakers at an assisted living center used sedation and restraints, insisted the family hire round-the-clock private duty help and later suggested that the family seek another place for Mrs. Kane to live. 'We were cobbling together the best care we could and we were always a battle behind,' Dr. Kane said. In his experience, assisted living is 'the grayest of options, neither fish nor fowl' and tends to be 'inflexible and unimaginative' about tailoring care to individual needs. In addition, in Dr. Kane's view, residents are rushed off in ambulances for minor ailments and accidents because the staff is not medically qualified and afraid of liability. In his mother's case, Dr. Kane said, 'each hospitalization made things worse,' forcing her eventual transfer to a nursing home. One remedy for traumatic hospitalizations, Dr. Kane said, is something called a negotiated risk contract, which he offered to sign, thus absolving the center of responsibility. 'Safety is not necessarily the paramount virtue,' for people in his mother's situation, Dr. Kane said, yet such contracts, while legal, remain a rarity. The people in charge at the two assisted living centers where his mother lived declined to enter into such a contract. Ms. Kane agrees that fear of a fall or other accident should not drive decision-making for the frail elderly and said that she has endured criticism from some friends and relatives for being too relaxed about her parents' safety during the decade they were in failing health yet still living on their own. Now the same critics worry that Ms. Kane has chosen 'unorthodox home care' for her father rather than a more typical cast of agency employees. She concedes the risks. Her father's first live-in companion was 'Marilyn Monroe meets Mary Poppins,' Ms. Kane said, a woman whom the old man adored. Then a drinking problem landed her in jail on a D.W.I. charge. She has been replaced with a man who used to be the Smolkins' driver. So far, so good, Ms. Kane said, 'but it's very tricky, hard not to get too involved and not unlike dealing with nannies.' The key to her decision-making, Ms. Kane said, is trying to honor the individuality of her parents. Her mother, she said, was an anxious woman who would never have felt safe at home without her solicitous, protective mate. Her father, by contrast, is bold enough to continue taking walks in the park and navigating the supermarket by memory even though he is now totally blind. 'My brother and I are dedicated to the idea that it's their lives and they can take the risks they want,' she said. 'That means you have to be fatalistic sometimes.'

Subject: Ethiopia's Capital, Once Promising From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 08:49:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/international/africa/14ethiopia.html November 14, 2005 Ethiopia's Capital, Once Promising, Finds Itself in Crisis By MARC LACEY ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia - This city fancies itself the capital of Africa, the crossroads of the continent, a refined refuge where African leaders gather to address the crises in unruly places like Sudan, Ivory Coast and Congo. The city's most powerful resident, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has been deemed one of Africa's new generation of leaders, a rebel turned democrat and darling of the international donors. But after a months-long political standoff that has turned increasingly bloody, Ethiopia's capital has joined Africa's more ignominious places, becoming the latest continental crisis point to attract the attention of the African Union, which has its headquarters here. Mr. Meles now finds himself criticized as a dictator, not a democrat. 'If the situation deteriorates here, it's a major symbolic failure for the African Union,' said Abdul Mohammed, an analyst with the Inter-African Group who huddled with African Union leaders on Nov. 4 to discuss the Ethiopia crisis. 'This is the home of the A.U. This is occurring in the A.U.'s backyard.' Quite literally. The African Union's crisis management team did not have to consult a map to find the latest hot spot on this continent. It could look out the window. Ethiopian security forces fired on stone-throwing protesters in the streets around the African Union's headquarters in early November. Tires were burned in the street. The lot next door to the organization was turned into a makeshift detention center as thousands of opposition supporters were rounded up by the government. Many have been released, but treason charges have been filed against some, and others are being held in rugged conditions outside the capital. The discord stems from a democratic transition that has stumbled and fallen flat. The government called parliamentary elections in May and, unlike in the last two elections in 1995 and 2000, actually allowed opposition candidates a chance to campaign. The election was considered a test of the fledging democracy in Africa's second most populous country. The results were a shock. The opposition swept seats in Addis Ababa and finished strongly in other urban areas. Little-known candidates managed to oust several powerful government ministers, a sign that many voters had lost confidence in the governing party. 'The beauty of democracy is people have started to tell even the ruling party they can vote it out if it does not address its concerns,' said Bereket Simon, a top aide to Mr. Meles, putting the best possible face on the surprise election results. After weeks of controversy over those results, the government announced that it had won 296 seats in the 547-member Parliament, with the opposition taking 176 seats, far fewer than the opposition believed it was due. Unused to sharing power, the ruling party also hastily changed parliamentary rules so that only a party with 51 percent of the seats could raise an issue for discussion, infuriating the opposition. When opposition supporters took to the streets in June to claim vote-rigging by the government, security forces opened fire, killing about 40 of them. The African Union stayed silent, drawing the wrath of opposition supporters who accused it of cozying up to the Ethiopian political elite and acting like the old, ineffective Organization of African Unity, which rarely criticized member governments, no matter how repressive. Ethiopia's political crisis blew up again on Nov. 1 while the African Union held a summit meeting here. Opposition supporters organized a low-key protest to attract the attention of the visiting African leaders: motorists were told to toot their horns from 8 to 8:30 a.m. for three days in a row. But heavily armed soldiers were on the streets. Tensions were high and clashes broke out. Soon, soldiers were firing on demonstrators, who were heaving rocks, smashing vehicles and burning tires in the road. The African Union condemned the violence this time and asked Mr. Meles to explain how so many people - 40 or more in the latest bout of violence - died. The chairman, former President Alpha Oumar Konaré of Mali, has met repeatedly with Mr. Meles to discuss the crisis. Mr. Meles blames the opposition for the violence, accusing it even of hurling grenades at security forces. Infuriated by the protests against his rule, Mr. Meles has accused the opposition of trying to topple the government through demonstrations, which he says he will not allow. To control the dissent, soldiers and police officers have swept through the city, arresting the top leadership of the main opposition group, the Coalition of Unity and Development. Similar sweeps have resulted in young men being taken away from neighborhoods where trouble has broken out. 'What we have detained is people who have tried to overthrow the duly constituted government, and that in my view is treason under the laws of the country,' Mr. Meles has told the BBC . Print journalists are also under siege. At least two reporters viewed as sympathetic to the opposition have been detained. Other journalists have gone into hiding, and the authorities took into custody two journalists' mothers as a pressure tactic. [The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York group that promotes a free press, has told Mr. Meles in a letter that it is 'deeply troubled by your government's harassment and censorship of journalists.'] Alemzurya Teshoe, 25, the daughter of one opposition leader, said that the police raided her home to take away her father and then fatally shot her mother, who was screaming in protest. Ms. Teshoe said the police also shot at one of her brothers, but missed and hit a neighbor instead. Distraught as she recounted the incident, Ms. Teshoe said neighbors who went to the hospital to recover her mother's body were told that they had to sign a document saying that the opposition party was responsible for the killing. 'I was there when they killed my mother,' she said, outraged by the request, which was later dropped. 'I saw it with my own eyes.' The opposition has said it will not join the Parliament until the government agrees to investigate the killings, release political prisoners and include the opposition on the electoral commission, among other demands. Boycotts of ruling party businesses are also planned. [A strike by shopkeepers and taxi drivers planned for the week of Nov. 7 did not succeed after the government threatened to take away the licenses of those who did not report to work.] 'This was daylight robbery,' Hailu Shawel, a prominent businessman who is president of the opposition coalition, said in a recent interview, before his arrest. 'The whole machinery of the government went to war to overturn these results.' Despite little tradition of compromise - the word itself does not exist in Amharic, Ethiopians say - negotiation is widely regarded as the only way out of the standoff. 'Africa is littered with the negative consequences of not compromising,' said Mr. Mohammed, an Ethiopian political analyst who has been trying to bring the parties together. 'The African elite sees compromise as a sign of weakness. It is not. A multiethnic state like this cannot be governed anymore by a one-party state.' What makes Ethiopia's turmoil all the more surprising is that Mr. Meles has been heralded by the West as one of Africa's promising new leaders. He stayed in the good graces of the United States and the European Union, the biggest donors to Ethiopia, even after he and his rival, President Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea, waged a border war from 1998 to 2000 that resulted in a death toll as high as 100,000. Tensions remain high between the countries, with many diplomats fearing that Mr. Isaias may take advantage of Mr. Meles's domestic woes to take aggressive action at the border. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain picked Mr. Meles, known for his cerebral nature, as a member of his Commission for Africa to help draft a blueprint for building wealth and democracy on the continent. Even after the June killings, Mr. Meles was invited to the Group of 8 meeting in Scotland to advise world leaders. But with the recent bout of violence, Mr. Meles's image abroad has begun to take a battering. 'Another bloodbath is taking place in Ethiopia,' Ana Gomes, the European Union's chief election observer in the May polling, said in a recent letter urging colleagues on the European Parliament to end their chummy approach toward Mr. Meles.

Subject: Re: Ethiopia's Capital, Once Promising From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 11:38:10 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Unbelievable. I used to travel to Ethiopia on a regular basis, up until a couple years ago. I am currently working on 3 projects in Ethiopia (based in Canada) and I have been totally unaware of this. I have just done a search and there are so many more stories on this topic in the news. Thanks Emma.

Subject: Online Encyclopedia Is Handy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 07:11:16 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/business/14drill.html November 14, 2005 More Find Online Encyclopedia Is Handy By ALEX MINDLIN By several measures, the user-written online encyclopedia Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.com) has exploded in popularity over the last year. The Internet traffic-measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings found that Wikipedia had more than tripled its monthly readership in September from the same month in 2004. September may have been a month of especially heavy usage for Wikipedia: the site does better during major news events, and September saw both the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. But Wikipedia's popularity is not limited to periods of big news. Intelliseek, a marketing-research firm that measures online buzz, has found that the term Wikipedia is consistently used by bloggers - about twice as often as the term 'encyclopedia' - and showed up in roughly one out of every 600 blog posts last month; it was one of every 3,300 posts in October 2004. 'For bloggers, it's almost like a badge of credibility to embed Wikipedia in their blog references,' said Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer for Intelliseek. 'There's something about Wikipedia that confers a degree of respectability, because multiple Web users have converged on it.'

Subject: National Index Returns [Dollars] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 06:54:06 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Dollars] 12/31/04 - 11/11/05 Australia 11.7 Canada 19.2 Denmark 15.1 France 5.0 Germany 3.3 Hong Kong 6.2 Japan 13.7 Netherlands 6.8 Norway 20.0 Sweden 3.4 Switzerland 13.8 UK 5.4

Subject: Index Returns [Domestic Currency] From: Terri To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 06:53:31 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.msci.com/equity/index2.html National Index Returns [Domestic Currency] 12/31/04 - 11/11/05 Australia 19.5 Canada 18.5 Denmark 34.0 France 21.9 Germany 20.0 Hong Kong 5.9 Japan 30.9 Netherlands 20.0 Norway 31.1 Sweden 27.1 Switzerland 31.5 UK 16.2

Subject: The Narnia Skirmishes From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 06:38:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/movies/13narnia.html November 13, 2005 The Narnia Skirmishes By CHARLES McGRATH Disney's new feature film, 'The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' spends a good deal more time than C.S. Lewis's beloved children's book on the climactic battle between the forces of the sinister White Witch and the army of Aslan, the supernatural lion. The movie of course has the benefit of studio bean counters and recognizes that this could be the mother of all screen battles - not just your basic struggle of good and evil but a $200 million smackdown between the religious right and godless Hollywood, between C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and, for that matter, between Aslan and King Kong, a resurrected version of whom opens in a movie of his own a few days after 'Narnia' does next month. The great philosophical debate of my childhood was: Who is stronger, King Kong or Mighty Joe Young? In the Kong-Aslan matchup, Aslan, a Christ figure, would seem to have the advantage of omnipotence, but that's not to say he will prevail at the box office. There are seven Narnia books in all, making them potentially the third great onslaught - after the movie adaptations of 'Harry Potter' and Tolkien's famous 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy - of British children's lit into the multiplex. Like the Rowling and Tolkien books, Lewis's evoke a richly imagined parallel universe, but they differ in including a frankly religious element: not just an undercurrent of all-purpose, feel-good religiosity but a rigorous substratum of no-nonsense, orthodox Christianity. If you read between the lines - and sometimes right there in them - these stories are all about death and resurrection, salvation and damnation. From a moviemaking point of view, this is excellent news if you are hoping to reach the crowd that packed the theaters to see Mel Gibson's 'Passion of the Christ,' probably not so great if you're also hoping to lure all those wizards-and-weapons fans who made the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy such a hit (Disney is still kicking itself for passing on that one) and sheer disaster, presumably, if your target audience also includes the hordes of moviegoing teenagers that turned Disney's last mega-hit, 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' into an apparently inexhaustible asset. In fact, there are some Hollywood observers who seem to believe that there is a good reason Lewis is among the last of the classic children's authors to be adapted for the movies, and that in taking on Narnia, Disney has backed itself into a corner. If the studio plays down the Christian aspect of the story, it risks criticism from the religious right, the argument goes; if it is too upfront about the religious references, on the other hand, that could be toxic at the box office. Disney, which is producing 'Narnia' with Walden Media, the 'family friendly' entertainment company owned by the politically conservative financier Philip Anschutz, is hedging its bets and has, for example, already issued two separate soundtrack albums, one featuring Christian music and musicians and another with pop and rock tunes. 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' published in 1950, was the first of the Narnia books. It now comes second in the order established by HarperCollins, Lewis's publisher, but it remains the most famous and is also the most essential volume in the series. It tells the story of the four Pevensie children - Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy - who have been sent by their parents to stay with an elderly professor in the country as the blitz rages in wartime London. While exploring the professor's house, Lucy, the youngest, comes upon an old wardrobe in an empty room and, pushing aside some fur coats there and groping to the back, finds herself in a snowy wood at nighttime. This is Narnia, it turns out - a more or less medieval version of Paradise, populated by dwarfs, fauns and talking beasts, that is now under the wintry spell of an evil queen (the witch of the title), whose hold over the place is broken only by the arrival of a supersize lion named Aslan. Aslan is fierce but beautiful, stern but loving; his breath is perfumed like incense; and the mere sight of him is enough to set most creatures tingling. He is, in fact, nothing less than the Son of God, who dies and then comes back to life and through the seven volumes repeatedly tests but ultimately saves the children and leads them to eternal safety - all except Susan, that is, who will become too interested in 'nylons and lipstick and invitations.' If the series is read in what is now the canonical order, Volumes I and VII, 'The Magician's Nephew' and 'The Last Battle,' which are, respectively, a Creation story and a version of Armageddon, unmistakably spell out the theological dimensions of the story, but if you're not forewarned, it is perfectly possible to read most of the other volumes without a clue that anything more is going on than meets the eye. Actually, the books are better when read without the subtext. Aslan, for example, is much more thrilling and mysterious if you think of him as a superhero lion, not as Jesus in a Bert Lahr suit. And though central to the Narnia books, Aslan is not the real draw. Narnia itself is - or, rather, that wardrobe door opening onto a parallel universe, a magical place to which only children have access. This is what captivated my children about the story - in my daughter's case so much so that we had to empty her bedroom closet of clothes and build a little shelf on which she could climb up with her books and dolls and stuffed animals. She spent hours in there, dreaming of getting through to the other side. The allegorical element in the Narnia books drove J.R.R. Tolkien crazy. By remarkable coincidence, he and Lewis - arguably the two greatest pre-'Harry Potter' writers of fantasy literature in English - overlapped for some 30 years at Oxford. Tolkien, older by seven years, was known as Tollers; Lewis preferred to be called Jack. They were absent-minded dons of the old school, the kind who wore carpet slippers, baggy flannel trousers and elbow-patched tweed jackets in which a forgotten pipe might at any moment start a pocket fire. Tolkien was famous for mumbling, Lewis for conducting conversations from the next room while noisily using his chamber pot. Tolkien and Lewis were friends - close for a while, then a little less so, while maintaining a certain wary affection - and the senior members of a literary club called the Inklings, whose members customarily read aloud from their own writing and, after a few pints, said what they thought about the work of others. On at least one occasion when Tollers was reading from 'The Lord of the Rings,' Hugo Dyson, another member, groaned and said (in slightly less polite language), 'Oh, no, not another elf!' And in 1949, after being exposed to an early draft of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' Tolkien said, 'It really won't do, you know.' Tolkien, a devout Catholic, thought that religious writing ought to be left to the professionals - to the clergy. He also hated that 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' was such a hodgepodge. Tolkien in his own work was what he called a 'subcreator,' the maker of an imaginary world as intricate, as detailed and as self-sufficient as the real one. For 'The Lord of the Rings' trilogy, he created not just a story but also an entire world, Middle Earth, a geography, a mythology and several languages. Lewis, by contrast, was a magpie. He took whatever came to hand and dumped it all in. 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' is a pastiche not only of Christian theology but also of Wagner and of classical Greek and Latin mythology, of Arthurian romance, Grimm's fairy tales and Scandinavian folklore, of Kenneth Grahame, Beatrix Potter and Edmund Spenser. Near the end of the book, even Santa Claus (as Father Christmas) makes a cameo appearance, much as he does at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Unlike Tolkien, who had three sons and a daughter, Clive Staples Lewis knew very little about children. By choice, he spent most of his life as a militant bachelor, immersed in medieval and 16th-century literature. Lewis was also a famously precocious atheist who, in 1931, underwent a conversion, brought about in part by conversations with Tolkien, who convinced Lewis, a lover of myth, that the story of Christ, his birth, death and resurrection, was a myth that just happened to be true. Lewis went on to become an outspoken Christian apologist, and in books like 'The Problem of Pain,' 'The Great Divorce' and 'Mere Christianity,' he expounded in clear, plain-spoken language his particular brand of no-frills, muscular Christianity, which was in many respects a theological version of stalwart English middle-classness. He had no use at all for those who wished to recover the 'historical Jesus,' for example - the slightly distant and unknowable one Anglicans worshiped every Sunday was perfectly good. These religious writings made Lewis immensely popular, and in some circles he has even been elevated to secular sainthood. In middle age, Lewis became the romantic figure depicted in 'Shadowlands,' the Richard Attenborough movie based on William Nicholson's play. Both are a more or less faithful account of his surprising marriage, at age 58, to one of his many female groupies, Joy Gresham, an American divorcée and convert from Judaism, who died of cancer less than four years later. But for decades before that, Lewis also had a secret life, another marriage of sorts, that was both mysterious and a little weird. For more than 40 years, he lived with the mother of a friend named Edward Moore, with whom he had made one of those earnest World War I pacts: if anything happened to either of them, the other would take care of his friend's family. In the event, it was Moore who died, while Lewis came down with trench fever and was later wounded, not severely but badly enough that he was sent home. Lewis, then 20, went to Oxford in January 1919, but he kept his word and moved Mrs. Moore and her daughter, Maureen, to lodgings nearby. In those days, for an Oxford undergraduate to spend the night away from his college, let alone spend it with a woman, was a serious offense, and so Lewis embarked upon a double life, spending the week in college and weekends and vacations with Maureen and Mrs. Moore, or Minto, as she was known. The arrangement persisted for the rest of Minto's life, long after Lewis earned his degree and became a don. In 1930, he and Minto bought a house together, and Lewis's brother, Warnie, a career army officer whose excessive drinking had forced him into early retirement, moved in. But during the term, Lewis still slept in his rooms at Magdalen College. Many of his friends didn't even know about Minto; others had the vague impression that she was his stepmother. The exact nature of their relationship is something that many of Lewis's biographers would prefer to tiptoe around. But Lewis was far from a sexual innocent, and the evidence strongly suggests that, at least until he got religion, there was an erotic component to his life with Minto. Did they actually sleep together, this earnest, scholarly young man, conventional in almost every other way, and a woman 26 years his senior? Walter Hooper, the editor of Lewis's 'Collected Letters,' thinks it 'not improbable.' A.N. Wilson, the best and most persuasive of Lewis's biographers, argues that there's no reason at all to think they didn't, leaving us with the baffling and disquieting psychological picture of C.S. Lewis, the great scholar and writer and Christian apologist-to-be, pedaling off on his bicycle, his academic gown flapping in the wind, to have a nooner with Mum. What Lewis saw in Minto is another matter. No one else could stand her. Warnie once described her association with Lewis as 'the rape of J's life.' He wrote in his diary at the time of her death in January 1951, 'And so ends the mysterious self-imposed slavery in which J has lived for at least 30 years.' Minto said of Jack, 'He was as good as an extra maid,' and she subjected him to a kind of domestic slavery that Wilson says he thinks amounted to sexual masochism on Lewis's part. His servility grew worse toward the end of Minto's life, when she slipped into an angry and querulous senility, and he spent most of his waking hours caring for her, for her ancient, incontinent dog, Bruce, and for Warnie, who eventually became a six-bottle-a-day man and was now stumbling around in a stupor all afternoon. It was at the beginning of this period, during the summer of 1948, that Lewis returned to the writing of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' which he started and abandoned in 1939. Inevitably, there have been a number of Freudian interpretations of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' theories making a great deal of the observation, for example, that you get to Narnia through what amounts to a closet-size vagina. But if in fact there is a psychological explanation for how the books came to be, it is probably a good deal simpler. Lewis was at the time so despondent and worn down, so weary of the world of grown-ups, with their bedpans and whiskey bottles, that he must have longed for a holiday in a land of make-believe. Lewis later claimed that in writing the Narnia books, he 'put in what I would have liked to read when I was a child and what I still like reading now that I am in my 50's.' Children's literature - the notion of books written specifically to be read to or by young people - was a Victorian invention, and Lewis as a child was shaped by a typically Victorian reading list. With the indiscrimination that so troubled Tolkien, he cannibalized much of it for 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' The talking beavers, for example, who hide the Pevensie children in their lodge, come from Kenneth Grahame and from Beatrix Potter. The idea of an enchanted place on the other side of a door may owe something to Lewis Carroll. And Lewis never bothered to deny that the central conceit of the book - a group of children displaced from their parents and adventuring on in an unfamiliar landscape - was inspired in part by E. Nesbit's Bastable books, especially 'The Story of the Amulet,' about children who travel through time, and 'The Enchanted Castle,' where on the grounds of an old house statues come to life and the Greek gods make an appearance. In turn, of course, the Narnia books cast their shadow over other writers. J.K. Rowling has said that she was influenced by them, and you can feel aspects of Harry Potter being anticipated in, say, the character of the loathsome Eustace Scrubb, who before he is redeemed by Aslan is cut from the same smarmy cloth as Harry's cousin Dudley, or in the scene in 'The Magician's Book,' where Lucy picks up an enchanted book whose pictures come alive and predict the future as she looks at them. Lewis's greatest influence, though, is on the British fantasy writer Philip Pullman, whose 'His Dark Materials' trilogy is both a homage of sorts (it begins with a girl in a wardrobe) and also a kind of anti-Narnia, a negation of everything Lewis stood for. God in these books turns out to be a senile impostor and Christianity merely a 'very powerful and convincing mistake.' Pullman is an atheist and, not coincidentally, one of Lewis's fiercest critics. He has said of the Narnia cycle that 'it is one of the most ugly and poisonous things I've ever read' and has called Lewis a bigot and his fans 'unhinged.' The books do have their faults, certainly. They're not nearly as well written as either the 'Potter' or the 'Dark Materials' books. And by the standards of political correctness, they commit a host of sins. They're preachy, they're sometimes gratuitously violent and they patronize girls. The villains, moreover - the Calormenes, who dwell in the south - are oily cartoon Muslims who wear turbans and pointy-toed slippers and talk funny. Then there's the unfortunate business with Susan, the second-oldest of the Pevensies, who near the end of the last volume is denied salvation merely because of her fondness for nylons and lipstick - because she has reached puberty, in other words, and has become sexualized. This passage in particular has set off Pullman and other critics (and has caused the fantasy writer Neil Gaiman to publish a kind of payback scenario, in which Susan has grown up to be a distinguished professor, not unlike Lewis, and in which for good measure Aslan performs earth-shaking oral sex on the witch). But you sense that among many British critics the real failure of the books is that they're so middle class - so affirming of traditional behaviors and role models, of old-fashioned, Church of England religion and Tory politics. This criticism is perfectly fair up to point - Lewis was a progressive in nothing except his choice of women to sleep with - and the solid, no-nonsense 'values' of the books are precisely the source of their appeal to Anschutz, a former Sunday-school teacher who has plotted a 15-year battle plan to turn Narnia into a mega-weapon in the entertainment wars. But there is also an undercurrent of restlessness in the Narnia books, which manifests itself in Lewis's obsessive borrowings and crammings - the need to include Bacchus and Silenus in the same scene as some talking animals and slow-witted giants - and in a kind of headlong narrative hastiness. Lewis seldom lingers, and the books are always rushing on to the next thing. In 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,' Prince Caspian travels to the end of the world just to see what's there, and the motto of the final volume, in which the children travel from the old Narnia to a newer and even better one, is 'Further Up and Further In.' Lewis once characterized the imagination as a faculty that 'stirs and troubles' the reader with a 'dim sense of something beyond his reach,' and the Narnia chronicles, however stodgy their apparent message, surely succeed at doing just that. Like all the great children's books, they're not really concerned with explaining or defending this or that orthodoxy. They're interested in mostly the same thing Hollywood is: escape.

Subject: The Goat at Saks From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 05:56:04 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/business/14book.html November 14, 2005 The Goat at Saks and Other Marketing Tales By LORNE MANLY Few children's books carry promotional blurbs from the likes of the fashion designers Roberto Cavalli, Giorgio Armani and Jean Paul Gaultier. But then 'Cashmere if You Can,' is not your typical children's book. This new lavishly illustrated book from HarperCollins Publishers follows the misadventures of Wawa Hohhot and her family of Mongolian cashmere goats who just happen to live on the roof of Saks's Midtown Manhattan store. The location is no accident: a Saks Fifth Avenue marketing executive came up with the idea, and the department store chain owns the text copyright. It is as if the Plaza Hotel had underwritten 'Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-ups.' On sale now only in Saks stores, HarperCollins plans to distribute the $16.99 book nationwide in January as if it were any other children's picture book. And 'Cashmere if You Can' has inspired HarperCollins, a unit of the News Corporation, to make a business out of these sorts of corporate collaborations. Saks has already signed with the publisher to produce another children's book for next year's holiday season, and HarperCollins is in negotiations with sports and entertainment entities and packaged goods companies. The weaving of brands and products into content - making them supporting characters or even the stars rather than mere scenery -is growing elsewhere in the media, particularly on television, as advertisers try to cut through the clutter. The book world, however, has not always been hospitable to such commercialization. Working that closely with a sponsor is viewed as compromising the work's artistic or literary aspirations or sullying the integrity of the reading experience, as the novelist Fay Weldon discovered when she accepted a product placement fee for a 2001 book. While there have always been books, like 'Weber's Big Book of Grilling' and 'The Cheerios Counting Book,' with obvious corporate tie-ins, 'Cashmere if You Can' offers a new twist, with a more subtle connection and no clear disclosure of Saks's involvement. Although there is a Mr. Saks in the story, who hires Wawa to be a model, and the Elizabeth Arden Red Door Salon at the Saks Midtown location makes an appearance, they are in service to an actual plot. 'It's not the 'Saks Book of Style,' ' said Andrea Rosen, vice president of special markets at HarperCollins. 'We flipped the model.' (HarperCollins receives a publishing fee from Saks and an undisclosed share of revenue.) In attempting to make a business - albeit a modest one - out of publishing similar books, HarperCollins is also trying to goose an industry that is being squeezed from different sides. Powerful discounters like Wal-Mart and Costco sell a limited selection of books and return them promptly for full refunds if they do not sell quickly. Book chains like Barnes & Noble are devoting more space to gift items and other trinkets. Amid all this, publishers have been trying to push into nontraditional markets and to find new outlets for their wares, like Saks Fifth Avenue. 'We can't keep chasing only best sellers,' said Jane Friedman, chief executive of HarperCollins. 'We all recognize we all have to do different things today.' Ms. Friedman enjoys doing just that. Not one to play down accomplishments - she misses few opportunities to take credit for the invention of the author tour or popularizing the audio book - she recently put corporate initiatives into place aimed at making HarperCollins as much of a brand name as its authors. To further those ends, she relishes making use of other assets within the News Corporation empire. On 'Stacked,' the Fox television show revolving around a ditzy character played by Pamela Anderson who works in a bookstore, the books on display are from HarperCollins. And Ms. Friedman mused in a recent interview about steering her writers on to the show. 'Wouldn't it be fun to put Jack Welch with Pamela Anderson?' Ms. Friedman asked. Given synergy's dodgy record, it is unclear whether these efforts will help sell HarperCollins books. But Ms. Friedman does not lack optimism. 'Maybe I'm a dreamer,' she said, 'but a lot of what I've dreamt has come true.' Terron Schaefer, the senior vice president of marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue who came up with the idea for a children's book and has an as-told-to credit on the cover, also dreams big. He envisions a movie or television show based on the antics of the Hohhot goat family, and has hired a Hollywood talent agency to sell the project. (He hit upon the surname while researching cashmere, discovering that much of today's fabric comes from Inner Mongolia, and that Hohhot is one of its towns.) Although 'Cashmere if You Can' is part of a chainwide holiday promotion for a certain expensive fabric, Mr. Schaefer said the book was not about persuading 7-year-olds (or their mothers) to develop a taste for fur-trimmed cashmere scarves. 'There's no real sell in the book,' he said. 'It's just about being happy with who you are.' But the ultimate goal is, of course, all about marketing in some form. 'If you can get into the lexicon of the public, I think we'll have accomplished something,' he said. 'Eloise at the Plaza; I rest my case.' But not all booksellers may be keen to help HarperCollins insinuate the Hohhots into the national consciousness come January. 'That's disgusting,' said Carla Cohen, co-owner of Politics and Prose in Washington, when told about the book. 'Teaching kids about material things most people can't afford, that's gross.' The intersection of books and advertising - disguised or not - has always been a fraught issue. Chris Whittle was greeted by a torrent of criticism more than 15 years ago when he bound ads into books by authors like John Kenneth Galbraith and Richard Rhodes. Ms. Weldon created a minitempest when she accepted an undisclosed sum from Bulgari, the Italian jewelry company, in exchange for prominent placement in her 2001 book, 'The Bulgari Connection.' (HarperCollins was the book's British publisher, while Grove/Atlantic published the novel in the United States.) And last year, the Ford Motor Company paid Carole Matthews, a British author, to feature the Ford Fiesta in her next two novels. The Saks imprimatur does not necessarily bother other booksellers. 'If it's a good book, we'll buy it,' Steve Riggio, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, said through a spokeswoman. That view was echoed by people in the independent bookselling world, including Roxanne J. Coady, owner of R J Julia Booksellers, which owns two stores in Connecticut, and Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, with three locations in southern Florida. 'All the books published come from a big corporation,' Mr. Kaplan said. 'In situations like this, it all depends on how good the book is.' Anne Irish, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children, concurred that merit would be the primary consideration. Ms. Friedman said the publisher would disclose Saks's involvement in the trade version of the book, but she was puzzled by objections. 'The idea of working with a company and creating editorial together, I see nothing untoward about that, nothing,' Ms. Friedman said. And if people do have a problem? 'Don't buy our book if you don't want to,' Ms. Friedman said.

Subject: Stonewalling the Katrina Victims From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 05:53:58 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/14/opinion/14mon2.html November 14, 2005 Stonewalling the Katrina Victims Public outrage is clearly growing over the federal government's woefully inadequate program for housing the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Last week a group of survivors filed the first of what are likely to be several lawsuits alleging that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has failed to live up to its responsibilities. The recovery effort has been subject to blistering criticism from conservative, nonpartisan and liberal groups alike. The same basic question is this: Why did the Bush administration focus on trailer parks built by FEMA - which is actually not a housing agency - instead of giving the lead role to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has so much experience on this issue? Many, including the Brookings Institution and the conservative Heritage Foundation, urged the administration to switch on HUD's famously successful Section 8 program, which gives families government vouchers to find decent housing in the private real estate market. That program worked well after the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. But the White House - which seems less interested in conservative philosophy about how to make government programs work than with simply cutting the amount of money that gets spent on poor people - has been working feverishly to cripple HUD and destroy the Section 8 voucher program for years. So the administration rigged up a hastily thought out program that is less flexible and less helpful than Section 8 - and confusing in the bargain. Still focused on tax cuts for the wealthy, the administration is apparently hoping that people who need housing will be frustrated by the difficult process of applying for federal relief dollars and simply give up and go away.

Subject: Paul Krugman: Health Economics 101 From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 05:04:45 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://economistsview.typepad.com/ November 14, 2005 Paul Krugman: Health Economics 101 By Mark Thioma It's nice to have Paul Krugman discuss a question that has been addressed repeatedly at this site, market failure in the provision of health and social insurance due to moral hazard and adverse selection: Health Economics 101, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...[W]e rely on free markets to deliver most goods and services, so why shouldn't we do the same thing for health care? .... It comes down to three things: risk, selection and social justice. First, about risk: ... In 2002 a mere 5 percent of Americans incurred almost half of U.S. medical costs. If you find yourself one of the unlucky 5 percent, your medical expenses will be crushing, unless you're very wealthy - or you have good insurance. But good insurance is hard to come by, because private markets for health insurance suffer from ... the economic problem known as 'adverse selection,' in which bad risks drive out good. To understand adverse selection, imagine what would happen if ... everyone was required to buy the same insurance policy. In that case, the insurance company could charge a price reflecting the medical costs of the average American, plus a small extra charge for administrative expenses. But in the real insurance market, a company that offered such a policy ... would lose money hand over fist. Healthy people, who don't expect ... high medical bills, would go elsewhere, or go without insurance. ... [T]hose who bought the policy would be a self-selected group of people likely to have high medical costs. And if the company responded to this selection bias by charging a higher price for insurance, it would drive away even more healthy people. That's why insurance companies ... devote a lot of effort and money to screening applicants... This screening process is the main reason private health insurers spend a much higher share of their revenue on administrative costs than do government insurance programs like Medicare, which doesn't try to screen anyone out. ... [P]rivate insurance companies spend large sums not on providing medical care, but on denying insurance to those who need it most. What happens to those denied coverage? Citizens of advanced countries ... don't believe that their fellow citizens should be denied essential health care because they can't afford it. And this belief in social justice gets translated into action... Some ... are covered by Medicaid. Others receive 'uncompensated' treatment, ... paid for either by the government or by higher medical bills for the insured. ... At this point some readers may object that I'm painting too dark a picture. After all, most Americans ... have private health insurance. So does the free market work better than I've suggested? No: to the extent that we do have a working system of private health insurance, it's the result of huge though hidden subsidies. ... [C]ompensation in the form of health benefits... isn't taxed. One recent study suggests that this tax subsidy may be as large as $190 billion per year. And even with this subsidy, employment-based coverage is in rapid decline. I'm not an opponent of markets. ... I've spent a lot of my career defending their virtues. But the fact is that the free market doesn't work for health insurance, and never did. All we ever had was a patchwork, semiprivate system supported by large government subsidies. That system is now failing. And a rigid belief that markets are always superior to government programs - a belief that ignores basic economics as well as experience - stands in the way of rational thinking about what should replace it. For similar comments on Social Security insurance, see Social Security is about insurance, not savings, The Need for Social Insurance, and Optimizing Social Security through Poverty Insurance and Retirement Saving. And from Paul Krugman, see Passing the Buck.

Subject: Tax reform (by Alan B. Krueger) From: Yann To: All Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 03:32:50 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: One Tempting Remedy for the Alternative Minimum Tax Has Flaws of Its Own By ALAN B. KRUEGER The New York Times, Economic Scene Nov. 10, 2005 THE recommendations of President Bush's advisory panel on federal tax reform, announced last week, were greeted by Congress and the administration with all the enthusiasm of a recommendation for root canal surgery. Although the panel proposed two sensible plans to reduce distortions in the tax code and improve fairness, its proposal to cut the popular mortgage interest deduction, included in both plans, almost assures that the plans will not reach Congress as written. Perhaps the most likely of the panel's proposals to be enacted is the elimination of the deduction for state and local taxes. This is a tempting but flawed way to 'fix' the alternative minimum tax. Eliminating the state and local deduction would make it harder for state and local governments to raise revenue for essential public services and result in more distortions and inequities from the tax code. 'We should be very wary about getting rid of this worthwhile deduction unless it's our last resort,' said James R. Hines Jr., a public finance economist at the University of Michigan. The panel's report is now being reviewed by the Treasury secretary, John W. Snow, who will decide which, if any, of the proposals to send to the president. Without pressure from the White House - and a willingness by the president to roll back some of his previously enacted tax cuts - Congress is unlikely to consider a major tax overhaul anytime soon. The report may do more than gather dust, however. Eventually, Congress will have to consider options to raise revenue, and the report will be a natural source of ideas. More immediately, Congress is likely to address the alternative minimum tax, which will ensnare 21.6 million taxpayers in 2006, up from 4.1 million in 2005, absent changes. The A.M.T., which was established to make a small number of wealthy tax avoiders pay some income tax, sets up a parallel tax structure. The definition of taxable income under the minimum tax is broader than under the regular tax code; most important, it does not allow deductions for state and local taxes. Congress is likely to reduce the reach of the minimum tax. But reining in or repealing the A.M.T. will be expensive; full repeal could cost $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years if the president's tax cuts are made permanent, and $611 billion if they are not. Eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes would bring in almost enough revenue to pay for repealing the A.M.T. if the president's tax cuts remain - and more than enough if the tax cuts expire - according to a study by Kim Rueben of the Urban Institute. On the surface, that approach appears to make sense, since taxpayers caught in the A.M.T. lose the deduction. Why shouldn't everybody? If state and local taxes were mainly used for services that taxpayers directly benefit from, like garbage collection, the case for deducting the taxes would be weak. But this is not the case. Most state and local tax revenue is used for education, health care, social services, highways and other programs that probably do not directly benefit the individual taxpayer nearly as much as the community at large. Additionally, because people are geographically mobile, states and cities lose residents if they set taxes too high. The state and local deduction reduces this distortion. Eliminating the state and local deduction would also cause a distortion between support for charities and similar government programs. Why allow people to deduct charitable contributions to a homeless shelter, but not their state taxes used for the same purpose? The tax panel's call for a tax credit for charitable donations, but not for state and local taxes, would worsen this distortion. A more rational approach would base deductibility on the function of the funds. Eliminating the state and local deduction would also create a peculiar inequity in the tax code: American taxpayers would be allowed to deduct income taxes that they paid to foreign governments but not those paid to their state or local government. State and local taxes have been deductible since the start of the federal income tax in 1913. After Hurricane Katrina revealed serious shortcomings in the infrastructure of state and local government, Congress should think carefully about making it harder for states and municipalities to raise funds for essential government functions. Indeed, it would make more sense to allow deductions for state and local taxes from the A.M.T. income base than to eliminate the state and local deduction from the regular income tax. My Economic Scene column on Aug. 18, 2005 ('Fair? Balanced? A Study Finds It Does Not Matter') reported on a research paper by Prof. Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Prof. Ethan Kaplan of the Institute for International Economic Studies at Stockholm University. Their paper concluded that the spread of the Fox News Channel across 8,630 towns and cities in 24 states from 1996 to 2000 had no detectable effect on voter behavior. The professors have continued their research, adding data on four additional states, assigning greater weight to areas with higher voter turnout and eliminating towns with multiple cable providers or questionable data. They conclude from their latest research that from the 1996 presidential election to the one in 2000, 'Republicans gained 0.4 to 0.6 percentage points in the towns which broadcast Fox News.' Alan B. Krueger is the Bendheim professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. His Web site is www.krueger.princeton.edu.

Subject: Federal Reserve to Stop M3??!? From: Johnny5 To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 20:29:03 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/discm3.htm Discontinuance of M3 On March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate. The Board will also cease publishing the following components: large-denomination time deposits, repurchase agreements (RPs), and Eurodollars. The Board will continue to publish institutional money market mutual funds as a memorandum item in this release. Measures of large-denomination time deposits will continue to be published by the Board in the Flow of Funds Accounts (Z.1 release) on a quarterly basis and in the H.8 release on a weekly basis (for commercial banks). I thought he wanted to be transparent - why the change?

Subject: Re: Federal Reserve to Stop M3??!? From: Emma To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 06:07:57 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Imagine how shocked I am that a statistic that has no evident analytical meaning is not being collected and published each week. There will however be much concern among the advocates for a constant money supply. There is no cause for concern, but gold standard fans will complain for ever more.

Subject: Why now? From: Johnny5 To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:11:40 (EST) Email Address: johnny5@yahoo.com Message: Please tell me Emma - why now? If it was so useless - why not make the change 2 years ago or 5 or 10? Why was it included to begin with? Remember several posts down I stopped allocating capital to GOLD. That does not increase mankinds science or technology.

Subject: Re: Why now? From: Emma To: Johnny5 Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 09:20:24 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: All statistics gathers should examine the cost and use of the data collected and published. The Fed does this from time to time. This has absolutely no bearing on whether precious metals and mining stocks are worth investing in. The Fed has not used the data in question for policy making for decades.

Subject: A foggy world From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 10:33:23 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma. When you invest do you have the same disregard for market cap and stock dilution for a given company in which you might invest? The dollar has often been refered to as America's share of stock. If the money supply is growing at a much higher rate than GDP (the economy) does this have no significance? UNPLEASANT M3 TREND FED COUNTERS BY STOPPING RELEASE OF MONEY SUPPLY DATA by Toni Straka November 12, 2005 I am beginning to lose my respect for the Federal Reserve. At a time when money supply (link to Wikipedia) has been exploding and weekly figures provide a nasty experience week after week, month after month, the Fed put out a short, flat notice last Thursday, saying that it will discontinue publication of M3 figures after March 2006. Such a step may fit in the policy of the current Bush administration but certainly not a supposedly independent central bank. M3 is the most important money aggregate for economists, analysts and Fed watchers to get an idea at what the speed the (electronic) printing press is running. The European Central Bank (ECB) honors this set of data with a special press release every month. So much about transparency. GRAPH: Recent M3 figures are certainly unpleasant and worrisome. M3 has been growing at an annual rate of 7.5 percent or double the most recent rate of GDP growth (subject to a revision.) Since Bush took office money supply M3 has risen 39.2%. The Fed prints it and the government spends it as can be seen by growing government participation in growth numbers. I am still shocked and in a state of disbelief that gives place to being disgusted about the new style. What will be next? Discontinuation of industrial production figures below zero? The consumer price index (CPI) being treated as a national secret once it rises above 5%? Torture threats against people insisting to get the whole picture? US Investing Will Become Fly By Night Adventure No! First comes the discontinuation of more important data releases. No more repo data, no more Eurodollar data, no more large time deposits. Investing will become a fly by night adventure. From the Fed website (saved locally for later reference): On March 23, 2006, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System will cease publication of the M3 monetary aggregate. The Board will also cease publishing the following components: large-denomination time deposits, repurchase agreements (RPs), and Eurodollars. The Board will continue to publish institutional money market mutual funds as a memorandum item in this release. Measures of large-denomination time deposits will continue to be published by the Board in the Flow of Funds Accounts (Z.1 release) on a quarterly basis and in the H.8 release on a weekly basis (for commercial banks). Take note that only publication, but not calculation of these figures will be discontinued. I strongly hope that Ben Bernanke will revise this decision, being an economist who knows that sound research can only be done on the basis of data. Looking back into history economic data was only kept a secret in failing economies, e.g. the Soviet Union As this data is published by the board of governors of the Fed every one of their words will have to be scrutinized most carefully in the future and tested for credibility. Words are easy, but I prefer hard data. No prudent investor will navigate his funds through a foggy world but lie at anchor below a clear sky, meaning: elsewhere. For further information read 'If it weren't that cheap to print them greenbacks' and 'M3 and public debt hit record highs.' Once you read this you may be in the mood to read 'US AAA rating - how much longer?'

Subject: Re: A foggy world From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 10:57:14 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: I imagine there will be fear all through the investment community, the statistics they never bothered to look at are suddenly available less frequently, but I do not see the problem. Inflation is nicely under control almost everywhere, even with higher international energy costs, and the bond market will tell us if there is a problem even with no weekly reference to a particular extended money supply measure. But, I will not miss data I never bothered to use though the money supply trackers will. Worry not.

Subject: Money supply growth From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 16:24:39 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: The following is from Wikipedia (online encyclopedia): Monetary exchange equation Money supply is important because it is directly linked to inflation by the 'monetary exchange equation': where: velocity = the number of times per year that money changes hands (if it is a number it is always simply GDP / money supply) real GDP = nominal Gross Domestic Product / GDP deflator GDP deflator = measure of inflation. Money supply may be less than or greater than the demand of money in the economy In other words, if the money supply grows faster than real GDP (unproductive debt expansion), inflation must follow as velocity has been shown to be relatively stable.

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Pete Weis To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 16:50:01 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Oops. I left out the Money Exchange Equation: Velocity x Money Supply = real GDP x GDP deflator 'In other words, if the money supply grows faster than real GDP (unproductive debt expansion), inflation must follow as velocity has been shown to be relatively stable.' As I was trying to get across to Terri, when we borrow heavily to close the gaps caused by both the current account deficit and fiscal deficit, we get money supply growing faster than real GDP and hence eventually it leads to inflation (a weakening dollar). While cheap overseas labor has served to keep the cost of many imported goods down, most of the necessities in life (food, energy, materials) have been rising at a much faster rate than the 'core inflation' rate. Energy and material costs for US companies have been rising at a rapid rate in recent years. At least some of this has been due to a weakening dollar relative to its levels back in the late 90's. Although, the dollar has shown some recent strength, inevitably it will weaken over time unless the fiscal and current account deficits eventually disappear.

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Jennifer To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 18:43:26 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: All you write is correct, as usual, but correct in theory does not mean correct in reality. As far as inflation and investing goes, there is no relation between the broad money supply measure and either inflation or long term interest rates. This was noted about 20 years ago. I pay attention to many things, and try to be open to ideas, but I abide by what is meaning and what makes investing sense. The Fed change is only amusing to me because I am sure the gold standard folks will be complaining as usual. Precious metals stocks make sense or not, but never because of the ideas of the gold standard crowd.

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Peter Weis To: Jennifer Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 21:05:30 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: 'As far as inflation and investing goes, there is no relation between the broad money supply measure and either inflation or long term interest rates. This was noted about 20 years ago.' Jennifer. Where was this noted? I would be interested in knowing who might have noted this and what information did they use to back their findings. The basis for the monetarist view is the relationship between money supply and inflation/deflation. Has someone already conclusively refuted Milton Friedman's money supply theories?

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Jennifer To: Jennifer Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 19:56:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Imagine, I was even been buying financials earlier in the year :) Oh dear, oh dear.... I like you.

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Emma To: Jennifer Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 05:39:46 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Pete and Johnny are surely right, the Federal Reserve does at least need to explain the reason to change the procedure for collecting and listing data on broad money supply growth. I agree, this is surely not transparency.

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 09:22:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: In the 80's the Fed pulled housing, energy and food from the 'headline' core inflation number. In 1999 substitution and hedonics were further introduced to further reduce the inflation data. How can we compare today's reported inflation numbers with those of the late 70's and early 80's? Now they want to stop reporting M3, which when compared against other data (such as GDP), is one of the most used pieces of data by economists to predict potential inflation. If I'm a potential investor in longer term bonds, or bond funds in general, M3 is an important bit of data without question (not just for those 'crazy gold bugs').

Subject: Re: Money supply growth From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 09:47:40 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: No; I could not care in the least what the broad money supply figures are doing. Not in the least, and I handle large protfolios. The figure does not lend itself to investment planning. Also, I have no trouble with the price index calculations from an economic or investment perspective. Data needs change over time. Explanations are useful and important to many, but I am not the least personally concerned.

Subject: Macro economics & investing From: Pete Weis To: Emma Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 19:37:20 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Emma. So you don't consider macro economic issues when developing and managing portfolio's? I ask you this because there are a few fund managers who do.

Subject: Re: Macro economics & investing From: Emma To: Pete Weis Date Posted: Tues, Nov 15, 2005 at 19:44:29 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Macro economic issues are simply too complex and outcomes too indefinite and timing too uncertain to more than consider them as background. But, I believe that the developed economies are coming to adjust increasingly smoothly to system shocks and considering macro too closely will often often deceive an investor. I talk macro, but I get lost.

Subject: Race-Based Medicine From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 13:56:18 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/health/11heart.html November 11, 2005 Genetic Find Stirs Debate on Race-Based Medicine By NICHOLAS WADE In a finding that is likely to sharpen discussion about the merits of race-based medicine, an Icelandic company says it has detected a version of a gene that raises the risk of heart attack in African-Americans by more than 250 percent. The company, DeCode Genetics, first found the variant gene among Icelanders and then looked for it in three American populations, in Philadelphia, Cleveland and Atlanta. Among Americans of European ancestry, the variant is quite common, but it causes only a small increase in risk, about 16 percent. The opposite is true among African-Americans. Only 6 percent of African-Americans have inherited the variant gene, but they are 3.5 times as likely to suffer a heart attack as those who carry the normal version of the gene, a team of DeCode scientists led by Dr. Anna Helgadottir reported in an article released online yesterday by Nature Genetics. Dr. Kari Stefansson, the company's chief executive, said he would consult with the Association of Black Cardiologists and others as to whether to test a new heart attack drug specifically in a population of African-Americans. The drug, known now as DG031, inhibits a different but closely related gene and is about to be put into Phase 3 trials, the last stage before a maker seeks the Food and Drug Administration's approval. Last year a drug called BiDil evoked mixed reactions after it was shown to sharply reduce heart attacks among African-Americans, first in a general study and then in a targeted study, after it failed to show efficacy in the general population. The drug, invented by Dr. Jay N. Cohn, a cardiologist at the University of Minnesota, prompted objections that race-based medicine was the wrong approach. Geneticists agree that the medically important issue is not race itself but the genes that predispose a person to disease. But it may often be useful for physicians to take race into account because the predisposing genes for many diseases follow racial patterns. The new variant found by DeCode Genetics is a more active version of a gene that helps govern the body's inflammatory response to infection. Called leukotriene A4 hydrolase, the gene is involved in the synthesis of leukotrienes, agents that maintain a state of inflammation. Dr. Stefansson said he believed that the more active version of this gene might have risen to prominence in Europeans and Asians because it conferred extra protection against infectious disease. Along with the protection would have come a higher risk of heart attack because plaques that build up in the walls of the arteries could become inflamed and rupture. But because the active version of the gene started to be favored long ago, Europeans and Asians have had time to develop genetic changes that offset the extra risk of heart attack. The active version of the inflammatory gene would have passed from Europeans into African-Americans only a few generations ago, too short a time for development of genes that protect against heart attack, Dr. Stefansson suggested. The DG031 drug being tested by DeCode Genetics affects a second gene, but one that is also involved in control of leukotrienes. Because the drug reduces leukotriene levels and inflammation, it may help African-Americans who have the variant of the hydrolase gene. 'It would make scientific, economic and particularly political sense to have a significant part of the clinical trials done in an African-American population,' Dr. Stefansson said. A spokeswoman for the black cardiologists' group, which supported the BiDil trial, said the group's officials were not ready to discuss the new gene. Dr. Troy Duster of New York University, an adviser to the federal Human Genome Project and a past president of the American Sociological Association, said he saw no objection to a trial, provided it focused on African-Americans with the risk-associated variant of the gene and took into account that people with ancestry from different regions of Africa might show variations in risk. But Dr. Charles Rotimi, a genetic epidemiologist at Howard University, said a separate study of African-Americans would not be desirable. The variant gene may be overactive in African-Americans because of their greater exposure to deleterious environments, Dr. Rotimi said. Dr. Cohn, the inventor of BiDil, said it was 'always best to study a drug in a highly responsive group,' rather than testing large populations where possible benefits to subgroups could be missed.

Subject: Making Much Out of Little From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 13:49:03 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/arts/design/11kimm.html November 11, 2005 40 Years of Making Much Out of Little By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN HERE are a few things you might not notice in Richard Tuttle's sublime retrospective at the Whitney Museum. Blue gels tint the wall at the entrance that has his early tin 'Letters' on it. The lights cast in slight shadow the shallow letters, which are a little like metal versions of toddlers' toys in cryptic alphabet shapes. 'Replace the Abstract Picture Plane' - a grid of painted plywood panels, jaunty and framed in white - is off to the right. It looks as if it stands out from the wall. That's because it does, barely: the panels extend beyond their frames by the width of the plywood (or twice that width where the plywood sheets are doubled), while the backs of the picture frames aren't quite flush with the wall. They hang a quarter of an inch away. Such whispering details, of which there are an endless number here, are at the heart of Mr. Tuttle's rapturous brand of intimism. For 40 years he has murmured the ecstasies of paying close attention to the world's infinitude of tender incidents, making oddball assemblages of prosaic ephemera, which, at first glance, belie their intense deliberation and rather monumental ambition. Never mind the humdrum materials and small scale. In the ambition department, Mr. Tuttle yields no ground to the Richard Serras of this world. He has dreamed up his work out of such ostensible nothings as a three-inch segment of plain white clothesline nailed at the middle and on both ends to an otherwise empty white wall. Notice the cord's frayed edges; where the center nail interrupts the plaits; how, because it is so vanishingly small, the cord commands a psychic space in direct disproportion to its size. Pushing the buttons of skeptics for whom such stuff doesn't even qualify as art in the first place, the work addresses anyone with open eyes and an open mind about the basic ingredients of art-making, not to mention a little sense of humor. Since the 1960's, and out of not just cord but also Styrofoam and florist wire and bubble wrap and twigs, Mr. Tuttle, now 64, has devised objects whose status is not quite sculpture or drawing or painting but some combination of the three, and whose exquisiteness is akin to jewelry. His show is a cross between a kindergarten playroom and a medieval treasury. It arrives as a second act, 30 years after his last retrospective at the Whitney traumatized the New York art world. Back then, conservatives naturally heaped scorn on Mr. Tuttle's inventions, which, as the critic Thomas Hess then responded in ArtNews, only attested to the work's deceptive radicalism. 'When you read such words as 'remorselessly and irredeemably ... egregiously ...pathetic ... a bore and a waste ... arid ... debacle ... farce' from a critic who once called Jackson Pollock 'second rate' and Willem de Kooning a 'pompier,' ' Hess wrote after Hilton Kramer's review in The New York Times, 'then it's probable that something importantly different has come to notice.' It had. But it was hard for many people to see. Mr. Tuttle started out making small paper cubes with geometric cutouts. Ostensible riffs on Donald Judd's heavy metal boxes, they substituted handmade delicacy and lightness for industrial weight, coyly suggesting a kind of innocence while extrapolating on art's fundamental role as language. 'Letters' followed, along with 'Constructed Paintings': canvases also shaped like nonsense signs, painted in catchy, offbeat colors, the shapes not sharp-edged but quavery, after faint pencil drawings. Mr. Tuttle, in nudging Minimalism toward personal touch and private speech, was here abetted by the somewhat paradoxical examples of Agnes Martin and Barnett Newman. Poetic discretion slyly combined with grandiose aspirations. The Whitney retrospective opens with his succeeding 'Cloth Pieces,' of the mid-60's, dancing across a far wall and spilling onto the floor. Exploring a no-man's land between painting and sculpture, they pick up on the same eccentric shapes as the letters. Lightly tinted, crumpled pieces of heavy fabric, hand cut and roughly hemmed, with no front or back, no up or down, made to hang on the wall or not, they also look best together rather than one at a time. Mr. Tuttle's early efforts occasionally favored metaphysics over sheer visual loveliness, although the early drawings, on which many works are based, place delicate marks just so on otherwise blank sheets of paper. They are like heavenly doodles, as ethereal as angels' breath. Organized by Madeleine Grynsztejn for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where its presentation was bigger and more strictly chronological, the exhibition occupies the Whitney's third floor, which is ordinarily not a congenial space but now has been given an almost domestic feel. Works are hung close together, with aptly unconventional irregularity. (Many of them will rotate in and out during the run of the show, as works did 30 years ago.) The Whitney curator is David Kiehl, who, in clear psychic sync with Mr. Tuttle, has made the exhibition into something of a homecoming - the installation affectionately recalling aspects of the 1975 show while casting more recent work in newly designed galleries that serve Mr. Tuttle's high-minded, obsessive-compulsive predilections. Perhaps partly in reaction to the reaction against that first retrospective and in general keeping with the art world's turn from his own postminimal austerity toward 1980's extravagance, Mr. Tuttle allowed himself an increasing opulence in the late 70's. The evolution unfolds in rooms toward the back of the show. The first has Mr. Tuttle's utterly fine wire pieces from the early 70's: almost invisible pencil lines drawn on the wall; thin wires tracing the contours of the lines and springing from the walls, casting shadows that make yet more lines. Wall assemblages from the early 80's, in an adjacent room, which seems like a world away, look baroque by comparison: twigs, blocks, thicker wire and corrugated cardboard are joined into Rube Goldbergian confections, brightly painted, divinely balanced. To these Tinkertoy devices, Mr. Tuttle added light bulbs during the late 80's. Their shimmery effect, collected in the last of the back galleries, is reminiscent of a sacristy. How you approach such art is up to you. Purely abstract, made up of endless parts, joints and painterly marks that affect happenstance, they have no central focus, no beginning, no end, but sometimes a narrative peg. A group of palm-size drawings in faux-ornate yellow cardboard frames hang across a gallery corner (the corner and frames make a triangle), bearing gently colored marks and symbols inspired by Egypt. Watercolors, loosely brushed in frames shaped like railroad tracks, suggest Chinese paintings. Floor sculptures that resemble teepees summon up the Southwest, while those early wire pieces, making shapes from simple to ornate, are explicitly meant to allude to Archaic and Rococo art. But the beauty of Mr. Tuttle's art is ultimately in its concentration on materials for their own sake, and the space they occupy. He regards these the way we hope to be regarded - individually, patiently. If what results is sometimes a trifle, so is life sometimes. There is nothing more difficult in art than to make work that looks easy. A shaman with waferboard and colored tissue paper, Mr. Tuttle operates far above the run of ready-made conceptualists with their throwaway aesthetics, because of the urgency and occasional melancholy he brings to even the simplest things. It happens that the tranquil 19th-century American Luminist painter John Frederick Kensett is one of his ancestors. With Kensett, Mr. Tuttle shares a refined respect for plain material facts and a fascination with immaterial ones like light, which verges on the spiritual. A work like '20 Pearls (12),' painted on cheap pressed wood scraps cut into florid shapes, is a mélange of nature and culture, shot through with flowery pink, its central motifs thin washes of orange-gold paint that delicately shift in changing light. Standing near '20 Pearls (12),' looking across the next two galleries in the show, you may notice how the edge of a work called 'New Mexico, New York No. 14' in the far room lines up with the edge of the wall in the nearer room on which is hanging 'Sand Tree 2.' 'New Mexico, New York No. 14' is shaped like a droopy red envelope with a needle's eye looping across its middle. 'Sand Tree 2' deploys a large, irregular green ovoid with a clutter of small wood crosses, from which issue forth broken Styrofoam chunks embedded with curling strips of red paper. The chunks skip up to the end of the wall. So from the doorway they can meet up in your line of sight with 'New Mexico, New York No. 14' - the wood crosses of one bookending the needle's eye of the other, making a fresh, third work. It is not a coincidence. Nothing ever is in Mr. Tuttle's perfect world.

Subject: Marrying Off Those Bennet Sisters From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:42:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://movies2.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/movies/11prid.html November 11, 2005 Marrying Off Those Bennet Sisters Again, but This Time Elizabeth Is a Looker By STEPHEN HOLDEN The sumptuous new screen adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' has so much to recommend it that it seems almost churlish to point out that its plucky, clever heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, played by Keira Knightley, is not exactly the creature described in the 1813 novel. The second of five well-brought-up but impecunious Bennet sisters, whose fluttery mother (Brenda Blethyn) desperately schemes to marry them off to men of means, Elizabeth prevails in the novel through her wit and honesty, not through stunning physical beauty. Among the five, the belle of the ball is Elizabeth's older sister, Jane (Rosamund Pike), who is as demure and private as Elizabeth is outspoken and opinionated. But because Ms. Knightley is, in a word, a knockout, the balance has shifted. When this 20-year-old star is on the screen, which is much of the time, you can barely take your eyes off her. Her radiance so suffuses the film that it's foolish to imagine Elizabeth would be anyone's second choice. Once you've accepted this critical adjustment made by Joe Wright, a British television director in his feature film debut, 'Pride & Prejudice' gathers you up on its white horse and gallops off into the sunset. Along the way, it serves a continuing banquet of high-end comfort food perfectly cooked and seasoned to Anglophilic tastes. In its final minutes, it makes you believe in true love, the union of soul mates, happily-ever-after and all the other stuff a romantic comedy promises but so seldom delivers. For one misty-eyed moment, order reigns in the universe. If the depth and complexity of the movie can't match those of the five-hour British mini-series with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth that was shown on A&E a decade ago, how could they, given the time constraints of a feature film (128 minutes, in this case)? But in a little more than two hours, Mr. Wright and the screenwriter, Deborah Moggach, have created as satisfyingly rich and robust a fusion of romance, historical detail and genial social satire as the time allows. Matthew Macfadyen finds a human dimension in the taciturn landowner Fitzwilliam Darcy that was missing in earlier, more conventionally heroic portrayals. Mr. Firth might have been far more dashing, but Mr. Macfadyen's portrayal of the character as a shy, awkward suitor whose seeming arrogance camouflages insecurity and deep sensitivity is more realistic. Isolated by his wealth, ethical high-mindedness and fierce critical intelligence, Mr. Darcy is as stubborn in his idealism as Elizabeth is in hers. The disparity between his diffidence and her forthrightness makes the lovers' failure to connect more than a delaying tactic to keep the story churning forward; it's a touching tale of misread signals. The movie unfolds as a sweeping ensemble piece in which many of the characters outside the lovers' orbit are seen through a Dickensian comic lens. Ms. Blethyn's mother is a dithery, squawking hysteric; Donald Sutherland's father a shaggy, long-suffering curmudgeon with a soft heart; and the Bennet sisters, except for Elizabeth and Jane, a gaggle of pretentious flibbertigibbets. Jena Malone, as the saucy, boy-crazy youngest daughter, Lydia, offers an amusing caricature of teenage idiocy and entitlement. William Collins (Tom Hollander), the priggish, self-satisfied clergyman Elizabeth rejects, to her mother's horror, is mocked for his short stature as well as his puffed-up airs. Late in the movie, Dame Judi Dench storms onto the screen as Mr. Darcy's imperious aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourg, to offer a tutorial on British snobbery. Elocution curdled with contempt and kept on ice; upwardly tilted facial posturing with narrowing eyes; and the deployment of artful humiliation, as when Lady Catherine coerces Elizabeth into playing the piano (very badly): all are laid out to be studied by mean-spirited future grandes dames on both sides of the Atlantic. In the film's most intoxicating scenes, the camera plunges into the thick of the crowded balls attended with delirious anticipation by the Bennet sisters and moves with the dancers as they carry on breathless, broken conversations while whirling past one another. That mood of voluptuous excitement, barely contained, is augmented by Dario Marianelli's score, which takes the sound and style of late 18th- and early 19th-century piano music in increasingly romantic directions. The movie skillfully uses visuals to comment on economic and class divisions. The humble Bennet estate, in which farm animals roam outside the house, is contrasted with some of the world's most gorgeous palaces and formal gardens, all filmed with a Realtor's drooling eye. Burghley House, a resplendent mid-16th-century palace in Lincolnshire, doubles as Lady Catherine's home, Rosings. At Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the largest private country house in England, which substitutes for Mr. Darcy's home, Pemberley, the movie pauses to make a quick tour of a sculpture gallery. For all its romantic gloss and finery, the film still reflects Austen's keen scrutiny of social mobility and the Darwinian struggle of the hungriest to advance by wielding whatever leverage is at hand. This is a world in which, for a woman, an advantageous marriage made at an early age is tantamount to safety from the jungle. As the tide of feminism that crested two decades ago recedes and the old advance-and-retreat games of courtship return, 'Pride & Prejudice' speaks wistfully to the moment. Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are tantalizing early prototypes for a Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy ideal of lovers as brainy, passionate sparring partners. That the world teems with fantasies of Mr. Darcy and his ilk there is no doubt. How many of his type are to be found outside the pages of a novel, however, is another matter.

Subject: Rise of American Democracy From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:40:11 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/books/review/13wood.html November 13, 2005 'The Rise of American Democracy': A Constant Struggle By GORDON S. WOOD This enormous book by Sean Wilentz has been in the works a long time, and the results are nothing less than monumental. An old-fashioned account of the rise of democracy during the first half of the 19th century, it is a tour de force of historical compilation and construction that more than justifies all the articles and monographs on antebellum politics written by historians over the past several decades. Wilentz, the Dayton-Stockton professor of history at Princeton, has drawn extensively on these secondary sources and on his own research. He has brought it all together into a clear and generally readable narrative. Coming in at just over a thousand pages, 'The Rise of American Democracy' is one of the longest works of history to appear recently, and this at a time when most histories and biographies are getting shorter, presumably because of our reduced attention spans. Wilentz makes no concessions to his readers' patience. He has filled his book with an extraordinary multitude of details about nearly every conceivable aspect of antebellum politics, both at the state and federal levels. Of course, since context is everything in history, excessive detail of this kind warms a historian's heart, though whether anyone except a few scholars and information-hungry graduate students will have the stamina actually to slog through such an enormous work remains to be seen. Awesome in its coverage of political events, this is a long, long read. Wilentz's first book, 'Chants Democratic' (1984), was a celebrated study of the rise of the working class in the early Republic, an especially appropriate subject for a scholar known for his devotion to liberal causes and the Democratic Party. This new book is an outgrowth of that earlier work, but it is not likely to receive similar acclaim from the scholarly left; for it very much runs against the flow of current academic trends. Most historians today, especially those writing about the period Wilentz is concerned with - the period of the early Republic from Jefferson to Lincoln - are interested in what they call 'the new political history.' They seek to transcend the usual stuff of politics - elections, parties and the political maneuvering of elite white males in government - and to provide a history that views politics through the lenses of race, gender and popular culture. So they devote themselves primarily to the symbols and theatrics of politics - the various ways common people, including women and blacks, expressed themselves and participated in the political process, whether in parades, costume or drinking toasts. These historians believe culture trumps policy and power. They explicitly reject any sort of narrative of dead white males bringing about the triumph of democracy within the two-party system. This, however, is the very subject of Wilentz's book. Wilentz is well aware of the new political history. Indeed, elsewhere he has expressed his contempt for it, assailing it as filled with 'bargain basement Nietzsche and Foucault, admixed with earnest American do-goodism, that still passes for 'theory' in much of the academy.' In opposition to the fashionable emphasis on culture, he wants, he says, to highlight the independent existence and importance of politics. However significant social and cultural developments were to the American people in the early Republic, these developments, he claims, were perceived primarily in political terms - 'as struggles over contending ideas of democracy.' From the late 19th century to our own day we are apt to see economics, society or culture as the ground for politics and political institutions. But, Wilentz says, for the people of the early Republic, politics, government and constitutional order, not economics, not society, not culture, were still the major means by which the world and the men who ran it were interpreted. He therefore feels justified in making this in-your-face challenge to the new political historians and in writing this old-fashioned narrative. By focusing on men like Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln, however, he does 'not mean to say the presidents and other great men were solely responsible for the vicissitudes of American politics,' since ordinary Americans had a profound influence on the exercise of power. 'But just as political leaders did not create American democracy out of thin air, so the masses of Americans did not simply force their way into the corridors of power.' Leaders were always important. It is a fact of life, he writes, 'that some individuals have more influence on history than others,' even if they cannot make history as they please. Conceived as a narrative, his book, Wilentz explains, 'can be read as a chronicle of American politics from the Revolution to the Civil War with the history of democracy at its center, or as an account of how democracy arose in the United States (and with what consequences) in the context of its time.' His huge work is divided into three sections, each a good-sized book in itself: the first (almost 200 pages), entitled 'The Crisis of the New Order,' on the Jeffersonians; the second and the heart of the book (340 pages), entitled 'Democracy Ascendant,' on the Jacksonians; and the third (270 pages), entitled 'Slavery and the Crisis of American Democracy,' on the coming of the Civil War. These sections are bounded by a prologue and an epilogue. The rise of democracy, Wilentz points out, was not a given from the outset. It 'developed piecemeal, by fits and starts, at the state and local as well as the national level.' It emerged, he says, through a constant struggle among different groups that cut across distinctions of wealth, power and interest (though they often claim the same democratic ideals). In order to demonstrate this struggle, Wilentz takes us through all the national elections (and some of the state ones), the presidential administrations, many of the Congressional bills passed and defeated, and much of the complicated political maneuvering of the period. This accumulation of detail nicely recaptures some of the contingency of day-to-day politics that the participants experienced. Along the way Wilentz offers some beautifully drawn and concise vignettes of important events - like the antislavery printer Elijah Lovejoy's martyrdom, the Amistad affair, the Dorr Rebellion of dissidents in Rhode Island and John Brown's raid - that are better than many book-length accounts. We can get some idea of where Wilentz is coming from by noting the book that seems to have most influenced him - Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning history, 'The Age of Jackson.' Before Schlesinger's book appeared in 1945, Wilentz writes, 'historians thought of American democracy as the product of an almost mystical frontier or agrarian egalitarianism.' But Schlesinger, reflecting the New Deal perspective of the time, 'toppled that interpretation by placing democracy's origins firmly in the context of the founding generation's ideas about the few and the many, and by seeing democracy's expansion as an outcome of struggles between classes, not sections.' 'The Age of Jackson,' Wilentz says, located the origin of modern liberal politics in the belief of Jefferson and Jackson that the demands of the future, in Schlesinger's words, 'will best be met by a society in which no single group is able to sacrifice democracy and liberty to its own interests.' In 1945, the interest group Schlesinger was most worried about was what he labeled 'the business community' or 'the capitalists.' Although Wilentz is too sophisticated to posit something as crude as 'the business community,' he nevertheless believes that some sort of class struggle lay behind the politics of the antebellum period. In other words, he writes as a good liberal, but an old-fashioned New Deal one. Like Schlesinger in 1945, he wants in 2005 to speak to the liberalism of the modern Democratic Party. By suggesting that the race, gender and cultural issues that drive much of the modern left are not central to the age of Jackson, Wilentz seems to imply that they should not be central to the future of the present-day Democratic Party. As he was for Schlesinger, Andrew Jackson is Wilentz's hero. Jackson's presidential victory in 1828, he writes, 'marked the culmination of more than 30 years of American democratic development.' In fact, Wilentz may help to recover the descriptive rubric 'the age of Jackson,' which has fallen out of favor since Schlesinger wrote his book. In his account of the politics of the time, Wilentz includes all the usual personalities and anecdotes - the Eaton affair, the clashes with Calhoun, the Bank veto - and he generally comes down on the side of Jackson and the Jacksonians. He even makes credible Jackson's radical monetary actions, including the bizarre policy of removing all the federal government's specie deposits from state banks and placing them in the Treasury vaults, where they would have little effect on the money supply or the economy. In 1957, Bray Hammond, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning study, 'Banks and Politics in America from the Revolution to the Civil War,' severely criticized Jackson's banking and monetary policies, suggesting that they were backed by state bankers and others who wanted a free hand in running their commercial affairs. But Wilentz shows that Jackson, unlike Jefferson, was no promoter of laissez-faire economics. Instead, his antibank policies were devised to keep private interests, particularly speculative and business interests, out of the government. 'The key to Jacksonian politics,' Wilentz says, was 'a belief that relatively small groups of self-interested men were out to destroy majority rule and, with it, the Constitution.' The Jacksonian Democrats 'assumed that politics and government institutions remained the primary locus of power,' and that power was to be used to protect the majority of 'producers' - farmers, mechanics and other workers in the society - from 'a nonproducer elite' composed of bankers, speculators and other moneyed men. 'If they did not invent democracy,' he writes, 'the Jacksonians did make this way of thinking the basic credo of American liberal democracy.' There's a hint in all this history that the present-day Democratic Party might greatly improve its bearings by going back to its Jacksonian roots. These days, most historians would not look to Jackson for anything worthwhile. Indeed, modern scholars have bashed Jackson nearly as much as they have Jefferson, picturing him as a raging fanatic, a passionate slaveholder and a violent Indian-hater who removed Native Americans to the trans-Mississippi West and created the 'trail of tears.' This sort of criticism did not exist 60 years ago. Schlesinger never even mentioned Indian removal in 'The Age of Jackson'; in fact, he has no entry for Indians in his index. Unlike Schlesinger, however, Wilentz confronts the issue head on, offering a generally impartial account. Nor does he deny the many contradictions and dilemmas of Jacksonian egalitarianism, especially on racial matters and slavery. He concedes, for example, that the Jacksonians celebrated the expansion of white suffrage in some of the Northern states in the 1830's, giving the vote even to white aliens, at the very time they were taking the franchise away from free blacks who had voted for a generation or more (mostly for Federalists and Whigs). Wilentz also admits that the Jacksonians tolerated slavery and were friendlier than their opponents to efforts that would widen its spread. But he denies the charge of some historians that this made the Jacksonians a proslavery party. In short, he makes no attempt to hide the flaws of either Jackson or the Jacksonian Democrats. He does, however, provide as powerful a defense of Jackson and Jacksonianism as we are likely to get in this day and age. Wilentz insists that the various recent interpretations of the Jacksonian era contain only partial truths. These are the studies that emphasize an entrepreneurial consensus over economic conflicts; that believe religion, ethnicity and other cultural issues drove Jacksonian politics; that contend the Jacksonian Democratic Party was an alliance of slaveholders and racists eager to clear out the Indians in order to make the imperial republic safe for slavery; and that depict Jacksonianism as a movement of subsistence farmers and urban workers resisting capitalism. 'All of them,' he says, 'slight the dynamic and unstable character of the Democracy's rise and development, and the primacy of politics and political thinking in the conflicts of the era.' And none of them can take away from the fact that the Jacksonians 'created the first mass democratic national political party in modern history.' Wilentz is especially anxious to distinguish the Jacksonian Democrats from the Whigs. The Democrats, he writes, were economic radicals intent on creating a hard-money currency regulated by the federal government. By contrast, the Whigs believed in a 'credit-and-paper, boom-and-bust' economic system. Moreover, he denies the claim of some historians that the Whigs were the optimistic party of active government and the Democrats the pessimistic party of laissez-faire. If anything, he says, the opposite was true. To Wilentz the Whigs resemble the Republicans of today. 'As long as the Whigs appeared to be the party of the rich and privileged,' he says, 'they would never win a national election.' But in 1840 they reinvented themselves as the party of the people. 'For the Whigs to purport to represent the people,' Wilentz says, 'they had to talk more like the people, or how they thought the people talked.' So they stressed American exceptionalism, denied the existence of classes and 'with a combination of calculation and improvisation' mastered the art of popular flattery, repackaging their message in order to bamboozle the public. The Whigs even had their own boy genius, the 43-year-old insider-manipulator Thurlow Weed. The Whigs, Wilentz writes, were especially successful in 'reorienting debates along ethical and cultural lines that cut across differences of wealth and class.' If they could have conceived of gay marriage, they would have used the issue. Good Democrat that he is, Wilentz cannot quite believe that the Whigs in 1840 (any more than the present-day Republicans) truly represented the majority of the people. The Democrats were natural democrats, the Whigs artificial ones. The Democrats never doubted that 'they were the constitutional party of the sovereign people.' Thus it was only a matter of time before the fraudulence of the Whigs would be exposed. It was the issue of slavery that finally destroyed the Whig Party. (Although slavery broke the Democrats apart, it did not destroy them.) A merica's politicians tried from the beginning to table the explosive issue of slavery - to bury it, postpone it and hope against hope that it would just go away. But it would not disappear. By the 1840's the many-sided conflicts over American democracy, Wilentz says, came to focus on the fate of slavery. By then it had become increasingly clear that the free-labor North and the slave-ridden South had developed two very different systems of democracy. While those two systems often appealed to the same ideals and values, and were 'linked through the federal government and the national political parties,' they were 'fundamentally antagonistic.' Despite the leaders' attempts to suppress these antagonisms, 'by 1860 the conflict could no longer be contained, as a democratic election sparked Southern secession and the war that would determine American democracy's future.' It is one of the many ironies of American history that the wildfire spread of democratic politics in both the North and the South eventually made it impossible to solve the problem of slavery peaceably. To learn how the triumph of democracy nearly destroyed the United States, this book is a good place to start. Gordon S. Wood is the Alva O. Way University professor and professor of history at Brown University.

Subject: U.S. Innovators From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:20:22 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13invent.html November 13, 2005 Are U.S. Innovators Losing Their Competitive Edge? By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN Baltimore WHEN James E. West was 8 years old, he propped himself on his bed's brass footboard one afternoon and stretched to plug the cord of a radio he had repaired into a ceiling outlet. It was one of his first experiments. Mr. West's hand sealed to the light socket as 120 volts of electricity shimmied through his body, freezing him in place until his brother knocked him from the footboard and onto the floor. Like more storied inventors who preceded him, he was quickly hooked on the juice - even as he lay shivering from that first encounter. 'I became fascinated by electricity after that, just completely fascinated,' recalled Mr. West, now 74 and an award-winning research professor at Johns Hopkins University. 'I needed to learn everything I could about it.' Over the past several decades, he has secured 50 domestic and more than 200 foreign patents on inventions relating to his pioneering explorations of electrically charged materials and recording devices. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, an organization in Akron, Ohio, that counts Mr. West among its inductees, about 90 percent of all microphones used today in devices like cellphones, acoustic equipment and toys derive from electronic transducers that he helped to develop in the early 1960's. Inventors have always held a special place in American history and business lore, embodying innovation and economic progress in a country that has long prized individual creativity and the power of great ideas. In recent decades, tinkerers and researchers have given society microchips, personal computers, the Internet, balloon catheters, bar codes, fiber optics, e-mail systems, hearing aids, air bags and automated teller machines, among a bevy of other devices. Mr. West stands firmly in this tradition - a tradition that he said may soon be upended. He fears that corporate and public nurturing of inventors and scientific research is faltering and that America will pay a serious economic and intellectual penalty for this lapse. A larger pool of Mr. West's colleagues echoes his concerns. 'The scientific and technical building blocks of our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength,' the National Academy of Sciences observed in a report released last month. 'Although many people assume that the United States will always be a world leader in science and technology, this may not continue to be the case inasmuch as great minds and ideas exist throughout the world. We fear the abruptness with which a lead in science and technology can be lost - and the difficulty of recovering a lead once lost, if indeed it can be regained at all.' A COMMITTEE of leading scientists, corporate executives and educators oversaw the drafting of the report, entitled 'Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.' To spur American innovation, it recommends enhanced math and science education in grade school and high school, a more hospitable environment for scientific research and training at the college and graduate levels, an increase in federal funds for basic scientific research and a mix of tax incentives and other measures to foster high-paying jobs in groundbreaking industries. The report cites China and India among a number of economically promising countries that may be poised to usurp America's leadership in innovation and job growth. 'For the first time in generations, the nation's children could face poorer prospects than their parents and grandparents did,' the report said. 'We owe our current prosperity, security and good health to the investments of past generations, and we are obliged to renew those commitments.' The Industrial Research Institute, an organization in Arlington, Va., that represents some of the nation's largest corporations, is also concerned that the academic and financial support for scientific innovation is lagging in the United States. The group's most recent data indicate that from 1986 to 2001, China, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan all awarded more doctoral degrees in science and engineering than did the United States. Between 1991 and 2003, research and development spending in America trailed that of China, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan - in China's case by billions of dollars. Mr. West's personal journey has involved overcoming school segregation and racism, a reading disability and the downsizing of Bell Labs, the legendary New Jersey research center where he once worked, and he fantasizes about a day when children hold inventors and scientists in higher esteem than hip-hop stars and professional athletes. 'We need to bring the view back in this country that we're willing to make investments for the future because everything that's in the cellphone and the iPod today was known 20 years ago,' he said. 'I think scientists and inventors are a very peculiar breed in that we're not in it for the money - we're in it for the knowledge.' IT all begins with a tingle of curiosity. 'If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger,' Mr. West recalled of his childhood. 'I had this need to know what was inside.' That need links Mr. West to a rich tradition in American life and civilization. Benjamin Franklin, his kite lofted into the sky to coax electricity from the clouds, is the totemic American inventor whose financial acumen gave him time to ponder and then spout a series of inventions that included a stove, catheter, glass harmonica, bifocals and, of course, the lightning rod - which he declined to patent so it would be freely available to the public. No less a figure than Abraham Lincoln regarded the patent system, and the protections it offered for what he called the 'fire of genius,' as one of history's signature achievements. Shortly after President Lincoln's death, Thomas Alva Edison filed a patent for his first invention, an electric vote recorder. Edison became widely heralded not only as the creator of a longer-lasting light bulb and the phonograph but also as the inventor of the invention factory. When the conglomerate that eventually became General Electric began buying out Mr. Edison's operations in the 1890's, it represented the beginning of the corporate absorption of the inventive act. 'Edison marks the end of the individual inventor and the precorporate phase of invention,' said Randall E. Stross, a contributor to The New York Times who is also working on an Edison biography titled 'The Wizard,' which Crown Publishing plans to release in 2007. In 1932, a year after Edison died, corporations secured more patents than individuals for the first time, and a year later the Census Bureau eliminated 'inventor' as a job class, according to Technology Review, a trade publication. During the golden era of corporate research and development that followed Edison's death, G.E., DuPont, AT&T and eventually Lockheed, Eli Lilly, Intel and other corporate giants came to dominate innovation. And as that happened, some tensions arose between corporations and independent inventors and researchers. While tipping their hats to the scores of breakthroughs that have emerged from corporate labs, inventors also say they are concerned that bottom-line pressures at many companies may cause pure research to be eclipsed by innovation tied to rapid commercialization - leading to routine refinements of existing products rather than to breathtaking advances. A tug of war has emerged between individual inventors and corporations over proposed legislative changes in patent laws, with the inventors arguing that possible revisions would benefit the business giants. Corporations have argued that the system is equitable but flawed. Dean Kamen, an inventor whose creations include the wearable insulin pump and the Segway transporter, recently testified before Congress, calling for changes in the patent system that also preserve protections for individual inventors. Despite those tussles, Mr. Stross says he believes that recent technological advancements have helped to move innovation out of the corporate sphere and to 'give the lone inventor access to inexpensive tools and resources to once again be master of one's own lab.' Robert S. Langer, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a biotechnology pioneer, says that he shares the concerns raised in the National Academy of Sciences report but that he remains confident about the country's prospects. 'While I think we can always do better, I am optimistic about the spirit of innovation in this country,' he said. 'I think we hold a lead, but no lead is unassailable.' For Mr. West, whose career has spanned stretches in creative havens like Bell Labs, inventing has meant brainstorming sessions with fellow tinkerers and long hours walking the corridors of his own mind. 'I spend a great deal of the hours that I'm awake within myself,' he said. 'You never want to stop doing it, especially when it's a pleasure. It's vital to my existence and I couldn't live if I wasn't an inventor.' Ilene Busch-Vishniac, a Johns Hopkins professor and inventor who has collaborated with Mr. West for more than two decades, most recently on acoustical research, called him the quintessential explorer. 'For an inventor to be successful they have to think outside of the box and propose things that are wildly different,' she said. 'Secondly, you need to be able to figure out how to do the tests that evaluate whether something is plausible. Jim is great at both of those things, but especially at figuring out the tests.' Mr. West began testing his limits at an early age, defying his family's wishes that he become a dentist and setting his sights on a doctorate in physics. To dissuade him, his father introduced him to other African-American friends with doctorates - all of whom had failed to land university posts and held blue-collar jobs instead. Still, Mr. West pressed on, coached by a series of mentors, memorizing text and numbers to mask his reading problems, building on his mathematical gifts and eventually enrolling as an undergraduate in physics at Temple University. AFTER a summer internship at Bell Labs, he invented a pair of headphones; enthralled by his lab work, he decided to forgo his physics studies and to stay on at Bell Labs, where he developed microphone technologies and explored a range of interests in acoustics. When Bell Labs became part of Lucent after AT&T reorganized, the scope of its research operations shifted, and Mr. West eventually moved on as well. At Ms. Busch-Vishniac's invitation, he joined Johns Hopkins in 2000. Although he walks with a slight limp caused by a series of lower back surgeries, Mr. West looks much younger than his age. Like all inspired inventors whose fertile imaginations make them both researchers and artists, Mr. West also still manages to bring a Zen-like focus to his endeavors. 'If I'm concerned about what an electron does in an amorphous mass then I become an electron,' he allowed. 'I try to have that picture in my mind and to behave like an electron, looking at the problem in all its dimensions and scales.' He and Ms. Busch-Vishniac are currently analyzing solutions to noise problems in hospitals, and they are mentoring two local high school students and a Johns Hopkins graduate student who have joined their team as young inventors. The graduate student, Emily Nalven, 22, said she decided to join Mr. West after taking classes with him. 'Even on the days he didn't lecture, he came to class, sat in the front row, took notes and spent his time after class answering student questions,' she said in an e-mail message. 'One day, I asked him something about sound waves and he answered my question, then came back the next day with an even more detailed explanation to ensure that I truly understood.' The seeds of future inventions are sown in these kinds of interactions, but the possible erosion of fertile academic and financial soil in America concerns Mr. West and many others in science. 'The inventiveness of individuals depends on the context, including sociopolitical, economic, cultural and institutional factors,' said Merton C. Flemings, a professor emeritus at M.I.T. who holds 28 patents and oversees the Lemelson-M.I.T. Program for inventors. 'We remain one of the most inventive countries in the world. But all the signs suggest that we won't retain that pre-eminence much longer. The future is very bleak, I'm afraid.' Mr. Flemings said that private and public capital was not being adequately funneled to the kinds of projects and people that foster invention. The study of science is not valued in enough homes, he observed, and science education in grade school and high school is sorely lacking. But quantitative goals, he said, are not enough. Singapore posts high national scores in mathematics, he said, but does not have a reputation for churning out new inventions. In fact, he added, researchers from Singapore have studied school systems in America to try to glean the source of something ineffable and not really quantifiable: creativity. 'In addition to openness, tolerance is essential in an inventive modern society,' a report sponsored by the Lemelson-M.I.T. Program said last year. 'Creative people, whether artists or inventive engineers, are often nonconformists and rebels. Indeed, invention itself can be perceived as an act of rebellion against the status quo.' THOSE who keep an eye on corporate behavior say they think that sober-minded risk taking - and the support of daring research for research's sake - also needs to be on the strategic menus of more companies. 'When inventors work independently, the invention itself is seen as an opportunity, whereas in the corporate world accidents are seen as failures,' said Peter Arnell, a marketing consultant who coaches companies about innovation. 'When people exist outside of the corporate model and have vision and passion, then accidents and getting lost are beautiful things.' Nathan Myhrvold, part of Microsoft's early brain trust and the former head of its heavily endowed research arm, founded Intellectual Ventures, a fund that he says spends 'millions of dollars' annually to support individual inventors in long-term projects. Mr. Myhrvold started his fund about five years ago after he retired from Microsoft; he now backs about 20 inventors in such fields as nanotechnology, optics, computing, biotechnology and medical devices. 'As far as we know, we're the only people who are doing this - which means we're either incredibly smart or incredibly dumb,' Mr. Myhrvold said. 'There's a network of venture capitalists for start-ups that have created thousands and thousands of businesses, but very little for inventors.' Mr. Myhrvold says that most public and academic grants are for investigating well-defined research problems - and not for backing, as he does, 'an invention before it exists.' His staff of about 50 people files about 25 patent applications a month on behalf of inventors and his fund. He and his staff also help inventors refine ideas, pay for their time and labor and share ownership stakes in projects with them. 'We all love the goose that lays the golden eggs but somehow we've forgotten about the goose,' Mr. Myhrvold said. 'This decade I'm hoping will be the decade of the invention.' Whether or not a new inventive age is coming in America, Mr. West says he plans to continue doing what he's always done. He and Ms. Busch-Vishniac debate, regularly and vociferously, the merits of their respective ideas. But both say their debates are authentic exchanges of viewpoints, not games of one-upmanship. 'You can't have a big ego and be a great inventor,' Mr. West said. 'You constantly have to be listening and evaluating.' Even though he is halfway through his eighth decade, he is pursuing other new projects - collaborating with a colleague at Georgia Tech, for example, to explore improved methods of teleconferencing. Inventing, he says, is the intellectual bicycle that he rides each day. Looking back over the years, Mr. West says he has often gone down the wrong intellectual path. But, he says, that's just how inventors do their thing. 'I think I've had more failures than successes, but I don't see the failures as mistakes because I always learned something from those experiences,' Mr. West said. 'I see them as having not achieved the initial goal, nothing more than that.'

Subject: In Zimbabwe From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 09:50:55 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/international/africa/13zimbabwe.html November 13, 2005 In Zimbabwe, Homeless Belie Leader's Claim By MICHAEL WINES BULAWAYO, Zimbabwe - President Robert G. Mugabe has one word for reports that Operation Drive Out Trash, the urban-demolition campaign aimed at slum dwellers that his government describes as a civic beautification program, has rendered thousands of his impoverished citizens homeless. 'Nonsense,' he told ABC News in an interview broadcast on Nov. 3. 'Thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands. Where are the thousands? You go there now and see whether those thousands are there. Where are they? A figment of their imagination.' Clearly, Mr. Mugabe has not been to Bulawayo. Just three miles west of the center of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city, Robson Tembo and his wife, Ticole, live in the open air in a small pen, 12 feet by 12 feet, built of deadwood and scrap. Rows of plastic grocery sacks hold the assets they have collected over 72 years. Five miles north, Nokuthula Dube, 22, her two daughters and two orphaned relatives are squatting in an unfinished two-room house of cinder blocks. During a reporter's recent visit, an unidentified woman lay curled up on the concrete floor of the house's only closet, sleeping. On the other side of town, Gertrude Moyo, 28, lives with her four children and seven other families in tents, pitched in the bush. More than simple homelessness binds the three families. Until a few months ago, they all lived in Killarney, a shantytown with an improbable name that had housed Bulawayo's less fortunate citizens since the early 1980's. Today, Killarney is a moonscape of sunbaked dirt, scrub and burned-out rubble. Last May and June, police officers reduced its huts to wreckage, burned their remains and routed the area's more than 800 residents as part of Operation Drive Out Trash. 'They had iron bars as long as this,' Mr. Tembo said of the police, stretching his arms wide. 'They demolished part of every hut, and then they told us to destroy the rest.' Mr. Tembo said he refused, and so the police finished the job, leveling his two-room home built of wooden poles and metal walls. More than five months after the demolitions began, Zimbabwe's government continues to insist that the destruction of 133,000 households, by its own count, was a long-overdue slum-clearance effort that has caused its citizens only temporary inconvenience. The government contends that most of those made homeless have been relocated to the rural villages where they lived before migrating to the cities, mostly to look for work. Others, it says, will be placed in thousands of new homes being built to replace the illegal huts that have been razed. Mr. Mugabe has rejected the United Nations' attempt to raise $30 million to aid the victims of Operation Drive Out Trash on the ground that Zimbabwe has no crisis. Despite a public appeal by Secretary General Kofi Annan on Oct. 31, the government so far has rejected any assistance that implies that its evicted citizens are in distress. Yet many are in great distress. Relying on the estimates of Zimbabwe's government, the United Nations says 700,000 people were displaced by the May and June demolitions and a later campaign, Operation Going Forward, No Turning Back, in which police officers routed those who tried to return to the cities and rebuild. An August survey of more than 23,000 Zimbabwean households by the South Africa-based advocacy group ActionAid International places the number of those made homeless as high as 1.2 million - more than 1 in 10 Zimbabweans. Where many have gone is a mystery. The government carted thousands to holding camps that were later disbanded, and transported thousands more by trucks into the countryside and left them there, ostensibly near their rural homes. Those people are registered with local officials, but almost certainly, they are but a fraction of the total. In the Nkayi district, a vast expanse of bush terrain north of Bulawayo with 110,000 people, fewer than 700 families are known to have been relocated, according to church officials involved in assisting them. Similarly, the government's home-building plan has fallen far short of its promises and of the demand. Mr. Mugabe pledged three trillion Zimbabwe dollars for construction in July - about $30 million in American dollars, and dropping steadily given Zimbabwe's 400 percent inflation rate. But the national treasury is all but bare, and in Bulawayo, where 1,000 homes were promised in short order, fewer than 100 are being built. So where are the homeless? 'This remains what I'd call an invisible humanitarian crisis - invisible to international eyes, the reason being that those who were displaced have been dispersed,' said David Mwaniki, who oversees ActionAid's work in Zimbabwe. Many are probably with relatives; a few have fled the country. Others are in the bush, surviving off the kindness of neighbors. Many more have vanished into hovels and tents and half-built houses. The United Nations says 32,000 of Bulawayo's 675,000 residents lost their homes and were ordered to leave the city during the demolition campaign; city officials put the number at 45,000. Torden Moyo, who directs an alliance of local civic groups called Bulawayo Agenda, says there is no doubt where they have gone. 'Ninety-five percent are now back,' he said. 'They're still struggling, still homeless, still penniless, still shelterless. They've been made refugees in their own country.' Killarney is proof of that. Before the demolitions, it was dirt-poor but thriving, subdivided into three villages with stores and services. All that has been razed and burned. Northeast of town, not far off the road to Bulawayo's airport, Nokuthula Dube, her own children and an orphaned niece and nephew share the two rooms of a half-finished home. Ten stunted cornstalks and some greens grow in a makeshift plot outside, but the five live on donated cornmeal from a nearby church. Ms. Dube returned from her niece's school in June to find her home in Killarney's Village One wrecked and on fire. Homeless and pregnant, she lost her housecleaning job in a nearby suburb. Her husband, Nomen Moyo, had to move away to keep his job as a gardener. Ms. Dube said she and the children walked for a week, sleeping by the road, before finding the shell where they now live. In September, Ms. Dube had a daughter, Mtokhozisi. She left her 3-year-old daughter, Nomathembe, and the two orphans - 10-year-old Pentronella and 14-year-old Kevin - alone while she gave birth in a local hospital. She walked home from the hospital with her newborn. 'I left in the morning,' she said, 'and arrived around 3.' A few weeks ago, a man who said he was the house's owner appeared. 'He wants us to leave,' she said. 'He's claiming that this is his house.' Asked where they would go, she said, 'Only God knows.' Across town, Gertrude Moyo, who lived in Killarney for 23 years before being driven out on June 11, lives in a 10-foot-by-15-foot tent with her four children. Her husband died a year ago. She said the police first took the family to a transit camp for the homeless, then to the tent. Mrs. Moyo said she was told to wait for a new home. In fact, the government is building a row of houses next to her tent, and says they are for victims of the demolitions. But Ms. Moyo said the police had told her that her family was going not to a new home, but to a plot of farmland north of town. Robson Tembo and his wife drifted from one church to a second, then to a succession of relatives' homes before finally returning in late September to Killarney's Village Three. They built their scrap-metal enclosure not far from the two-room home in which they once lived, and which the police had razed in May. Once a miner, Mr. Tembo is now too infirm to walk very far, much less work. A son who cleans houses gives the couple maize; a second sometimes brings money. Mr. Tembo's great worry, he said, is that the police, who cruise up and down Killarney's main dirt road, will evict the couple again. 'I'm from Malawi,' he said. 'But if they tear down this hut of mine, I will stay here, because I have nowhere to go in Malawi.' Local church workers, who have assumed much of the burden of finding and caring for the homeless here, say that about 240 of Killarney's residents have returned, many living in the sort of scrap-metal lean-to's that the Tembos cobbled together. Down a dirt path, past the charred remains of huts in what was once Killarney Village Two, Mhulupheki Tshuma, 29, his wife, Ncadisani, and their 20-month-old son survive by scavenging plastic containers and collecting white pebbles, which Mr. Tshuma sells as decorations for graves. Two other children have been sent to live with relatives elsewhere in town. Mr. Tshuma was born here, and his parents died here. The family lived in a two-room mud hut when the police arrived in early June and burned it down. 'The only thing I took out,' Ms. Tshuma said, 'was the children.' After wandering for three months, they returned on Sept. 4 and built a hovel. The police demolished it on Sept. 29. Now they live in the open air, their living space bounded by knee-high mud walls and pieces of rubbish. Mr. Tshuma said the police returned early this month and beat him roundly, telling him he had to leave. But that is impossible. 'We came here,' he said, 'because we didn't have anywhere else to go.'

Subject: UN on Zimbabwe From: Mik To: Emma Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 16:37:41 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Taken from the UN internet site: Annan appeals to Zimbabwe to let UN help homeless after Government rejects aid Kofi Annan 31 October 2005 – Secretary-General Kofi Annan today appealed to the Government in Zimbabwe to allow the United Nations to provide humanitarian assistance to the country after the authorities rejected the world body's aid amid reports that tens of thousands of people there are still homeless and in need of help. 'The Secretary-General remains deeply concerned by the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe,' his spokesman said, citing reports of continued suffering months after the eviction campaign that began in May 2005. Mr. Annan reacted with dismay to a decision by the Government to reject offers of UN assistance. In an official communication, the Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development stated 'that there is no longer a compelling need to provide temporary shelter as there is no humanitarian crisis' and claimed that Government interventions have addressed the most urgent shelter needs, according to the spokesman. The Government's position stands in stark contradiction to the findings contained in a report by the Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe, Anna Tibaijuka, as well as most recent reports from the UN and the humanitarian community. 'A large number of vulnerable groups, including the recent evictees as well as other vulnerable populations, remain in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, including shelter,' spokesman Stephane Dujarric stressed. He added that there is 'no clear evidence' that subsequent Government efforts have significantly benefited these people. The Government's decision to decline assistance comes despite extensive consultations on relief efforts between the UN and the authorities. With the impending rainy season threatening to worsen the living conditions of the affected population, the Secretary-General made a strong appeal to the Government of Zimbabwe to 'ensure that those who are out in the open, without shelter and without means of sustaining their livelihoods, are provided with humanitarian assistance in collaboration with the United Nations and the humanitarian community in order to avert a further deterioration of the humanitarian situation,' his spokesman said.

Subject: Mugabe receives standing ovation in South Africa From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 16:46:12 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Let's put this into perspective, this is a relatively recent article: South Africans don’t support Mugabe By Ian Macdonald, published 24/05/2005 The South African government has been criticised for engaging in what it calls “quiet diplomacy” with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe. During an event to mark the 10th anniversary of democracy at the Union Buildings in Pretoria, Mugabe received a standing ovation from the attendees, seen at the time as tacit approval of his controversial land reform policies that have devastated the Zimbabwean economy.

Subject: African Unity and Mugabe From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 16:52:59 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Africa hopes for new beginning Flags of all African nations are carried by South African soldiers The AU is touted as the face of a new, democratic Africa The first summit of the African Union has opened in Durban, South Africa, amidst flamboyant celebrations and calls for a new beginning for the troubled continent. outh African President Thabo Mbeki, the first chairman of the AU, called the new organisation a chance for Africa to take its 'rightful place' in global affairs. 'The time has come that we must end the marginalisation of Africa,' he said in a speech at the spectacular opening ceremony. 'We must end many centuries in which many on our globe despise the people of our continent.' The new organisation is intended to be people-orientated, in contrast to the 'dictators' club' of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) which was formally wound up on Monday. It will also have 'teeth' and proper authority, with the first task on its books the creation of a Peace and Security Council, which, in turn, will establish an African peacekeeping force. An ultimate aim is for the organisation to have a single African parliament, court of justice and central bank, although leaders acknowledge it will be several years before they are likely to take shape. ..... Such nicwe words.... butr guess what: And while the AU is intended to promote good governance, there has been criticism of the leaders' acceptance of Robert Mugabe, a more controversial attendee of the AU's launch ceremony.

Subject: IMF on Zimbabwe From: Mik To: Mik Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 17:15:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- The International Monetary Fund says Zimbabwe's gross domestic product will fall 7 percent this year but the African nation projects a 2-percent rise. President Robert Mugabe also disputes the International Monetary Fund projection that Zimbabwe's inflation will hit 400 percent this year, the BBC reported. Zimbabwe's program of destroying shantytown traders has reduced activity and people's incomes. The seizure since 2000 of white-owned farms has crippled agricultural production, led to food shortages and boosted unemployment 70 percent, the Washington-based monetary agency said. 'Without a bold change in policy direction, the economic outlook will remain bleak, with particularly detrimental effects on the poorest segments of the population', the IMF said. HARARE, Zimbabwe, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Zimbabwe's land reform is to blame for the food shortages as those given land since 2000 knew little about farming, the deputy agriculture minister admits. Deputy Agriculture Minister Sylvester Nguni was quoted in the state-owned Herald as saying while a few of those given land were committed to agricultural production, many others were doing 'nothing' on the farms, reports the BBC. Critics also have blamed the seizure of most of the land from white people for the food crisis. The United Nations has estimated as many as 3 million people will need food aid this year. The world body also has criticized the government for refusing aid to people made homeless by housing demolitions, the report said.

Subject: Give Peas a Chance From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 09:42:53 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/review/15ELLISL.html May 15, 2005 Give Peas a Chance By SARAH ELLIS THE PEA BLOSSOM By Hans Christian Andersen. Retold and illustrated by Amy Lowry Poole. HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1805-75) was fascinated by the future. In ''The Swineherd'' he invented a surveillance device, a cooking pot that reveals what everyone in town is having for dinner. In ''The Philosopher's Stone'' he imagined the ultimate Webcam, a mirrored room that shows the doings of the whole world. ''The pictures on the walls were alive and moving; they showed everything that was taking place, no matter where it was happening; all one had to have were the time and the desire to look.'' Andersen's passion for devices is one link from his time to ours that seems particularly clear this year, the bicentennial of his birth. Another reason for the survival and wide-ranging popularity of his work is his unfettered exploration of desire. When he wrote of the desire for adventure, status, respect, acceptance, love and a chance to be fully human, he wrote without the safety nets of irony or a mature acceptance of the human condition. His sensibility is rare in a world of cool postmodern detachment, in which we value seeing through things more than we value simply looking at them. Children, however, have never much liked the po-mo stance and, like a child, Andersen took the unflinching stance of ''I want it.'' Nowhere is this raw intensity more evident than in his stories of the desire to cheat death. One of the lesser-known death-cheating stories is one whose title is usually translated as ''Five Peas From the Same Pod.'' Dating from the middle of Andersen's career, it begins jauntily with the musings of five peas as they grow in their pod and wonder what life holds. When they emerge into the world, a boy with a peashooter sends them off to their various destinies. Three become pigeon food, one ends up in a gutter and the fifth lands on a windowsill, where it begins to grow and blossom. Inside the room a poor young girl, dying from one of those 19th-century wasting illnesses, observes the growing plant and takes inspiration from its beauty and its unlikely survival. She recovers. Amy Lowry Poole dusts the story off and gives it new clothes in a picture-book version she calls simply ''The Pea Blossom.'' As she sets the story near Beijing, the new clothes are Chinese. Poole studied scroll painting in China, and she uses the tale as a vehicle for her illustration medium, paintings on rice paper. The pictures are gentle and controlled, and they are an unexpectedly good fit for Andersen. In his world everything is alive, from peas to darning needles to shirt collars. Poole captures this animation in her decorative settings -- a tree whose leaves are composed of animal shapes; a glimpse underground to a bustling, kinetic world of snakes, worms, lizards and growing vegetables. In contrast, she shows restraint in her humanizing of the peas. No big eyes or accessories here, just a simple face and a pair of sketchy, stubby arms, relying on their roundness to give them a delicious fat-baby look. In the text, Poole tailors the fate of the peas to the Chinese setting as well, as two peas end up in the emperor's rice bowl. She adds details from Chinese folklore, legends of sun and moon. All these amendments are very appropriate for Andersen, who was a traveler, fascinated by world folklore. He once wrote that he wanted to ''walk every radius, so to speak, in the circle of the fairy tale.'' The Chinese setting also solves a potential problem this 19th-century story poses for contemporary readers. A dying child and the redemptive powers of nature and beauty are themes that can skate very close to sentimentality. Andersen was well aware of this pitfall, and wrote that his work needed ''the kiss of a sunbeam or drop of malice.'' Here he leavened the sentiment with a sardonic touch. He told us of the girl's recovery and then gave the last word to the gutter -- the gutter where Pea No. 4 ended up, the gutter who believes that his pea, bloated and soggy, met the most glorious fate of all. Poole omits the gutter but, by setting the story in what is a faraway country for most of her readers, she establishes some artistic distance from the tale's potential soppiness. A poverty-stricken child, a hard-working single mother, a mysterious illness -- all these themes could have been played out on a stage much closer to home, but Poole's psychological chinoiserie makes for a version that is both true to the spirit of Andersen and suitable for the current picture-book crowd. Over the last two centuries, Andersen's stories have taken on the qualities of folklore. They are malleable, forming themselves to the shapes of our beliefs. Andersen's fifth pea is evidence of God's compassion. ''God himself planted that pea and made it thrive for your sake, to give you back your health,'' the mother says. Poole's fifth pea is evidence of individual virtue. In an author's note, Poole writes, ''I admired the fifth and smallest pea because, unlike the others, he was content to accept his fate, which eventually led him to a fulfilling new life.'' In this Rorschach approach to folklore, the fifth pea could as easily tell us that the peashooters of fortune blow us where they will and whether our lives result in good or ill is largely an arbitrary matter, or that if you live in a pod you naturally think the whole world is green, or that the gutter looks good to the gutter. THE Andersen bicentennial is being celebrated by new translations in French and Chinese, concerts, new critical work, a statue in Moscow, a new complete audio recording of all 157 stories, and the opening of an Andersen theme park near what the Frank Loesser song calls ''wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen.'' On the quieter book front, this year as every year, a new crop of children will drop into Andersen's world for a time. It remains a world of nightingales, flying peas, match girls and naked emperors, a world of devices and desires that seem magically tailored for you alone.

Subject: Low-Cost Credit for Low-Cost Items From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:21:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/business/worldbusiness/12retail.html November 12, 2005 Low-Cost Credit for Low-Cost Items By PAULO PRADA RIO DE JANEIRO - Márcia Regina da Cruz, a 40-year-old janitor and mother of three, decided to splurge. Ms. da Cruz, who lives in São Vicente, a coastal town an hour's bus ride from São Paulo, made a purchase in September equal to one-fifth of her monthly salary. She bought three irons - one for herself and two as gifts for her mother and sister - for 72 reais, or just over $32. 'It was a big purchase,' she said. 'I normally couldn't pay for it.' She could, though, because of a new policy at CompreBem, a supermarket chain owned by Grupo Pão de Açúcar, Brazil's biggest retailer. The plan allows her to pay for the purchase in 10 interest-free monthly installments of about $3.20 a month. Big retailers in Brazil are lowering the bar for what they will sell on credit. Though the country's shops and department stores have long sold big-ticket items on installment plans, Brazilian and multinational retailers, like Wal-Mart Stores and Carrefour of France, have begun offering purchase plans with monthly payments that come to no more than one or two reais - about 45 to 90 cents. The shift is an effort by retailers here to squeeze more spending from the big, but cash-short, bottom of the consumer base in Brazil, South America's biggest economy. Amid a tepid recovery that has yet to blossom into strong, sustained growth in retail demand, vendors are going to new lengths to help low-income Brazilians pay for everything from their weekly rice and beans to inexpensive items like clothes, radios, blenders and other goods. The installments are interest-free until a payment is missed, and then interest of at least 3 percent a month is charged. 'Retailers are trying to wring the very last bit of disposable income from consumers who would like to buy more, but often can't,' says Paulo Francini, an economist at the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo, an influential business organization. Low-income consumers - defined roughly as those earning less than 1,000 reais, or $445, a month - make up nearly half Brazil's population, according to government figures. A recent study by Target Marketing, a consultant group based in São Paulo, found those Brazilians accounted for only 11 percent of all consumer spending, representing annual purchasing power of nearly $54 billion. Manufacturers in recent years have developed new products to better tap that market, introducing low-cost versions of coffees, shampoos, even washing machines. When the Swiss food giant Nestlé discovered recently that some Brazilians give condensed milk as a present - a can retails for 2.30 reais, or $1.02 - the company developed a gift-wrapped version of the product. 'It's not about reaching a new part of the market,' said Ivan Zurita, chief executive of Nestlé's Brazilian operations. 'It is the market.' Brazil's erratic economic history made it a long slog for retailers to reach this market. Expensive credit - Brazil still boasts the highest real interest rates in the world - kept most low-income consumers from seeking loans. And years of runaway inflation meant stores were able to offer few affordable payment plans. But economic changes in the last decade helped curb inflation and laid the groundwork for what many economists believe is a nascent period of prolonged, if modest, growth. After years of stagnation, Brazil's gross domestic product in 2004 grew by 4.9 percent, the quickest clip in a decade, and is expected to grow by more than 3 percent this year. Slower inflation enabled stores to introduce payment plans for retail goods that many consumers once strained to finance - from tennis shoes and televisions, to refrigerators and home computers. So successful was retail credit, especially among the middle class, that price tags in many stores now highlight the cost of the monthly installment, with the total price in much smaller print below. Yet a big portion of the consumer base still struggles with bare necessities. That is why vendors recently began applying their credit plans to low-cost items, too. 'You want to make it easy for even basic purchases,' said João Carlos de Oliveira, president of the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets in São Paulo. The approach was evident one recent Saturday evening at a Wal-Mart in southern Rio. Price tags offer telephones in 12 monthly installments of 3.57 reais. A plug-in electric grill sold for 12 monthly payments of 1.87 reais. Wines, domestic or imported, were offered for three interest-free monthly installments. Wal-Mart and other big retailers use one central tool for such promotions: internal, or 'private label,' credit cards. Because many low-income Brazilians do not have bank accounts, retailers offer their own cards to provide credit to customers unable to meet the conditions for traditional bank cards. With no annual fees and low salary requirements - stores compute card limits using monthly income stubs - the cards offer many consumers their first experience with credit. They also give stores a platform to offer special card-only promotions, which foster user loyalty. At Carrefour, the second-biggest retailer in Brazil, the store card is now used in nearly 40 percent of sales, outpacing cash, checks and bank cards as the most frequent form of payment. Customers with a minimum monthly salary of 150 reais - half Brazil's minimum wage - qualify for the card and can use it for purchases as small as 5 reais. Purchases over 30 reais can also be paid, interest-free, in 5-real installments. Retailers are using the cards to attract those for whom even these requirements are difficult. Pão de Açucar, for instance, has a card it offers customers who were initially denied credit. Though the card cannot be used for payment, it allows customers to take advantage of card-only promotions and creates a tool to track the customer's spending habits. 'We can analyze their spending patterns and calculate a credit level to offer them in the future,' says Hugo Bethlem, executive director of the company's CompreBem and Sendas supermarkets. Brazilian banks want to cash in on the boom, too. Banco Itaú, one of the country's biggest private banks, has signed agreements in the last year to administer cards used by two big retail chains, including Pão de Açúcar. Last year, União de Bancos Brasileiros, or Unibanco, acquired Hipercard, Wal-Mart's private-label card. Now, banks plan to use the cards to offer services - like insurance and personal loans - to Brazil's legions of so-called bank orphans, consumers still foreign to the traditional bank branch. 'There's a huge segment of the population that we can only reach because of their relationships with retail stores,' said Antonio Matias, director of institutional relations at the Brazilian Banking Federation and a vice president at Banco Itaú. Márcio Caldeira, a street vendor, says he rarely uses banks at all. Sitting at the credit desk of a Sendas supermarket in Nova Iguaçu, a bustling, working-class suburb north of Rio, he says he wants a Sendas card to complement three other retail cards he uses to buy things like sodas, that he later sells on the sidewalk. 'Sometimes the little costs add up,' he adds, 'but they make it easier to finance my work.'

Subject: Consumption in Brazil From: Emma To: Emma Date Posted: Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 12:34:56 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Consumption in Brazil

Subject: Confusion Is Rife About Drug Plan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:20:27 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/national/13drug.html November 13, 2005 Confusion Is Rife About Drug Plan as Sign-Up Nears By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON - Enrollment in the new Medicare drug benefit begins in three days, but even with President Bush hailing the plan on Saturday as 'the greatest advance in health care for seniors' in 40 years, large numbers of older Americans appear to be overwhelmed and confused by the choices they will have to make. 'I have a Ph.D., and it's too complicated to suit me,' said William Q. Beard, 73, a retired chemist in Wichita, Kan., who takes eight prescription drugs, including several heart medicines. 'I wonder how the vast majority of beneficiaries will handle this. I fervently wish that members of Congress had to deal with the same health care program we do.' Mr. Beard was interviewed at First United Methodist Church in Wichita, where he and 100 other members of an adult Sunday school class recently received a two-hour explanation of the drug benefit from a state insurance counselor. Confusion was a dominant theme at education and counseling sessions held over the last two weeks in Wichita and in Glen Burnie, Md.; Fairfax, Va.; Urbana, Ohio; and Santa Rosa, Calif. 'The whole thing is hopelessly complicated,' said Pauline H. Olney, 74, a retired nurse who attended a seminar at a hotel in Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco. The drug benefit, estimated to cost $724 billion over 10 years, is the biggest expansion of Medicare since its creation in 1965 and is often described as Mr. Bush's biggest achievement in domestic policy. Bush administration officials and other backers of the plan say the new program can cut drug costs in half for a typical beneficiary, to $1,120 a year, with much greater savings for low-income patients. In his radio address on Saturday, Mr. Bush said, 'If you or someone you love depends on Medicare, I urge you to learn about the new choices you have so you can make a decision and enroll.' Beneficiaries around the country are flocking to Medicare workshops, where experts present them with complicated descriptions of drug formularies, 'tiered co-payments,' 'creditable coverage' and 'true out-of-pocket costs,' and caution about penalties for late enrollment. In most states, beneficiaries have a choice of more than three dozen prescription drug plans. Premiums, deductibles, co-payments and covered drugs vary widely. Many retirees also have other options: getting drug coverage through former employers or through Medicare-managed care plans. In Kansas, Medicare beneficiaries have a choice of 40 prescription drug plans charging premiums from $9.48 a month to $67.88 a month. Gene D. Peterson, 71, who attended the session at First United Methodist, said: 'The government asks us to sign up for a plan, but we have to figure out which drugs are covered by which of the 40 plans. For the average person, that's almost impossible. It's much too complicated.' Mr. Peterson is far from alone. In a survey issued this week by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, only 35 percent of people 65 and older said they understood the new drug benefit. Those who said they understood it were more likely to have a favorable impression of it. Asked about beneficiaries' confusion, Michael O. Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, said: 'Health care is complicated. We acknowledge that. Lots of things in life are complicated: filling out a tax return, registering your car, getting cable television. It is going to take time for seniors to become comfortable with the drug benefit.' Paulette Dibbern, a retired State Farm insurance agent in Wichita, said the government was not emphasizing an important fact about the new benefit: 'You must go out and shop for a drug plan and buy this coverage from an insurance company.' In principle, Mrs. Dibbern said, drug coverage for older Americans is a good idea. But in practice, she said, the new program is immensely frustrating. 'Federal officials seem to go on the philosophy, 'Why keep it simple when you can gum up the works?' ' she said. Mendell F. Butler, 76, a longtime member of First United Methodist, said he wished people could pay $20 a month for a simple Medicare drug plan, 'without searching out all these different companies you've got to buy it from.' Mr. Butler said he was deeply concerned about people who did not have the capacity to understand the decisions they had to make. 'With the new program,' he said, 'you go home at night, and your mind is totally boggled, so confused that you think, 'Golly, is it worth it?' ' Mr. Leavitt said beneficiaries could get help on a toll-free telephone number, 1-800-633-4227, and on a Web site, www.medicare.gov, which includes a 'plan finder' to sort through the options. Beneficiaries understand that Parts A and B of Medicare cover hospital care and doctors' services, and many want to know why Medicare does not have its own drug plan. The new prescription drug plans, though heavily subsidized by Medicare, are marketed and administered by private insurers like Aetna, Humana, PacifiCare and UnitedHealth Group. The Bush administration and Republicans in Congress chose this approach for two reasons. They firmly believe that competition among private plans will hold down costs, and they do not want the government to specify which drugs will be covered. Brian D. Caswell, a former president of the Kansas Pharmacists Association, said he spent two to three hours a day explaining the Medicare drug benefit to customers at his store in rural Baxter Springs. He encouraged them to take a look at the new program. But Mr. Caswell said: 'The program is so poorly designed and is creating so much confusion that it's having a negative effect on most beneficiaries. It's making people cynical about the whole process - the new program, the government's help.' Robert W. Nyquist, a pharmacist in Lindsborg, Kan., said customers had told him: 'This is just beyond me. I can't decipher which drug plan is cheapest.' Suzi Lenker, who coordinates insurance counseling for the Kansas Department on Aging, said that 'some people were in tears' at a recent session she held for 140 Medicare beneficiaries in McPherson. 'They did not like this newfangled change,' Ms. Lenker said. Bush administration officials said Medicare drug plans were offering more benefits at lower cost than had been expected. But that does not mean that a person's local pharmacy will be in every plan. 'In some rural areas,' Ms. Lenker reported, 'beneficiaries say: 'There are 40 Medicare drug plans to choose from, but my pharmacy takes only one or two plans. How does that give me choice?' ' Mr. Nyquist said he was doing business with only one prescription drug plan, Community Care Rx, offered by MemberHealth in cooperation with the National Community Pharmacists Association. If Medicare beneficiaries choose another plan, he said, they cannot get their drugs at his store, the only one in Lindsborg. 'We are not trying to deny access to people,' Mr. Nyquist said. 'We chose to do business with Community Care Rx because, in my opinion, it is the plan most friendly to senior citizens.' Food shoppers tend to like having a large variety of products and brands, but many Medicare beneficiaries are perplexed by the prospect of an insurance supermarket. 'In a grocery store, we know the products,' said Irwin Samet, 74, of Fairfax, Va. 'With prescription drug plans, we don't know the products. We are guessing.' After a two-hour class at the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, Mr. Samet used a Yiddish word to describe his state of mind. 'Farmisht,' he said. 'Mixed up. All of us here are mixed up.' In Urbana last week, more than 150 people showed up for a Medicare seminar held by the Ohio Insurance Department. Joseph Rizzutti, 68, said he had found the seminar helpful, but would have to do 'a lot of research and homework' to choose plans for himself and his 88-year-old mother, who has Alzheimer's disease and lives in a nursing home. The Medicare handbook, sent to all beneficiaries, lists 43 drug plans available in Ohio. Edith L. Kohn, 81, who worked as a cashier in a grocery store in Urbana for two decades, said she had been studying her Medicare options for a month. 'I feel like I'm just about ready to make a decision, signing up for the plan offered by AARP,' Mrs. Kohn said. 'But the government has made this hard, and it should not be that way. I don't understand why they have to make things so darn complicated.' Even after attending the seminar, Raymond L. Middlesworth, 70, a retired truck driver from Urbana, said he was baffled. 'I've tried reading the Medicare book about the drug plan,' Mr. Middlesworth said, 'but I couldn't make sense of it. This is the biggest mess that Medicare has ever put us through.'

Subject: Medicare Prescription Drug Plan From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:10:49 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Public/Include/DataSection/Results/ListPlanByState.asp?dest=Nav|Home|State|ListPlanByState#TabTop Find a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan

Subject: How Much Will the Plans Cost? From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 06:07:37 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Shared/Static/Resources.asp?dest=Nav|Home|Resources|Resources#PlansCost How Much Will the Plans Cost? When you get Medicare prescription drug coverage, you pay part of the costs, and Medicare pays part of the costs. You pay a premium each month to join the drug plan (generally around $37 in 2006 for standard coverage). If you have Medicare Part B, you also pay your monthly Part B premium. If you belong to a Medicare Advantage Plan or a Medicare Cost Plan, the monthly premium you pay to the plan may increase if you add prescription drug coverage. Your costs will vary depending on which plan you choose. Your plan must, at a minimum, provide you with a standard level of coverage as shown below. Some plans offer more coverage or lower premiums. Standard Coverage (the minimum coverage drug plans must provide): If you join in 2006, for covered drugs you will pay a monthly premium (varies depending on the plan you choose, but estimated at about $37). the first $250 per year for your prescriptions. This is called your 'deductible.' After you pay the $250 deductible, here's how the costs work: You pay 25% of your yearly drug costs from $250 to $2,250, and your plan pays the other 75% of these costs, then You pay 100% of your $2,850 in drug costs, then You pay 5% of your drug costs (or a small copayment) for the rest of the calendar year after you have spent $3,600 out-of-pocket. Your plan pays the rest.

Subject: Medicare Prescription Drug Plans From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 05:59:51 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://www.medicare.gov/MPDPF/Shared/Static/Resources.asp?dest=Nav|Home|Resources|Resources#DrugPlans What are Medicare Prescription Drug Plans? Starting January 1, 2006, new Medicare prescription drug coverage will be available to everyone with Medicare. Everyone with Medicare can get this coverage that may help lower prescription drug costs and help protect against higher costs in the future. Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage is insurance. You choose the drug plan and pay a monthly premium. There are two types of Medicare plans that provide insurance coverage for prescription drugs. There will be prescription drug coverage that is a part of Medicare Advantage Plans and other Medicare Health Plans. You would get all of your Medicare health care through these plans. There will also be Medicare prescription drug coverage that adds coverage to the Original Medicare Plan, and some Medicare Cost Plans and Medicare Private Fee-for-Service Plans. These plans will be offered by insurance companies and other private companies approved by Medicare. Like other insurance, if you join a plan offering Medicare drug coverage there is a monthly premium. If you have limited income and resources, you may get extra help to cover prescription drugs for little or no cost. The amount of the monthly premium is not affected by your health status or how many prescriptions you need. You will also pay a share of the cost of your prescriptions. All drug plans will have to provide coverage at least as good as the standard coverage, which Medicare has set. However, some plans might also offer more coverage and additional drugs for a higher monthly premium. If you have limited income and resources, you may be able to get help with drug plan costs.

Subject: Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress From: Emma To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 17:32:35 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/11/paul_krugman_ta.html#comments November 12, 2005 Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress They say: CampusProgress.org | Five Minutes With: Paul Krugman: Q: What prompted you to write your November 4th column “Defending Imperial Nudity?”.... A: We finally reached a point where a lot of people are starting to acknowledge the obvious, which is that we were deliberately hyped into war, and a lot of defenses are coming up. People are still trying to pretend that nothing happened and it all made sense, and I felt that it was time to find a way to play how ridiculous that is. Q: I get the feeling that we’re living in a really good political satire. A: Yeah, or a really tawdry political novel. If you tried to make this stuff up, nobody would dare – they’d say that it’s ridiculous. Q: You’ve written economics textbooks before. If you had to imagine writing another textbook thirty years from now characterizing economic policy under various presidents, how would you talk about the Bush administration? A: Well, the answer is that there is no policy. What’s interesting about it is that there’s no sign that anybody’s actually thinking about “well, how do we run this economy?” Everything becomes an excuse to do pre-set things instead of an actual response to an event or a real problem. So, the idea was “we’re going to cut taxes on capital income, as opposed to earned income” and whatever happened became a reason to do that.... Q: Having been a strong proponent of globalization whose enthusiasm on the subject seems to have waned a bit, can you talk about where you stand now and how you think it might be most productive for students who work on this issue to talk about it? A: If you aren’t a little bit tortured about globalization, you’re not paying attention. I got into economics nearly 30 years ago, in grad school. At the time, development was too depressing as a field – there were no success stories. The club of rich countries had closed in the late 1880s, and there really was no way forward. The very good news is that there has been a lot of upward movement in select parts of the third world. All of that is based on exports, on the opportunities presented by globalization. You can’t be against globalization in general if you support third world countries making their way up in the world. The downside is that there have by no means been success stories across the board. On the one side, you clearly have some of the most vulnerable people in our own society that have been paying the price, and a lot of developing countries have been following the advice from Washington on globalization, and things have gone very badly. It’s a very mixed picture. What I want to hear is not “let’s rally against globalization,” but “let’s try to fix it.” It’s easy enough to say, but where’s the political constituency for that? Anyone who thinks of globalization as a great unambiguous evil hasn’t been paying attention. Anyone who thinks it’s a total good hasn’t been following things that have been happening in places like Argentina. Q: I recently got good health insurance for the first time in a while, and I can safely say how what a relief it is. Clearly the US lags well behind other industrialized nations in terms of our numbers of uninsured. Can we make the move to universal coverage? A: There are two questions there: one is economics, one is politics. The economics is really straight forward. Some kind of national health insurance financed out of a mandatory premium on all wages, a tax, however you want to do it – is clearly the dominant system. The US system is a patchwork with big gaps in it, Medicare, Medicaid, employer based coverage, it’s a mess. It’s the wonder of the world. We get worse results at greater cost than anyone else. We have enormous bureaucracy and administrative expenses basically because private insurers and lots of other players in the system are spending lots of money trying not to cover people. Now, politics, the trouble is, how do you do that? How do we achieve some approximation to a national healthcare system, given the political realities? The funny thing is, happy majorities in the American public, according to polls, favor guaranteed healthcare for everybody, so we’re not talking about something where the public is against the idea. What we’re talking about is a very powerful set of interests and a very powerful set of ideologues in Washington, who have managed to intimidate the politicians. That’s a really hard thing to get through.... Q: Obviously journalism isn’t your only or even your primary job. It seems like that lets you be more independent and more risk taking. A: Very much so. There was a long period, from September 2001 until early 2004 when I felt like I was really alone among prominent commentators in saying “hey, we’re being lied to, these people are not defending us, they’re lying to us a lot.” I think had I been worried about a journalistic career, about “will the Times keep me?” I would have been much more inhibited. But, the fact is, if the Times had given into pressure and gotten rid of me, my life actually would have improved in a lot of ways. Personally, it would be easier. Still, I don’t think it would be good if every op-ed columnist was like me. Journalism is a craft and there are things I can’t do. I can’t do investigative reporting, I can’t play Carl Bernstein....

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress From: Pancho Villa To: Emma Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 19:36:38 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: '... There are two questions there: one is economics, one is politics. ...'

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress From: Emma To: Pancho Villa Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 20:39:52 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: And, I am wondering Dear Pancho whether these are separable. I am thinking.

Subject: Re: Paul Krugman Talks to Campus Progress From: Pancho Villa To: Emma Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 20:49:11 (EST) Email Address: nma@hotmail.com Message: 'And, I am wondering Dear Pancho whether these are separable.' No!

Subject: publish editorial From: Jim Asmussen To: All Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 11:45:30 (EST) Email Address: jimasmussen@yahoo.com Message: I would like to run Paul Krugman's editorial on Medicare Part D in our small town (Neligh, NE) Neligh News and Leader paper. As a licensed Health Insurance agent, I think that Medicare Part D is a total scam on our seniors (I am one too). Please tell me how to do this. Thanks-Jim Asmussen

Subject: Re: publish editorial From: Emma To: Jim Asmussen Date Posted: Sat, Nov 12, 2005 at 18:31:09 (EST) Email Address: Not Provided Message: Please send an email to the office of the publisher or managing editor of the New York Times, I am told you will receive permission to reprint the column.