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The San Juan Weeekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Horizon Fined $45 Million Felony Price Fixing to Puerto Rico
T
he Department of Justice announced last week that the steamship company Horizon Lines has agreed to plead guilty to price fixing on freight services between the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico and to pay a criminal fine of $45 million. According to a felony charge filed on February 24, 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, Horizon Lines engaged in a conspiracy to fix prices from at least as early as May 2002, until at least April 2008. Charles G. Raymond, Chairman, President & CEO of Horizon, has agreed to retire and John V. Keenan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, is taking a leave of absence, each effective March 11, 2011. Both men were excluded from an agreement by the Antitrust Division
of the Department of Justice not to bring any criminal charges against other current officers or directors of Horizon Lines and are believed to face potential prosecution. According to information made public by the Department of Justice, Horizon Lines and co-conspirators engaged in a conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by agreeing to fix rates for Puerto Rico freight services. This conspiracy was a restraint of interstate trade and commerce in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Horizon Lines and co-conspirators carried out the conspiracy by participating in meetings, conversations and communications to discuss customers, rates, surcharges, and bids. In carrying out the conspiracy, they agreed to
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Exquisite Cuisine in an Oppulent Setting allocate customers, fix, stabilize and maintain rates charged to customers and rig bids submitted to government and commercial customers of Puerto Rico freight services. Horizon Lines and co-conspirators also engaged in meetings, conversations and communications to monitor and enforce adherence to agreed upon rates. These activities resulted in selling and accepting payment for Puerto Rico freight services at collusive and noncompetitive rates. The Department of Justice’s investigation has previously resulted in five shipping company executives pleading guilty. On October 20, 2008, three former Horizon Lines executives, R. Kevin Gill, Greggory Glova and Gabriel Serra, and another former shipping executive, Peter Baci, pleaded guilty to a wide-ranging conspiracy to rig bids, fix prices and allocate customers related to the transportation of goods between the continental US and Puerto Rico by ocean vessel. On the same day, Alexander Chisholm pleaded guilty for his conduct in obstructing the Department of Justice’s investigation of the shipping company. The five executives were sentenced to prison terms ranging up to 48 months, the longest individual antitrust prison sentence ever according to information provided at that time by the Department of Justice. On June 11, 2009, Horizon Lines entered into a preliminary civil settlement agreement in the amount of $20 million with a class comprised of direct purchasers of Puerto Rico freight services. The settlement is subject to court approval and a number of customers have opted out of the class action and may pursue their own civil antitrust cases. As a result of the level of opt outs, Horizon Lines has the ability to void the civil settlement. The complaint related to this civil action was unsealed on November 15, 2010. In that complaint, the plaintiffs allege numerous examples where Horizon
Lines executives participated in price fixing conspiracies affecting specific customers, including Walmart, Goya, Walgreens, Baxter and Nestle, among others. On February 22, 2011, Horizon Lines entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and attorneys representing indirect purchasers. The indirect purchasers allege they paid inflated prices for goods imported to Puerto Rico. Under the memorandum of understanding, Horizon Lines has agreed to pay $1.8 million in exchange for a full release. The settlement agreement, when negotiated and entered into, will be subject to court approval. Horizon Lines operates four of the seven steamships that move containers between the mainland and Puerto Rico and they are a large source of sulfur pollution in the San Juan area. These steamships burn an unrefined residual fuel with sulfur content over 3% while the tug/ barge operators moving containers to Puerto Rico use ultra low sulfur diesel fuel with no more sulfur than gasoline. The exponentially higher sulfur content of residual fuel and the higher consumption of the steamships results in their sulfur emissions being more than 5,000 times per equivalent unit compared to the tug/barges. Vessel sulfur emissions result in 60,000 annual deaths worldwide. The steamships moving containers between the mainland and Puerto Rico emit most of their sulfur pollution near coastal areas and emissions from each can be linked with 16 deaths every year. When news of Horizon Line’s guilty plea broke on Thursday, the company said that it would not be in compliance with its credit agreement and was seeking waivers. At the end of the day Friday, Horizon Line’s stock was down 15% compared to when the news broke.
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Faster Internet Service for Puerto Rico T
o provide quick acces to the internet Critical Hub Networks officially launched the project Puerto Rico Bridge Initiative (PRBI). Several Internet providers will participate to guarantee service, efficiency and economy to all broadands users. In the event, state and federal government officers met with public agencies, educational institutions and represenatives of private sector companies, mainly in the telecommunications industry. In April 2010, Critical Hub Networks was awarded with $25.7 million in Recovery Act (ARRA) funds through the U.S. Departament of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administraton (NTIA), for the PRBI to bring fast, affordable service to all Puerto Rico. An average of $6.8 million in matching funds was also contributed by Critical Hub Networks to the project. “Since the funding of the project in April 2010, Critical Hub has made great strides in deplopying this first key phase of our project,” said Carlo Marazzi, President of Critical Hub Networks. The service of
broadband Internet in Puerto Rico is 78% slower than the USA national average. “The high-speed broadband and connectivity are essential to economic growth, job creation, global competitiveness, world-class education, innovation and creativity. PRBI is designed so that Puerto Rico will be equal to the mainland, says the Critical Hub Networks proposal. PRBI will make broadband affordable for all, which is universally available, with more speed, and lower prices per megabit. Moreover, internet providers will offer 25% of services to schools, libraries, health services and public safety providers. Equally important, PRBI proposed an interconnection between the systems of government agencies, including the Department of Education and the Department of Health websites. PRBI will help to eliminate the digital divide, by encouraging the development of Public Computer Access and Training Centers in unserved and underserved communities. Finallly, the last PRBI goal is faster competition and offer Puerto Ricans a wide selection of broadband providers.
Another recent achievement wich benefits the project is the deal with CIARA (Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment) of Florida International university to establish a new point of trade AMPATH which serves as first point of interconnection for research enabled for science in America and the Caribbean. Through interconnection facilities in Miami, Sao Paulo, New York, St. Croix and now in San Juan, Puerto Rico’s broadband services will be available to millions of US citizens. They will also be available throughout the research and education networks to increase participation of underrepresented groups in Latin America and the Caribbean. AMPATH operates as a research center recognized by the National Science Foundation. “With the establishment of an AMPATH Exchange Point in San Juan, we are looking forward to both strenghtheing the participation from existing networks in the Island - inlcuding the university of Puerto Rico - and the addition of new Puerto Rican research, education, government and health care networks in the support of
international e-science.” said Chip Cox, Chief Operations Officer of AMPATH. “We are thrilled to be partnering with AMPATH in the establishment of an Exchange Point here in San Juan. AMPATH’s unique cutting-edge research network and services with private networks including Internet, Florida Lambda Rail and the National Lambda Rail present a unique opportunity for academic research here on the Island, as well as support Puerto Rico’s transition to a knowledgebased economy”, said Carlo Marazzi of Critical Hub Networks. For its inauguration the Resident Comissioner of Puerto Rico Pedro Pierlusi explained how he endorsed the project at the Congress with the approval of ARRA Recovery Funds. Based in the building El Telegrafo, in Santurce, Critica Hub Networks, is an Internet service provider offering disaster recovery services, data centers and others. For additional information you can acces the website Puerto Rico Bridge Initiative in www.prbridgeinitiative.org or call (787) 728-9000.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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Teacher Exchange Program Proposed P edro Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner, Republican Mario Díaz Balart (Florida), and democrat Raúl Grijalva (Arizona) submitted a measure to initiate a teacher exchange program between Puerto Rico and the
mainland. The measure has the support of the American Federation of Teachers, The National Association of School Boards, and The Hispanic Association of Schools and Universities. Congressman Raúl Grijalva is the chairman of the Education Commitee of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Pierluisi stated “The previous Congress I submitted similar legislation that received significant support. I resubmitted the project because I am convinced that it would benefit the participating teachers as well as directly impact the students. Additionaly the Education and Work Commitee is cu-
rrently in the process of rewriting the Elementary and Secondary School Education Law, better known as No Child Left Behind”. “The project would provide funds to allow all states and territories of the United States to exchange teachers. These teachers will learn new educational techniques, gain exposure to other cultures, other stu-
dent populations, as well as provide these insights to their schools of origin once returned”. “As for Puerto Rico english teachers could use the opportunity to improve their ability in the language. Local students will benefit from studying english from a teacher whose main language is english”, Pierluisi added.
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Lovers of Cuban Cigars By VICTORIA BURNETT
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imon Chase, a British sage of the cigar world, stood in an elegant hotel salon here before a select group of aficionados, scrutinizing a box of 1970s cigars for evidence of their proclaimed vintage. One clue, he said, was the style and quality of the seal on the box. Another was the cigar’s old-fashioned, slightly domed end, or “cabeza tumbada.” The group muttered with interest and lit up, using cedar strips, or spills, to avoid contaminating their cigars with lighter fumes. Gray wisps curled into the air, and a brief hush fell as they solemnly considered the $90 smokes. The private tasting by some of Cuban tobacco’s most devoted connoisseurs took place on the fringe of Havana’s Cigar Festival, an annual, five-day whirl of grand receptions, talks and plantation visits organized by Habanos S.A., a joint venture between the Cuban government and Britain’s Imperial Tobacco. The event, much of which is staged at a gloomy 1970s convention center, is a somewhat surreal eruption of luxury in a landscape that, after five decades of Com-
munist rule, is an odd mélange of tropical exuberance and stern socialism. Cubans are inveterate smokers, and men and women alike suck on huge “tabacos” that cost about four cents. But with salaries of around $20 per month, very few islanders could afford even the least expensive offerings from Habanos, whose retail prices on the international market can go as high as about $80 apiece. Still, the sale of cigars to wealthy foreigners helps bring in hard currency, which the government desperately needs to finance programs like health and education. At a lavish dinner to close the festival, organizers hope to raise as much as $1 million for the Cuban public health system from the auction of humidors. “If you love cigars, Havana is what Jerusalem is to a Christian: the Holy Land,” said Bryan Ng, who owns an oyster bar in Hong Kong and was on his first visit to Cuba. About 1,200 retailers, distributors and enthusiasts flocked to the Cuban capital this week to fraternize and indulge their penchant for what many consider the world’s finest tobacco. Among them was a sprinkling of
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American cigar lovers, who came through third countries or traveled on religious or humanitarian licenses, arriving in time for the festival. Habanos is banned from selling cigars to the United States under the trade embargo, but the company says it accounts for about 80 percent of premium, hand-rolled cigar sales in the rest of the world. Paul Segal, who had his first cigar in Cuba in 2003 when he was on a humanitarian trip to help the island’s Jewish community, was making his fourth visit to the festival this week, bringing with him medicines and other supplies. At home in San Diego, he smokes Cuban cigars only occasionally, if someone brings them as a gift. “I’m crazy obsessed for cigars,” he said during a master class where hundreds of participants learned to roll their own. “To see the whole process, from the seed to the leaves to the cigar factory, that’s very cool.” The question of whether the huge American cigar market would open anytime soon hovered over the festival. Habanos officials said they were not banking on any change in American policy, despite the recent decision to further ease restrictions on travel by Americans. Mr. Chase, a consultant who was in the Cuban cigar trade for decades, said Cuba could, in theory, meet added demand from the United States, if allowed. Any loss of cachet that would result from no longer being a forbidden product would be compensated for by added sales, he said. “Lifting the embargo would cause some upheaval, but Cuba could handle it,” he said. “Cuban cigars compete on their own merit.” Habanos’s sales have been hit in recent years by the global economic downturn and the spread of smoking restrictions to countries like Spain, its biggest market. But the company was upbeat this week, saying sales rose 2 percent last year, to $368 million, as China overtook Germany as its number three customer.
The company, which owns well-known brands like Cohiba, Partagás and Romeo y Julieta, introduced some stubbier cigars this week that could be smoked more quickly by those forced to slip outside. The festival is paradise for smokers who bridle under smoking bans. Participants puff their way through sommelier contests, fancy lunches and talks on cigar arcana, enveloping conference rooms and coffee bars in a thick haze of pungent smoke. Participants held blindfold tastings in which experts tried to identify unlabelled cigars, and at other sessions tried pairing cigars with rum and chocolate. Mr. Chase even gave a 45-minute lecture to a packed conference room on the history of the aluminum tubes used to package Cuban cigars — an account more lively than its subject matter would suggest. “It’s an intense week: lots of caffeine, lots of tobacco” and no sleep, said Alex Iapichino, an Italian lawyer who hosted the private tasting. Away from the fray, the coterie of connoisseurs determined that their 40-yearold cigar had been well preserved. It was a round, even smoke, they said, and had retained some delicate aromas. Mr. Iapichino looked around the group, an eccentric mix from a dozen different countries that included a Japanese man who skewered his cigar on a custom-made metal pin to protect his fingers. “This is the only place where I get to share cigars with all these people together,” he said. When he left Cuba, his cigars would evoke the smells and sounds of the island, he said. “As Churchill said,” he smiled. “I always have Cuba on my lips.”
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
New Volley Spending Dispute By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and CARL HULSE
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s jockeying in fight over spending kicked into high gear, Republican House speaker, John Boehner, it was up to White House and Democrats who control Senate to agree to at least some Republican-backed cuts to help reach short-term deal and avoid government shutdown next month. House approved $60 billion spending reductions, for fiscal year through Sept. 30, would hit every area of government. Not one Democrat voted for the bill, and the White House has threatened to veto it. Senate Democrats are calling for 30-day extension to hold spending at last year’s levels. Stopgap expires March 4, with Congress on recess until four days to reach accord or face closing federal agencies outcome both parties want to avoid as they blame other side should it occur. Senate majority leader, Harry Reid asked Appropriations Committee to draft a 30-day extension of stopgap that he could bring to floor next week. Mr. Boehner and other Republicans quickly rejected the idea, saying Democrats were stalling to avoid making cuts. Democratic leaders left mountain of debt and a stalled economy with unemployment near 10 percent.” Reid and Senator Charles Schumer No. 3 Democrat, said they knew they had to cut but there was not enough time before stopgap runs out. Current stopgap includes cuts $41 billion less than requested last year. House bill included $60 billion in additional cuts. With each passing week, cuts be-
come more difficult. Time goes by, closer Washington gets to battle over need to raise federal debt. Republicans described spending cuts as condition of lifting debt ceiling, despite warnings from Federal Reserve. Lawmakers not play politics with nation’s ability to meet financial obligations. “American people spoke loud and clear: stop Washington spending spree and bring down debt,” “Yet Democrats can’t find a single dime of federal spending to cut, insisting on status quo, even for a short-term spending bill. Keeping bloated spending levels and proposing even more tax increases, is simply unacceptable.” White House avoided initial skirmishing, and said little other than Republican cuts are too big and warning the president would veto House spending bill. Mr. Obama talked about his budget proposal, a five-year spending freeze for many domestic programs, but warned making cuts would hurt economy or reduce competitiveness of businesses. Obama said nation needed “to get our fiscal house in order” and “That’s why I’ve put forth a budget that includes a five-year spending freeze that will help reduce deficit by $400 billion and will get annual domestic spending down to the lowest levels since Dwight Eisenhower.” At the same time, we can’t sacrifice investments in our future.” Mr. Boehner, said it was time for Democratic leaders to get specific. “Senator Reid and the Democrats who run Washington should stop creating more uncertainty by spreading fears of a government shutdown,” “and start telling the American people what — if anything — they are willing to cut.”
Third Judge Validates Health Care Law By KEVIN SACK
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third federal judge upheld the constitutionality of the Obama health care law, reinforcing the divide in the lower courts as the case moves toward its first hearings on the appellate level. Judge Gladys Kessler of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia became the third appointee of President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, to reject a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. Two other federal district judges, both appointed by Republican presidents, have struck down the law’s keystone provision, which requires most Americans to obtain health insurance starting in 2014.
Although the issue will almost certainly be determined by the Supreme Court, each lower court ruling contributes to the balance of legal opinion that the justices will consider. More than 20 challenges to some aspect of the sprawling act have been filed around the country. Oral arguments in the first appellate reviews are scheduled for May and June. Judge Kessler adopted the government’s position on Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce it can require people to buy a commercial product. Past Supreme Court decisions have established the standard that Congress can control “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Thousands March on State Capitols as Union Fight Spreads By SABRINA TAVERNISE and A. G. SULZBERGER
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irst Wisconsin. Now Ohio and Indiana. Battles with public employees’ unions spread on Tuesday, with Republican-dominated Legislatures pressing bills that would weaken collective bargaining and thousands of pro-union protesters marching on Capitol buildings in Columbus and Indianapolis. After a week of upheaval in Madison, Wis., where the thumping din of protesters has turned almost celebratory, the battle moved to Ohio, where the Legislature held hearings on a bill that would effectively end collective bargaining for state workers and drastically reduce it for local government employees like police officers and firefighters. Several thousand pro-union protesters filled a main hall of the state courthouse in Columbus and gathered in a large crowd outside, chanting “Kill the bill,” waving signs and playing drums and bagpipes. There were no official estimates, but the numbers appeared to be smaller than those in Madison last week. One Democratic state legislator put the figure at 15,000. In Indiana, nearly all of the Democratic members of the state’s House of Representatives stayed away from a legislative session on Tuesday in an effort to stymie a bill that they say would weaken collective bargaining. By late Tuesday, they seemed to have succeeded in running down a clock on the bill, which was to expire at midnight. Representative Brian Bosma, the speaker of the Indiana House, said the bill would die when the deadline passed. Fleeing was not an option for Ohio Democrats because the Republicans had enough members on their side for a quorum. Republicans have a 23-to-10 majority in the Ohio Senate, and the bill needs 17 votes to pass. It was not clear when it would be voted on. The bills have amounted to the largest assault on collective bargaining in recent memory, labor experts said, striking at the heart of an American labor movement that is already atrophied. “I think we are looking at the future of the labor movement being defined in rotundas in several states,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, specializing in labor issues. “This is a
structural change with profound repercussions.” The Ohio bill was introduced this month by a Republican senator, Shannon Jones, who said it was intended to give state and local governments more control over their finances in hard economic times. But opponents say the bill is about politics, calling it a direct attack on the unions, which have long been reliable Democratic supporters. “They’re using a fiscal challenge as an excuse to consolidate political power,” said former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, who was in the crowd of protesters in Columbus. Rob Nichols, a spokesman for Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, strongly denied that characterization. “This is nothing more than an effort to reduce the cost of governance so we can start to create jobs,” he said by telephone. “This is an effort to save the state, no agendas.” Ohio is facing an $8 billion budget deficit, about 15 percent of its two-year budget, far less than states like California, Illinois and New Jersey, but still significant, and Mr. Kasich says drastic steps are required to plug the gap. “The state is at a point of no return,” said Chris Kershner, a Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce vice president, who testified last week before the Senate committee overseeing the bill. “Change must happen now if Ohio emerges solvent from the current fiscal situation.” Some in the Columbus crowd compared themselves to protesters in Egypt: a growing movement of people who will not take it anymore. But labor experts and political analysts were skeptical. Unionized workers represented just 6.9 percent of all workers in the private sector in 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics down from about 36 percent in 1955. The number of unionized workers in the public sector has held steady at about 35 percent since the late ’70s. “Seven percent in the United States makes them a very rare breed,” said Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard. “I don’t think there’s a high probability that this will be an explosive event where the average American says, ‘Wait, this is what’s left of the middle class — what are you doing?’ ” In Wisconsin, Senate Democrats remained in hiding across the state line, depriving the chamber the quorum needed
to take up the budget repair bill, which includes provisions they view as an attack on public sector unions. Meanwhile, Gov. Scott Walker, who introduced the legislation, warned that if the bill was not passed, layoff notices could be sent to state workers as early as next week. Seeking to increase pressure on Mr. Walker to compromise, the South Central Wisconsin Federation of Labor announced on Tuesday that it had endorsed a rare labor action — a general strike that would begin if he signed the bill that would curb collective bargaining rights. The federation, which represents 45,000 unionized workers in the Madison area, said it was not a formal call for a general strike, but the first step toward preparing for an eventual strike. . The Ohio bill, if passed, would do away with the legal protections passed in 1983 governing collective bargaining for state workers, including prohibitions on hiring alternate workers during a strike. Bargaining power would be weakened for local workers, doing away with binding arbitration, an option favored by police officers and firefighters, who are not allowed to strike. It would also slice into public-worker benefits by taking health insurance off the bargaining table and requiring government workers to pay at least 20 percent of the cost. It would strip automatic pay increases and mandatory sick days for teachers. The bill could have political repercussions for Ohio Republicans, who draw some of their votes from union members. Jeremy Mendenhall, president of the Ohio Troopers
Association, who is an active duty sergeant and a registered Republican, said he was angry with his party for pushing it. “People won’t forget this in 2012,” he said. But Republicans could also gain, said Gene Beaupre, a political science professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Taking a cost-cutting position against unions is part of the mantra for far-right groups like the Tea Party, and not necessarily unpopular. “There is a strong sentiment against pension benefits and all that has accrued over the years as a result of organized public labor,” Mr. Beaupre said. For the working class in Ohio, government jobs are highly desirable, with the median salary about 20 percent more than in the private sector, according to 2009 data from the Census Bureau. This is partly because employees tend to be more skilled: more than half of state and local workers have college degrees, far more than in the private sector. But among college graduates, public workers make less than those in the private sector. Public employees say they have sacrificed. The Ohio Civil Service Employees Association said they had taken five pay cuts in nine years with a savings to the most recent budget of about $250 million. Monty Blanton, 50, who worked for 31 years as a food service worker and an electrician in a state facility for mentally retarded people, made a gross salary of $44,000 before retirement. His pension, he said, stands at $19,500, barely enough to live on. “We’re barely making a living wage,” he said. “I don’t think they understand how hard it is in southeastern Ohio.”
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
When Armies Decide
By DAVID E. SANGER
T
here comes a moment in the life of almost every repressive regime when leaders — and the military forces that have long kept them in power — must make a choice from which there is usually no turning back: Change or start shooting. Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1. In so doing, they ignored the advice of the Saudis, who, in calls to Washington, said that President Hosni Mubarak should open fire if that’s what it took, and that Americans should just stop talking about “universal rights” and back him. As the contagion of democracy protests spread in the Arab world last week, Bahrain’s far less disciplined forces decided, in effect, that the Saudis, who are their next-door neighbors, were right. They drew two lessons from Egypt: If President Obama calls, hang up. And open fire early. It is far too early to know how either of these reactions will work out. But in both countries, as in nearly all police states, the key to change lies with the military. And as with any self-interested institution, the military’s leaders can be counted on to ask: What’s in it for us, long and short term? Egypt’s military leadership came to the same conclusion that South Korea’s did in the 1980s and Indonesia’s did in the 1990s: The country’s top leader had suddenly changed from an asset to a liability. The military, with its business enterprises, to say nothing of its American aid and high-tech arms, required a transition that would let it retain power while allowing Washington to herald gradual, substantive reform. In Bahrain, on the other hand, the military seems to have concluded that adapting to change would do them no good — that the protesters were far too great a threat to their very command of society. So the country that acts as host to America’s Fifth Fleet decided to ignore President Obama’s advice, which it regarded as assisted suicide. None of this came as much of a surprise to the White House, which last summer, at President Obama’s request, began examining the vulnerability of these regimes and more recently began examining what makes a transition to democracy successful.
“There are many different factors involved in the cases we have looked at: economic crises, aging authoritarians, negotiated transitions between elites,” said Michael McFaul, a top national security aide at the White House who runs what he jokingly calls the White House “Nerd Directorate.” He spent the past few weeks churning out case studies for President Obama and the National Security Council, as it sought lessons about how to influence the confrontations that have engulfed close American allies and bitter adversaries. “There is not one story line or a single model,” said Mr. McFaul, who drew on work he did as a professor at Stanford. “There are many paths to democratic transition, and most of them are messy.” Egypt certainly started out that way, with street battles between police and protesters, and a rampage by thugs to rout the protesters from Tahrir Square. But American officials, recalling their strained conversations with Egyptian counterparts, say they knew that Mr. Mubarak’s days were numbered eight days into the crisis, when the military made clear that — except in some extreme cases — it simply would not fire on its own people. “You could almost hear them making the calculations in their heads,” said one senior American official who was involved in the delicate negotiations. “Did they want to stick with an aging, sick leader whose likely successor was his own son, who the military didn’t trust? And we just kept repeating the mantra, ‘Don’t break the bond you have with your own people.’ ” Their words were persuasive, in no small part, many American officials believe, because of the revered role the military has long had in Egypt and its deep ties to the American military. A 30-year investment paid off as American generals, corporals and intelligence officers quietly called and e-mailed friends they had trained with. But now comes the trickiest part, which is making the military hold to its promises to allow a civilian government to flourish. That will mean the military must give up its monopoly on power, and that isn’t easy for any leader of a regime, especially one deeply invested in its country’s economy — a trait Egypt’s army shares with the People’s Liberation Army in China. Already, Egypt’s generals have balked at Mr. Obama’s demand for an immediate end to emergency rule. The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile
have. South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident. Then there is Indonesia. General Suharto ruled for 31 years — then ran out of gas, just as Mr. Mubarak did. Washington ignored Suharto’s many human rights abuses because he was a steadfast anti-Communist. But he lasted only two and a half weeks after street riots broke out in 1998, triggered by the Asian economic crisis. Suharto’s cold war utility had expired. Karen Brooks, a former White House expert on Indonesia, wrote last week for the Council on Foreign Relations about the similarities between Suharto and Mr. Mubarak: “Both demonized Islamist political forces and drove them underground; both kept a tight lid on the media, the opposition and all forms of dissent; both accumulated massive amounts of wealth while in power” and, of course, “both enjoyed the support of the United States.” After Suharto was finally forced out, it took the Indonesian military little more than a year to hold elections. Ms. Brooks said that a clear deadline was important, but so was allowing the Islamists to enter politics. They did so on an anti-Israel, anti-American platform. But even in the world’s most populous Islamic nation, she notes, the Islamic parties have remained a small minority, because once they were inside the system “the party found itself participating in the same unseemly activities” as everyone else, from corruption to deal-making. That example leaves the Israelis,
among others, unimpressed. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, they point out, is far better organized, and more disciplined. “History is rife with cases in which well-intentioned revolutions are hijacked,” said one senior Israeli official, echoing a point that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the weekend before Mr. Mubarak’s fall. One can make a good case that Washington’s comfort with years of slow, incremental change contributed to the crisis sweeping the region. When American officials visited Bahrain, the king, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, usually said the right things: The country’s dispossessed Shiite majority was gradually getting a larger share of the national wealth, and slightly greater political freedoms. In private, though, the Bahraini military would tell the Pentagon that it would never allow Shiites into serious positions. “We were told the Shia would all be spies for Iran,” one former senior official in the Defense Department said last week. So when the protests started, the military decided that if it held its fire, Egypt-style, it would have no future: The Shiite majority would take over the country. Military leaders doubled their bet on King Hamad and his son, Crown Prince Salman, who on Friday was placed in charge of starting a “national dialogue.” The same day troops opened fire again. Abderrahim Foukara, the bureau chief of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service in Washington, said the crackdown’s consequences are predictable. “Once you shoot women and children at 3 in the morning, you may be able to hold on to power for a while, but any sense of legitimacy is gone,” he said. He may prove right. But other people said the same thing about the People’s Liberation Army in Beijing when it opened fire in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The army’s bet on firepower that June day has paid off many times over: Today it has far-flung business interests that make it so rich and powerful that most of China’s leaders will not mess with it.
The San Juan Weekly
13 Mainland
March 3 - 9, 2011
Court Weighs the Power of Congress By ADAM LIPTAK
T
he Supreme Court heard arguments on Tuesday in a case that touched on the most pressing constitutional question of the day: just how much power does Congress have to regulate matters ordinarily left up to the states? The fate of President Obama’s health care law will turn on how that question is answered. But based on the justices’ comments, the lurid facts of the case and the odd posture in which it reached the court, the eventual decision will probably offer only limited guidance on the health care law’s prospects. The case heard Tuesday, Bond v. United States, No. 09-1227, arose from a domestic dispute. Carol A. Bond, a Pennsylvania woman, did not take it well when she learned that her husband was the father of her best friend’s child. She promised to make her former friend’s life “a living hell,” and she drew on her skills as a microbiologist to do so. Ms. Bond spread harmful chemicals on her friend’s car, mailbox and doorknob. The friend suffered only a minor injury. Such matters are usually handled by the local police and prosecutors. In Ms. Bond’s case, though, federal prosecutors charged her with using unconventional weapons in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993, a treaty concerned with terrorists and rogue states. At the argument, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggested that Congress had gone too far. Suppose, he said, that Ms. Bond had “decided to retaliate against her former friend by pouring a bottle of vinegar in the friend’s goldfish bowl.” “As I read this statute, Justice Alito said, “that would be a violation of this statute, potentially punishable by life imprisonment.”
Ms. Bond’s lawyer, Paul D. Clement, said that a chemical used by his client was not much more exotic than vinegar. “There is something sort of odd about the government’s theory that says that I can buy a chemical weapon at Amazon.com,” he said. In her appeal to the federal appeals court in Philadelphia, Ms. Bond argued that Congress did not have the constitutional power to use a chemical weapons treaty to address a matter of a sort routinely handled by state authorities. She cited the 10th Amendment, which says that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” The appeals court ruled that Ms. Bond did not have standing to raise a 10th Amendment defense. Only states, it said, can invoke the amendment. Federal prosecutors initially embraced that line of argument, but the Justice Department abandoned it in the Supreme Court, now saying that Ms. Bond was free to try to mount a defense based on the amendment. Since Ms. Bond and her nominal adversary agreed on the central issue in the case, the court appointed a lawyer, Stephen R. McAllister, to argue for the position the government had disowned. The outcome of the case on the standing point did not seem in much doubt on Tuesday. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., for instance, said it would be “pretty harsh” to forbid Ms. Bond from challenging her conviction on the ground that the law under which she was convicted exceeded Congressional authority. But the justices struggled with two other distinctions. One was how to disentangle claims that Congress had exceeded its enumerated powers in Article I of the Constitution from ones based on the 10th
Amendment. The other was whether there were at least some 10th Amendment claims that could be pressed only by states. Justice Elena Kagan suggested that the case could be decided simply on the ground that Congress had exceeded the powers listed in Article I of the Constitution. “Are there any peculiarly 10th Amendment claims that you’re making?” she asked Mr. Clement. He replied that Ms. Bond relied “principally” on the argument that Congress had exceeded its
powers but that it was possible the 10th Amendment played a role as well. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy added that individuals had a role to play in cases that at first blush seem to implicate only a clash between federal and state sovereignty. “Your underlying premise,” Justice Kennedy told Mr. McAllister, “is that the individual has no interest in whether or not the state has surrendered its powers to the federal government, and I just don’t think the Constitution was framed on that theory.”
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EDUCATION 14
The San Juan Weeekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Obama’s Budget Proposes a Significant Increase for Schools By SAM DILLON and TAMAR LEWIN
P
resident Obama proposed a 2012 Department of Education budget on Monday that would, if approved, significantly increase federal spending for public schools, and maintain the maximum Pell grant — the cornerstone financial-aid program — at $5,550 per college student. Whether it will be possible to keep that Pell maximum remains uncertain, however, given that House Republicans have proposed cutting the maximum by about $845, or 15 percent, in their proposal to extend the current budget. The administration’s education proposal asks for $77.4 billion. That includes $48.8 billion for the portion of the education budget that does not include Pell grants, or an increase of about 4 percent above the 2010 budget. Congress has not yet enacted the 2011 budget. Among education programs that the administration was protecting was Race to the Top, the competitive grant program that the administration has made its centerpiece initiative. Last year the administration used the Race to the Top to channel $4 billion in economic stimulus money to New York and other states that had proposed bold school improvement plans. The 2012 budget proposal includes $900 million for Race to the Top, which the administration says would be awarded this time not to states but to school districts. That would make it possible, for instance, to channel money to Houston or other districts in Texas that wanted to compete in the Race to the Top initiative but could not because their state declined to participate. Some House Republicans are skeptical of the program, however, and — like other line items in the education budget — it could face trims or elimination as Congress works on its own budget and the administration’s. The Republicans also propose to cut $1.1 billion from the
Head Start program, which, according to estimates by the National Head Start Association, would eliminate services for more than 200,000 children and the jobs of more than 50,000 Head Start employees. Reacting to the administration’s budget, Representative John Kline, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, indicated a reluctance to invest more in education. “Over the last 45 years we have increased our investment in education, but the return on that investment has failed to improve student achievement,” Mr. Kline said. “Throwing more money at our nation’s broken education system ignores reality and does a disservice to students and taxpayers.” The administration’s education proposal also includes $600 million for School Turnaround Grants, another favorite of the president and of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. This would be a $54 million increase above 2010 levels. The turnaround effort, which the ad-
ministration hopes will finance makeovers of thousands of the country’s worst schools, was also financed with billions in economic stimulus money. The vast program known as Title I, which channels money to school districts to help them educate disadvantaged children, would receive $14.8 billion, an increase of $300 million over 2010. Last year, the president said that, to remain competitive, the nation must increase the number of college graduates. But forced to make deep cuts in many areas of government, the president now proposes to eliminate some provisions of the Pell program, which has doubled in size over five years, and serves nine million low-income students. The administration’s budget would end Pell grants for summer students and end interest subsidies on graduate students’ loans. “We’re making some tough choices to protect the Pell grant,” Justin Hamilton, a department spokesman, said Monday in an e-mail statement. “We’re cutting where we can so that we can in-
vest where we must.” Congress passed the legislation providing an extra $36 billion over 10 years for the Pell program, and increasing the maximum grant to $5,550 only last year. But with the new Congress’s emphasis on costcutting, Pell grants became a prime focal point for cost-cutting. Beyond the 15 percent cut in this fall’s Pell grants, the House Republicans’ proposal would, over 10 years, cut $56 billion from the program. Mr. Kline said the Democrats had expanded Pells beyond what taxpayers can afford and put the program on the path to bankruptcy. But education groups warned that cutting the Pell program would put college out of reach for many low-income students. “With millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet, cutting Pell grants would pull the rug right out from under students and families who are counting on these crucial grants to help pay for college this fall,” said Lauren Asher of the Project on Student Debt.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
15
Warm Nights, Cold Noses
By BOB MORRIS
E
VERY night for the last year, Kathy Ruttenberg has been taking a bath, putting on pajamas, turning on CNN and getting into bed with a little pig named Trixie. “She’s a great cuddler if you lie still,” said Ms. Ruttenberg, a 53-year-old artist. “But if you’re restless, she gets annoyed, and her hooves are very sharp.” Ms. Ruttenberg has the black-andblue marks to show for it. Still, of all the animals she has in her bed (there are also two kittens and three terriers, to be precise), Trixie, a 16-pound Vietnamese potbellied pig, is her favorite, because of the way she spoons. “I have an Angora rabbit, too,” Ms. Ruttenberg said. “But he’s on the floor running around because the other animals don’t allow him up. We have a hierarchy in our bedroom.” Ms. Ruttenberg’s habit of sleeping with pets mirrors that of Paris Hilton, who has slept with a pig — of the four-legged variety — and was once bitten at her home at 3 a.m. by a kinkajou, a tiny raccoonrelated creature. Keeping that sort of menagerie may be unusual, but the habit of allowing animals in bed is not. Figures vary, but according to a recent study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 14 to 62 percent of the 165 million dogs and cats in this country sleep in bed with humans, with other surveys skewing higher. The reasons are well documented. First, touching, human or otherwise, raises levels of oxytocin in the body, creating feelings of contentment. And, of course, the comfort that an unconditionally loving animal provides in bed is a emotional balm, especially for the depressed, lonely or anxious. “Animals are uncomplicated and keep us in the present tense,” said Mark Doty, the author of a memoir called “Dog Years,” which chronicles the death of a lover. “When Wally could barely move, I saw him lifting his hand to reach over and pet Beau, our young retriever, who was curled up next to him. He couldn’t even feed himself, but he had the strength and will to give comfort to a dog at his side. It was remarkable.” It’s no surprise that pet owners like Mr. Doty seem unconcerned about the study published earlier this month by the C.D.C., in which two doctors warn that allowing pets to sleep in the bed can be dangerous and can spread zoonoses (pronounced zoh-AN-ee-sees), pathogens that go from animals to people. According to Bruno B. Chomel, a professor, and Ben Sun of the Department of Public Health, the risks are rare, but real. They cite instances
of fleas from cats transmitting bubonic plague. Cat scratch fever is a danger, too, they say, as are various forms of meningitis, Pasturella pneumonia and other infections. “We know these are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Chomel, who said he has owned dogs and cats, but has never allowed them in the bedroom. “There are risks and precautions to take. But we aren’t telling people not to be close to their pets.” That’s a good thing, because kicking pets out of bed isn’t likely to be an option for many people. First of all, it’s difficult to retrain animals once they have established a routine. Erica Lehrer and Richard Goldman learned that when they tried to keep their three cats out of the bedroom after installing an expensive black carpet. “They staged a protest: cried all night, pounded with their cat paws on the door,” said Ms. Lehrer, 52, a writer. After three sleepless nights, she said: “They won and moved back in. We bought a really good vacuum cleaner.” “Now we know that white carpet is better than black if you have cats,” added Mr. Goldman, a 54-year-old business consultant who disliked all cats before he married Ms. Lehrer, and finds himself in the guest room when the two in his home are too active in the bed. “Marriage is a journey, and this is part of it.” At least their cats are indoor animals. That means there is less risk of having mice and other critters deposited in the bed. Staying indoors, like most city cats do, also reduces the risk of fleas, ticks and other potential disease carriers. Which brings us to dogs. Could all that slush they walk through and bring into bed at this time of year be a risk to health as well as to housekeeping? “I’d say, just wipe them down and you’ll be fine,” said Lucy O’Byrne, a veterinarian at the West Village Veterinary Hospital. “As long as you have good flea and tick control, and keep your pet healthy the way most people do, you don’t have to worry.” DR. CHOMEL, author of the C.D.C. study, doesn’t disagree. There is far more risk, he warned, with pet licks and kisses. If you have a wound or if your immune system is compromised, licking should be avoided. (Meaning, don’t let the dog lick you — the hazards involved in the other way around have not been researched.) It’s also not good for babies. And there have been cases of animals spreading resistant strains of staph infections and other diseases by licking cuts and wounds after surgery, so it’s not recommended that pets be allowed in bed then. On the other hand, what would Patricia Garcia-Gomez have done without a
dog in bed after major surgery? Six months after falling in love with her boyfriend, but not his territorial Rhodesian ridgeback, Sylvie (who made it clear that she didn’t like her turf being invaded by urinating in his apartment while staring into Ms. Garcia-Gomez’s eyes), she was recuperating when the Great Dane-size dog surprised her by joining her in bed. It was a great comfort. “She’s been in bed with us since,” said Ms. Garcia-Gomez, who works in branding (and is happy to provide Sylvie’s age, 8 ½, but not her own). “It can also be tricky, because when she stretches, she pushes us off. Humans only have two big legs, and she has four.” Ms. Garcia-Gomez doesn’t worry about the dog’s giant licks, despite the fact that they present a real risk — just as the popular notion that dog saliva is cleaner than human saliva is a real myth. “I’ll just continue to believe what I want to believe,” she said. AND why not? Even if licking is risky, the risks might well be offset by the benefits, given the evidence suggesting that pets can increase longevity and boost the immune system. “If the dog starts licking the baby too much, we discourage it,” said Alexandra Horowitz, author of the bestselling “Inside of a Dog,” and a psychology professor at Barnard, who sleeps with her toddler, husband and dog without worry. “But in general, if you’re a dog person, you live with dirt and other things that come in benign and less benign forms. I think the health risks are overstated. I say that if it’s mutually agreeable, just as it is between two people, then sharing a bed with a dog is fine.” Even Cesar Millan, the hard-nosed dog trainer known for his TV series “The Dog Whisperer,” agrees, although he believes the dog should be invited up each night, just to show it who’s the real leader of the pack. “Then choose the portion of the bed where the dog sleeps,” he writes in his book “Cesar’s Way.” “Sweet dreams.” Sometimes, however, sweet dreams are not an option, as Tracy Rudd, an illustrator, has discovered. One man she dated
years ago picked up her growling, nipping Chihuahua and tossed her out of the bedroom, later to find his clothes soaked in urine. When Ms. Rudd, 47, met her current husband, she said she knew he was the one because when he put his arm around her in bed during the night, causing her dog to growl and nip at him, he didn’t seem to mind. “He said he respected her for defending her space.” As a result, the dog respected him and a lasting marriage was born. Perhaps one day it will be the same for Ms. Ruttenberg with her upstate menagerie. “Although I’m starting to think it’s not likely,” she said. Most gentlemen callers don’t even make it to the bedroom. One bolted when Ms. Ruttenberg, who has a total of 160 animals on her sprawling mountainside property, let a baby goat into the living room after Trixie, the pig, had already joined the visit. “I thought he would find a little goat charming,” she said. “But after the pig, it was too much for him. Especially as the goat, Iris, was leaving droppings on the floor.” Another date fled, after some wine and a soak in the hot tub under the stars, when Oola, one of the resident pigs (black, 150 pounds) charged and tried to bite him. “The last guy I had in bed was freaked out by the rabbit.” “He’s huge, and he got territorial seeing this guy in the room, so he started thumping and picking up his dish in his mouth and tossing it in our direction.” “The truth is, with all my animals around me, I feel loved here, and I always have someone to come home to and someone who misses me when I’m away,” said Ms. Ruttenberg, who got her first pet, a dog, 20 years ago, after a terrible romantic breakup. Ms. Ruttenberg’s mother frets her daughter put herself in permanent zone of marriage ineligibility. Ms. Ruttenberg is busy making art, having fun and cooking for her animals to worry about it. As for health risks letting animals sleep in her bed, she’s more concerned with making them sick than catching something.
Wine
16
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Wine in Two Words By ERIC ASIMOV
I
’M not one to go overboard in describing the myriad aromas and flavors in a glass of wine. In fact, most of the gaudy descriptions found in tasting notes will not help a whit to understand the character of a bottle of wine or to anticipate the experience of drinking it. While it may seem heretical to say, the more specific the description of a wine, the less useful information is actually transmitted. See for yourself. All you have to do is compare two reviewers’ notes for a single bottle: one critic’s ripe raspberry, white pepper and huckleberry is another’s sweet-and-sour cherries and spice box. What’s the solution? Well, if you feel the urgent need to know precisely what a wine is going to taste like before you sniff and swallow, forget it. Experience will give you a general idea, but fixating on exactitude is a fool’s errand. Two bottles of the same wine can taste different depending on when, where and with whom you open them. Besides, the aromas and flavors of good wines can evolve over the course of 20 minutes in a glass. Perhaps they can be captured momentarily like fireflies in a child’s hands, yet reach for them again a minute later and — whiff! — they’re somewhere else. But the general character of a wine: now, that’s another matter. A brief depiction of the salient overall features of a wine, like its weight, texture and the broad nature of its aromas and flavors, can be far more helpful in determining whether you will like that bottle than a thousand points of detail. In fact, consumers could be helped immeasurably if the entire lexicon of wine descriptors were boiled down to two words: sweet or savory. These two simple words suggest the basic divide of all wines, the two grand categories that explain more about the essence of any bottle than the most florid, detailed analogies ever could. Just as important, thinking of wine in this more streamlined fashion is an efficient method for clarifying your own preferences. First, though, let’s define our terms, beginning with sweet, one of the more alarming words to American wine drinkers. Alarming? Naturally. For years, the cliché in the wine trade has been, “Americans talk dry but drink sweet.” Some of the most popular American wines, like Kendall-Jackson Vintner Select chardonnay, are made with unannoun-
ced residual sugar in them. But when I use the word sweet, I’m thinking not only of actual sugar in the wine, but also (more often) of the impression of sweetness. This impression can be provided by dominant fruit flavors and high concentrations of glycerol, a product of fermentation that is heavy, oily and slightly sweet. Zinfandel, for example, is usually dry, but I would categorize it as sweet because of its intense fruitiness. I would also include plush, opulent California pinot noirs, many Châteauneuf-du-Papes from the ripe 2007 vintage, Côtes du Rhône from the 2009 vintage, Amarones and a number of Spanish reds. Among whites I would classify as sweet are California chardonnays from the tutti-frutti school, with their tropical flavors and buttery notes, although the term does not fit leaner, more structured examples. Voluptuous viogniers, wherever they come from, typify sweet. Gewürztraminer and pinot gris, especially in their unctuous Alsatian modes, qualify, as do the more flowery torrontés from Argentina. Savory wines, as you would imagine, are the ones that don’t leave the impression of sweetness. In fact, they may not taste like fruits at all, with the exception of citrus and possibly apple flavors, which are more acidic than sweet. Fino sherries, especially manzanillas, are saline rather than sweet, for example. Good Muscadet and Sancerre? Chablis and other white Burgundies? They may offer suggestions of fruit flavors but they are far more likely to convey herbal or smoky flavors along with the stony, chalky, slate and flint qualities that come under the vague, all-encompassing term “mineral.” Mineral flavors often go hand in hand with lively acidity. Indeed, many of the wines in the savory category also have a freshness that comes with acidity. Good examples of Soave and dry rieslings would also fit in. Can reds be savory? Of course. In the world of tasting notes, good syrah wines from the northern Rhône Valley are often said to have aromas and flavors of herbs, olives and bacon fat — prime savory material. Yet if you pick the grapes riper and lavish the wine with oak, northern Rhône wines can become sweet. Australian shiraz and California syrahs are more in the sweet category, although some producers in both places make excellent savory examples. Young Riojas are more sweet than savory, but as they
get older — especially old-school gran reservas — they turn smoky, spicy and almost leathery, savory for sure. Naturally, generalizing like this is dangerous. Many categories of wine are too hard to consign to either sweet or savory, and anybody can offer exceptions and counterexamples. Often you have to go bottle by bottle and producer by producer to figure out where a wine fits. Commercial Beaujolais, for example, is often produced to amplify the fruitiness of the gamay grape, and so would be classified as sweet. But serious, smallproduction Beaujolais often shows more acidity and mineral flavors. The inherent fruitiness is there, but a fine Morgon or Moulin-à-Vent? Arguably savory, but again, it depends on the producer. Red Burgundy can also go both ways, especially when young. Good examples charm and seduce with their gorgeous, sweet perfumes, but the sweetness is often leavened with earthy mineral qualities. As good red Burgundies age, their savory side becomes more pronounced. Indeed, aging does bring out the savory elements in many wines. How about Bordeaux? Classic Pauillac is renowned for flavors often described as currant, graphite and cigar box. To me, they are savory. Wines from the Right Bank, with their higher percentage of merlot, are harder to classify. They may have more fruit aromas, but they, too, often have an underlying mineral quality along with a purity of fruit. Of course, a producer’s intent can completely change the character of a wine. The riper the grapes, the sweeter the juice, and the more likely the wine will end up on the sweet side, whether from Pauillac, St.-Émilion or anywhere else. Many sought-after Napa cabernets like Bryant Family are sweet, even as great counterexamples like Dominus and Mayacamas have pronounced savory elements. Finally, let’s turn to German rieslings. Bottles with residual sugar would obviously seem to be sweet. Indeed, it would be perverse to classify sweet German rieslings as savory. Yet, I have to admit I’m tempted, especially by good Mosels, which, with their energy, taut acidic structure and penetrating minerality, can come across as exactly that. But perhaps that’s going too far. I’ll leave it to you to decide. The point of this exercise, after all, is not so much to label every wine as one or the other, as it is to suggest a different, simpler way of thinking about these wines. And, perhaps, to
help people make their own discoveries. For example, if you like Australian shiraz, you might assume you would also like northern Rhône reds, as they’re made from the same grape. But the sweet-andsavory method would suggest a greater affinity for ripe Châteauneuf-du-Papes — made from a blend of grapes rather than straight syrah, but bold and full of fruit like shirazes. Or say you were partial to savory wines, and were faced with a selection of Brunello di Montalcinos, which can fall into both categories. Knowing your own preference would help you rule out those with amplified oak or sweet fruit in favor of those higher-acid, bitter cherry and spice flavors. Of course, this scheme may not have an immediate practical application until more of us speak the same language. Only the rare wine shop or sommelier might respond to a request for a savory wine, and you might not want to ask anybody for a sweet wine, unless you are certain they know what you mean. Some might object that I am dumbing down wine, but the reverse is true. Simplicity, as designers, cosmologists and philosophers know, is a virtue. As the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once put it, “Perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
It’s One or the Other All wines may be separated into two broad categories, sweet and savory, depending on the grapes, where they were grown and the intent and techniques of the producer. While there are many exceptions, and each wine should be evaluated individually, it’s possible to generalize by genre: Sweet: Zinfandel, grenache, Amarone, commercial Beaujolais, California pinot noir, viognier, modern Barolo, Napa cabernet Savory: Fino sherry, Muscadet, serious Beaujolais, white Burgundy, dry riesling, Rhone reds, old-school Barolo, extra-brut Champagne
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March 3 - 9, 2011
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ART
Francisco Goya F
rancisco Goya (y Lucientes), (b. March 30, 1746, Fuendetodos, Spain--d. April 16, 1828, Bordeaux, Fr.), consummately Spanish artist whose multifarious paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and
20th-century painters. Like Velázquez, Goya was a Spanish court painter whose best work was done apart from his official duties. He is known for his scenes of violence, especially those prompted by the French invasion of Spain. The series of etchings Los desastres de la guerra (“The Disasters of War”, 1810-14) records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion. His masterpieces in painting include The Naked Maja and The Clothed Maja (c. 1800-05). He also painted charming portraits such as Senora Sabasa Garcia. For the bold technique of his paintings, the haunting satire of his etchings, and his belief that the artist’s vision is more important than tradition, Goya is often called “the first of
the moderns.” His uncompromising portrayal of his times marks the beginning of 19th-century realism. Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in Fuendetodos, a village in northern Spain. The family later moved to Saragossa, where Goya’s father worked
as a gilder. At about 14 young Goya was apprenticed to Jose Luzan, a local painter. Later he went to Italy to continue his study of art. On returning to Saragossa in 1771, he painted frescoes for the local cathedral. These works, done in the decorative rococo tradition, established Goya’s artistic reputation. In 1773 he married Josefa Bayeu, sister of Saragossa artist Francisco Bayeu. The couple had many children, but only one--a son, Xavier-survived to adulthood. From 1775 to 1792 Goya painted cartoons (designs) for the royal tapestry factory in Madrid. This was the most important period in his artistic development. As a tapestry designer, Goya did his first genre paintings, or scenes from everyday life.
The experience helped him become a keen observer of human behavior. He was also influenced by neoclassicism, which was gaining fa-
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ART
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nish monarchy, Goya was pardoned for serving the French, but his work was not favored by the new king. He was called before the Inquisition to explain his earlier portrait of The Naked Maja, one of the few nudes in Spanish art at that time. In 1816 he published his etchings on bullfighting, called the Tauromaquia. From 1819 to 1824 Goya lived in seclusion in a house outside Madrid. Free from court restrictions, he adopted an increasingly personal style. In the Black Paintings, executed on the walls of his house, Goya gave expression to his darkest visions. A similar nightmarish quality haunts the satirical Disparates, a series of etchings also called Proverbios. In 1824, after the failure of an attempt to restore liberal government, Goya went into voluntary exile in France. He settled in Bordeaux, continuing to work until his death there on April 16, 1828. Today many of his best paintings hang in Madrid’s Prado art museum.
Comes from page 17 vor over the rococo style. Finally, his study of the works of Velázquez in the royal collection resulted in a looser, more spontaneous painting technique. At the same time, Goya achieved his first popular success. He became established as a portrait painter to the Spanish aristocracy. He was elected to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1780, named painter to the king in 1786, and made a court painter in 1789. A serious illness in 1792 left
Goya permanently deaf. Isolated from others by his deafness, he became increasingly occupied with the fantasies and inventions of his imagination and with critical and satirical observations of mankind. He evolved a bold, free new style close to caricature. In 1799 he published the Caprichos, a series of etchings satirizing human folly and weakness. His portraits became penetrating characterizations, revealing their subjects as Goya saw them. In his religious frescoes he employed a broad, free style and an earthy realism unprecedented
in religious art. Goya served as director of painting at the Royal Academy from 1795 to 1797 and was appointed first Spanish court painter in 1799. During the Napoleonic invasion and the Spanish war of independence from 1808 to 1814, Goya served as court painter to the French. He expressed his horror of armed conflict in The Disasters of War, a series of starkly realistic etchings on the atrocities of war. They were not published until 1863, long after Goya’s death. Upon the restoration of the Spa-
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New York Times Editorials If Not Now, When? By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
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hat’s unfolding in the Arab world today is the mother of all wakeup calls. And what the voice on the other end of the line is telling us is clear as a bell: “America, you have built your house at the foot of a volcano. That volcano is now spewing lava from different cracks and is rumbling like it’s going to blow. Move your house!” In this case, “move your house” means “end your addiction to oil.” No one is rooting harder for the democracy movements in the Arab world to succeed than I am. But even if things go well, this will be a long and rocky road. The smart thing for us to do right now is to impose a $1-a-gallon gasoline tax, to be phased in at 5 cents a month beginning in 2012, with all the money going to pay down the deficit. Legislating a higher energy price today that takes effect in the future, notes the Princeton economist Alan Blinder, would trigger a shift in buying and investment well before the tax kicks in. With one little gasoline tax, we can make ourselves more economically and strategically secure, help sell more Chevy Volts and free ourselves to openly push for democratic values in the Middle East without worrying anymore that it will harm our oil interests. Yes, it
will mean higher gas prices, but prices are going up anyway, folks. Let’s capture some it for ourselves. It is about time. For the last 50 years, America (and Europe and Asia) have treated the Middle East as if it were just a collection of big gas stations: Saudi station, Iran station, Kuwait station, Bahrain station, Egypt station, Libya station, Iraq station, United Arab Emirates station, etc. Our message to the region has been very consistent: “Guys (it was only guys we spoke with), here’s the deal. Keep your pumps open, your oil prices low, don’t bother the Israelis too much and, as far as we’re concerned, you can do whatever you want out back. You can deprive your people of whatever civil rights you like. You can engage in however much corruption you like. You can preach whatever intolerance from your mosques that you like. You can print whatever conspiracy theories about us in your newspapers that you like. You can keep your women as illiterate as you like. You can create whatever vast welfare-state economies, without any innovative capacity, that you like. You can undereducate your youth as much as you like. Just keep your pumps open, your oil prices low, don’t hassle the Jews too much — and you can do whatever you want out back.” It was that attitude that enabled the
Arab world to be insulated from history for the last 50 years — to be ruled for decades by the same kings and dictators. Well, history is back. The combination of rising food prices, huge bulges of unemployed youth and social networks that are enabling those youths to organize against their leaders is breaking down all the barriers of fear that kept these kleptocracies in power. But fasten your seat belts. This is not going to be a joy ride because the lid is being blown off an entire region with frail institutions, scant civil society and virtually no democratic traditions or culture of innovation. The United Nations’ Arab Human Development Report 2002 warned us about all of this, but the Arab League made sure that that report was ignored in the Arab world and the West turned a blind eye. But that report — compiled by a group of Arab intellectuals led by Nader Fergany, an Egyptian statistician — was prophetic. It merits rereading today to appreciate just how hard this democratic transition will be. The report stated that the Arab world is suffering from three huge deficits — a deficit of education, a deficit of freedom and a deficit of women’s empowerment. A summary of the report in Middle East Quarterly in the Fall of 2002 detailed the key evidence: the gross domestic product of the entire Arab world combined was less than that of
Spain. Per capita expenditure on education in Arab countries dropped from 20 percent of that in industrialized countries in 1980 to 10 percent in the mid-1990s. In terms of the number of scientific papers per unit of population, the average output of the Arab world per million inhabitants was roughly 2 percent of that of an industrialized country. When the report was compiled, the Arab world translated about 330 books annually, one-fifth of the number that Greece did. Out of seven world regions, the Arab countries had the lowest freedom score in the late 1990s in the rankings of Freedom House. At the dawn of the 21st century, the Arab world had more than 60 million illiterate adults, the majority of whom were women. Yemen could be the first country in the world to run out of water within 10 years. This is the vaunted “stability” all these dictators provided — the stability of societies frozen in time. Seeing the Arab democracy movements in Egypt and elsewhere succeed in modernizing their countries would be hugely beneficial to them and to the world. We must do whatever we can to help. But no one should have any illusions about how difficult and convulsive the Arabs’ return to history is going to be. Let’s root for it, without being in the middle of it.
At Grave Risk By BOB HERBERT
B
uried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count. A 46-year-old teacher in Charlotte, Vt., who has been unable to find a full-time job and is weighed down with debt, wrote to his U.S. senator, Bernie Sanders: “I am financially ruined. I find myself depressed and demoralized and my confidence is shattered. Worst of all, as I hear more and more talk about deficit reduction and further layoffs, I have the agonizing feeling that the worst may not be behind us.” Similar stories of hardship and desolation can be found throughout Vermont and the rest of the nation. The true extent of the economic devastation, and the enormous size of that portion of the population that is being left behind, has not yet been properly acknowledged. What is being allowed to happen to those being pushed out or left out of the American mainstream is the most important and potentially most
dangerous issue facing the country. Senator Sanders is a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats. He asked his constituents to write to him about their experiences coping with the recession and its aftermath. Hundreds responded, including several from outside Vermont. A 69-year-old woman from northeastern Vermont wrote plaintively: “We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?” A woman with two teenagers told the senator about her husband, a building contractor for many years, who has been unable to find work in the downturn: “I see my husband, capable and experienced, now really struggling with depression and trying to reinvent his profession at age 51. I feel this recession is leaving us, once perhaps a middle-class couple, now suddenly thrust into the lower-middle-
class world without loads of options except to try and find more and more smaller jobs to fill in some of the financial gaps we feel day to day. “All we want to do is work hard and pay our bills. We’re just not sure even that part of the American Dream is still possible anymore.” One of the things I noticed reading through the letters was the pervasive sense of loss, not just of employment, but of faith in the soundness and possibilities of America. For centuries, Americans have been nothing if not optimistic. But now there is a terrible sense that so much that was taken for granted during the past six or seven decades is being dismantled or destroyed. A 26-year-old man who emerged from college with big dreams wrote: “I had hoped to be able to support not just myself by this point, but to be able to think about settling down and starting a family. My family always told me that an education was the ticket to success, but all my education seems to have done in this landscape is make it impossible to pull myself out of debt and begin a successful career.” How bad have things become? According to the National Employment Law Project, a trend is growing among employers
to not even consider the applications of the unemployed for jobs that become available. Among examples offered by the project were a phone manufacturer that posted a job announcement with the message: “No Unemployed Candidate Will Be Considered At All,” and a Texas electronics company that announced online that it would “not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.” This is the environment that is giving rise to the worker protests in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere. The ferment is not just about public employees and their unions. Researchers at Rutgers University found last year that more than 70 percent of respondents to a national survey had either lost a job, or had a relative or close friend who had lost a job. That is beyond ominous. The great promise of the United States, its primary offering to its citizens and the world, is at grave risk. A couple facing foreclosure in Barre, Mass., wrote to Senator Sanders: “We are now at our wits end and in dire straits. Our parents have since left this world and with no place to go, what are we to do and where are we to go?” They pray to God, they said, that they will not end up living in their car in the cold.
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The San Juan Weeekly
LETTERS US Constitution Mandates Democracy in States and Territories When I took a year of law school at UPR way back when, Fernando Martín, then not yet a politician, taught Introduction to Law. One morning he narrated, as if a quaint memory, how Luis Muñoz Marín and his buddies cheated at the elections in the early days, that reams of ballots ended up in the various island rivers. But that this was not done to hurt in any way, it was all, nobody doubted at the time, for the greater good. In out time Puerto Rico is saddled by an unabashedly fascist leadership, who’ve managed to dismantle whatever democracy we had by packing deliberative and judicial bodies with partisan hacks. And they’re not averse to use police force, meant meant in principle to protect civilian lives and tranquilty, to instead enforce their will on a hapless populace through violence, intimidation and humiliation, even employing sexual assault as a weapon, complements to the Serbians. Worldwide, folks from Congressman Luis Gutiérrez to Cuba’s Fidel Castro are sounding the voice of alarm. Yet here everybody’s smug that come 2012 we’ll be done with the penepeístas, that Puerto Rico is, after all, a democracy, with a constitution and citizen rights enforced by federal courts. But may not a federal judge or two be bought over? And what when the media announce on the morning of the election that Fortuño/McClintock/Pierluisi have just been reelected by an unprecedented landslide? A few insiders pop up to squeal on TV that it was all rigged, that it was set up. Then silence, they travel abroad for no apparent reason, get arrested for selling dope, commit suicide like the macheteros and Salvador Allende were reported to have done in their day or simply get squashed to death in one of our many, many traffic accidents, or holdups, or burglaries, or shootouts. Can anybody countence after all we’ve seen and heard that the New Progessive Party can actually win an election? I guess their most lethal weapon is our silly complacency and our only hope is the fed. No, don’t say you weren’t warned. And talk about complacency. Over WOSO Radio Speak Out, local attorney and NPP zealot Miguel Pereira, in sneaky drawn out verbiage, told Congressman Gutierrez that the latter was not Puerto Rican enough to voice an opinion and ought to mind his own business. To which Gutierrez replied that Puerto Rico being a colony of the United States, as surrendered by Spain in the 1898 Treaty of Paris, it’s the responsibilty of the US Congress to watch over the welfare of Island American citizens. Pereira could then not stand up to Gutierrez, one man’s mind was not a match to the other’s. Lastly, the American Constitution established a community of sovereign states that surrendered ennumerated attributes of sove-
reignty to a common government, but beyond that the United States is guarantor to the individual states of “a republican form of government.” In 1789 the Founding Fathers were worried that there might turn out a little monarchy somewhere, it was the evil of the age. But clearly the investiture of a facist state would be a violation of the United States Constitution and the federal government is entrusted with the obligation to set things right by whatever means. When George Wallace’s “riot squad” attempted to force segregation in Alabama universites, President Kennedy summoned and federalized the Alabama National Guard and that was the end of that. Just imagine the Puerto Rico National Guard standing between the Puerto Rico police and the UPR students. And I think Obama would do it too, let’s just hope he’s paying attention. Joaquín Serrano, Condado
UPR: a Mess All the Way Consider a judiciary where you may only appeal when you’ve won your case. I couldn’t go on at the UPR this semester because of the $800 and I’m mad as hell. So I showed up at the student assembly today to vote for continuance of the strike, as you’d expect. Only I wasn’t allowed in because I’m no longer a student. You can only cry out if you haven’t been hurt. Congrats to Ana Guadalupe and Fortuño and Figueroa Sancha, yes, the bad folks prevail one way or the other. Emilio Santiago, Caparra
A Day in the Life “A crowd of people stood and stared, they’d seen his face before. Nobody was sure if he was from the House of Lords...” The Beatles (1967) To Joseph Ramos: You write in to gripe about the quality of the TV commercials during the Superbowl. If that’s what bothers you most about all the stuff that’s happening around us, either you’ve attained Nirvana or you tripped too much in the 60s. Doubtless next season you’d like spots on the latest eateries in downtown Minneaplis, what’s at the Met that week, the updated schedulings for the Boston Museum, perhaps a Ferrari commercial and even what’s playing at the Albert Hall. Best try what I do, walk to the fridge and help yourself to a cold Löwenbräu. Andy Tyler, Condado
Futility of Wellwishing To Gilberto Oliver Campos: You lament today’s “state of chaos in Puerto Rico,” student unrest/police battery and the politician tyranny/corruption and you long for the halcyon years of the Ponce Massacre and the Nationalist Revolt. You don’t propose anything concrete, just cliché wisdom, the stuff we hardly need you to tell us. And life is messy, Gilberto, bleary-eyed wishful thinking gets nowhere. Computers are the wave of the future and high-end audio has displaced those expensive musical instruments and you were no less imaginarily murderous with your make-believe arsenal from Wild West silvery Colts to Capone tommy guns to Buck Rogers disintegrators to fry the martians. When “mothers ruled the lives of their children” was the age of la correa and who thinks of that as wholesome? Everybody is “aware of the need for a better education,” it’s just that the opposite is government policy here, to assure their corporate underwriters an abundant minimum-wager reservoir. My grandmother used to say that the real blind are those who don’t wish to see. But then, why bother with letters to newspapers? . Guillaumette Tyler , Puerta de Tierra
Women Under Tyranny Might that footage of the Riot Squader squeezing the coed’s breasts in the back of a police van be used in a recruitment video? What the Department might do for a rookie. I doubt Fortuño would mind, he’d again tell us we must listen to both sides of the story or that it was the girl’s boobs that got into the cop’s hand and sucked the fingers in, and we’ve witnessed he mutters stuff like that with a straight face. Nina Fotze, San Juan
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March 3 - 9, 2011
San Juan Weekly
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modern love
GPS on a Path to the Heart By DANIEL JONES
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S there a proven strategy for finding love? If so, I suspect millions of people would like to know. In six years of editing this column, I have received so many stories from the baffled and the frustrated that even tsunami metaphors can’t convey the volume. Answers, I’m sure, abound. I can already see the raised hands of self-help authors, relationship coaches and matchmakers eager to ply their trade. Open your wallet and maybe you’ll learn that the secret is to follow a set of antiquated rules, or to lower your expectations and settle. Perhaps you’ll be asked to describe your favorite salty snack, and that preference, when added to your profile and cross-referenced with someone else’s preferences, will turn the key and in you’ll go. Surely there’s a science to this. Isn’t there a science to everything? Not according to all the grinning newlyweds who first locked eyes during Pilates or in a conga line at the tiki bar and found themselves hitched and happy without consultants, fees or even a single round of speed dating. “We just knew,” they say, maddeningly. “It’ll happen to you, too. You have to be patient.” Patience may be a virtue, but for many, it’s no strategy for finding love. So what else can you do, short of hiring advisers, creating a direct mail campaign or revealing your vitals to a site like Perfectmatch.com? For Valentine’s Day, I offer a sampling of intriguing tactics I’ve come across lately: familiar oldies that have been dusted off and modernized, along with some economical, technologydriven options.
Perfect the text Seduction via love letters has a long, rich history. With text messaging, the genre is enjoying a renaissance, albeit one marked by shallowness and brevity. Not that that’s a bad thing. After all, it’s hard not to be impressed by the efficiency of a message like “ur gr8 lets m8,” which takes three seconds to type and a fraction of a second to send, and requires no stamp, wax seal or calligraphy. Cost: zero (depending on your texting plan). Yet it can still be the start of a beautiful relationship. If the object of your desire replies with something chatty like “lol! its f8!” you’re well on your way. Keep it going. Consider adding a playful photo or two (data charges may apply). But be careful where you aim your
camera: One ill-advised picture can ruin a thousand words.
CONSULT A RELIGIOUS GURU Just two months ago in this column Amy Klein explained how, as a lapsed Jew, she still had enough faith in divine intervention to follow a friend’s advice and consult a Jerusalem rabbi known for predicting coupledom. After he told Amy she’d meet her husband during Hanukkah (then three months away), she waited through the holiday on high alert before succumbing to despair. Until the next Hanukkah (he didn’t say which one!), when she indeed found love. But did it happen because the rabbi predicted it, she wondered, or because his prediction caused her to make it so? Answer: Don’t analyze miracles. This is one miracle, by the way, that a lot of readers would like to tap into. Of the many who e-mailed us in response, an impressive number were already in Israel or on their way and wrote not to comment but to urgently request the rabbi’s name and contact information.
TANTALIZE WITH TWEETS Not long ago a young Brooklynite I heard from, Julieanne Smolinski, discovered an interesting phenomenon. She was seducing people. And she was being seduced. Not with suggestive touches or whispered come-ons, but with 140-character dispatches accompanied by, as she put it, “a chest-up self-portrait the size of a Scrabble tile.” Here is a truism about social media like Twitter and Facebook: the smaller the profile picture, the greater the fantasizing. People will double-click on your photo to try to see more of you, or drag it to their desktops hoping for a better view. But the photo stubbornly remains a minuscule square of seductive potential, which only fuels the obsession. Combine it with some witty tweets and the package may prove irresistible. The Scrabble tile must be met in person. Of course, it’s almost impossible in these circumstances for the encounter to live up to the fantasy. Which is the downside of imagining one’s romantic future based on a smattering of thumbnail images and glib phrases. Which is increasingly how we meet each other these days. Uh-oh.
MAKE PEOPLE APPLY TO DATE YOU Another person who wrote to me, Jessica Delfino, was so tired of going nowhere on the dating hamster wheel that she decided to compose an old-fashioned list of everything she wanted in a partner — height, age, eye color, parental and job status, pet ownership status and so on — and then publicized it in a newfashioned way: by posting it on Craigslist and inviting applicants. She pledged to respond to all, but not meet unless the man fulfilled all criteria. In the end, she gave in on age (he was a year below her minimum), but he possessed every other characteristic and was a real person who came to love her as much as she came to love him. Now they’re engaged. True, such lists can be arbitrary and misguided. But sometimes you just need a way forward, something to believe in, a way to feel right about a person who is right. You need, in short, to create an illusion of destiny.
CHASE TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH We are told in matters of love never to chase. Chasing makes you look desperate, pathetic and obsessed. I’ve read hundreds of tales of chasing. The common version, which involves drive-bys and doorbell ringing and way too many unreturned calls and text messages, can be squirm-inducing. But chasing someone you love to the ends of the earth is different. If the crush of your life decides to up and move to Japan, as Lisa Ruth Brunner’s did in a story she told here last summer, and you miss her so much you arrange for foreign study in Beijing (which was as close as Lisa could get), and a year later you find yourself reunited with her in Tiananmen Square, the magnitude of your act is so absurdly out of scale that it can turn the original paradigm on its head: pathetic becomes romantic, desperate becomes determined. And even if your grand gesture doesn’t lead to love, as Lisa’s didn’t, at least your story stands a better chance of moving from the police blotter to Hollywood.
LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH Sometimes the love of your life is al-
ready with you. But there is some reason you cannot be a couple, or so you think. In this column we publish stories about human relationships, hoping to illuminate some facet of love. But I would not call many of them love stories. A bona fide love story is a rare thing. Gary Presley’s, which appeared here 15 months ago, is one. A near quadriplegic from childhood polio, Gary was, in his mind, a burden — always had been and would be. One who cannot maneuver one’s body outside of a wheelchair without substantial help from another is dependent on that person, and it is hard to imagine a loving relationship, much less a romantic relationship, starting with such inequality. Nevertheless, Gary had developed feelings for his home care aide, a young single mother named Belinda. It was a hopeless yearning he regularly felt compelled to quash. He did not consider that she might have feelings for him. It would make no sense. In fact, Belinda had fallen for Gary. But even as she made this clear to him over time, he maintained that he didn’t deserve to love her, and that he shouldn’t allow her to love him. “I held hard to the idea I should be content to ride out the remainder of my life without complaint,” he wrote, “a burned-out case, an absurd hodgepodge of broken parts.” Eventually, with Belinda’s constancy, he overcame his denial, and they have been married 20 years. “Even now I cannot fully resolve myself to the reality of Belinda’s love,” he wrote, adding simply: “I chose to love Belinda, chose against my head-logic and with my heart-dreams.” Logic no, heart yes. I think we have our proven strategy.
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Fried Red Thai Jasmine Rice With Shrimp By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN
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hai-style fried rice is an addiction in our household. If you cannot find Alter Eco’s ruby red jasmine, you can make this dish with red Bhutanese rice or with regular jasmine rice. This may seem like a lot of fried rice, but believe me, you’ll finish it in one sitting. 2 tablespoons canola or peanut oil 8 garlic cloves, minced 1 large carrot, peeled and cut in 1-inch long julienne 8 medium or large shrimp (about 6 ounces), peeled, deveined and chopped 6 cups cooked ruby red jasmine rice, red Bhutanese or regular jasmine rice (2 cups uncooked) 1 bunch scallions, trimmed, cut in half lengthwise and then into 1-inch lengths 2 tablespoons Thai or Vietnamese fish sauce (omit if sodium is an issue; the high sodium content in this recipe comes from the fish sauce) 2 to 4 tablespoons chopped cilantro For garnish (optional): Chopped cilantro Thinly sliced cucumber Lime wedges Scallions Fish sauce with hot chilies (nam pla prik) Chopped roasted peanuts
1. Heat a large wok or large, heavy nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until a drop of water evaporates upon contact. Add the oil, tilt to spread across the pan, and add the carrot and shrimp. Stir-fry until the shrimp is pink and opaque, about two minutes. Add the garlic, and stir-fry just until golden, 15 to 30 seconds. Add the rice. Stir-fry for about two minutes by scooping the rice up, then pressing it into the pan and scooping it up again. The rice should have a seared taste. Add the scallions and fish sauce, stir together for a half-minute to a minute and transfer to a platter. Sprinkle the cilantro over the top, and serve, passing the garnishes of your choice. Diners should squeeze lime juice onto their rice as they eat. Yield: Serves four generously as a one-dish meal. Advance preparation: Cooked rice will keep for three or four days in the refrigerator and can be frozen. The dish is a last-minute stirfry. Nutritional information per serving: 484 calories; 1 gram saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 68 milligrams cholesterol; 82 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams dietary fiber; 900 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 16 grams protein
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Kitchen
Shaved Steak, a Favorite With Many Names
By JANE SIGAL
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OU turn up the flame under a sizzling pan and sear steak for just a minute or two, barely cooking it before you sit down. The beef is remarkably tender. You are eating: A. Expensive rib-eye from the nicely marbled rib section; or B. Cheap, lean, chewy top round, from the hard-working upper leg? It’s a trick question, because if the meat is shaved steak — handkerchief-thin slices of beef cut across the grain — it can come from any part of the steer and still be tender. “All cuts become almost indistinguishable when you slice them so thinly,” said Jake Dickson, the owner of Dickson’s Farmstand Meats in Chelsea Market, where shaved top or bottom round is sold as “sandwich steak” for a high-minded Philly cheese steak. Compared with $25 a pound for boneless New York strip, Dickson’s shaved steak is a bargain at $9 a pound. It is even more affordable in local supermarkets, where the same amount goes for around $5 or $6 a pound. Shaved steak is often marketed under the name of one of the dishes it’s traditionally used in, which gives an idea of its versatility and broad fan base. At Italian stores, it’s “beef for braciole” or “carpaccio.” In German butchers’ shops it’s “rouladen,” beef rolled around bacon, pickles and onion. At Korean markets, it’s “bulgogi,” for barbecue. At Japanese stores, it’s “sukiyaki-style,” for hot pots, or “shabu-shabu” as it is called at Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y. Vietnamese find “pho” sold for their traditional soup. Since a slicer or band saw can cut any meat thin, shaved beef can cost as much as the most expensive cut or even slightly more if it’s sliced to order. But there’s no need for
such extravagance, and most sliced steak comes from the round. A home cook can save even more money and control quality by freezing a whole piece of round, defrosting it lightly and slicing it with a very sharp knife. That is a pain, though. “Think of slicing a pound of prosciutto,” said Champe Speidel, the chef and butcher and an owner of the restaurant Persimmon, in Bristol, R.I., and the artisan butcher’s shop Persimmon Provisions in Barrington, R.I. “The time adds up fast.” That’s why most supermarkets buy it already sliced. Mr. Speidel said that meat-department managers often purchase shaved steak in modified atmosphere packaging, plastic tubs filled with nitrogen, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide, which keeps the slices rosy red. Wherever the beef comes from and whatever the cut, when sliced between 1/16- and 1/8-inch thick it is economical because a little looks like a lot. That feeling of abundance also makes it a good choice for people who, for one reason or another, are trying to eat less red meat. And as Mr. Dickson pointed out, shaved steak is an unintimidating cut for people who aren’t entirely comfortable at the stove. Precision timing is not required. The meat is going to cook quickly, and whether it ends up medium or well done it will still be tender. “Sometimes people don’t think they can cook a thick steak,” he said. “But nobody says, ‘I can’t cook that.’ ” Shaved steak, he said, is “foolproof.” For that reason, perhaps, it has been the kitchen training wheels for many chefs, though most of them would never think of putting it on the menu. Hugue Dufour, the chef and owner of M. Wells in Long Island City, Queens, said that when he was growing up in Alma, Quebec, 300 miles north of Montreal, shaved steak fondue was the best treat he could
have. He remembered dipping slices of the meat into the steaming onion soup his mother prepared with beef broth made from Oxo cubes. The second day, she would add Gruyère toasts to the broth, which had been enriched with the juices from the steak, and serve gratinéed onion soup. Later, beef fondue was the first dinner he made with friends as a teenager. “It made us feel grown up, doing adult things,” Mr. Dufour said, “even if it was simple.” In Philadelphia, the chef Marc Vetri, of the restaurants Vetri, Osteria and Amis, was raised on another down-to-earth version of shaved steak, the cheese steak. “Most Sundays we’d go down to my grandmother’s house, six blocks from the steak sandwich place. Once a month we’d walk over to Pat’s King of Steaks. It was a special day.” When he was old enough to cook at the stove, he made his own steak sandwiches, using Steak-umm, the chopped, shaped and frozen version of shaved steak. “I loved Steak-umm when I was 11 or 12 years old,” he said. But he would not countenance a cheese steak adaptation on any of his restaurants’ menus. “I’m a traditionalist,” he said. “I don’t want to mess with it.” Marco Canora, an owner of Hearth and the two Terroir wine bars in Manhattan, used to serve beef in brodo when he was the chef at Insieme in Midtown. “The thinly sliced beef looks so beautiful raw,” he said. “Then pouring hot consommé over the top lightly poaches it.” At Bubby’s in TriBeCa, Ron Silver buys
a whole steer every week from Fleisher’s, and it’s his job to figure out what to do with everything from the tongue to the tail. Depending on the time of year, the top round might be turned into shaved steak. “I’ll ask myself, ‘Is it cheese steak season or beef stew season?’ ” Mr. Silver said. Shaved steak is not a staple of Mexican cuisine. Most cooks prefer the slightly thicker beef milanesa cut, similar to minute steak. But Memo Pinedo, the proprietor of a restaurant and a food truck in Houston, both called Jarro Cafe, appreciates Angus beef sliced from sirloin for his tacos de bistec. It’s so thin he can cook it in steam coming off a skillet of sizzling onions, tomatoes and jalapeños. “It’s the most juicy meat and the most tender,” he said. “It’s hard to find in Houston. I have to slice it myself.” At Takashi, a Japanese raw beef and Korean-style barbecue restaurant in the West Village, Takashi Inoue treats 10 or so cuts of very thinly sliced beef like a delicacy, showing that, depending on the thickness and cut of meat, you will taste a difference. “The rib-eye is the thinnest because I want people to feel the melt,” he said. “You don’t even have to chew. The short rib and skirt steak have more texture, and the texture should be enjoyed.” But few chefs etherealize shaved steak. “I do love it,” said Mr. Silver, of Bubby’s. “In the roulette wheel of stuff I like to eat, it makes a trashy, greasy sandwich that hits the spot.”
Mexican-Style Pepper Steak Time: 20 minutes 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1 medium onion, halved and sliced 2 medium Roma tomatoes, coarsely chopped 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into julienne strips 4 jalapeño or habañero chilies, sliced crosswise with seeds Kosher salt and black pepper 1 cup unsalted chicken broth 8 fresh bay leaves 1 pound shaved beefsteak 2 tablespoons chopped cilantro. 1. In each of 2 large skillets, heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil over mediumhigh heat and add half of the onion, tomatoes, bell pepper and chilies, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring, until slightly
softened, about 2 minutes. 2. Add half of the broth and bay leaves to each skillet and bring to a simmer. Lay beef slices over top, season with salt and pepper and cook, turning beef once, until it loses its pink color, about 3 minutes total. Transfer meat to a platter or plates. Simmer pan juices until slightly thickened, 1 to 2 minutes. Spoon vegetables and juices over the beef and sprinkle with cilantro. Yield: 4 servings.
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Glazed Beef-and-Scallion Rolls Time: 30 minutes 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/4 cup orange marmalade 2 tablespoons light brown sugar 2 tablespoons grated garlic 2 tablespoons Asian sesame oil 1 1/2 tablespoons white sesame seeds 1/2 tablespoon black pepper 1/2 tablespoon cayenne pepper 24 thin scallions, tops and bottoms trimmed 24 thin asparagus spears, bottoms trimmed 1 pound shaved beefsteak Canola oil. 1. In a large shallow baking dish, whisk the soy sauce with the marmalade,
Beef Involtini With Grape Tomato Sauce Time: 1 hour 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 2 anchovy fillets, chopped 4 fat garlic cloves, 2 sliced, 2 minced 1 pint grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise 1 cup canned crushed tomatoes Kosher salt and black pepper 1 tablespoon minced sage 1 tablespoon minced rosemary 1 pound shaved beefsteak 2 tablespoons chopped parsley. Boiled fettuccine, for serving. 1. In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat. Add anchovies and stir until they begin to dissolve. Add sliced garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add grape tomatoes and crushed tomatoes, and season with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook over medium-low heat, sti-
rring occasionally, until thickened, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat. 2. Meanwhile, mix sage, rosemary and minced garlic in a small bowl. Lay a slice of beef on a work surface. Sprinkle a little herb mixture on top, and season with salt and pepper. Starting with a short end, roll up, tucking in sides; transfer to a large plate. Repeat with remaining meat. 3. In another skillet, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat. Season meat rolls with salt and pepper. Working in batches, brown them all over, about 30 seconds per side; transfer to tomato sauce. 4. Stir parsley into sauce and cook over medium heat until involtini are heated through, 2 to 3 minutes. Spoon involtini and sauce into a shallow bowl or plates, and serve with fettuccine. Yield: 4 servings.
brown sugar, garlic, sesame oil, sesame seeds, pepper and cayenne powder. 2. Bring a large skillet of water to a boil. Add the scallions and cook until bright green, about 30 seconds. Transfer to a plate and pat dry. Add the asparagus and cook until bright green, about 1 minute; transfer to plate and pat dry. 3. Lay a slice of beef on a work surface. Arrange a scallion and an asparagus spear crosswise at a short end and roll up. Add to soy sauce glaze and turn to coat. Repeat with remaining beef rolls. 4. Brush a grill pan with canola oil and heat over high heat until smoking. Working in batches, cook beef rolls until nicely charred all over, about 15 seconds per side. Transfer to a platter or plates. Yield: 4 servings.
Purple Barley Risotto With Cauliflower By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN
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urple prairie barley is an heirloom grain that originated in Tibet. High in protein, the grain has the chewy texture of regular barley but with a dark purple hue. If you can’t find purple barley, make this delicious risotto with the regular type, preferably whole hulled barley that has not been pearled. (Pearl barley cooks more quickly, but many of the nutrients are lost when it’s pearled.) Whichever you use, cook the barley ahead of time so that the dish doesn’t take too long to make. Purple prairie barley takes about one and a half hours to cook if unsoaked, about one hour if soaked. A cup yields just under 4 cups cooked barley. 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil 1/2 cup finely chopped onion 2 garlic cloves, minced 1 small head cauliflower, separated into small florets, then broken into smaller pieces or sliced 1/2 inch thick (about 4 heaped cups) 1/2 cup fruity red wine, such as a Côtes du Rhone 4 cups cooked purple prairie barley (1 cup uncooked) or hulled barley 2 cups vegetable or chicken stock 1 cup thawed frozen or fresh peas Salt and freshly ground pepper 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley 2 ounces Parmesan, grated (1/2 cup) 1. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy nonstick skillet or saucepan, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes. Add the garlic and cauliflower. Cook, stirring, for a minute until the garlic is fragrant. Stir in the barley and red wine. Cook, stirring, until the wine has eva-
porated, leaving the cauliflower tinted. 2. Add 1 1/2 cups of the stock, and cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes. Add the peas, and continue to simmer until the cauliflower and peas are tender and most of the stock has evaporated, about 15 minutes. There should still be some creamy liquid surrounding the grains of barley. If the mixture dries out before the cauliflower is tender, or if the grains are not suspended in some liquid at the end of cooking, add some of the additional 1/2 cup of stock. Add pepper, and adjust salt. 3. Stir in the parsley and Parmesan, remove from the heat and serve. Yield: Serves four to six. Advance preparation: Unlike regular risotto, the grains will not continue to soften after you remove this from the heat. If you need to have the dish made ahead of serving, you can cook it through Step 2 and reheat. I would cook the peas separately, however, and add them when you reheat, because their color will fade due to the acid in the red wine. You may want to add some more broth when you reheat. Nutritional information per serving (four servings): 384 calories; 3 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 12 milligrams cholesterol; 48 grams carbohydrates; 12 grams dietary fiber; 306 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 16 grams protein Nutritional information per serving (six servings): 256 calories; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 4 grams monounsaturated fat; 8 milligrams cholesterol; 32 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams dietary fiber; 204 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 11 grams protein
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Tairona Gold Museum T
he Gold Museum (Spanish: El Museo del Oro) is a museum located in Bogotá, Colombia. It displays an extraordinary selection of its pre-Hispanic gold work collection - the biggest in the world in its exhibition rooms on the second and third floors. Together with other pottery, stone, shell, wood and textile archaeological objects, these items, made of what to indigenous cultures was a sacred metal, testify to the life and thought of different societies which inhabited what is now known as Colombia before contact was made with Europe. In 1939 the Bank of the Republic began helping to protect the archaeological patrimony of Colombia. The object known as Poporo Quimbaya was the first one in a collection. It has been on exhibition for 65 years. The museum houses the famous Muisca’s golden raft found in Pasca, Colombia, that represents the El Dorado ceremony. The heir to the chieftaincy assumed power with a great offering to the gods. In this representation he is seen standing at the centre of a raft, surrounded by the principal chieftains, all of them adorned with gold and feathers. The museum has a collection of 55,000 pieces. 6,000 pieces are on display in their expanded building. There are bilingual discriptions of almost all exhibits. On the first floor is the museum’s main entrance, the shop and a restaurant, The Gold Museum Restaurant and Café. Continues on page 26
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Comes from page 25 On the second floor the exposition begins, the Main Room is called People and Gold in pre hispanic Colombia. Through itsglass cases it displays the goldsmith work of the different cultures which inhabited Colombia before the Spanish people arrived; the room is divided into different halls for every culture; Calima, Quimbaya, Muisca, Zenu, Tierradentro, San Augustín, Tolima, Tayrona and Uraba, and a special room called After Columbus (Despues de Colón). The exposition continues on the third floor, with The Flying
Chamanic and The Offering. The first shows the process of Chaman’s Ceremony with its different gold pieces, the second is divided into three parts; the Offering Room, the Offering Boat and the Lake. At the end of the exposition there’s a Profunditation Room with artistic videos about the most important gold pieces of the museum.
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Finally, Turkey Looks East By ELIF SHAFAK
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STARTED reading the fiction of the Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz with a delay that embarrasses me, not until my early 30s. In the Turkey of my formative years, he was not well-known. His famous “Cairo Trilogy,” published in the 1950s, wasn’t widely available in Turkish until 2008. We were far more interested in Russian literature — Dostoyevsky, Gogol, Chekhov and Tolstoy — and European literature — Balzac, Hugo, Maupassant and Dickens — than in Arab literature. Western classics had been widely translated into Turkish since the late 19th century. A number of them were even published as supplements in children’s magazines, and I remember devouring them eagerly. Paris, London and Moscow seemed closer in spirit to Istanbul than Cairo was. We saw our own writing as part of European literature, even as our country waited and waited to become a full member of the European Union. So Mahfouz, the Nobel Prize-winning author of dozens of novels, remained at the periphery of our vision — despite the strong historical, cultural and religious ties between Turkey and Egypt. There is a saying that “the Koran is revealed in Mecca, recited in Cairo and written in Istanbul.” Recently, however, the Turkish elite has started paying much more attention to Egypt. A few years ago the
governments of Turkey and Egypt signed a memorandum of understanding to endorse cooperation and broaden military relations. Today Turks are closely watching what is happening in Cairo. At the height of the protests, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave a speech broadcast live to the protesters in Tahrir Square. “No government can remain oblivious to the democratic demands of its people,” he said. “There isn’t a government in history that has survived oppression.” When Mubarak stepped down, there was widespread celebration in Turkey. It’s a topsy-turvy world. The Europe we loved and admired for so long has looked down on Turkey, but the Middle East we ignored is suddenly looking up to us as a force to be reckoned with. Now there is much talk of Turkey serving as a model for a new Egypt. It has been disconcerting to hear politicians in the United States speak about Turkey as if it is in thrall to radical Islamists. President Obama described our country as an “Islamic” democracy. Turkish society is a debating society, with some people passionately in favor of the governing Justice and Development Party and some passionately against it. I heard an academic applaud the government for curtailing the power of the military, while a journalist criticized it for conducting groundless trials against army officers and restricting the press.
Nepal’s Stalled Revolution By MANJUSHREE THAPA
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WAS at a dinner party in Kathmandu when a journalist friend looked at her cell phone and made a joyous announcement: “Mubarak’s gone!” “He left Cairo for Sharm el-Sheikh. The army’s taken charge,” she said. No one at that Feb. 11 party, neither the foreign-educated Nepalis nor the expatriates who call Nepal home, had any connection to Egypt. Yet the victory felt personal. A bottle of wine appeared and we toasted Egypt. As protests spread in Bahrain, Yemen, Iran and Libya, what is emerging as the “Arab Spring” continues to resonate here. Just five years ago, the world was watching Nepal as it now watches the Mideast and we had our dreams of democracy. “We Nepalis, we grew up with political movements,” he explained over a cup of coffee. He had came of age amid student politics, was even jailed in 1990 for his activism. “Despite all our movements, we still haven’t been able to have the kind of change our hearts are set on,” he said. “I think that’s why we feel so happy when we see change taking place elsewhere.” We also approach world events seeking correspondences between our history and that of others. India’s struggle for freedom from British rule inspired Nepal’s first democratic movement in 1950. Forty years later, our second democratic movement was energized by events farther off: the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Eastern Europe. Our third and most recent move-
ment took place in 2006, when democratic political parties and Maoist rebels united against King Gyanendra Shah, ending a 10-year civil war. Millions of Nepalis participated in nonviolent demonstrations in a show of support. Nineteen days after that, the king relinquished power; two years later, a newly elected Constituent Assembly abolished the 240-year-old monarchy with a near-unanimous vote. With the democratic political parties and the Maoists vowing to work together peacefully, a “new Nepal” felt attainable. Five years later, it still has not taken shape. Instead, we have learned that it is easier to start a revolution than to finish one. Overthrowing the monarchy was difficult, but institutionalizing democracy is harder still. Our democratic parties are inexperienced, deferring to “big brother” India on all matters political. But India has backed an inflexible policy of containing the Maoists. And the Maoists have also been unwilling to compromise, holding on to their 19,000-troop army and their paramilitary group, the Young Communist League, and refusing to turn into just another political party. The result has been a bitter polarization between hard-liners of democratic and Maoist persuasion. The May deadline set for finishing our new constitution is less than 100 days away, but the document remains in rough draft. The will to complete it — among the democratic political parties and the Maoists, as well as in India — appears to be wholly
In Istanbul, I cannot help but notice the diversity of the people. Professional women wearing modern clothes stand in line next to women in head scarves and young men with long hair or piercings. The crowds include leftists, liberals, feminists, Kurds, conservative Muslims, non-Muslims, religious minorities like Alevis, Sufi mystics and so on. Not only the variety of people is striking; it is the extent they intermingle. While Turkey’s political system is polarized and male-dominated, the society is, thankfully, far more hybrid. It is this complexity outsiders fail to recognize. A society with a multiethnic, multilingual, multireligious empire under its belt and 80 years of experience as a constitutional republic, Turkey has managed to create its own passage to democracy, however flawed. We blend Islamic and Eastern elements with a modern, democratic, secular regime?
lacking. Kathmandu is rife with rumors the Constituent Assembly will be dissolved through a military-backed “democratic coup.” Equally dismal scenarios in the public imagination are a return to civil war, the escalation of localized conflicts or the rise of the criminal underworld. Unable to earn a living wage at home, up to 1,000 Nepalis are estimated to leave the country every day to work as migrant laborers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and elsewhere in the Middle East and the Far East, often under very exploitative conditions. As many as six million Nepalis live in India, and hundreds of thousands more have migrated to the developed world. London and New York and Toronto. “Those who could lead a new movement — you could call it the Facebook generation — have left the country,” says Mr.
Subedi. And there is no single tyrant against whom to direct a movement. What we have in Nepal is a “ganjaagol,” a mire. “The thing about movements,” Mr. Subedi says, “is that at a certain point, the ordinary person experiences power. Beforehand and afterwards, nobody pays him any attention. But at a certain point, the ordinary person feels his own power. “That feeling,” he says. He does not complete his sentence, but we both know what he means. So many Nepalis have experienced this giddy sense that change is possible. For now, we watch others in the Arab world feel their power. We wish them well, and worry for their safety, and share in their victories. They inspire us. They make us feel wistful, and also a bit envious.
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Qaddafi’s Grip on the Capital Tightens as Revolt Grows By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
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owing to track down and kill protesters “house by house,” Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya tightened his grip on the capital, Tripoli, but the eastern half of the country was slipping beyond his control. A bloody crackdown drove protesters from the streets of Tripoli, where residents described a state of terror. After a televised speech by Colonel Qaddafi, thousands of his supporters converged in the city’s central Green Square, wearing green bandannas and brandishing large machetes. Many loaded into trucks headed for the outlying areas of the city, where they occupied traffic intersections and appeared to be massing for neighborhood-to-neighborhood searches. Human Rights Watch confirmed 62 deaths after a rampage when groups of heavily armed militiamen and mercenaries from other African countries cruised the streets in pickup trucks, spraying crowds with machine-gun fire. Death toll was probably higher militia forces using vans to cart away bodies. As they clamped down on the capital, Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces did not make any attempt to take back growing number of towns in east that had declared independence and set informal opposition governments. There is little indication what will replace the vacuum left by Colonel Qaddafi’s authority in broad parts of the country other than simmering anarchy. Only around the town of Ajdabiya, south of the revolt’s center in Benghazi, were Colonel Qaddafi’s security forces and militia still clashing with protesters along the road to the colonel’s hometown, Surt. The widening gap between the capital and the eastern countryside underscored the radically different trajectory of the Libyan revolt from the others that recently toppled Arab autocrats on Libya’s western and eastern borders, in Tunisia and Egypt. Libyan revolt began with a relatively
organized core of longtime government critics in Benghazi, its spread to the capital was swift and spontaneous, outracing any efforts to coordinate protests. Colonel Qaddafi has lashed out with a level of violence unseen in either of the other uprisings, partly by importing foreigners without ties to the Libyan people. His four decades of idiosyncratic one-man rule have left the country without any national institutions — not even a unified or disciplined military — that could tame his retribution or provide the framework for a transitional government. Condemnations of his brutal crackdown mounted, from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the United Nations Security Council to the Arab League, which suspended Libya as a member. High-profile aides and diplomats continued to defect, among them Libya’s interior minister and the country’s ambassadors to the United States, India and Bangladesh. Colonel Qaddafi vowed to die as a martyr for his country. “I will fight on to the last drop of my blood”. Wearing a beige robe and turban and reading at times from his manifesto, the Green Book, Colonel Qaddafi called the protesters “cockroaches” and attributed the unrest shaking Libya to foreigners, a small group of people distributing pills, brainwashing and young people’s naïve desire to
imitate the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. He urged citizens to take to the streets and beat back the protesters, and he described himself in sweeping, megalomaniacal terms. “Muammar Qaddafi is history, resistance, liberty, glory, revolution”. In Tobruk, an eastern city that joined the uprising almost as soon as it began, a resident watching the speech in the main square reacted by throwing a rock at Colonel Qaddafi’s face as it was broadcast on a large television “He is weak now,” he said. “He’s a liar, a big liar. He will hang.” In Tripoli, however, the reaction was more chastened. One resident reported the sound of gunfire during the speech — presumably in celebration, he said, but also in warning. “He is saying, ‘If you go to protest, all the shots will be in your chest,’ ” he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “We are unarmed and his warning is very clear,” he added. “The people are terrified now.” The gap between Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in Tripoli and the insurrection in the east recalled Libya’s pre-1931 past as three different countries — Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica — and underscored the challenge facing its insurrection. Many analysts have suggested that Colonel Qaddafi seemed to fear the development of any national institutions or networks that might check his power, and he has kept even his military divided into battalions, each loyal mainly to its own officers. That has set the stage for heavy defections during the revolt — rebels in the east said some government forces had simply abandoned their uniforms to join the cause. But it also means that Libya’s military is unlikely to play the stabilizing role its Tunisian or Egyptian counterparts did. Foreign companies and Libyan factions focused intensely on the fate of the country’s substantial oil reserves. The Italian oil company Eni confirmed that it had suspended use of a pipeline from Libya to Sicily that provides 10 percent of Italy’s natural gas. Opponents of Colonel Qaddafi tightened their control of their area around Ajda-
biya, an important site in the oil fields of central Libya, said Tawfiq al-Shahbi, a protest organizer in Tobruk. Tripoli remained under an information blackout, with no Internet access and limited and intermittent phone service. Colonel Qaddafi’s government has sought to block all foreign journalists from entering the country or reporting on the revolt. But the uprising in the east cracked open the country on Tuesday as the Libyan military retreated from the eastern border with Egypt and foreign journalists poured through. The road from the border to Tobruk appeared to be completely under the control of Colonel Qaddafi’s opponents, and small, ragtag bands of men in worn fatigues ran easygoing checkpoints and flashed victory signs at visitors. Except for those guards, there was little to suggest an uprising was under way. Shops were open along the road, which was full of traffic, mostly heading out of Libya. Tobruk residents said neighboring cities — including Dernah, Al Qubaa, Bayda and El Marij — were also quiet, and effectively ruled by the opposition. The government lost control of Tobruk almost immediately, according to Gamal Shallouf, a marine biologist who has become an informal press officer in the city. Soldiers took off their uniforms on Friday and Saturday, taking the side of protesters, who burned the police station and another government building, smashing a large stone monument of Colonel Qaddafi’s Green Book. Four people were killed during clashes here, residents said. Salah Algheriani, who works for the state-owned Gulf Oil company, talked about the sea change in Tobruk, where everyone was suddenly full of loud opinions and hope, including the hope that young people might stop leaving the country for Europe. “The taste of freedom is very delicious,” he said. The protests began with a relatively organized network of families in Benghazi who had all lost relatives in a 1996 prison riot. Many were represented by the same lawyer, a prominent Qaddafi critic in the region, and his arrest last week set off their uprising. The revolt in Tripoli appears far more genuinely spontaneous and unorganized than the Benghazi uprising or the revolutions that toppled leaders of Tunisia or Egypt. The lack of organization now raises questions about the ability of the mostly young rebels in the capital to regroup after the Qaddafi government’s retaliation. Protesters in other parts of the country have vowed in recent days to send reinforcements to their fellow citizens in Tripoli, but Qaddafi supporters have set up roadblocks to prevent entry into the city. Still, even in Tripoli, some protesters who had retreated into their homes vowed that they would return to the street.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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Rescuers Work to Find Survivors of a Powerful New Zealand Earthquake
By ERICA BERENSTEIN and MERAIAH FOLEY
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escue workers spent a cold, rainy night pulling survivors from the wreckage caused by a powerful earthquake that struck Christchurch, New Zealand’s second largest city, killing at least 75 people. Some emerged unscathed from the rubble, while emergency workers had to amputate the limbs of others who were trapped, the city’s police superintendent, Russell Gibson, told Radio New Zealand on Wednesday morning. Around midday, one woman was pulled from the wreckage of a severely damaged building after being trapped for nearly 24 hours, the police said. Officials said that at least 75 people had been killed, although only 55 had been identified. The authorities have repeatedly warned that the final death toll could be significantly higher. Several buildings were demolished when the 6.3-magnitude earthquake struck Christchurch, a graceful 19thcentury city of nearly 400,000 people, during the busy weekday lunch hour. Two large office towers, the Pyne Gould building and the Canterbury Television headquarters, virtually collapsed. Some cars and buses were smashed by falling debris. “We’ve been pulling 20 or 30 people out of those buildings right throughout the night,” Superintendent Gibson said. But many people did not survive, and Superintendent Gibson said the streets were littered with bodies. “They are trapped in cars, crushed under rubble and, where they are clearly deceased, our focus unfortunately at this time has turned to the living,” he told the radio network. “We are getting texts and tapping sounds from some of these buildings, and that’s where our focus is at the moment.”
Police officers were moving from building to building, calling out for survivors and listening for signs of life from heavily damaged buildings, he said. The police pulled emergency crews out of a large part of central Christchurch amid concerns that one of the city’s tallest buildings could collapse. Officials cleared a two-block zone around the Hotel Grand Chancellor, suspending search and rescue operations on some of the city’s most badly damaged buildings. The Canterbury Television headquarters — where dozens of people were still missing — was among them. As many as 24 Japanese exchange students were believed to be among the missing in the collapse of the Canterbury Television building, which housed their language school. “We understand that a significant proportion of those that were in that building are Japanese nationals. We are working with the Japan consul around that,” Dave Cliff, a police official, told reporters. Photographs and videos from the scene in the aftermath of the earthquake showed people running through the streets, and landslides pouring rocks and debris into suburban streets. People said they watched the spire of the landmark ChristChurch Cathedral come crashing down during an aftershock. One witness called it “the most frightening thing of my entire life,” and television video showed a person clinging to a window in the steeple. Shortly after declaring a state of emergency and ordering the evacuation of the city center, Christchurch’s mayor, Bob Parker, told reporters: “I think we need to prepare ourselves in this city for a death toll that could be significant. It’s not going to be good news, and we need to steel ourselves to understand that.” Hundreds of frightened residents crammed into temporary shelters. Food and drinking water were being brought
into the city. The rescue mission was further complicated by repeated strong aftershocks and wet, chilly conditions overnight. Prime Minister John Key said that while the extent of the devastation was unknown, New Zealand had witnessed “its darkest day,” and one of its worst natural disasters. “It’s an absolute tragedy for this city, for New Zealand, for the people that we care so much about,” he told TVNZ, the national television broadcaster. “People are just sitting on the side of the road, their heads in their hands. This is a community that is absolutely in agony.” A number of makeshift triage centers and emergency clinics were set up across the city to handle the injured. Some victims were airlifted to hospitals outside the earthquake zone. By Tuesday afternoon, officials said there were no ambulances available in the city; all were tied up with urgent calls. Video showed office workers loading their injured co-workers into station wagons and four-wheel- drive vehicles because of the lack of emergency transportation. Police officers and search and rescue teams were being flown to the scene from Australia on Wednesday. Members of the Singaporean Army, in Christchurch for training exercises, were expected to also help with search and rescue efforts, officials said. The Christchurch Airport, which was closed, was expected to reopen for emergency flights and some domestic flights. Video from the scene by 3 News New Zealand showed emergency crews pulling shaken and injured victims from damaged buildings, including the fourstory Pyne Gould building. The top three floors of the building, a 1960s-era structure, collapsed as terrified workers huddled under desks. A video showed a woman clinging to the roof as emergency workers raised a crane to rescue her. “There was a guy on the second floor who was buried up to his waist in concrete and stuff,” a man who escaped the building told 3 News. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” In another building, residents rappelled to safety from a broken window after the stairwell in the 17-story building collapsed. Some witnesses reported seeing people inside the ChristChurch Cathedral when its spire collapsed, but it was not known if anyone was killed. “Until we’ve got the search and rescue teams in place and systematically go through each building, we won’t
get an idea of how many people are missing and unaccounted for,” the New Zealand civil defense director, John Hamilton, told reporters in Wellington, the capital. The earthquake hit the country’s South Island just before 1 p.m. local time. The United States Geological Survey said it was part of an aftershock sequence from a 7.1-magnitude earthquake that rocked the same area in September, but caused no casualties. Officials said earthquake packed more deadly force because its epicenter was closer to the city and it struck at a shallower depth than the more powerful earthquake in September. It was centered about six miles from downtown Christchurch, and was only about three miles underground. Several news outlets reported extensive devastation to the nearby seaside town of Lyttelton, close to the epicenter of the earthquake. A delegation of American government, business and community leaders had been in Christchurch for a meeting of the United States New Zealand Partnership Forum. Many participants, including several members of Congress, left the city only hours before the earthquake. A senior official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Timothy W. Manning, who is the deputy administrator for protection and national preparedness, was part of the delegation. In an interview, he said that he had spent several days with local officials, inspecting structural damage and repairs caused by the September earthquake. He said the reconstruction had doubtless limited damage from the latest earthquake. “They had done a great deal of work and were fastidious about marking damaged buildings and closing not just buildings but streets in potential collapse zones, which I’m sure saved uncounted lives,” he said. Jason Tweedie, 40, was sitting in his four-wheel-drive vehicle when the quake struck. “The earthquake itself was quite violent, a lot of movement,” he said. Julian Sanderson was in his apartment on the first floor of an old brick movie theater when the walls and ceiling began to crumble. “When it all stopped, I had to kick out the front door to get out,” Mr. Sanderson, 41, said by telephone, standing in front of his nearly collapsed building. “I used to work in that building making furniture, but everything has just changed. What we have now is the clothes that we’re wearing.”
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The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Highway in India Offers Solution to Land Fights By JIM YARDLEY
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hen the state of Uttar Pradesh announced plans to confiscate farmland for a toll road to the Taj Mahal, a grimly predictable plotline ensued. Protesting farmers, angry over low compensation, blocked road work. Frustration boiled into fatal clashes with the police. Then opposition politicians arrived to pillory the state government and pose for photos with farmers. Next, though, came something less predictable. Rather than the usual standoff, the state’s chief minister increased payments to farmers and offered them annuities for the next three decades. The new policy also gave farmers stakes in residential developments being built alongside the toll road, known as the Yamuna Expressway, and promised jobs connected to the project. Today, the Yamuna Expressway is again under construction, and if some farmers are still not satisfied, the project is now regarded as a tentative sign of progress in India’s wrenching fights over land, one of the most serious yet seemingly intractable challenges facing the country. Angry confrontations between farmers and business interests occur in every corner of India, yet India’s coalition national government is deadlocked on reforming land acquisition laws written in 1894 during the British Raj. The political paralysis has only deepened public cynicism about the ability of Indian politicians to get things done on critical national issues. But the Yamuna Expressway may point to a more promising trend. Even as the national government is stalled, some of India’s poorest states, facing rising public pressure to deliver good governan-
ce and economic growth, are making progress. “Several of the state governments that normally you would think of as incompetent and ungovernable are the ones taking new initiatives,” said Himanshu, a social scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, who studies regional politics. He said the key to Uttar Pradesh’s new land policy was recognizing that farmers needed a future livelihood, not just a one-time payoff. “Land is not just an asset you can dispose of,” he said. “It is an income stream for them.” Politically, any improvement in governing by India’s poorest states would have a significant national impact and help reduce the grinding inequity that exists beneath India’s economic rise. Already, economic growth in the impoverished state of Bihar has risen sharply after its reform-minded chief minister, Nitish Kumar, improved services and cracked down on lawbreaking. Uttar Pradesh, with nearly 200 million people, is one of the poorest places in the world and has long been awash in corruption allegations under the chief minister, Mayawati, who has spent millions of dollars in public funds building statues of herself. But facing a re-election campaign next year, Ms. Mayawati has appeared to pivot, focusing on development projects, like ambitious highway plans. Many analysts say voters are beginning to compare the performance of their state government with those in neighboring states — and to demand results. Officials in Uttar Pradesh, who were initially criticized for their handling of the Yamuna Expressway project, now boast that their land policy is unmatched in India. “This is the most liberal policy in the country,” said Vijay Shankar Pandey, a spokesman for the Uttar Pradesh government. “This is not giving compensation alone but also rehabilitation. In some cases people lose all their land, so they have to be provided some alternative kind of living.” Anyone handicapping India’s chances of becoming one of the world’s most important economies inevitably points to infrastructure as a glaring weakness. New highways, new ports and new rail links are all needed — yet progress is halting at best. Less than two years ago, India’s roads minister, Kamal Nath, pledged to pave an average of 12 miles of new highway every day. Instead, Mr. Nath
was transferred to another ministry last month amid questions about corruption and mismanagement; in 2010, Mr. Nath’s ministry managed to pave less than four miles of highway a day. The Yamuna Expressway is intended to connect the national capital, New Delhi, with Agra and the country’s most famous tourist attraction, the Taj Mahal, a distance of 126 miles. The existing highway offers a kidney-rattling experience that can take four to nine hours, depending on traffic. The Yamuna Expressway promises to reduce the drive to roughly two hours, while developers are also planning six residential and commercial developments along the route. But problems erupted last August after farmers in Jikarpur blocked work, complaining that their land compensation was far lower than that paid to farmers on the outskirts of New Delhi. Moreover, farmers were doubly outraged when they found that prices for apartment space in the proposed residential developments were substantially higher than what they got for their land. The anger exploded when farmers clashed with the police, leaving three people dead, including one officer. The controversy exposed the potential for abuse in what has become India’s template for infrastructure projects — as governments use their powers of eminent domain to acquire land for private developers. In this case, Jaypee Infratech, a private company, agreed to build the $2.1 billion toll road in exchange for 6,000 acres of roadside property, tax breaks and other benefits. Farmers could not sell their land to Jaypee on the open market, but were expected to accept “market” compensation levels set by the state government. And these rates
were set before the land was rezoned from agricultural to commercial use. “Any agricultural piece of land, when it is turned into industrial or commercial land — that act itself raises the value of the land by a factor of 10 to 100,” said Ashutosh Varshney, a scholar at Brown University who has studied India’s land policies. “So the offer of a ‘market’ price is actually meaningless.” For Ms. Mayawati, who is India’s most famous politician from the Dalit caste, or untouchables, the scandal created the impression of the state’s using its unfettered powers to push farmers off the land to help a private partner reap huge profits. Under fire from opponents, she announced her new land policy and also later rezoned all the land along the project as commercial, instantly increasing its value. Now, farmers along the project site have mixed feelings. A small group of farmers, still protesting for higher compensation at a village called Bhatta Pasrol, clashed with the police this week. In Jikarpur, most farmers have already sold their land for the project, though some are still holding out and even contemplating future protests. But others are optimistic. Ganga Charan Singh, 65, who joined the initial protests, is now adding a second floor to his brick home. He recently received a payment of 450,000 rupees, or about $10,000, for a small piece of land lost to the road and expects to qualify for the promised annuity. “We are supposed to get a plot in the project, too,” he said. “We’ll see. Many farmers thought that if they are now giving us money every year, it is not a bad deal. Slowly, people realized there is not much harm. They also realized there is no way out.”
San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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FASHION & BEAUTY
It’s Good to Know It’s Not All About Posing By CATHY HORYN
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ashion is perversely and infinitely unfair. Both Marc Jacobs and Ralph Rucci possess knowhow, no small thing in an era of disappearing hand arts and factories. Yet Mr. Jacobs is considered cool, and Mr. Rucci is not. And by offering his shows as conceptual and social experiences, Mr. Jacobs in a way acknowledges the breakup of traditional fashion over the last 20 years. Mr. Rucci continues to make elegant clothes. Despite a burgeoning interest among young people in traditional dressmaking (the Paris-based designer Bouchra Jarrar is but one example), it’s no secret that you don’t need special qualifications to be a designer. What’s more, consumers don’t seem to care. For now, and possibly many years to come, what draws people to fashion are its celebrity and communal properties, and not how clothes are made or whether they are innovative. “It’s become more of a social imperative than a creative one,” Gene Krell, the Brooklyn-born, Tokyo-based editor who has been on the fashion and club scene since the 1960s, said Monday night outside Mr. Jacobs’s show. Since Mr. Jacobs had just presented a collection full of hourglass shapes,
as well as some inventive garments in rubber and bonded fabrics — pencil skirts and sheaths in rubber sequins, heavy crepe trousers spray-painted to look like denim lamé — I wondered how he fit into this analysis. Mr. Krell laughed. “He’s the doorman. He’s the one everybody has to get past.” That may be, but the self-defeating ironies in this collection are inescapable. Shown on a mirrored runway, with columns covered in tufted ice-blue vinyl, the clothes evoked an obsessive interest in style, one associated with haute couture and Hollywood glamour of the ’30s, but also dominatrix fantasies. Despite the campy bits (mainly chin-strapped hats and all-over polka-dot outfits), Mr. Jacobs never allowed one element to take over. And it was easy to pick out wearable looks: creamy blouses in a heavy polyester; shapely jackets in stiff navy wool, many of the fake fur and crocodile pieces; board-stiff sailor pants; and long-sleeve dresses in navy or maroon guipure lace with contrasting jabots in cellophane. Afterward, Mr. Jacobs said that he was tired of all the “easy stuff out there,” and that he liked the idea of something that looked strict and disciplined. But, of course, given his track record, he was looking at
this disciplined style ironically, and in time, he will swing around to the opposite view. Mr. Rucci’s show, on Monday night in his studio, was a pleasure to watch, and partly for its pacing. It was as if he were talking directly to all his clients, a far more eclectic group than might be imagined. He started with a hot coat in red Mongolian lamb, then moved quietly to beige-to-gray store clothes (nice, pretty, mmm ... do I have time to step out for a quick manicure?), then sent out very beautiful and subtle variations on the black cocktail dress, and then ended with a blast of red. The final dress was column topped by an exaggerated bole-
ro in quilted satin. And all the while you were aware of how truly difficult it is to make the sleeves of that crazy bolero do what you want them to do — simply because that was the idea you had in your mind — and then to make all those parts conform to the story you have been telling for more than 20 years. Isn’t that real discipline? Donna Karan’s power suits and felted or jersey dresses, shown in monochromatic shades of pearl and with the odd fur stole or spangled head wrap, told a different tale for fall. While many designers this season are into parkas (or at least a more casual attitude), Ms. Karan is pushing seduction — and, frankly, a lack of reality. There is plenty for her customers to like in this collection, especially liquid jersey dresses and lush coats, but you don’t really see women dressing like this on the street. At Rodarte, Laura and Kate Mulleavy seemed to pick up where they left off last season, with a collection that had overtones of the rural West. There were long dresses and slim wool coats in wheat and blue-sky tones; a few dresses were printed with wheat stems around the hem, and others had decorative wide waistbands or aprons of calf hair. More contemplative than experimental, with some high-necked dresses that looked soberly Steinbeckian, the collection was a solid step forward. Apollo spacesuits were the inspiration for Ohne Titel’s fall line. Far out or not, the collection’s strong points included circular-shaped jackets in lunar white, a chunky shearling coat and a lovely earthbound bomber in black fur and shearling with a ribbed knit collar.
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San Juan Weekly
Pleats Meet Parkas at Vera Wang By ERIC WILSON
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era Wang kept her fall collection to two main looks: the pleated chiffon dress and the parka. You could say she was keeping things simple, since there were none of the usual big-statement jewelry pieces. The light dresses, in a palette of charcoal, ivory, putty and pewter, were pleated in different ways. Some had multiple panels of pleats going in opposite directions along the front, sides and back. There were tank dresses, halter dresses, slip dresses, floor dusters with full sleeves and dresses with racer backs. Parkas have been ubiquitous this season. Ms. Wang’s were lined and trimmed with fox, but the linings, which were removable, extended an inch or two below the hem of the coats so you could see the rough side of the skin. Ms. Wang seemed to like the two looks so much — maybe as much as chocolate and peanut butter — that at the end of the show, she had the idea to combine them. There were two long, pleated chiffon dresses with parka hoods sprouting from their shoulders.
Gucci’s Woman Sleek at Day, Vampish at Night C ome fall and winter 2011-2012 the Gucci woman will be a contrasting character, dressing sleekly but subtly during daytime before unleashing her vampish, showgirl look come nightfall.
Gucci’s show was the first major collection at the start of a week of showings of ready-towear outfits in Italy’s fashion capital. By day, the Gucci woman will dress in classy, closely cut outfits consisting of military style jackets, and knee-length skirts, all topped off with a dandyish fedora that hides the eyes and adds to her allure. By night she will throw caution to the wind and dress in sexy, billowing evening gowns, made from sheer material that delight in showing off plenty of flesh above and below the waistline. The top is slashed as far as the navel and arms and shoulders are left bare, while legs are exposed and their shape defined with super-high heels. Both Gucci styles were contrasted with fur trim and daring use of crocodile and lizard skin. “For the autumn winter 2011-2012 season, the Gucci woman dresses with a cinematic allure and a strong seductive power,” designer Frida Giannini said. Much of the collection was
based on styles from the 1970’s, fused with a dash of the 1940’s demeanor. This was clear from the bell-bottomed cut of the trousers and pant-skirts flaring out above knee-length leather boots. For the daytime collection, rustic colors were those of choice. Forest greens, teal, deep burgundy, lilac and winter orange all play a role in contrast to the ubiquitous black and gray. In the nighttime collection more colors are added to underscore the playful nature of the outfit. Lemon yellow, deep red and light green gives the Gucci woman the appearance of someone who wants to forget the harsh winter weather when she steps inside a restaurant, bar or nightclub. “This is a contemporary female dandy who fuses glamor and seduction,” Giannini said. “She is a polished woman with a decisive personality, who is attentive to detail and willing to dare.” A strong powerful side to the Gucci woman is brought through with the use of leather biker jackets, paired with overlarge sun-
glasses that sets off the image of a woman who knows her own destiny and how she wants to get there. The handbags are small and subtle. They complement, rather than dominate, the outfit and their block colors and contrasting piping set off the look tastefully. All bear the ever-present double GG buckle, the initials of Guccio Gucci who founded the company 90 years ago this year.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
RICKY MARTIN
By: Daniel Morales Pomales
he end of 2010 and beginning of 2011 have been very important and significant moments for the Puerto Rican star Ricky Martin, the arrival of twins, his openness to the world of sexuality so broad in his autobiography YO, release of a new album “MUSICA + ALMA + SEXO” and the presentation of his new tour with a score of concerts that start in Puerto Rico have the artist very busy and very excited. Within hours of its release his album reached # 1 in both hard copy and digital sales. His sixth studio album Martin came in at # 3 on the “Top 200” Billboard list, making the highest debut for a Spanish album in 15 years. “MUSICA + ALMA + SEXO” has been certified so far, platinum in the United States and Puerto Rico, Gold in Argentina, Mexico and Venezuela after debuting at the top of the list “Top Albums” on iTunes Latino, Mexico and Spain.
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The resounding success of the new production is also reflected in the airwaves with “Lo Mejor de mi Vida eres tu”, currently the leader for a second week on the lists “Latin Songs” and “Latin Pop Songs” chart. The video recently chosen as one of the five “Must See Videos” by the American magazine People Magazine, has generated more than 3 million hits in the digital music page VEVO. Ricky Martin, promoted the album and his tour through on major television programs like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and The Ellen Degeneres
Show. Then in the city of Miami where he received from his friend Ednita Nazario “Global Icon” award. He was admired for his artistic career in the ceremony of Premio Lo Nuestro 2011 transmitted through the Univision Network. Due to high demand “Musica + Alma +Sex”, Ricky Martin decides to include all the items on their official website www.rickymartinmusic.com. Published reports say record sales of the new album took place days before the official launch in Puerto Rico, the U.S. and Latin America. Martin wasted
Kitchen Witches N
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
othing to do with the prophetic witches at Cowdor in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. Caroline Smith is a Canadian author of these two modern TV witches. Which is easier; tragedy or comedy? Somebody said comedy is more difficult, because it has tragedy involved. It goes with this one. The drama goes back when these two divas reigned in the TV media. They got entangled in a love affair with the same guy. Thus becoming rivals in love as well as in the TV competition dealing with culinary recipes. in this adapted version, to the Puerto Rican cuisine, Johanna Rosaly is Lola Bringas and Alba Nydia Díaz is Ivette del ARío, both superbly casted. Perhaps, this is the best role undertaken an acted by Rosaly. Díaz is the proper match bringing the plot to a hilarious exceedingly played parts. Esteban, (Jorge Castro); Lola’s son is a TV producer. He makes up his mind to bring the two former rivals to the past glory of their career in front of the cameras. So, a live performance will take place and the audience is part in it. Lola as a prima donna demands priorities. She is motivated by all means to take revenge on her rival. A competition is arranged “Cuisine of the Deep Douth” enacted in the ambiance of “Gone With the Wind”. Playing Scarlett O’hara, Lola moves in the kitchen in a gown like a Southern Belle. She attains a fabolous performance, hilarious to the most delightful point. Ivette, is humiliated to the extent of playing the slave. Lola has accomplished her revenge in a mean way. The second act is centered around the competition that will select the best recipe produced by the two rivals. A judge is to be appointed that will decide who is going to take the lead. No other than a well known local TV personality steps out from the audience. He climbs up to the stage, to be trimmed as the judge, all covered up by the huge apron. The two competitors are now involved
no time and offered fans the opportunity to hear the exclusive “Musica + Alma + Sexo” songs: 1. MAS 2. FRIO 3. LO MEJOR DE MI VIDA ERES TU (with Natalia Jimenez) 4. TE VAS 5. TU Y YO 6. CANTAME TU VIDA 7. TE BUSCO Y TE ALCANZO 8. SERA SERA 9. NO TE MIENTO 10. BASTA YA 11. LO MEJOR DE MI VIDA ERES TU (with Joss Stone) 12. SHINE 13. FRIO [Remix] (with Wisin y Yandel) Ricky explains in his own words the meaning of each song in “Track by Track” Billboard magazine’s top single, “Lo mejor de mi vida eres tu” is # 1 in the country and currently leads the Hot Latin Songs “and” Latin Pop Airplay “chart. The official video of the English version of “The Best Thing About Me Is You” has generated more than two million visits to Vevo. Target ® announced a unique new musical association with Ricky Martin to launch a special version of its new album - available at Target stores nationwide and on Target.com since 1st. February. A digital download version will also be available through “ScatterTunes” at Tar-
get.com. Given high demand and euphoria of the fans his concert opened a fourth and final show Musica + At the Coliseo Jose Miguel Agrelot Ricky Martin presents a cutting-edge assembly, which brings together the talents of virtuoso musicians who accompany the Puerto Rican star in four historic presentations. The tour will be a completely innovative show presented on Friday 25 and Saturday March 26 at 8:30 pm, Sunday 27 to 5:00 pm and Monday 28 at 7:30 at the Coliseo José Miguel Agrelot in a production of Tony Mojena Entretainment. For information and tickets please contact (787) 294-0001 or access www.ticketpop.com
in the task of feeding the judge eagerly and voraciously. Lola is devastated. Her way out of the humiliation is to pretend being suddenly sick. Out of the way, now Ivette can play her mothers role; after all, she gave birth to Esteban. However, his attachment for Lola is much stronger. Clad in a patient’s outfit, she runs in the claim for her place as the queen of the program. She is given a crown and regal robe; and all is well. Credits for Gilberto Valnzuela for the TV set scenery; Alba Kercadó is responsible for the gorgeous costumes. Aida Encarnación provided the exhilarating music with inherent comical slant. Julio Ramos as Papo is Esteban father. You are welcomed to enjoy the hell of a spectacle of a histerical riot lead by these two expert gourmet witches in the kitchen at Sala de Drama in Bellas Artes.
By Max González
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
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Cellphone Use Tied to Changes in Brain Activity By TARA PARKER-POPE
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esearchers from the National Institutes of Health have found that less than an hour of cellphone use can speed up brain activity in the area closest to the phone antenna, raising new questions about the health effects of low levels of radiation emitted from cellphones. The researchers, led by Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, urged caution in interpreting the findings because it is not known whether the changes, which were seen in brain scans, have any meaningful effect on a person’s overall health. But the study, published Wednesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, is among the first and largest to document that the weak radiofrequency signals from cellphones have the potential to alter brain activity. “The study is important because it documents that the human brain is sensitive to the electromagnetic radiation that is emitted by cellphones,” Dr. Volkow said. “It also highlights the importance of doing studies to address the question of whether there are — or are not — longlasting consequences of repeated stimulation, of getting exposed over five, 10 or 15 years.” Although preliminary, the findings are certain to reignite a debate about the safety of cellphones. A few observational studies have suggested a link between heavy cellphone use and rare brain tumors, but the bulk of the available scientific evidence shows no added risk. Major medical groups have said that cellphones are safe, but some top doctors, including the former director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center and prominent neurosurgeons, have urged the use of headsets as a precaution. Dr. Volkow said that the latest research is preliminary and does not address questions about cancer or other heath issues, but it does raise new questions about potential areas of research to better understand the health implications of increased brain activity resulting from cellphone use. “Unfortunately this particular study does not enlighten us in terms of whether this is detrimental or if it could even be beneficial,” Dr. Volkow said. “It just tells us that even though these are weak signals, the human brain is activated by them.” Most major medical groups, including the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the Food
and Drug Administration, have said the existing data on cellphones and health has been reassuring, particularly a major European study released last year by the World Health Organization that found no increased risk of rare brain tumors among cellphone users. When asked to comment on the latest study, the leading industry trade group, CTIA – The Wireless Association, released a statement emphasizing recent studies that have shown no elevated cancer risk associated with cellphone use. “The peer-reviewed scientific evidence has overwhelmingly indicated that wireless devices, within the limits established by the F.C.C., do not pose a public health risk or cause any adverse health effects,” said John Walls, vice president of public affairs for the trade group, adding that leading global health groups “all have concurred that wireless devices are not a public health risk.” But the new research differed from the large observational studies that have been conducted to study cellphone use. In Dr. Volkow’s study, the researchers used brain scans to directly measure how the electromagnetic radiation emitted from cellphones affected brain activity.. The randomized study, conducted in 2009, asked 47 participants to undergo positron emission tomography — or PET — scans, which measure brain glucose metabolism, a marker of brain activity. Each study subject was fitted with a cellphone on each ear and then underwent two 50-minute scans. During one scan, the cellphones were turned off, but during the other scan, the phone on the right ear was activated to receive a call from a recorded message, although the sound was turned off to avoid auditory stimulation. Whether the phone was on or off did not affect the overall metabolism of the brain, but the scans did show a 7 per-
cent increase in activity in the part of the brain closest to the antenna. The finding was highly statistically significant, the researchers said. They said the activity was unlikely to be associated with heat from the phone because it occurred near the antenna rather than where the phone touched the head. In the past, any concerns about the health effects of cellphones have been largely dismissed because the radiofrequency waves emitted from the devices are believed to be benign. Cellphones emit nonionizing radiation, waves of energy that are too weak to break chemical bonds or to set off the DNA damage known to cause cancers. Scientists have said repeatedly that there is no known biological mechanism to explain how nonionizing radiation might lead to cancer or other health problems. But the new study opens up an entirely new potential area of research. Although an increase in brain glucose metabolism happens during normal brain function, the question is whether repeated artificial stimulation as a result of exposure to electromagnetic radiation might have a detrimental effect. Although speculative, one theory about how an artificial increase in brain glucose metabolism could be harmful is that it could potentially lead to the creation of molecules called free radicals, which in excess can damage healthy cells. Or it may be that repeated stimulation by electromagnetic radiation could set off an inflammatory response, which studies suggest is associated with a number of heath problems, including cancer. Among cancer researchers and others interested in the health effects of cellphones, the study, listed in the medical journal under the heading “Preliminary Communications,” was met with enthusiasm because of the credibility of the researchers behind it and the careful
methods used. “It’s a high-quality team, well regarded, and if nothing else they’re showing that radiation is doing something in the brain,” said Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, a newsletter on the health effects of electromagnetic radiation. “The dogma in the cellphone community says that it doesn’t do anything. What she’s shown is that it does do something, and the next thing to find out is what it’s doing and whether it’s causing harm.” Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, former director of the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and now chief medical officer for the Intrexon Corporation, a biotechnology company in Germantown, Md., said, “I think it’s a very well-designed study, and they have clearly shown that there is biologic activity being induced in the nerve cells in the region where the antenna is the closest.” Dr. Herberman said skeptics about the risks of cellphones have focused on the fact that the type of radiation they emit is too weak to break chemical bonds and cannot plausibly be implicated in cancer. However, the new research suggests a potentially different pathway for cancer and other health problems to develop. “I think it’s an important new direction to go in for biologists to start delving deeper into sorting out what might be going on,” Dr. Herberman said. In an editorial accompanying the Journal article, Henry C. Lai, a University of Washington professor of bioengineering who has long raised concerns about cellphone safety, said he hoped the data would broaden the focus of cellphone research and health. “The bottom line is that it adds to the concern that cellphone use could be a health hazard,” said Dr. Lai. “Everybody is worried about brain cancer, and the jury is still out on that question. There are actually quite a lot of studies showing cellphone radiation associated with other events, like sleep disturbances. But people have not been paying a lot of attention to these other types of studies.” Dr. Volkow said future research may even show that the electromagnetic waves emitted from cellphones could be used to stimulate the brain for therapeutic reasons. She said the research should not set off alarms about cellphone use because simple precautions like using a headset or earpiece can alleviate any concern. “It does not in any way preclude or decrease my cellphone utilization,” she said.
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The San Juan Weekly
High Fiber to Combat Death and Disease
A Fake Smile Can be Bad for Your Health
By RONI CARYN RABIN
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study of almost 400,000 people aged 50 to 71 has found a strong link between a high-fiber diet and a longer life. Specifically, subjects who ate a diet rich in whole grains, fruits and vegetables (adding up to 29 grams of fiber per day for men, 26 grams for women) were 22 percent less likely to die after nine years than those who ate the least fiber (13 and 11 grams per day), according to the study, in Archives of Internal Medicine. Those in the high-fiber group were less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, infectious disease and respiratory disease; a high-fiber diet was also associated with fewer cancer deaths in men, though not in women. The lower death rates were associated with dietary fiber from whole grains, said the lead author, Dr. Yikyung Park, a staff scientist at the National Cancer Institute. “One of our findings was that fiber has anti-inflammatory properties,” Dr. Park said, adding that grains are also rich in beneficial vitamins, minerals and chemicals. People who ate more fiber were generally healthier, more educated and more physically active to begin with, the authors noted. But the study adjusted for these differences. At the start of the study, all participants filled out 124-item food frequency questionnaires. Nine years later, 20,126 men and 11,330 women had died.
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
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hen was the last time you flashed a fake smile at the office? For some, it may be just another mundane aspect of work life — putting on a game face to hide your inner unhappiness. But new research suggests that it may have unexpected consequences: worsening your mood and causing you to withdraw from the tasks at hand. In a study published this month in the Academy
of Management Journal, scientists tracked a group of bus drivers for two weeks, focusing on them because their jobs require frequent, and generally courteous, interactions with many people. The scientists examined what happened when the drivers engaged in fake smiling, known as “surface acting,” and its opposite, “deep acting,” where they generated authentic smiles through positive thoughts, said an author of the study, Brent Scott, an assistant professor of management at Michigan State University. After following the drivers closely, the researchers found that on days when the smiles were forced, the subjects’ moods deteriorated and they
tended to withdraw from work. Trying to suppress negative thoughts, it turns out, may have made those thoughts even more persistent. But on days when the subjects tried to display smiles through deeper efforts — by actually cultivating pleasant thoughts and memories — their overall moods improved and their productivity increased. Women were affected more than men. Dr. Scott suspected cultural norms might be at play: women are socialized to be more emotionally expressive, he said, so hiding emotions may create more strain. THE BOTTOM LINE Research suggests that an inauthentic smile to hide unhappiness can further worsen your mood.
Clove Oil for Tooth Pain
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR
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ore than a third of American adults use some form of complementary or alternative medicine, according to a government report. Natural remedies have an obvious appeal, but how do you know which ones to choose and whether the claims are backed by science? In this occasional series, Anahad O’Connor, the New York Times “Really?” columnist, explores the
claims and the science behind alternative remedies that you may want to consider for your family medicine cabinet. The Remedy: Clove oil. The Claim: It relieves toothaches. The Science: What can you do in a pinch when you have a toothache? Most people reach for age-old medicine-cabinet staples like Anbesol and Orajel, which contain benzocaine, an anesthetic, as their active ingredient. Benzocaine, like many other anesthetics, can cause allergic reactions and other side effects that some people find unpalatable. But one natural alternative is clove oil, an essential oil from the clove plant, native to India and Indonesia and also known by the scientific but somewhat pleasant-sounding name Eugenia aromaticum. The essential oil has been shown in studies to have both analgesic and antibacterial properties, which can be particularly helpful in the case of a toothache instigated by bacteria. Clove oil is not for everyone. It has a strong and sometimes unpleasant taste, and if large quantities are accidentally ingested, it too can have side effects. But it was widely used in dentistry before the advent of more commercial anesthetics, and
research shows it works thanks to its active ingredient, eugenol, the same compound responsible for the plant’s aroma. In a study published in The Journal of Dentistry in 2006, for example, a team of dentists recruited 73 adult volunteers and randomly split them into groups that had one of four substances applied to the gums just above the maxillary canine teeth: a clove gel, benzocaine, a placebo resembling the clove gel, or a placebo resembling benzocaine. Then, after five minutes, they compared what happened when the subjects received two needle sticks in those areas. Not surprisingly, the placebos failed to numb the tissue against the pain, but the clove and benzocaine applications numbed the tissue equally well. “No significant difference was observed between clove and benzocaine regarding pain scores,” the scientists concluded. The Risks: Clove oil can be found in most health food stores for a few dollars a bottle. To use it, apply a very small amount to a cotton swab or piece of tissue and apply gently to the affected area. Although considered safe when used correctly in small amounts, it can cause liver and respiratory problems when ingested in large quantities.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
37
Should Children Run Marathons? By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
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any people are feeling an insistent urge to get outside and run, perhaps even to start training for a marathon or other distance race. For some of us, particularly those with young families, this laudatory goal can pose a problem. Should we take our kids with us? Can and should children, at any age, be runners? This question commonly voiced by athletic parents has received little scientific scrutiny. Injury patterns in youth, basketball, baseball and soccer have been extensively studied, but not youth running. Two new studies have looked squarely at what happens when young people run. Unfortunately they seem to have produced incompatible results. The most wide-ranging, published in Clinical Pediatrics, examined data about young runners’ emergency room visits nationwide between 1994 and 2007. The authors, affiliated with the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, gathered statistics about children and adolescents hurt while running for exercise. The authors excluded injuries that occurred during team sports like soccer, even if the youngster was sprinting up the field at the time. He or she had to be specifically running, perhaps during track or cross-country practice, a gym class, a running club or as part of a personal program to get fit. The number of purposeful young run-
ners is difficult to gauge. Youth running is not an organized sport before middle school, unlike Little League baseball. According to loose estimates, 12 million youngsters between the ages 6 to 17 ran for exercise in 2007. Nationwide, participation has grown enormously as school administrators noted running is cheap. Phys-ed teachers need little equipment to send students out for a run. As participation has grown, so has incidence of injuries. According to the Nationwide Children’s Hospital 225,340 young runners visited an emergency room during the 14-year study period, with number of injuries rising every year. Number of injuries was 34 percent higher in 2007 than in 1994. Meanwhile, types of injuries varied markedly, depending on their ages. Teenagers typically twisted ankles. Children younger than 12 scraped their wrists, elbows and even scalps because they tripped half the running-related injuries and most of the head trauma among elementary-school runners was because of falls. None of which means your child should remain quietly home donning a bike helmet under 12) according to another recent study of young runners, this one examining whether children as young as seven can safely complete a marathon. William Roberts, M.D. medical director for the Twin Cities Marathon, and his colleague pulled data about every young finisher of the Marathon from 1982 through 2007. 310 youngsters age 7 to 17 completed the 26.2 miles, most with quite respectable
times. The slowest, an 11-year-old girl, crossed the line in six hours and 10 minutes, while the swiftest, a 17-year-old-boy, clocked an impressive finish of two hours and 53 minutes. Only 4 of the 310 young people throughout the entire 26 years visited the medical tent, and none required beyond a brief rest. Young runners’ “medical encounter rate,” the study concluded, “was half of adults” who finished the marathon those years. It’s safe for 11-year-olds to run a marathon but not participate in running program in phys-ed class? How are parents supposed to interpret contradictory findings? “When more kids participate in a sport, you’ll see more injuries,” Dr. Roberts said. “I think that’s happening” with youth running, especially among younger children. The increased incidence of injuries doesn’t mean running is inherently unsafe for young people. It does mean parents, teachers and coaches need to view the sport with appropriate caution. “With proper training and planning, the marathon distance can be safe for certain highly motivated children. That does not mean I would encourage most children” to run a marathon. No studies linked distance running by young children to potentially serious overuse injuries like growth-plate disruptions or knee arthritis, Dr. Roberts said, although a few studies found high rates of stress fractures among high-school cross-country and track runners. Dr. Roberts says he hopes soon to contact past Twin Cities Marathon
youth finishers to ask about the state of their knees and other vulnerable body parts today. Lara McKenzie, principal investigator of thIn the meantime, though, a few obvious fixes suggest themselves: Make sure your young children’s shoes are tied and the places where they run are clear of toys, broken pavement, lunch boxes and other easily sprawled-over obstacles. Adolescents should increase mileage gradually. And, obviously, just because children apparently can run long distances safely does not mean that they should. “It has to be a self-directed choice,” Dr. Roberts said. “The child should want to run with you, not you wanting to run with your child.” If, with these caveats, your son or daughter does wish to train with you, “there doesn’t seem to be a valid reason to say no,” Dr. Roberts concluded, apart, of course, from the humbling certainty that at some point you will be unable to keep up.
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When Elderly Drivers Must Stop Driving By JANE GROSS
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hen is it time to give up the car keys? In my many years of reporting about the elderly, I found little that caused doctors more angst than confronting a patient and family about driving. When is it time for someone with physical or cognitive problems to give up the car keys? Who makes that decision? And how can it safely and compassionately be enforced? Late into the fray, but with a comprehensive and thoughtful handbook, is the American Medical Association, in collaboration with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Recently updated, the “A.M.A. Physician’s Guide to Assessing and Counseling Older Drivers” is an invaluable addition to the literature on the subject, directed to its own members but accessible and informative to the layperson as well. The guidebook has plenty of information about assessing a patient’s driving ability; medications and medical conditions that impair mobility, vision, hearing, reflexes and judgment; tips on having the conversation with patients and caregivers; advice on how to avoid isolation and dependence when driving is no longer sensible or safe; discussion of a doctor’s ethical responsibilities; and state-by-state guidelines for reporting drivers to the state department of motor vehicles, which has the ultimate say in who remains on the road. Alas, among the takeaways of the guidebook are the great difficulties physicians have at this fraught moment, and how much easier it would be for them if the decision did not involve them. As it is, physicians must wrestle with laws that vary by state on a variety of issues: if and how elderly drivers are assessed differently than younger ones; whether it is mandatory or optional for doctors to report their concerns; how they are supposed to go about it and strike the right balance between confidentiality and safety; and whether they risk legal liability if, on the one hand, they alert the state authorities or, on the other hand, keep silent and a subsequent accident occurs. In the current issue of the journal Health Affairs, Dr. Anna Reisman, an internist in Connecticut and an associate professor at the Yale School of Medicine, tells the tangled tale of a doctor (herself), an elderly patient who lied about
continuing to drive and his son, who was unwilling to intervene and anger his father. “Surrendering the Keys: A Doctor Tries to Get an Impaired Elderly Patient to Stop Driving,’’ is Dr. Reisman’s guilt-ridden lament about failing to get her patient off the road after he flunked an assessment she asked him to take following a small fender bender. The patient almost dropped her, all because of a problem that had never been raised by her professors in medical school or in residency training. “A moment such as this was — and is — awkward,’’ she wrote. “I dreaded conversations about driving. Driving safety wasn’t something I could treat with a prescription or with how-to medical advice. It was a big messy issue that sprawled beyond the confines of the office to the realm of public safety…. Like most of my peers I had little experience in assessing safe driving…. The only driving related question we were trained to ask — ‘Do you wear a seat belt?’ — was buried in a general office check list, somewhere between ‘Have you ever injected drugs?’ and ‘Do you have a gun in the house?’ [Nobody] had ever told me I might bear some responsibility for deciding whether a patient should be behind the wheel.’’ Dr. Reisman studied up on the issue in part by using the A.M.A. guidebook. That is where she learned that only six states — California, Delaware, New Jersey, Nevada, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have mandatory reporting requirements for doctors. Other states, Connecticut among them, do not require a doctor to report a physically or cognitively impaired driver but permit doctors to express their concerns if they fear harm to a patient or the public. Fourteen states require greater frequency in renewing licenses after a certain age — say, every two years instead of five for those older than 70. Seventeen states make special demands of the elderly — that they renew in person not by mail, for instance, or take a vision test. Some states offer legal immunity to doctors who report patients and others don’t. Some allow family members or other concerned parties to report drivers to the state Department of Motor Vehicles. Some have stringent privacy restrictions. Others permit anonymous reports. All consider such reporting permissible under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the federal law that is supposed to guarantee medical confidentiality.
Among many recommendations in her article, Dr. Reisman urges greater legal uniformity across states in this matter, suggesting that all require in-person renewals for elderly drivers, for example. She also suggests more education for doctors about having these conversations and assessing driving competency. She calls for clarity regarding the medical privacy act, which can be more limiting than necessary in the hands of those who are poorly trained and play it safe with a law they do not understand. “The A.M.A recognizes that the safety of older drivers is a growing health public health concern,’’ says the organization’s primer. But, it asks, “How can you fulfill these competing legal and ethical duties?” The A.M.A. goes on to tell doctors how to part with as little information as possible, and how to guard against lawsuits or deal with a patient who threatens to leave and find another doctor who won’t report him. In its summation, the association urges doctors to remind patients, again and again, that the state D.M.V., and only the D.M.V., decides who drives. These are the bureaucracies, ensconced in dreary offices, where waits for a simple transaction can last hours. For most of us, that it is not confidence-inspiring. That said, is it fair to solely blame the California D.M.V., several years back, for renewing the license of an 86-year-old man who confused the accelerator and brake and mowed down 73 people, killing 10, including a 3-year-old girl, at a Santa Monica farmer’s market?
New Advice on Preventing Falls By KAREN STABINER
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or the first time since 2001, the American Geriatrics Society and the British Geriatrics Society have updated their guidelines for preventing falls in older people. The update includes two notable changes: One recommends tai chi — the meditative, slow-motion Chinese exercise — as an effective way to prevent falls, while another suggests that doctors review medication use by all elderly patients, with an eye toward reducing use of those drugs that increase the risk of falling. The earlier guidelines did not single out any particular exercise regimen and endorsed prescription reviews only for patients taking more than four medications. Exercise is essential for any older person who can manage it, according to Dr.
Mary Tinetti of the Yale University School of Medicine, a chairwoman of the panel that issued the new guidelines. Tai chi gets the nod because several trials have suggested that it seems to help reduce the risk of falling, she said, although it is possible that other forms of balance training work just as well. Greg Fuller teaches tai chi at the Jewish Home in Los Angeles. “The basic underlying philosophy is that balance is everything,” he said. Most important for his students, whose average age is 90, tai chi involves small, slow, controlled motions. “With beginners, we spend a lot of time working while seated, bringing attention to the proper alignment of the pelvis, chest and head,” said Mr. Fuller. Once that is accomplished, “finding strength and balance while standing is much easier.” Even then, many students work stan-
ding just behind a chair. “The presence of the chair back within reach gives them a sense of security and confidence,” Mr. Fuller said. “They forget about the possibility of falling and concentrate on the movements.” Confidence is important to fall prevention, according to Dr. Tinetti, who said that fear of falling can itself lead older people to cut back on activities they used to enjoy. The less they do, sadly, the less they eventually are able to do. The geriatrics groups also have long recommended that the medication regimens of older patients be reviewed and, if possible, scaled back. Earlier guidelines called for reviewing medications only if a patient takes more than four. This time around, researchers say that all older patients ought to have their doctors review their prescriptions for any that might increase the risk of
falling. “The evidence is strongest that medications that affect the brain — these include antidepressants, sleep medications and medications for anxiety — increase the risk of falling,” said Dr. Tinetti. “There is also a suggestion, not yet proven, that narcotics and some blood pressure medications may increase the risk of falls, as well.” The updated guidelines distinguish between a fall that requires intervention and one that might be a isolated incident. The updated criteria for getting a risk evaluation are: • An elderly person worried or frightened by a fall. • Two or more falls in the past year. • One or more falls with injury. • Repeated difficulty with balance when walking.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
39 SCIENCE / TECH
The Threatening Scent of Fertile Women By JOHN TIERNEY
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he 21-year-old woman was carefully trained not to flirt with anyone who came into the laboratory over the course of several months. She kept eye contact and conversation to a minimum. She never used makeup or perfume, kept her hair in a simple ponytail, and always wore jeans and a plain T-shirt. Each of the young men thought she was simply a fellow student at Florida State University participating in the experiment, which ostensibly consisted of her and the man assembling a puzzle of Lego blocks. But the real experiment came later, when each man rated her attractiveness. Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else. The other guys, the ones in romantic relationships, rated her as significantly less attractive when she was at the peak stage of fertility, presumably because at some level they sensed she then posed the greatest threat to their longterm relationships. To avoid being enticed to stray, they apparently told themselves she wasn’t all that hot anyway. This experiment was part of a new trend in evolutionary psychology to study “relationship maintenance.” Earlier research emphasized how evolution primed us to meet and mate: how men and women choose partners by looking for cues like facial symmetry, body shape, social status and resources. But the evolutionary mating game wasn’t just about finding a symmetrical face in the savanna’s equivalent of a singles bar. Natural selection favored those who stayed together long enough to raise children: the men and women who could sustain a relationship by keeping their partners happy. They would have benefited from the virtue to remain faithful, or at least the wiliness to appear faithful while cheating discreetly. It’s possible that some of the men in Florida were just trying to look virtuous by downgrading the woman’s attractiveness, the way a husband will instantly dismiss any woman pointed out by his wife. (That Victoria’s Secret model? Ugh! A skeleton with silicone.) But Jon Maner, a co-author of the study, says that’s unlikely because the men filled out their answers in private and didn’t expect the ratings to be seen by anyone except the researchers. “It seems the men were truly trying to ward off any temptation they felt toward the ovulating woman,” said Dr. Maner, who did the work with Saul Miller, a fellow psychologist at Florida State. “They were trying to convince themselves that she was undesirable. I suspect some men really came to believe what they said. Others might still have felt the undercurrent of their forbidden desire, but I bet just voicing their lack of attraction helped them suppress it.” It may seem hard to believe that men could distinguish a woman who’s at peak fertility simply by sitting next to her for a few minutes. Scientists long assumed that ovulation in humans was concealed from both sexes. But recent studies have found large changes in cues and behavior when a woman is at this stage of peak fertility. Lap dancers get much higher tips (unless they’re taking birth-control pills that suppress ovulation, in which case their tips remain lower). The pitch of a woman’s voice rises. Men rate her body odor as more attractive and respond with higher levels of testosterone. “The fascinating thing about this time is that it flies under the radar of consciousness,” says Martie Haselton, a psychologist at U.C.L.A. “Women and men are affected by ovulation, but we don’t have any idea that it is what is
driving these substantial changes in our behavior. It makes it clear that we’re much more like other mammals than we thought.” At this peak-fertility stage, women are more interested in going to parties and dance clubs, and they dress more attractively (as judged by both men and women). Some women’s attitudes toward their own partners also change, according to research by Dr. Haselton along with a U.C.L.A. colleague, Christina Larson, and Steven Gangestad of the University of New Mexico. “Women who are in steady relationships with men who are not very sexually attractive — those who lack the human equivalent of the peacock’s tail — suddenly start to notice other men and flirt,” Dr. Haselton said. “They are also more critical of their steady partners and feel less ‘one’ with them on those few days before ovulation.” But that doesn’t mean they’re planning to walk out. “These women don’t show any shifts in feelings of commitment,” Dr. Haselton said. “They don’t want to leave their steady partners. They just want to look around at other men and consider them as alternative sex partners.” This fits the “good genes” evolutionary explanation for adultery: a quick fling with a good-looking guy can produce a child with better genes, who will therefore have a better chance of passing along the mother’s genes. But this sort of infidelity is risky if the woman’s unsexy long-term partner finds out and leaves her alone to raise the child. So it makes sense for her to limit her risks by being unfaithful only at those times she’s fertile. By that same evolutionary logic, it makes sense for her partner to be most worried when she’s fertile, and that’s just what occurred in the relationships tracked by Dr. Haselton and Dr. Gangestad. The unsexy men became especially jealous and engaged in more “mate-guarding” during the stage of high fertility — perhaps because they sense the subtle physical cues, or maybe just because they could see the overt flirting. One safe way for both men and women to stay in a relationship is to avoid even looking at tempting alternatives, and there seem to be subtle mental mechanisms to stop the wandering eye, as Dr. Maner and colleagues at Florida State found in an experiment testing people’s “attentional adhesion.” The men and women in the experiment, after being
primed with quick flashes of words like “lust” and “kiss,” were shown a series of photographs and other images. The single men and women in the study couldn’t help staring at photographs of good-looking people of the opposite sex — their gaze would linger on these hot prospects even when they were supposed to be looking at a new image popping up elsewhere on the screen. But the people who were already in relationships reacted differently. They looked away more quickly from the attractive faces. The subliminal priming with words related to sex apparently activated some unconscious protective mechanism: Tempt me not! I see nothing! I see nothing! This is good news for fans of fidelity, but there’s one caveat from a subsequent study by Dr. Maner along with C. Nathan DeWall of the University of Kentucky and others. This time, the researchers subtly made it difficult to pay attention to the attractive faces. Both men and women responded by trying harder to look at the forbidden fruit. Afterward, they expressed less satisfaction with their partners and more interest in infidelity. The lesson here seems to be that too much “mate-guarding” can get in the way of “relationship maintenance.” “We shouldn’t want our partner to be looking at lots of other people, because that’s bad for the relationship,” Dr. Maner said. “At the same time, preventing them from looking doesn’t help either, and can backfire.” Left to their own devices, conscious or unconscious, they might just manage to restrain themselves.
Brain’s Reading Center Isn’t Picky About Vision By SINDYA N. BHANOO
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he part of the brain thought to be responsible for processing visual text may not require vision at all, researchers report in the journal Current Biology. This region, known as the visual word form area, processes words when people with normal vision read, but researchers found that it is also activated when the blind read using Braille. “It doesn’t matter if people are reading with their eyes or by their hands,” said Amir Amedi, a neuroscientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the study’s authors. “They are processing words.” The research counters the textbook belief that the brain is a sensory organ, in which various regions govern activities of the different senses, like sight, sound and touch.
Instead, Dr. Amedi said, the brain is a task machine. “What we suggest is that what this area is doing is building the shape of the words, even though we call it the visual word form area,” he said. Dr. Amedi and his colleagues ran functional M.R.I. scans on eight adults with congenital blindness as they read using Braille. He and his colleagues belong to a small community of neuroscientists who are trying to demonstrate that the brain’s regions are multisensory. Although the theory has not become mainstream, it has been gaining acceptance in the past decade. “We hope that this paper will be another break in convincing people,” Dr. Amedi said. “But one or two or 10 papers is not enough to change the textbook. It might take another decade, so we can prove that we haven’t missed something.”
SCIENCE / TECH 40 March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
A Romp Into Theories of the Cradle of Life By DENNIS OVERBYE
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e’re not in the Garden of Eden anymore. Darwin speculated that life began in a warm pond on the primordial Earth. Lately other scientists have suggested that the magic joining of molecules that could go on replicating might have happened in an undersea hot spring, on another planet or inside an asteroid. Some astronomers wonder if it could be happening right now underneath the ice of Europa or in the methane seas of Titan. Two dozen chemists, geologists, biologists, planetary scientists and physicists gathered here recently to ponder where and what Eden might have been. Over a long weekend they plastered the screen in their conference room with intricate chemical diagrams through which electrons bounced in a series of interactions like marbles rattling up and down and over bridges through one of those child’s toys, transferring energy, taking care of the business of nascent life. The names of elements and molecules tripped off chemists’ tongues as if they were the eccentric relatives who show up at Thanksgiving every year. They charted the fall of meteorites and the rise of oxygen on the early Earth and evidence in old rocks that life was here as long as 3.5 billion years ago. The planet is only a billion years older, but estimates vary on when it became habitable. In front of a 2,400-member audience one night they debated the definition of life — “anything highly statistically improbable, but in a particular direction,” in the words of Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist at Oxford. Or, they wondered if it could be defined at all in the absence of a second example to the Earth’s biosphere — a web of interdependence all based on DNA. Hence the quest for extraterrestrial examples is more than a sentimental use of NASA’s dollars. “Let’s go look for it,” said Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Laboratory in Mountain View, Calif., who is involved with the Mars Science Laboratory, which will be launched in November. The rapid appearance of complex life in some accounts — “like Athena springing from the head of Zeus,” in the words of Dr. McKay — has rekindled interest recently in a theory fancied by Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the double helix, that life
originated elsewhere and floated here through space. These days the favorite candidate for such an extraterrestrial cradle is Mars, which was once a water world. Perhaps, some think, its microbes hitched a ride to Earth on asteroids — unless, of course, the microbes went the other way and what’s to be found on Mars are the dead remains of longlost cousins of Earth. “We’ve crashed more space probes on Mars than anywhere else — it’s that interesting,” Dr. McKay said. The conference was sponsored by the Origins Project at Arizona State University in an effort to get people together who don’t normally talk to each other, said Lawrence Krauss, a physicist who helped organize the meeting. Talk is indeed hard across disciplines and geological ages. John Sutherland, a biochemist at Cambridge University in England, said geologists and astronomers were more interested in talking and speculating about the origin of life than chemists were, even though it is basically a problem of “nitty-gritty chemistry.” The reason, he explained, is that “chemists know how hard it is.” The modern version of the Garden of Eden goes by the name of RNA world, after the molecule ribonucleic acid, which plays Robin to DNA’s Batman today, but is now thought have preceded it on the biological scene. RNA is more versatile, being able not only to store information, like DNA, but also to use that information to catalyze reactions, a job now performed by proteins. That solved a sort of chicken-and-egg problem about which ability came first into the world. The answer is that RNA
could be both. “If you want to think of it that way, life is a very simple process,” said Sidney Altman, who shared a Nobel Prize in 1989 for showing that RNA had these dual abilities. “It uses energy, it sustains itself and it replicates.” One lesson of the meeting was how finicky are the chemical reactions needed for carrying out these simple-sounding functions. “There might be a reason why amino acids and nucleotides are the way they are,” Dr. Krauss said. What looks complicated to us might not look so complicated to a piece of a carbon molecule awaiting integration into life’s dance. “Complexity is in the eye of the beholder,” said Dr. Sutherland, who after 10 years of trying different recipes succeeded in synthesizing one of the four nucleotides that make up RNA in a jar in his lab. With the right mixture and conditions, complicated-looking molecules can assemble themselves without help. “When everything is in the pot,” he said, “the chemistry to make RNA is easier.” Dr. Sutherland’s results were hailed as a triumph for the RNA world idea, but there is much work to be done, said Steve Benner, who constructs artificial DNA at the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, in Florida. Nobody knows whether Dr. Sutherland’s recipe would work on the early Earth, he said. Moreover, even if RNA did appear naturally, the odds that it would happen in the right sequence to drive Darwinian evolution seem small. “Other than that,” Dr. Benner said, “the RNA world is a great idea for origin of life.”
Some others, including astronomers and geologists, have another view of biological inevitability. Life is a natural consequence of geology, said Everett Shock, a geophysicist at Arizona State. “Most of what life is doing is using chemical energy,” Dr. Shock said, and that energy is available in places like undersea volcanic vents where life, he calculated, acts as a catalyst to dissipate heat from the Earth. In what he called “a sweet deal,” life releases energy rather than consuming it, making it easy from a thermodynamic standpoint. “Biosynthesis is profitable — it has to be; they live there,” said Dr. Shock, referring to microbes in undersea vents. Some scientists say we won’t really understand life until we can make it ourselves. On the last day of the conference, J. Craig Venter, the genome decoding entrepreneur and president of the J. Craig Venter Institute, described his adventures trying to create an organism with a computer for a parent. Using mail-order snippets of DNA, Dr. Venter and his colleagues stitched together the million-letter genetic code of a bacterium of a goat parasite last year and inserted it into another bacterium’s cell, where it took over, churning out blue-stained copies of itself. Dr. Venter advertised his genome as the wave of future migration to the stars. Send a kit of chemicals and a digitized genome across space. “We’ll create panspermia if it didn’t already exist,” he said. The new genome included what Dr. Venter called a watermark. Along with the names of the researchers were three quotations, from the author James Joyce; Robert Oppenheimer, who directed the building of the atomic bomb; and the Caltech physicist Richard Feynman: “What I cannot build, I do not understand.” When the news came out, last year, Dr. Venter said, the James Joyce estate called up and threatened to sue, claiming that Joyce’s copyright had been violated. To date there has been no lawsuit. Then Caltech called up and complained that Dr. Venter’s genome was misquoting Feynman. The institute sent a photograph of an old blackboard on which Feynman had written, “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” And so his genome is now in the process of acquiring its first, nonDarwinian mutation.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
41 SCIENCE / TECH
A Dazzling Show Inside a Laser, but a Vacuum of Light Outside By HENRY FOUNTAIN
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n an elegant melding of theoretical and experimental physics, scientists at Yale University have taken the basic function of a laser and flipped it around — producing a device that absorbs, rather than emits, a beam of light. The device, which the scientists call a “coherent perfect absorber” or, more popularly, an anti-laser, may lead to the development of new kinds of switches, filters and other components that could be useful in hybrid optical-electronic computers under development, among other applications. A. Douglas Stone, a theoretical physicist at Yale, developed the concept of a backward-running laser in a paper in Physical Review Letters last spring. The actual device, described in a paper published last week in Science, was created in the laboratory of a laser physicist, Hui Cao. In a laser, energy is pumped into a medium — which can be a solid, liquid or gas — between two mirrors, stimulating the emission of photons that are coherent, or of the same frequency and phase. The photons reflect back and forth between the mirrors, resulting in amplification of the light. “You put energy into it, and some of that energy gets converted into that beautiful coherent light beam,” Dr. Stone said. In his theoretical work, Dr. Stone said, he made use of the fact that the equations that describe how a laser works have certain symmetrical properties. “If you can make a laser of a certain type, the equations say you can make a reverse device as well,” he said.
An anti-laser uses mirrors, too, but the other components are the reverse of a laser. The medium that provides amplification is replaced with one that provides absorption, and the outgoing light beam is replaced with an incoming one. (This light needs to be coherent, so it takes a laser to make an anti-laser.) The incoming beam is split in two, and hits the medium from two sides. The photons bounce around between the mirrors and interfere with one another, eventually wiping themselves out in a flurry of electrons and heat. The experimental device absorbed about 99.4 percent of the light. In theory, an anti-laser should be able to absorb 100 percent. “It’s a one-way trap for light,” Dr. Stone said. Dr. Cao said the device they built was relatively simple, using silicon as the absorptive medium and a couple of “bad” mirrors. “But we should be able to get coherent perfect absorption in more complicated systems,” she said. Eventually it may even be possible to make an “anti” version of a so-called random laser, in which the medium is
Hibernating Bears Keep Thermostat Turned Up
Skull-Cups in British Cave Conjure an Ancient Rite By SINDYA N. BHANOO
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he three human braincases, two from adults and one from a child, were carefully skinned and cleaned with flint tools. The soft tissue was removed and probably consumed, leaving a well-shaped cup, perhaps made for use in some sort of ritual. This is not a scene from a horror film. British paleoanthropologists report the discovery of these 14,700-year-old skull-cups in the journal PLoS One. They were found in Gough’s Cave in Somerset, England, and are the oldest directly dated skull-cups known, based on radiocarbon analysis. “It shows, really, how skilled these people were in shaping the skull, and also the fact that it was a very complex ritual,” said Silvia Bello, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London and the study’s lead author.
highly disordered and there are no mirrors. The experimental device works in the near-infrared, outside of the visible spectrum. But Dr. Stone said that in principle anti-lasers would not be limited in terms of frequency. “We could move it into the visible, or the farther infrared,” he said. “It’s definitely possible to engineer this across the whole range.” Stefano Longhi, a physicist at the Polytechnic Institute of Milan in Italy who was not involved in the work, said the anti-laser was an “important achievement” that was “exciting and surprising to the scientific community.” He said one important characteristic of the device is that the absorption could be turned on or off. This might make anti-lasers extremely useful as optical switching devices. A device that absorbs light perfectly might be considered ideal for solar energy applications, but Dr. Longhi said this is not the case. Sunlight is not coherent, and an anti-laser will not work with incoherent light, he said. A physicist would describe the device as a “timereversed” laser, since the symmetrical properties are related to the concept of time reversal. But Dr. Stone said he thought the term anti-laser was a better description for nonscientists, so that no one would think the device had anything to do with time travel. But even “anti-laser” is problematic, he noted. “I don’t want people to think this is some kind of laser shield,” he said. “If R2-D2 had our anti-lasers, it would be melted into a puddle.”
By SINDYA N. BHANO
Historical accounts hold that other human societies, like the Scythians, nomadic Indo-European warriors, used skull-cups to sip the blood of enemies. And as late as the 19th century, skull-cups were reportedly used in Fiji and other islands in Oceania. But archaeological evidence of skullcups has been rare. The oldest known specimens date to the Upper Paleolithic period in Western Europe, 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, although none of those artifacts were directly dated. “But what we see here in Gough’s Cave is very different from other cases, where maybe you killed the enemy and took the skull as the trophy,” Dr. Bello said. “This seems more of a ritual, perhaps a funeral ritual.” A cast of one of the skull-cups will be on display at the Natural History Museum in London for three months, starting March 1.
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hanks to a few adventurous black bears that wandered too close to human communities in Alaska, scientists gained a rare glimpse into the species’ hibernation habits. The researchers were surprised to find that while bears’ body temperature drops only slightly during hibernation, they slow their metabolic activity to about 25 percent of their normal, active rate. The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Science. In other animals, there is generally a more significant change in body temperature when there are metabolic changes, said Craig Heller, a biologist at Stanford University and one of the study’s authors. But anytime the bears’ body
temperatures dropped to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, they shivered to warm up, he said. He and his colleagues also found that while in hibernation, bears do not have a circadian rhythm, and that they spend most of their time in sleep. The bears in the study were deemed a nuisance by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and were taken to artificial dens, where the researchers were able to closely monitor them. The research might one day help doctors treat stroke patients, who could benefit from a lowered brain temperature in the hours after a stroke, Dr. Heller said. “You can’t just pack someone in ice, because the body will fight to stay at a normal temperature,” he said. “If you can figure out how bears and other animals do it, you could possibly induce this.”
SCIENCE / TECH 42 March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
Shhh, and Not Because the Fauna Are Sleeping By FELICITY BARRINGER
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t times, deep within this vaulted chamber of redwoods, it is almost quiet enough to hear a banana slug slither by. For the National Park Service, that stillness is as vital a component of the site as the trees’ green needles, or the sudden darting rays of sunlight. A decade after the agency resolved to restore natural sounds to this park in a metropolitan area of seven million people, managers at Muir Woods, in Marin Country just north of San Francisco, have made big strides in vanquishing intrusive noise. Now the background sounds are dominated by the burbling rush of Redwood Creek, the soft sibilant breeze that stirs the redwood branches, the croak of a crow. Humans do contribute, too, but, with the exception of toddlers’ squeals, their voices tend to be pitched lower than usual. The impact of noise on wildlife ranging from birds to whales to elk has been a growing focus of scientific study. Increasing evidence suggests that animals in natural settings modify their behavior, though sometimes only briefly, in response to human commotion. In a 2009 article in Park Science, researchers explained that animals react to human intrusions as if they were suddenly being threatened by predators. “These disturbances evoke antipredator behaviors and interfere with other activities that enhance fitness,” the article said, like foraging for food, mating and tending to the young. When such disturbances grow frequent, the researchers warned, “population consequences may result.” By 2001 or so, Muir Woods had in fact long been abandoned by otters and piliated woodpeckers, and park managers had grown concerned that sightings of a pair of northern spotted owls, an endangered species, were becoming more and more infrequent.
There were other worries besides noise levels. An asphalt walkway was cramping the growth of the redwoods’ surprisingly shallow roots in some places, causing at least one tree to topple. And park visitors were straying from the path into the groves, compacting earth that was meant to be loose and harming the redwoods further. But the noise question was the most vexing. The pathway could be altered, and was: in many places a slightly elevated boardwalk has replaced it. Visitors are firmly advised to stay on the paths. But the clatter and rumble of garbage can lids and maintenance vans remained. Today, no Dumpsters or garbage cans are to be found along the trails. Maintenance vehicles powered by electricity glide by almost silently. Workers in emergency vehicles do not idle their engines while resolving whatever problem brought them to the park. Once the diesel engines had been stilled, visitors began falling into line, heeding a subtle signal that human noises are superfluous here. But some of the signals are hardly subtle: signs posted near Cathedral Grove in the heart of the park call for silence. Near the entrance to the food and gift shop close to the park’s entrance, a decibel meter measures the sound of a visitor’s voice. “I could see myself crunching potato chips,” Chris Mueller, a New York City tourist interviewed in the woods, said, referring to the digital readout on the decibel meter. “Out here it is very quiet,” Mr. Mueller added appreciatively. “The mumbling of the tourists and the babbling of the stream, it has a very calming sense to it.” What is more, the nocturnal spotted owls have responded: Muir Woods now has two breeding pairs instead of one. The decade-long campaign for quiet in national parks has been little heard or noticed. The park system provides considera-
ble autonomy to the individual parks, and officials at some parks have worried about noise and taken stronger steps more than have others. Karen Treviño, the chief of the natural sounds and night skies division of the National Park Service, a system that includes hundreds of parks, monuments and historical tracts, said the noise issues varied widely. In the Florida Everglades, the rhythmic thudding of electrical generators has been stilled at a campground, and park officials are negotiating with operators of airboats, whose revved-up fans can sound like miniature jet engines, to see how their impact might be reduced. They have also approached officials at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami about the timing of the sonic booms that shake the saw grass. For about a decade now at Zion National Park in Utah, a shuttle bus service has replaced most private cars on the main loop at the heart of the canyon. And Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado has now ensured that some campground areas are generator-free and is weighing the best way to tackle motorcycle noise. The progress at Muir Woods has been largely overshadowed by highly publicized noise battles between managers at the highest-profile parks and companies that pilot small planes and helicopters full of aerial sightseers. This month, park managers at the Grand Canyon proposed requiring the operators to shift gradually to quieter aircraft, fly higher above the North Rim and refrain from flying at dawn and dusk. Yet Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, introduced legislation last week that could forestall the park’s plan. The measure, in the form of an amendment, specifies that noise standards “shall be considered to be achieved in the park if, for at least 75 percent of each day, 50 percent of the park is free of sound produced by commercial air tour operations.” Bill Hedden, the executive director of the Grant Canyon Trust, an Arizona environmental organization, denounced the McCain proposal. “This is an amendment that essentially gives the entire game away to the air tour operators,” Mr. Hedden said. “It redefines what constitutes natural quiet and lets them do any thing they want.” Asked about the amendment, Brooke Buchanan, a spokeswoman for the senator, warned that tighter regulation by the Park Service “could dramatically threaten tourism jobs and the tax base in Northern Arizona.” “Senator McCain’s amendment would simply codify the existing definition of natural quiet that has been in place for the past 17 years,” Ms. Buchanan said. Muir Woods has airplane noise, too —
it is within 30 miles of the Oakland and San Francisco airports — but officials here do not worry much about tourist flights because the tree canopy masks the view from above. The park also contends with the whine of cars and especially motorcycles making their way up Mount Tamalpais on roads just above the park. Before the park quieted its maintenance fleet and other staff-generated noises, managers at Muir Woods had conducted a yearlong inventory of all sounds, natural and otherwise, in four places in the park, said Mia Monroe, a park ranger. To her surprise, Ms. Monroe said, noise from the parking lot and gift shop “bled a quarter-mile into the forest.” Administrators moved the parking lot about 100 yards farther from the entrance, eliminated the ice machine and installed the decibel meter. The new concessionaire agreed to make coffee in a way that minimized the odor and to bake its scones and muffins in nearby Mill Valley rather than on site. “So when you walk in the forest, you smell the wonderful fresh air of the forest” — not blueberry scones, Ms. Monroe said. Mr. Mueller, the New York tourist, savored the smells on his visit. “The scents are extraordinary,” he said. “There’s an intensity to the aromas one associates with dining. You can almost taste the air here, it’s that rich.” Managers and rangers are careful nonetheless not to attribute specific improvements in the park’s wildlife directly to policy changes like the new boardwalk or sound management or elimination of some invasive weeds. “It’s very, very hard to say what do the peace and quiet, what does the boardwalk, what do any of these things relate to,” Ms. Monroe said. “We don’t know.” Still, she noted, otters have returned after a 75-year hiatus, and chipmunks are on the rebound. And if a tree falls in this forest, it is likely to be heard.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
43 SCIENCE / TECH
Before Rush, One Tablet Stands Out
By DAVID POGUE
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t’s an old pattern by now. Phase 1: Apple introduces some new gadget. The bloggers and the industry tell us why it’ll fail. Phase 2: It goes on sale. The public goes nuts for it. Phase 3: Every company and its brother gets to work on a copycat. It happened with the iMac and the iPhone. Now the iPad is entering Phase 3. Apple sold 15 million iPads in nine months, so you can bet that 2011 will be the Year of the iPad Clone. Starting Thursday, you’ll be able to buy one of the most eagerly awaited iPad rivals: the Motorola Xoom. Like most iPad aspirants, this one runs Google’s Android software — but the Xoom is the first that runs Android 3.0 (code-named Honeycomb), which Google designed for tablets instead of phones. The Xoom continues Motorola’s recent streak of attractive, compact and well-built gadgets. Unless you inspect the back panel (rubberized plastic instead of silver aluminum), you might not be able to tell this touch-screen slab from the iPad. There are some differences, though. One is the price: the Xoom costs a stunning $800, $70 more than the equivalent 32-gigabyte iPad (WiFi and 3G cellular). You can get the Xoom for $600 if you’re willing to commit to a two-year Verizon contract. That means paying $20 a month to get online using Verizon’s cellular network (if you can get by on only 1 gigabyte of data), instead of just Wi-Fi hot spots. The Xoom also has a dual-core processor, which, according to Motorola,
means smoother game animation. And it has cameras. On the back, there’s a 5-megapixel still camera that can also record high-definition video. On the front, there’s a low-resolution video camera for video chatting. The new Android software includes a beefed-up Camera module, which gives weird prominence to gimmicky effects you’ll never use, like Solarize, Sepia and Polarize. Clearly, a camera is useful on a tablet, and will remain a gigantic competitive advantage for the Xoom — at least until the iPad 2 comes out next month (if Apple sticks to its usual annual update pattern, that is). If the new iPad doesn’t have a camera or two, I’ll eat a tablet. The Xoom’s screen has slightly higher resolution than the iPad’s, and it gives the tablet a slightly different shape — more like a business envelope than a greeting-card envelope. The screen shape is a better match for hi-definition videos, but worse for photos and maps. The Xoom has stereo speakers instead of mono, a battery good for 10 hours of video playback and a power button on the back panel. Motorola says that later this year, a software upgrade will let the Xoom take advantage of Verizon’s 4G cellular networks, which means better downloading speed in a few lucky cities. One very cool feature: The Xoom has an HDMI jack, meaning that a single cable can send both audio and hi-def video to a TV. That’s a perfect proposition for the peripatetic PowerPoint presenter. Motorola’s dock doctor has been working overtime, too. You can buy either a speaker dock or a charging dock that automatically activates the Xoom’s slide show or alarm-clock mode. If the
Xoom’s hardware were the whole story, it wouldn’t be much more than an anecdote. Those hardware improvements alone won’t knock the iPad —especially the iPad 2 — off its pedestal, especially considering the price premium. No, the more important story here is Honeycomb, the Google tablet software. This is the real iPad competitor; Honeycomb tablets in every size, shape and price range will soon be arriving in stores. So how is Honeycomb? Four words: more powerful, more complicated. The screen now bears two strips of tiny icons. In theory, the top ones pertain to the program you’re using, and the ones across the bottom ones resemble the system tray in Windows: status icons and pop-up menus for various settings. But these icons are darned cryptic; you’d think they were were designed by aliens. Google seems to have overlooked a huge drawback of unlabeled icons on a touch-screen computer: there’s no way to see their names or functions before you open them. There are no popup tooltips, for example. All you can do is touch one to activate it, see what happens and learn from the annoying experience. The new strips don’t always make sense, either. Why, for example, does tapping the clock icon bring up your list of notifications (completed downloads, incoming text messages and so on)? Why do you access some settings by tapping a bottom-strip icon, and the rest of the settings by tapping a top-strip icon? Does Android want to be Windows when it grows up? Some of the changes in Honeycomb are fresh. There’s a pop-up menu of list of recently opened apps — not just their names, but miniature screens that show you exactly what you were doing when you left off. Widgets (small windows that display the latest data from, say, your Gmail or Twitter accounts) are more flexible now; for example, you can scroll through their contents without having to open up a whole big app. You can drag individual messages into email folders. In the miscellaneous category, Google has blessed the Web browser with tabbed windows and an “incognito” mode (in which you leave no cookies, history or other tracks that might let someone see what you’ve been up to). When you’re using Google Maps
to view a major city like San Francisco or New York, you can twist with your fingers to reveal the three-dimensional outlines of actual buildings. (Useful if you’re the pilot of an ultralight aircraft, I guess.) Other improvements might best be labeled, “Lovingly ripped off from the iPad.” Take the new Gmail and email apps, for example (still no word as to why we need separate apps for Gmail and other account types). They’ve been redesigned to perfectly mimic the iPad’s mail app. That is, when the tablet is upright, the message fills the screen; when it’s horizontal, the message list appears at the left side, with the selected message in the main window. The Contacts app is similarly similar. There’s a Books app that mimics the iPad’s iBooks app, right down to the three-dimensional page-turning animation. (It accesses Google’s attractive new e-book store.) All the other Android goodies are still here, like speech recognition and impressive GPS navigation. Motorola says that an upcoming download will let the Xoom play Flash videos online — something the iPad can’t do. At the moment, few apps are designed for Android tablets’ larger screens. By contrast, there are 60,000 apps available specifically for the iPad (not counting the 290,000 iPhone apps that also run on it, at lower resolution). But that’s a temporary objection; the Android library is growing at a white-hot pace. If you’re interested in a tablet, you’d be wise to wait a couple of months. You’ll want to consider whatever Apple has up its sleeve for the iPad’s second coming, of course, but also Research in Motion’s business-oriented BlackBerry PlayBook and Hewlett-Packard’s juicylooking TouchPad tablet, which runs the webOS software (originally designed by ex-Apple engineers for the Palm Pre smartphone). It’s not crystal-clear at this point why the world needs all of these competing tablets, each with different operating systems and app stores. There’s not enough differentiation to justify the coming onslaught of models; most of these companies seem to cranking out tablets just so they can say, “We have an iPad thingie, too!” In the meantime, Motorola should be congratulated for the Xoom. For xealous tablet fans, it’s an excellent, xesty tablet with a xany price tag — but a lot of xip.
PEOPLE
44 March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
Will Britain’s Royal Wedding Pay the Bills? “It’s like a good football tournament,” said Brian Hilliard, economist at Société Générale in London. “Hotels and catering spending will go up.” For some businesses, the event has already had a positive impact. Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, started to sell a £16 replica of the dark blue dress by Isa London that Ms. Middleton wore to announce her engagement. It sold out online within one hour. QVC had a similar experience when it offered a ring that resembled the one Ms. Middleton received for her engagement. “This is a major opportunity for
By JULIA WERDIGIER
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oyal weddings can generally be counted on to produce plenty of pomp and circumstance, not to mention — later on, of course — a possible future king or queen. In Britain, the approaching wedding of Prince William, second in line to the throne, to Kate Middleton, his longtime girlfriend, comes with a whole new set of expectations. At a time of economic gloom, businesses and the government are hoping that the wedding April 29 will give Britain’s economy a lift. Hotels have started to assemble special royal wedding packages, a retailer is selling an engagement ring replica and a brewery is producing a special “Kiss Me Kate” beer. “It’s great to have a piece of unadulterated good news that everyone can celebrate,” Prime Minister David Cameron said after the couple announced their engagement in November. He then backed an investment of £50 million, or $80 million, to use the wedding and the Summer Olympic Games in 2012 to promote Britain as a tourist destination. More than a million visitors are expected in London for the wedding, according to estimates from the capital’s official tourism agency, Visit London. If all attend the procession, the number would dwarf the 600,000 who lined the streets 30 years ago for the marriage of Prince William’s father, Prince Charles, to Diana Spencer. With so many visitors, retailers could generate additional sales of £620 million, according to Verdict, an industry research firm. But the rosy forecasts have failed to mask the question of how the British
themselves, battered by rising unemployment and steep government spending cuts, will react to what almost certainly is to be an opulent celebration. The royal family is expected to pay for the wedding parties and the bulk of the costs, but the government will have to pay for policing and road closures from Westminster Abbey to Buckingham Palace along a route that will cover 2.25 kilometers, or 1.4 miles. There is already criticism about the costs the government will bear during this period of austerity. One local council complained that it could not afford the paid public holiday the government decided to grant for the wedding. Anti-royalists are especially incensed. “If people lose their jobs and homes and there are cuts to local services, someone else’s wedding is not going to make a difference to how they feel,” said Graham Smith, campaign manager for Republic, a group that calls for the abolition of the monarchy. New Scotland Yard declined to give its estimated cost for the wedding. The total cost of the wedding of Prince William’s parents in 1981 was estimated at about £30 million. It included a wedding dress with 10,000 hand-sewn pearls as well as 6,000 police and military officers to secure the couple’s even longer route from the palace to St. Paul’s Cathedral. Coincidentally, Britain had also just emerged from a deep recession back then as well and was eager for a feel-good event. Then as now, however, the economic impact is hard to measure. Some economists say a royal wedding would be “helpful,” even if it does not prove to be as beneficial as the government expects.
us,” said Lucy Lowe, a Tesco spokeswoman. “We expect high demand for party foods as people celebrate at home in front of their televisions or do a barbecue in their gardens.” Hotels have assembled packages. The Hyatt Regency offers “William and Kate: The Love Story” for £340, which includes a night at the hotel, a crown-jewel inspired cocktail, a box of Royal Wedding truffles and a tour pass to three London sights. TUI, the German tour operator, is offering customers a guided “Will & Kate Royal Wedding Walk” whose name sounds more promising than its itinerary. It includes a visit to a London clothing store where Ms. Middleton once worked and to Mahiki, a nightclub frequented by the couple. The Franklin Mint, which manufactures collectibles in the United States, is selling a $195 vinyl doll depicting Ms. Middleton in her engagement dress and plans to produce another doll once the wedding dress design is disclosed. In Britain, Asda, the grocer owned by Wal-Mart, is selling tea mugs, and Aynsley China, a 236-year-old porcelain maker, has painted the royal couple’s smiling faces on plates, cups and coasters. Dartington Crystal, a glassmaker, expects its engraved champagne flutes
to be a best seller and its royal wedding range to add at least a five-figure amount to its sales. “Times are tough and this will act as a stimulus,” said Richard Halliday, marketing director at Dartington. “It will certainly make the first half better than it would have been.” In some ways, it appears as if everyone hopes to make money from the royal wedding. At Paddy Power, a betting company, customers are betting on anything from the length of Ms. Middleton’s wedding dress train to where the couple will go on honeymoon. A more sinister bet is on their date of divorce. There also are signs that many Britons plan to go somewhere else on what for them will be a four-day weekend. Monday, May 2, is already a public holiday. Thomas Cook, the travel operator, said its bookings from British clients for April rose 35 percent in the past four weeks, and Ryanair, the budget airline, said bookings were up 65 percent for the period. Catherine Baxter, a voice coach who lives within walking distance of the planned wedding procession, said she planned to rent her apartment to tourists. “It’s a good opportunity,” she said. “There’s a little part of me that will miss being part of this, but living in this area there will be so many tourists around.” Some in the retail industry warned against seeing the royal wedding as a silver bullet to cure the ills of the British economy, which shrank in the fourth quarter of last year after four consecutive quarters of growth. “It will certainly help the economy, but there is a danger that people get too hopeful,” said Neil Saunders, consulting director at Verdict. “It could be really difficult if retailers can’t sell all that merchandise they plan to sell.”
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PEOPLE
The Many Qaddafis By DIRK VANDEWALLE
T
WO images serve as bookends to the four-decades-old rule of Libya’s ruler, Col. Muammar elQaddafi. The first is the picture taken a few days after the Sept. 1, 1969, coup that brought him to power: it shows a handsome, pencil-thin revolutionary in military uniform, kneeling in the desert sand to pray. The other was taken two days ago: Colonel Qaddafi in bedouin garb as an uprising sparked by the arrest of a human rights lawyer in Benghazi continued to overtake the country, defiantly and incoherently defending his selfstyled revolution, vowing to struggle on until death. Between those two shots lie 42 years of iron-fisted rule, and thousands of photos that show him slowly turning from a young firebrand to a mastermind of international terrorism; from ambitious new ruler, bent on restoring the grandeur of Arab nationalism after the death of his hero President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt to international pariah; from would-be philosopher to clownish figure whose demagoguery was derided by friend and foe alike. And, finally, after years of sanctions by the United States and the international community, a much older but equally combative Colonel Qaddafi was seemingly rehabilitated by the West. After the 1969 revolution, Western leaders initially believed that the new Libyan regime would follow in the kingdom’s footsteps, with a pro-Western bent to its policies. It quickly became clear, however, that Colonel Qaddafi was no ordinary Arab leader who would live by the conventions of international behavior or decorum. Once Colonel Qaddafi assumed power, his message was unambiguous: he cast himself and Libya as a bulwark against what he perceived as the predations of the West. The brutality of the Italian colonial period — which had lasted from 1911 through 1943 and led to the deaths of perhaps half of the population of Libya’s eastern province — would become for him an enduring obsession. The Italians had destroyed whatever embryonic bureaucratic and administrative structures had been in place before they invaded, so Libya had few elements of modern statehood. And the monarchy — headed by King Idris I, who showed no love for ruling a unified Libya — had for almost 20 years largely left matters as they were when the Italians left. What was not clear at the start of the 1969 revolution was how tortuous Colonel Qaddafi’s path would beco-
me. Fueled by ample petrodollars, he would descend into an increasingly selfcontained and self-reverential world, a closed system fed and reinforced by the sycophancy that always surrounds dictators and that brooks no opposition. In the early 1970s, by nationalizing the country’s oil companies, Colonel Qaddafi provided himself with a healthy dose of legitimacy at home, but also with increasing suspicion from the West. In the mid-’70s, he demonstrated his growing lack of perspective by publishing his manifesto, the Green Book, a slim collection of incoherent ramblings that he offered as the ideological guide to what he saw as Libya’s never ending “revolution.” Soon the contents of the Green Book became national slogans. “The house belongs to those who live in it,” said one, forcing landlords who owned multiple dwellings to give up their properties (or to hastily arrange marriages to keep them in the family). Another insisted that “democracy is the abortion of an individual’s rights.” Colonel Qaddafi came to be referred to as the Leader or the Guide, the oracle for an unsteady revolution. Increasingly, however, Colonel Qaddafi’s philosophical musings and his grand ideas for a new society clashed with what was becoming a visibly darker side of the regime. Libyans found themselves in an Orwellian nightmare where even small utterances of protest could lead to disappearances, prolonged incarceration without any form of legal redress and torture. Entire families were made to suffer from the alleged transgressions of one of its members. Even exile could not provide escape from the terror. In a campaign to kill what Colonel Qaddafi termed “stray dogs,” he had assassination teams gun down dissidents abroad. When, in 1984, Libyan protestors demonstrated in front of their embassy in London, a police officer, who was trying to keep demonstrators at bay, was killed by a bullet fired from inside the embassy. That led the British government to break off diplomatic relations with the regime. Colonel Qaddafi’s willingness to flout international conventions and his government’s well-documented involvement in terrorist incidents led inexorably to a sustained confrontation with the West and made the Libyan leader a pariah. President Ronald Reagan famously labeled him “the mad dog of the Middle East,” and the image of an irrational Colonel Qaddafi, hell-bent on destroying Western interests at all costs and by all methods, became the world’s lingering image of him. The bombing of a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, which
killed 270 people, was only the final confirmation of his madness and evil. After Lockerbie, Libya was plunged into isolation and remained there for more than a decade. Colonel Qaddafi ranted and raved, his speeches becoming even more apocalyptic. He blamed American or Zionist conspiracies — or a fifth column in Libya working at their behest — for every little setback his country suffered. Armed with large ambitions, and large amounts of cash, he struck back at the West — by committing more acts of terrorism, like the bombing of the La Belle disco in Germany in 1986, which killed two American soldiers, and attempting to create and purchase biological weapons and nuclear arms technology. He also supported unsavory liberation movements and causes throughout the world, ranging from small opposition movements in sub-Saharan Africa to the Irish Republican Army. But he was severely hemmed in by the world’s economic and diplomatic sanctions. In December 2003, Libya finally agreed to give up whatever supplies of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons it possessed. This promise came at the end of a long process of behind-the-scenes negotiations with Britain and the United States, and was one of the conditions Colonel Qaddafi met in order to end the sanctions. It marked the beginning of his rehabilitation into international society. The regime now sought in earnest to portray Muammar el-Qaddafi to the world as he had always envisioned himself: a global figure of major proportion, a visionary thinker whose ideas about democracy were worthy of serious intellectual contemplation. Among these ideas was Colonel Qaddafi’s notion of Israteen, a unitary state that would house both Palestine and Israel. The Libyan government paid an international consulting firm to help create a forum to bring well-known public pun-
dits and personalities to Libya to debate with the “leader of the revolution” on the nature of democracy. The appearance in Libya of leading Western intellectuals and public figures — willing to indulge a dictator’s whims and fancies for a handful of petrodollars — fed Colonel Qaddafi’s conviction that the Green Book was still relevant, and that his outworn revolution and his own stature as a world leader were important. The man who had once personified terrorism thus became our valued ally in the fight against terrorism. We could live with his foibles and occasional ranting in return for his cooperation. So he provided intelligence on Islamic groups in his country, and on at least one occasion accepted a terrorist detainee for interrogation — and American oil companies, along with various other United States businesses, returned to Libya. Colonel Qaddafi had come full circle, or so many believed. But now that the Libyan regime — like those of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain — is besieged by a popular uprising, the image of Colonel Qaddafi as the vicious monster who will go to any lengths to survive has reappeared. Hundreds of civilians have been killed by security forces and hired mercenaries, even as pro-Qaddafi forces have had to abandon Benghazi and most of the eastern province of Cyrenaica. On Monday, when the leader went on television with his Green Book in hand, his diatribe was incoherent but familiar. His opponents, he said, were nothing but dogs and cockroaches, and he would squash and kill them. Gone were the flowery niceties of democratic theory. Back again was the reality of brutal suppression. However, the terrible events of the past week do recall a line from the Green Book, written with perfect sangfroid by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi: “This is genuine democracy, but in reality the strong always rule.”
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WikiLeaks Cables Detail Qaddafi Family’s Exploits By SCOTT SHANE
A
fter New Year’s Day 2009, Western media reported that Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader Col. Muammar elQaddafi, had paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing just four songs at a bash on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. In the newspaper he controlled, Seif indignantly denied the report — the big spender, he said, was his brother, Muatassim, Libya’s national security adviser, according to an American diplomatic cable from the capital, Tripoli. It was Muatassim, too, the cable said, who had demanded $1.2 billion in 2008 from the chairman of Libya’s national oil corporation, reportedly to establish his own militia. That would let him keep up with yet another brother, Khamis, commander of a special-forces group that “effectively serves as a regime protection unit.” As the Qaddafi clan conducts a bloody struggle to hold onto power in Libya, cables obtained by WikiLeaks offer a vivid account of the lavish spending, rampant nepotism and bitter rivalries that have defined what a 2006 cable called “Qadhafi Incorporated,” using the State Department’s preference from the multiple spellings for Libya’s troubled first family. The glimpses of the clan’s antics in recent years that have reached Libyans despite Col. Qaddafi’s tight control of the media have added to the public anger now boiling over. And the tensions between siblings could emerge as a factor in the chaos in the oil-rich African country. Though the Qaddafi children are
described as jockeying for position as their father ages — three sons fought to profit from a new Coca-Cola franchise — they have been well taken care of, cables say. “All of the Qaddafi children and favorites are supposed to have income streams from the National Oil Company and oil service subsidiaries,” one cable from 2006 says. A year ago, a cable reported that proliferating scandals had sent the clan
into a “tailspin” and “provided local observers with enough dirt for a Libyan soap opera.” Muatassim had repeated his St. Barts New Year’s fest, this time hiring the pop singers Beyoncé and Usher. An unnamed “local political observer” in Tripoli told American diplomats that Muatassim’s “carousing and extravagance angered some locals, who viewed his activities as impious and embarrassing to the nation.” Another brother, Hannibal, meanwhile, had fled London after being accused of physically abusing his wife, Aline, and after the intervention of a Qaddafi daughter, Ayesha, who traveled to London despite being “many months pregnant,” the cable reported. Ayesha, along with Col. Qaddafi’s second wife, Safiya, the mother of six of his eight children, “advised Aline to re-
port to the police that she had been hurt in an ‘accident,’ and not to mention anything about abuse,” the cable said. Amid his siblings’ shenanigans, Seif, the president’s second-eldest son, had been “opportunely disengaged from local affairs,” spending the holidays hunting in New Zealand. His philanthropy, the Qaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, had sent hundreds of tons of aid to earthquake-ravaged Haiti, and he was seen as a reasonable prospect to succeed his father. The same 2010 cable said young Libyan contacts had reported that Seif al-Islam is the ‘hope’ of ‘Libya al-Ghad’ (Libya of tomorrow), with men in their twenties saying that they aspire to be like Seif and think he is the right person
to run the country. They describe him as educated, cultured, and someone who wants a better future for Libya,” by contrast with his brothers, the cable said. That was then. Today the young protesters on the streets are demanding the ouster of the entire family, and it was Seif el-Qaddafi who declared on television at 1 a.m. Monday that Libya faced civil war and “rivers of blood” if the people did not rally
around his father. As for the 68-year-old Colonel Qaddafi, the cables provide an arresting portrait, describing him as a hypochondriac who fears flying over water and often fasts on Mondays and Thursdays. The cables said he was an avid fan of horse racing and flamenco dancing who once added “King of Culture” to the long list of titles he had awarded himself. The memos also said he was accompanied everywhere by a “voluptuous blonde,” the senior member of his posse of Ukrainian nurses. After Colonel Qaddafi abandoned his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, many American officials praised his cooperation. Visiting with a congressional delegation in 2009, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut told the leader and his party-loving national security adviser, Muatassim, that Libya was “an important ally in the war on terrorism, noting that common enemies sometimes make better friends.” Before Condoleezza Rice visited Libya in 2008 — the first secretary of state to do so since 1953 — the embassy in Tripoli sought to accentuate the positive. True, Colonel Qaddafi was “notoriously mercurial” and “avoids making eye contact,” the cable warned Ms. Rice, and “there may be long, uncomfortable periods of silence.” But he was “a voracious consumer of news,” the cable added, who had such distinctive ideas as resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a single new state called “Isratine.” “A self-styled intellectual and philosopher,” the cable told Ms. Rice, “he has been eagerly anticipating for several years the opportunity to share with you his views on global affairs.”
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Culebra I
sla Culebra is an island-municipality of Puerto Rico originally called Isla Pasaje and Isla de San Ildefonso. It is located approximately 17 miles (27 km) east of the Puerto Rican mainland, 12 miles (19 km) west of St. Thomas and 9 miles (14 km) north of Vieques. Culebra is spread over 5 wards and Culebra (Dewey) Pueblo (The downtown area and the administrative center of the city). The island is also known as Isla Chiquita (“Little Island”) and Última Virgen (“Last Virgin”, reflecting its position at the end of the Virgin islands archipelago). Residents of the island are known as Culebrenses. Christopher Columbus was the first European to arrive at the island in 1493. The island was populated by Taíno Indians prior to this and was used by pirates as a refuge for more than 3 centuries. In 1875, a black Englishman named Stevens was made the first governor of Culebra by the government of Vieques. He was given the task of protecting the island and the fishermen who used the nearby waters from pirates. He was assassinated la-
ter that same year. Culebra was then settled by Cayetano Escudero Sanz on October 27, 1880. This first settlement was called San Ildefonso, to honor the Bishop of Toledo, San Ildefonso de la Culebra. Two years later, on September 25, 1882 construction of the Culebrita Lighthouse began and it was completed on February 25, 1886. It was the oldest operating lighthouse in the Caribbean until 1975, when the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard finally closed the facility. In 1902, Culebra was integrated as a part of Vieques. One year later, on June 26, President Theodore Roosevelt established the Culebra Naval Reservation. A bird refuge was established on February 27, 1909. In
1939, the U.S. Navy began to use the Culebra Archipelago as a gunnery and bombing practice site. This was done in preparation for the United States’ involvement in World War II. In 1971 the people of Culebra began protests, known as the Navy-Culebra protests, for the removal of the U.S. Navy from Culebra. Four years later, in 1975, the use of Culebra as a gunnery range ceased and all operations were moved to Vieques. Culebra was declared an independent island municipality in 1917. The first democratically elected government was put into place in 1960. Prior to this, the government of Puerto Rico appointed delegates to administer the island.
Demographics Culebra is an archipelago consisting of the main island and twenty-three smaller islands that lie off its coast. The largest of these cays are: Culebrita to the east, Cayo Norte to the northeast, and Cayo Luis Peña and Cayo Lobo to the west. The sma-
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ller islands include Cayo Ballena, Cayos Geniqui, Arrecife Culebrita, Las Hermanas, El Mono, Cayo Lobito, Cayo Botijuela, Alcarraza, Los Gemelos, and Piedra Steven. Islands in the archipelago are arid, meaning they have no rivers or streams. All of the fresh water is brought from Puerto Rico via Vieques. Culebra is characterized by an irregular topography resulting in a long intricate shoreline. The island is approximately 7 by 5 miles (11 by 8 km). The coast is marked by cliffs, sandy coral beaches and mangrove forests. Inland, the tallest point on the island is Mount Resaca, with an elevation of 650 feet (198 m). Ensenada Honda is the largest harbor on the island and is considered to be the most hurricane secure harbor in the Caribbean. The capital of the Culebra is Dewey, Puerto Rico.
Nature Reserves Map of the Culebra National Wildlife Refuge These small islands are all classified as nature reserves and several nature reserves also exist on the main island. One of the oldest bird sanctuaries in United States territory was established in Culebra on February 27, 1909 by President Teddy Roosevelt. The Culebra Island Giant Anole (Anolis roosevelti, Xiphosurus roosevelti (according to ITIS)) is an extremely rare or possibly extinct lizard of the Anolis genus. It is native to Culebra Island and was named in honor of Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who was the governor of Puerto Rico at that time. There are bird sanctuaries on many of the islands as well as turtle nesting sites on Culebra. Leatherback, green sea and hawksbill sea turtles use the
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Comes from page 47 beaches for nesting. The archipelagos bird sanctuaries are home to brown boobies, laughing gulls, sooty terns, bridled terns and noddy terns. An estimated 50,000 sea birds find their way back to the sanctuaries every year. These nature reserves comprise 1568 acres (6 km²) of the archipelago’s 7000 acres (28 km²). These nature reserves are protected by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Culebra has no natural large mammals. However, a population of White-tailed deer introduced in 1966 can be found on the eastern region of the island.
Tourism Culebra is a popular weekend tourist destination for Mainland Puerto Ricans, Americans and residents of Vieques. Because of the “arid” nature of the island there is no run-off from rivers or streams resulting in very clear waters around the archipelago. Culebra has many beautiful beaches including Flamenco Beach (Pla-
ya Flamenco), which can be reached by shuttle buses from the ferry. The beach extends for a mile of white coral sand and is framed beautifully by arid tree-covered hills. The beach is also protected by the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources as a Marine Wildlife Reserve. The area west of Flamenco Beach and the adjacent Flamenco Point were used for joint-United States Navy/ Marine Corps military exercises until 1975. Many military relics, including tanks, remain in the area. Culebra and Vieques offered the U.S. military an experience of great value to the battles in the Pacific as a feasible training area for the Fleet Marine Force in amphibious exercises for beach landings
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and naval gunfire support testing. Culebra and Vieques were the two components of the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range Inner Range. In recent years, only the shortened term “Inner Range” was used. Other beaches are only accessible by private car or boats. Of the smaller islands, only Culebrita and Luis Peña permit visitors and can be accessible via water taxis from Culebra. Hiking and nature photography are encouraged on the small islands. However, activities which would disturb the nature reserves are prohibited, e.g. Camping, Littering and Motor Vehicles. Camping, however, is allowed on Playa Flamenco throughout the year. Reservations are recommended. Culebra is also a popular destination for scuba divers because of the many reefs throughout the archipelago and the crystal clear waters. Landmarks and places of interes • Flamenco Beach Ranked # 2 in the top 10 most exotic beaches in the world. • Brava Beach • Las Vacas Beach • Larga Beach • Pueblo Español • Punta Soldado Beach • Resaca Beach
• Tamarindo Beach • Tortuga Beach Festivals and events • Windsurfing Competition - February • Fishing Tournament - March • Patron Festivities - June • Craft Festivities - November
Transportation Culebra has a small airport, Benjamín Rivera Noriega Airport with domestic service to the mainland and Vieques. The airport is served by small airlines: • Air Culebra from San Juan’s Luis Muñoz Marín and Isla Grande Airports. • Air Flamenco provides service from Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport in Isla Grande, Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, and José Aponte de la Torre Airport in Ceiba. • Vieques Air Link provides service to Culebra from San Juan and Fajardo. • M&N Aviation from Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport in Isla Grande, and José Aponte de la Torre Airport in Ceiba. Ferry service is available from Fajardo.
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36 Hours in Washington, D.C. By HELENE COOPER
W
ASHINGTON is suddenly hip again, infused with the heady double-barreled combination of a new crowd of idealistic young political worker bees, who actually believe they can change the world, and the arrival of America’s first black president. It’s even cool to wave the Stars and Stripes. And in the honeymoon months of the Barack Obama presidency, before the country’s marriage to its new president undergoes the usual souring, a trip to the nation’s capital is just the ticket. Why, it would almost be unpatriotic not to visit. Friday 6 p.m. 1) EARLY HOUSE PARTY Hobnob with the Beltway arrivistes at Eighteenth Street Lounge (1212 18th Street NW; 202-466-3922; www. eighteenthstreetlounge.com). Enter through the door next to the Mattress Discounters — there’s no sign outside — take the stairs and voila! A multilevel row house, with room after room of velvet couches and fireplaces, awaits you. There’s a back deck for spring and summer after-work cocktails, and the crowd is a mix of Yes We Can activists and Middle Eastern and European World Bank types. 8 p.m. 2) EAT LIKE OPRAH
Take a taxi to Capital Hill, to Art and Soul Restaurant in the Liaison Hotel (415 New Jersey Avenue NW; 202-393-7777; www.artandsouldc. com). Oprah Winfrey’s former chef, Art Smith, owns this restaurant, and it is command central for big inauguration parties. Yes, you’ve already had a cocktail, but you’re not driving, so be sure to try the margarita, Perfected at the bar before sitting down to eat. The menu will remind you that, yes, Washington is a Southern city — don’t even think of missing the Chesapeake
Bay fry to start. It’s a combination of deep-fried seafood — clams, calamari, shrimp, oysters with, of course, okra. Land and Sea hoecakes (with blue crab, beef and brie) are ridiculously good. If you’re still hungry, then go for the pork chop with red-eyed gravy. And the babycakes — miniature coconut and chocolate cupcakes. Dinner for two, with cocktails, wine and dessert, is about $140. 10 p.m. 3) FREEDOM WALK With luck, you did not wear the five-inch Prada heels tonight, because you’re about to walk off that pork chop as you head down the National Mall. Your destination is the Lincoln Memorial (www.nps.gov/linc), with ole Abe backlit at night. Washington’s monument row is always best viewed at night, when the tourists are gone and the romantics are strolling arm in arm. On election night, the Lincoln Memorial was an emotionally charged spot: Illinois was sending another of its sons to Washington. Since then, the monument — long the first destination for African-American visitors to Washington — has become almost a retreat, as residents and visitors alike come to read the inscription “With malice toward none, with charity for all” and to ponder America the Beautiful. Saturday 9 a.m. 4) MORNING SIT-IN Breakfast at Florida Avenue Grill (1100 Florida Avenue NW; 202-265-1586), a soul food institution, is a dip into the past, evoking the feel of lunch counter sit-ins and the civil rights movement. The place has been serving greasy and delicious Southern cooking since 1944. Buttery grits, Virginia ham, biscuits and gravy, even scra-
pple — all surrounded by photos of past Washington bigwigs as various as Ron Brown, the former Commerce Secretary, and Strom Thurmond, the former South Carolina Senator. Mr. Obama might have to keep his shirt on if he follows his predecessors here. 10 a.m. 5) 1600 PENNSYLVANIA We know. It’s the ultimate in touristy. But come on, it’s the White House (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; 202-456-7041; www.whitehouse.gov). To schedule a public tour, first you’ll need to find nine friends to come with you. Then call your Congressional representative to schedule. (Not sure who? Go to writerep.house.gov.) These self-guided tours — which are allotted on a first-come-first-served basis about one month before the requested date — allow you to explore the public rooms and the gardens. Sorry, you won’t be able to check out the indoor basketball court Mr. Obama might put in, but you will get to see the East Room, the Diplomatic Reception Room and the dining room where they have those swanky state dinners. Noon 6) HELLO, BETSY No, not that Betsy ... there are no star-spangled banners at Betsy Fisher (1224 Connecticut Avenue NW; 202-785-1975; www.betsyfisher.com). This stylish and funky boutique is port of call for those deputies in the new Obama administration. (Mr. Obama’s transition spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, gets her Diane von Furstenberg dresses there.) The owner, Betsy Fisher Albaugh, always has cocktails and wine on hand to occupy the men who invariably are dragged into the store.
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Comes from page 49 2 p.m. 7) GO REPRESENT It took six years to complete, but the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center (Capitol Hill; at the east end of the Mall; 202-225-6827; www.visitthecapitol. gov) finally opened last month. The subterranean center is meant to relieve the bottleneck that used to serve as the entryway for visitors to the Capitol. It does that and more, although the reviews have been mixed; some critics say it assumes a life of its own that is too separate from the Capitol itself. See for yourself — you can book a tour via the Web site, or just show up and wander around. The center has a rotating display of historic documents that can range from a ceremonial copy of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery to the speech President Bush delivered to Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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7 p.m. 8) PARTY CHASER O.K., enough with the federal touring, it’s time to hang out with the real Washingtonians. Head to the always hopping U Street Corridor, and plop yourself on a stool at Local 16 (1602 U Street NW; 202-265-2828; www. localsixteen.com), a popular Democratic hangout. There are multiple lounges and, best of all, a roof deck, where you can see the city lights while you sip your predinner watermelon martini. A lot of Democratic fundraisers habituate the place, so don’t be surprised if there’s a private party in one of the rooms. 8:30 p.m. 9) POLITICAL DISH Have dinner a few blocks away at Cork Wine Bar (1720 14th Street NW; 202-265-2675; www.corkdc.com), which might have the best fries in town. The owners, Khalid Pitts and Diane Gross, are friends of Barack (well, Mr. Pitts is director of political accountability with
the Service Employees International Union, which endorsed Mr. Obama, and Ms. Gross has worked with the Democratic political establishment for years). The menu includes both small and big bites, from marinated olives and cheeses to duck confit and sautéed kale. And for goodness’ sake, don’t forget those fries! They are tossed with garlic and lemon. In fact, order two helpings. Dinner for two with wine, around $60. 10:30 p.m. 10) SMOKE-FILLED ROOM Puff away the rest of your evening at Chi-Cha (1624 U Street NW; 202-234-8400; www.latinconcepts. com/chi-cha), a hookah lounge where you can smoke honey tobacco out of a water pipe and sip late-night cocktails. The eclectic crowd dances to rumba and slow salsa into the wee hours, and there’s always a diplomat in a corner couch doing something inappropriate — avert your eyes, enjoy your hookah and sway to the beat. You could be in Beirut. O.K., let’s try that one again. You could be in Marrakesh. Well, maybe Marrakesh with Brazilian music. If you want to keep the night going, stop by Ben’s Chili Bowl when it’s at its busiest. Sunday 8 a.m. 11) RIVER IDYLL Washington is known for beautiful mornings along the Potomac River, and a perfect way to see it is from a canoe. Thompson Boat Center (2900 Virginia Avenue NW; 202-333-9543; www. thompsonboatcenter.com), just where Georgetown meets Rock Creek Parkway, offers canoe rentals starting at $8 an hour and $22 a day. Paddle up the river, and you
might catch a Senator (or a Saudi prince) having coffee on the patio of his stately home. 12:30 p.m. 12) LIFT YOUR VOICE St. Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church (1419 V Street NW; 202-265-1470; www.saintaugustine-dc.org), which calls itself “the Mother Church of Black Catholics in the United States” is one of the oldest black Catholic churches in the country. The 12:30 Sunday Mass combines traditional black spirituals with gospel music. The place has been rocking with particular fervor since Election Day 2008. THE BASICS Hotel Palomar (2121 P Street NW; 202-448-1800; www.hotelpalomar-dc. com) is a Kimpton boutique hotel in the heart of Dupont Circle. Rates start at $150. Hotel Monaco (700 F Street NW; 202-628-7177; www.monaco-dc.com), also a Kimpton hotel, is in the Penn Quarter neighborhood across from the National Portrait Gallery and near the International Spy Museum. Rooms from $180. Hotel Tabard Inn (1739 N Street NW; 202-785-1277; www.tabardinn. com) is a budget alternative (some rooms share a bathroom) filled with charm; think Old England not far from the White House. Rooms with shared bath start at $113; with private bath, $158.
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Advertising
A Campaign to Introduce Keds to a New Generation By TANZINA VEGA
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RIVERS who see a 32-foot shoebox rolling down the highway over the next few weeks should not be alarmed. The large white box is part of a new national marketing campaign for the sneaker company Keds. The campaign, called “How Do You Do?,” is intended to reach millennials, who are generally in their 20s, by taking the shoebox on wheels on a cross-country tour of college campuses. The campaign is also part of an effort to reposition the Keds brand, which has existed since 1916, said Kristin Kohler Burrows, president of Keds Group, which is part of Collective Brands. “As people go through identity crises, so do the brands,” Ms. Kohler said, adding that one of the goals of the campaign was to “awaken people to the fact that it is an iconic brand.” Since 2009, the company has been laying the foundation for that awakening by revamping the Keds Web site and participating in partnerships with designers and outlets like Alice and Olivia, Jeffrey New York and Richard Chai. Keds has also joined with the Whitney Museum of American Art on the Keds Whitney Collection, where artists like Jenny Holzer, Laura Owens and Sarah Crowner created limited-edition designs of the canvas sneakers, which were sold in Bloomingdale’s in New York City. The company also created the online Keds Collective, where artists and designers could create their own versions of Keds to be sold on the company Web site. Users can also design their own Keds sneakers by customizing each of the 15 parts of the shoe, including details like the tongue binding, eyelets and laces. A print campaign that began in 2010 was the next step in reintroducing the brand to the millennial demographic, which Ms. Kohler defined as optimistic, collaborative, open and diverse. The ads featured groups of people doing things like building a sustainable garden on a rooftop. “What’s critical to the consumer today is giving back to the community,” Ms. Kohler said. The buildup of artist collaboration and partnerships culminates in the 2011 “How Do You Do?” cam-
paign, which will encourage the target audience to create and collaborate, and emphasizes the idea of Keds sneakers being a canvas used to express that creativity, Ms. Kohler said. Beginning in March, the mobile shoebox will stop at college campuses in nine cities across the nation, including the University of Texas at Austin during the South by Southwest music festival and the Fashion Institute of Technology and Pace University in New York. The schools are representative of colleges with strong arts or fashionbased programs, Ms. Kohler said. Inside the shoebox, visitors will find two touch-screen maps of the tour where they can watch videos about the local artists, retail outlets and charity organizations that Keds is working with in each city. On another wall, users can see a gallery of Keds shoes inspired by each city on the tour schedule. “We really feel that what’s important to this consumer is to engage with a brand and experience firsthand a brand,” said Ms. Kohler. Outside the shoebox, visitors will see activities that expand on the “How Do You Do?” campaign slogan. For a section called “How Do You Do Keds?” students will be able to customize their own sneakers using a touch-screen kiosk, and can purchase the sneakers from the shoebox. The kiosks will also promote a shoedesign competition called “How Do You Do Your City?” which will run through the month of March. The winner of the competition will get a $1,000 prize and a $5,000 donation to an arts-based charity. Keds is also sponsoring a segment called “How Do You Do Charity?,” where users will be asked to post messages on Twitter, using the symbol #HDYD, describing what inspires them about their city. The company will donate $1 per post to a local arts-based charity in each city, up to a predetermined maximum. For each city in the tour, Keds has teamed up with local artists who will use the sneakers as a canvas. The slogans for each of the city stops will reflect the city name, as in “How Do You Do Austin?” and “How Do You Do New York?” For a concurrent promotion — “How Do You Do Art?” — local artists will create a mural on an eight-foot canvas inspired by the postings on Twitter using the tag
#HDYD. A fashion show hosted on a blue Keds carpet, called “How Do You Do Fashion?,” will feature local models wearing Keds shoes and clothing from designers in each city. A segment called “How Do You Do Music?” will feature performances from local bands and disk jockeys. To help find local talent and generate interest on each campus, Keds joined with Mr Youth, a company that creates experiential and interactive marketing campaigns focused on young people. The company provided two student “ambassadors” for each stop on the Keds tour and worked with Keds on the execution of the mobile tour. “Students have access on campus that local companies don’t,” said Matthew Britton, the company’s
founder and chief executive. “All the local elements are basically going to be curated by those local ambassadors.” The students were chosen from a database of 125,000 students on RepNation.com and will be paid $500 to $2,500 for a semester of work in addition to other incentives. According to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, Keds spent $1.68 million on advertising from January through September 2010 and $450,000 during the same period in 2009. The company used its internal agency for other elements in the “How Do You Do?” campaign, including print ads featuring young artists from around the country. The Keds Web site will have an overview of all of the campaign elements and video biographies of the participating artists.
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Why Budget Cuts Don’t Bring Prosperity By DAVID LEONHARDT
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emember the German economic boom of 2010? Germany’s economic growth surged in the middle of last year, causing commentators both there and here to proclaim that American stimulus had failed and German austerity had worked. Germany’s announced budget cuts, the commentators said, had given private companies enough confidence in the government to begin spending their own money again. Well, it turns out the German boom didn’t last long. With its modest stimulus winding down, Germany’s growth slowed sharply late last year, and its economic output still has not recovered to its prerecession peak. Output in the United States — where the stimulus program has been bigger and longer lasting — has recovered. This country would now need to suffer through a double-dip recession for its gross domestic product to be in the same condition as Germany’s. Yet many members of Congress continue to insist that budget cuts are the path to prosperity. The only question in Washington seems to be how deeply to cut federal spending this year. If the economy were at a different point in the cycle — not emerging from a financial crisis — the coming fight over spending could actually be quite productive. Republicans could force Democrats to make government more efficient, which Democrats rarely do on their own. Democrats could force Republicans to abandon the worst of their proposed cuts, like those to medical research, law enforcement, college financial aid and preschools. And maybe such a benevolent compromise can still occur over the next several years. The immediate problem, however, is the fragility of the economy. Gross domestic product may have surpassed its previous peak, but it’s still growing too slowly for
companies to be doing much hiring. States, of course, are making major cuts. A big round of federal cuts will only make things worse. So if the opponents of deep federal cuts, starting with President Obama, are trying to decide how hard to fight, they may want to err on the side of toughness. Both logic and history make this case. Let’s start with the logic. The austerity crowd argues that government cuts will lead to more activity by the private sector. How could that be? The main way would be if the government were using so many resources that it was driving up their price and making it harder for companies to use them. In the early 1990s, for instance, government borrowing was pushing up interest rates. When the deficit began to fall, interest rates did too. Projects that had not previously been profitable for companies suddenly began to make sense. The resulting economic boom brought in more tax revenue and further reduced the deficit. But this virtuous cycle can’t happen today. Interest rates are already very low. They’re low because the financial crisis and recession caused a huge drop in the private sector’s demand for loans. Even with all the government spending to fight the recession, overall demand for loans has remained historically low, the data shows. Similarly, there is no evidence that the government is gobbling up too many workers and keeping them from the private sector. When John Boehner, the speaker of the House, said last week that federal payrolls had grown by 200,000 people since Mr. Obama took office, he was simply wrong. The federal government has added only 58,000 workers, largely in national security, since January 2009. State and local governments have cut 405,000 jobs over the same span. The fundamental problem after a financial crisis is that businesses and households stop spending money, and they remain skittish for years afterward. Consider
that new-vehicle sales, which peaked at 17 million in 2005, recovered to only 12 million last year. Single-family home sales, which peaked at 7.5 million in 2005, continued falling last year, to 4.6 million. No wonder so many businesses are uncertain about the future. Without the government spending of the last two years — including tax cuts — the economy would be in vastly worse shape. Likewise, if the federal government begins laying off tens of thousands of workers now, the economy will clearly suffer. That’s the historical lesson of postcrisis austerity movements. The history is a rich one, too, because people understandably react to a bubble’s excesses by calling for the reverse. When Franklin Roosevelt was running for president in 1932, he repeatedly called for a balanced budget. But no matter how morally satisfying austerity may be, it’s the wrong answer. Hoover’s austere instincts worsened the Depression. Roosevelt’s postelection reversal helped, but he also prolonged the Depression by raising taxes and cutting spending in 1937. Only the giant stimulus program known as World War II finally ended the Depression. When the private sector is hesitant to spend, the government has to — or no one will. Our recent crisis serves up the same lesson. Germany isn’t even the best example. Its response to the crisis has had some successful features, like an hours-reduction program to minimize layoffs, and Germany’s turn to austerity has not been radical. Britain’s has been radical, with a tax increase having already taken effect and deep spending cuts coming. Partly as a result, Britain’s economy is now in worse shape than Germany’s. “It’s really quite striking how well the U.S. is performing relative to the U.K., which is tightening aggressively,” says Ian Shepherdson, a Britain-based economist for the research firm High Frequency Eco-
nomics, “and relative to Germany, which is tightening more modestly.” Mr. Shepherdson adds that he generally opposes stimulus programs for a normal recession but that they are crucial after a crisis. The trick is finding the political will to end the stimulus when the time comes. That is not easy, especially for Democrats, given that stimulus programs tend to include policies they favor. But the wave of recently elected Republicans, in Congress and the states, will no doubt be happy to help summon that political will. For the sake of the economy, the best compromise in coming weeks would be one that trades short-term spending for medium- and long-term cuts. Beef up the costcontrol measures in the health care overhaul and add new ones, like malpractice reform. Cut more wasteful military programs, like the F-35 jet engine. Force more social programs to prove they work — and cut their funding in future years if they don’t. By all means, though, don’t follow the path of the Germans and the British just because it feels morally satisfying.
Long After Giving His Money Away, a Donor Takes the Pledge By STEPHANIE STROM
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he Shy Philanthropist is most decidedly going public. Charles F. Feeney, who made a fortune as co-founder of Duty Free Stores, has become the 59th signatory to the Giving Pledge, the project created by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren E. Buffett to encourage the mega-rich to commit at least half their wealth to philanthropy. Mr. Feeney, who eschews all the trappings of wealth, gave virtually all of his billions to the organizations now known as the Atlantic Philanthropies more than 25 years ago, but he insisted on keeping his philanthropy secret. Organizations receiving grants from
Atlantic were required to sign contracts that stipulated they would not reveal its support, and its Manhattan offices were hidden behind unmarked doors in a nondescript office building for years. But by 2007, when Atlantic hired Gara LaMarche, an outspoken alumni of George Soros’s Open Society foundations and the American Civil Liberties Union, it had decidedly hung its shingle out in the open. Mr. Feeney originally declined to sign the Giving Pledge, as he explains in the letter he wrote to accompany his change of heart, available at the Giving Pledge Web site. “Though I cannot pledge what I have already given — the Atlantic Philanthropies
have made over $5.5 billion in grants since inception — I want to now publicly add my enthusiastic support for this effort and celebrate this great accomplishment,” he wrote in his letter. Mr. Feeney is a leading advocate of a school of philanthropy that argues on behalf of “giving while living” rather than creating a foundation that will live in perpetuity, and his intention is for Atlantic to have spent its final dollar by 2020. The Gateses have stipulated that the money they have devoted to philanthropy must be spent down within 50 years after the death of whomever lives the longest. Mr. Buffett, who is giving the bulk of his fortune away through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has insisted that wha-
tever is left at his death be spent within 10 years after the settlement of his estate. Even though neither the Gateses nor Mr. Buffett has ever advocated that pledge signatories adopt similar spend-down policies, Mr. Feeney makes it clear in his letter that he plans to use his participation to urge fellow signers to give away their money while they are alive. “Today’s needs are so great and varied that intelligent philanthropic support and positive interventions can have greater value and impact today than if they are delayed when the needs are greater,” he wrote. “I urge those who are taking up the Giving Pledge example to invest substantially in philanthropic causes soon and not postpone their giving or personal engagement.”
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Bank Closings Tilt Toward Poor Areas By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
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ntil it closed its doors in December, the Ohio Savings Bank branch on North Moreland Boulevard was a neighborhood anchor in Cleveland, midway between the mansions of Shaker Heights and the ramshackle bungalows of the city’s east side. Now it sits boarded up, a victim not only of Cleveland’s economic troubles but also of a broader trend of bank branch closings that is falling more heavily on low- and moderate-income neighborhoods across the country. In 2010, for the first time in 15 years, more bank branches closed than opened across the United States. An analysis of government data shows, however, that even as banks shut branches in poorer areas, they continued to expand in wealthier ones, despite decades of government regulations requiring financial institutions to meet the credit needs of poor and middle-class neighborhoods. The number of bank branches fell to 98,517 in 2010, from 99,550 the previous year, a loss of nearly 1,000 locations, according to data compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Banks are expected to keep closing branches in the coming years, partly because of new technology and automation and partly because of the mortgage bust and the financial crisis of 2008. New regulations will also cut deeply into revenue, including restrictions on fees for overdraft protection — a major moneymaker on accounts aimed at lower-income customers. Yet the local branch remains a crucial part of the nation’s financial infrastructure, banking analysts say, even as more customers manage their accounts via the Internet and mobile phones. “In a competitive environment, banks are cutting costs and closing branches, but there are social costs to that decision,” said Mark T. Williams, a banking expert at Boston University and a former bank examiner for the Federal Reserve. “When a branch gets pulled out of a low- or moderate-income neighborhood, it’s not as if those needs go away.” Mr. Williams and other observers express concern that the vacuum will be filled by so-called predatory lenders, including check-cashing centers, payday loan providers and pawnshops. The F.D.I.C. estimates that roughly 30 million American households either have no bank account or rely on these more expensive alternatives to traditional banking. The most recent wave of closures gathered steam after the financial crisis in 2008, as banks of all sizes staggered under the weight of bad home loans. In some cases, banks with heavy exposure to risky mortgage debt simply cut branches as part of a broader restructuring. In other cases, banking companies merged and closed branches to consolidate. Whatever the cause, there were sharp disparities in how the closures played out from 2008 to 2010, according to a detailed analysis by The New York Times of data from SNL Financial, an information provider for the banking industry. Using data culled from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and ESRI, a private geographic information firm, SNL matched up the location of closed branches with census data from the surrounding neighborhood. In low-income areas, where the median household income was below $25,000, and in moderate-income areas, where the medium household income was between $25,000 and $50,000, the number of branches declined by 396 between 2008 and 2010. In neighborhoods where household income was above $100,000, by contrast, 82 branches were added during the same period.
“You don’t have to be a statistician to see that there’s a dual financial system in America, one for essentially middle- and high-income consumers, and another one for the people that can least afford it,” said John Taylor, president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that advocates for expanding financial services in underserved communities. “In those neighborhoods, you won’t see bank branches,” he added. “You’ll see buildings that used to be banks, surrounded by payday lenders and check cashers that cropped up.” Wayne A. Abernathy, an executive vice president of the American Bankers Association, disputed Mr. Taylor’s conclusion, as well as the significance of the data. “You need to look at the context,” he said. “We’re looking at a pool of more than 95,000 branches, and we’ve had several hundred banks fail, so what would be surprising is if no branches had closed.” The Community Reinvestment Act, signed into law more than three decades ago in an effort to combat discrimination and encourage banks to serve local communities, requires financial institutions to notify federal regulators of branch closings. But legal experts say the federal watchdogs that are supposed to enforce the law have been timid. “The C.R.A. has been a financial Maginot Line — weakly defended and quickly overrun,” said Raymond H. Brescia, a professor at Albany Law School. What’s more, Mr. Brescia said, while closing branches violates the spirit of the law, if not the letter, he could not recall a single example in which a bank was cited by regulators under the C.R.A. for branch closures in recent years. “The C.R.A leaves banks a lot of leeway,” he said, “and regulators have not wielded their power with much force.” Even as more customers turn to online banking, said Kathleen Engel, a law professor at Suffolk University in Boston, the presence of brick-and-mortar branches encourages “a culture of savings,” beginning with passbook accounts for children and visits to the local bank. “If we lose branch banking in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, banks stop being central to the culture in those communities,” said Ms. Engel, author of a new book, “The Subprime Virus: Reckless Credit, Regulatory Failure and Next Steps.” Among individual financial institutions, especially those hit hard by the mortgage mess, the differences between rich and poor communities were especially marked. Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., had 107 fewer branches serving low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in 2010 than it did in 2008. The company, which has yet to repay $3.5 billion in federal bailout money, shuttered just one branch in a high-income neighborhood, according to SNL Financial. At Zions Bancorporation, a Utah lender battered by losses on commercial real estate loans, branches in lowand moderate-income neighborhoods dropped by 24, compared with a decrease of just one branch in an upperincome area. It still owes the federal government $1.4 billion in bailout money. A spokesman for Zions said the branch closings reflected a strategic move to exit all supermarket locations as well as merger-related consolidation, rather than a withdrawal from particular neighborhoods. A similar trend is evident at some larger institutions. Bank of America closed 25 branches in moderate-income areas and opened 14 in the richest areas, according to the SNL data. Citigroup, whose branch network is smaller than Bank of America’s, closed two branches in the poorest areas and opened three in the wealthiest. The head of Citigroup’s global consumer business,
Manuel Medina-Mora, made no secret of his bank’s intention to focus on the wealthy in the country, telling a Wall Street investor conference in November that “in retail banking, we will focus our growth in the emergent affluent and affluent segments in major cities — exactly in line with our global consumer banking strategy.” Comparisons for two other giants, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, are more difficult because of the addition of thousands of branches in all categories in 2008 as they absorbed Wachovia and Washington Mutual, both of which were pushed to the brink by mortgage losses. From 2009 to 2010, however, Wells closed 57 branches in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and shut 20 in upper-income census tracts. JPMorgan Chase, which emerged from the turmoil of 2008 as the healthiest of the big banks, actually opened 11 branches in low- and moderate neighborhoods, while it closed one in the $100,000-plus communities. A spokeswoman for Bank of America, Anne Pace, defended her company’s record, noting that more than one-third of its new branch openings in 2011 would be in low- and moderate-income communities. Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Regions Financial disputed the statistics provided by SNL, arguing that the number of branches closed in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods was overstated. The three banks insisted they are committed to serving all customers and communities, regardless of the income level. In Cleveland, the closing of the Ohio Savings branch in December was one more bit of fallout from the financial crisis, according to Chris Warren, the city’s chief of regional development. A year earlier, New York Community Bancorp took over the assets of AmTrust Bank, now operating as Ohio Savings Bank in Ohio, after it was shut by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision. The F.D.I.C.’s deposit insurance fund took a $2 billion loss as a result of the closing. The North Moreland branch was the only one of Ohio Savings’ 29 branches in the state to close. “This was their introduction of their approach to community investment in this city,” Mr. Warren said. “They closed down the only branch Ohio Savings had in a low-to-moderate-income, African-American neighborhood.” A spokeswoman for New York Community Bank said the branch was closed only because the bank was unable to reach a new agreement on a lease. She said customers could choose other branches nearby, including an Ohio Savings branch 2.4 miles way. That is little comfort to customers like Lucretia Clay, who manages a store nearby and lives within walking distance of the now-shuttered branch. “I’ve given that bank a lot of money over the years,” she said. “So they should be here in the community. I shouldn’t have to drive forever to go find them.”
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Signs of a ‘Turnaround’ for the Banking Industry By ERIC DASH . ankers are finally starting to see the green shoots of a recovery. As loan losses eased, the banking industry swung to an $87.5 billion profit in 2010 from a net loss of $10.6 billion a year earlier, according to the latest government report card released on Wednesday. For the first time in six years, the number of institutions reporting an annual loss decreased. Even so, the nation’s banks remain under pressure from flagging revenue growth, and hundreds of small lenders remain at risk. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said that its list of “problem banks” — those with the highest risk of failing — had grown for the fifth year in a row, to 884, or just over one in nine lenders. Most are small community banks, saddled with bad real estate loans. Not all of the banks are destined to fail, but F.D.I.C. officials reiterated that they believed the number peaked at 157 banks in 2010 — an 18-year high. They expect both the number of closures and
B
total assets to be lower this year. Sheila C. Bair, the agency’s chairwoman, declared 2010 a crucial “turnaround year” for the banking industry. “Cleaning up balance sheets is only a first step,” she said in a statement. “Now, we are looking to the industry to take the next step, and begin to build their loan portfolios. The long-term health of both the industry and our economy will depend on a responsible expansion of bank lending.” Despite some recent promising signs, lending remained weak. Total loans and leases fell slightly during the quarter, the ninth time in the last 10 quarters. With the economy still fragile, many bankers do not expect a sharp increase in lending anytime soon. Revenue growth was similarly sluggish, just 1.7 percent higher than a year earlier. This was, in part, a result of sharp declines in fee income stemming from new financial regulations designed to protect consumers. Service fee charges on checking accounts, for example, fell 20 percent from a year earlier. Bank earnings, however, con-
tinued to rebound. The nation’s 7,657 banks reported $21.7 billion in profit in the fourth quarter, the F.D.I.C. reported. That was an improvement of about $23.5 billion from the $1.8 billion net loss the industry reported in the fourth quarter of 2009. It is the sixth consecutive quarter that earnings have registered a year over year increase, with nearly two in three banks posting better results. Fewer borrowers are falling behind on their loan payments, giving banks confidence to set aside the lowest amount of money since the credit crisis erupted in late 2007. Banks set aside $31.6 billion to cover loan losses in the fourth quarter, almost half of what they set aside in the period a year earlier. But the improvement was not spread evenly; just seven big banks accounted for the bulk of that $31 billion decrease. Regulators have cited the banks’ extremely thin reserves in the early days of the financial crisis as a major factor exacerbating the industry’s troubles, and they are eager to avoid a repeat.
Next month, the nation’s 19 biggest will learn the results of a new round of stress tests aimed at assessing their ability to cope with losses during a protracted downturn. The results will determine whether they are healthy enough to start raising a dividend. But with so many smaller lenders failing, the deposit insurance fund has been especially hard hit. At the end of December, it carried a negative balance of $7.4 billion, a slight improvement from a negative balance of $8 billion in September. The insurance fund is in better shape than such numbers might suggest, however. The F.D.I.C. has said that it will be able to recoup the costs through higher insurance premiums and a special assessment imposed in September 2009. The agency also expects the cost of resolving troubled banks to be lower in the near future. “We expect the DIF balance will turn positive in 2011,” Ms. Bair said in a statement, referring to the deposit insurance fund. “There is ample liquidity to meet our obligations arising from past and future bank failures.”
Home Sales Rise on Foreclosures and Cash Deals M
ore people bought previously occupied homes in January, but sales increased on a rising number of foreclosures and all-cash deals. The National Association of Realtors said that sales of previously occupied homes rose slightly last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.36 million. That was up 2.7 percent from 5.22 million in December. The pace is still far below the 6 million homes a year that economists say represents a healthy market. And the number of first-time home buyers shrunk to 29 percent of the market. A more healthy level of first-time home buyers is about 40 percent, according to the trade group. Foreclosures represented 37 percent of sales in January. And allcash transactions accounted for 32
percent of home sales — double the rate from two years ago when the trade group began tracking these deals. In places like Las Vegas and Miami, cash deals represented half of all sales. One reason cash sales are rising is that a growing number of purchases are being made by investors, the Realtors group said. Millions of foreclosures have forced down prices and more are expected this year. The median price of a home sold in January was $158,800. That is a 3.7 percent decrease from a year ago and the lowest point since April 2002. Tight credit has made mortgage loans tough to come by. And some potential buyers who could qualify for loans are hesitant to enter the market, worried that prices will fall further. High unemployment is also deterring buyers.
With mortgage rates rising, mortgage applications have been volatile and are now near their lowest levels in 15 years. Economists say it could take years for home sales to return to healthy levels. Last year, home sales fell to 4.9 million, the lowest level in 13 years. And even that number, some say, was overstated. The Realtors group, which has produced the monthly report on the number of existing homes sold since 1968 and acts as the chief advocate and lobbying arm for real estate agents, says it is reviewing its 2010 yearly estimate. One obstacle to a housing recovery is the glut of unsold homes. Those numbers fell to 3.38 million units in January. But at the January pace, it would take 7.6 months to clear them off the market. Most
analysts say a six-month supply represents a healthy supply of homes. Analysts said the situation is much worse when the “shadow inventory” of homes is taken into account. These are homes that are in the early stages of the foreclosure process but have not been put on the market yet for resale. For January, sales were up in three of the four regions of the country, led by an 7.9 percent rise in the West. Sales were up 3.6 percent in the South, 1.8 percent in the Midwest and down 4.6 percent in the Northeast. The January increase was driven by a 2.4 percent rise in sales of single-family homes, which pushed activity in this area to an annual rate of 4.69 million units. Sales of condominiums were up 4.7 percent, to a rate of 670,000 units.
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Football Association Champions League. The yacht needed work when it visited New Zealand over the Christmas New Year period of 2006/7. The work was carried out by Yachtwork . Its latest drydock and refit was in business partner Eugene Shvidler, who is Port Canaveral, FL in 2008. This refit inclucurrently on vacation in Puerto Rico. The ded a new “green” wastewater treatment yacht is estimated to be worth over $100 system in addition to the current Lloyd’s million. Le Grand Bleu has a crew of thirty and is powered by two 3,600 hp Wärtsilä engines. Both Shvidler and Abramovich are protective of their families privacy and highly security-conscious. The yacht interiors were designed by Terence Disdale. After departing the yard, Le Grand Bleu headed for the Mediterranean and caused quite a stir wherever it went. It was in Monaco in May 2004, serving as a base for Abramovich during his soccer team Chelsea Football Club’s matches against AS Monaco in the United European
Le Grand Bleu T
he tenth largest private yacht in the world at 341 ft in length, Le Grand Bleu visited our island. It was built at the Bremer Vulkan yard in Bremen, Germany, and was launched in 2000. It was designed by Stefano Pastrovich and constructed by Kusch Yachts. It was previously owned by John McCaw Jr., an American businessman, who sold her to Russian businessman Roman Abramovich in 2002. Abramovich had it refitted to his own preferences by HDW in Kiel, Germany. This included an internal refit and the addition of a 16-foot (4.9 m) swim platform. In June 2006, Abramovich gave Le Grand Bleu to its current owner, friend and
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ARCHITECTURE & HOME DECOR
certified system. The new treatment system allows the ship to reuse the wastewater after treatment rather than discharging the wastewater overboard into the sea. As of January 2010, it could frequently be seen docked in Nassau, Bahamas. It was at anchor in Marigot, St Martin (20 January 2011). It was at the cruise-ship terminal in St Vincent (29 January, 2011) On the 31st of January 2011, it was anchored off Grand Anse Beach, Grenada. On the 11th of February 2011, it was anchored off of Gustavia, Saint Barths, FWI. On Monday the 28th of February 2011, it was anchored in San Juan, Puerto Rico and remained there at presstime.
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The San Juan Weekly
Le Grand Bleu Yacht has thirtyfour transportation vehicles including a helicopter, a submarine, a sail boat and many other types of cars and boats.
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Sports
Knicks Go for Greatness With Anthony
By HOWARD BECK
C
armelo Anthony wanted the Knicks, and the Knicks wanted Carmelo Anthony, but the trade that finally united them was so much more complicated than mutual attraction. The Knicks had to navigate a minefield of conflicting agendas, internal and external. They had to weigh Anthony’s competitive drive against his drive for financial security. They had to gauge the anxiety of the Denver Nuggets and the stubborn persistence of the Nets. They ultimately paid a staggering price — four rotation players, all of them 26 or younger, three draft picks and $6 million in cash — to acquire Anthony and Chauncey Billups. But the Knicks nudged a little closer to contender status late Monday night, and that was all the justification they needed. Anthony, one of the N.B.A.’s elite scorers, is joining Amar’e Stoudemire, one of game’s fiercest big men, on the league’s greatest stage. Any nagging details — a gutted roster, a fractured front office — were deemed secondary. “We know that we want to win a championship,” Coach Mike D’Antoni said Tuesday. “And the way to do it, you got to get some star players in here. And you can’t say, ‘Well, what if, what if.’ We could be here forever. And what-ifs never happen. But we know we have two of the best players in the league.” The trade, which also involved the Minnesota Timberwolves, came together late Monday and was approved by the league in a conference call Tuesday night. The call was delayed all day until Anthony
completed a three-year, $65 million extension with the Nuggets that was agreed to as part of the deal. Anthony, Billups and the four other players obtained by the Knicks are expected to be in New York on Wednesday, although it is not clear whether they will be eligible to play that night against the Milwaukee Bucks. All players in the trade must pass physical examinations (or have them waived) before anyone can play for new teams. Without the new players, the Knicks would have nine players available. Anthony, 26, had been pushing for a trade since last summer and angling to join the Knicks all along. The Knicks preferred to keep their assets and sign Anthony as a free agent after the season. Anthony’s conflicting priorities made that a risky bet. Anthony wanted New York, but he also wanted his contract extension before the N.B.A. possibly adopted a more restrictive labor deal this summer. Knicks officials feared that Anthony — despite his well-known preference to play here — would sign the extension in Denver, or in New Jersey or some other city if they did not get him now. “I think if he could sign an extension, that’s what he wanted to do, for his reasons,” said the Knicks’ president, Donnie Walsh, adding, “He wasn’t going to make the free-agent market.” Knicks officials also feared that a new labor deal might include a so-called franchise tag, which could keep Anthony in Denver, and other marquee players like Chris Paul and Deron Williams with their respective franchises. Walsh played down any role the Nets had in driving up the price for Anthony, saying that Denver’s asking price would have been the same regardless. He also dismissed widespread reports that James L. Dolan, the Madison Square Garden chairman, forced the trade on the front office. Close associates of Walsh have said he was highly reluctant to make the trade and had practically stopped speaking with Dolan. Walsh, however, said he was in continuous communication with Dolan. He said he did not need to be sold on the deal. “No, not at all. And he shouldn’t, because I’m the one who knows basketball,” Walsh said. “So my job is to advise him: this is good for your franchise. And I did that.” Whoever made the final call, it was not an easy one. The Knicks gave up their most promising young player, Danilo Gallinari; their starting point guard, Ra-
ymond Felton; and two other key pieces, Wilson Chandler and Timofey Mozgov; and a first-round pick in 2014 and secondround picks in 2012 and 2013. The draft picks were the final hurdle, according to one executive involved in the deal. “These are the kind of guys that are really hard to get,” Walsh said, referring to Anthony as a player who “can go out there and get 30 to 40 points in a playoff game.” Billups, who led the Detroit Pistons to the 2004 championship, is a better playmaker and shooter than Felton. But he is also eight years older. “Trades are always painful and happy in a certain way,” said Walsh, who praised the overlooked Billups as “a terrific player.” Although the Knicks gave up youth, depth and size, Walsh said, “it came down to, how much do you want Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups? And are we a better franchise with those guys in it? The decision we made was, we are.” D’Antoni said he planned to start Stoudemire at power forward and Anthony at small forward, their traditional positions. Ronny Turiaf will replace Mozgov at center. But the Knicks will be thin behind them, with no one over 6 feet 10 inches on the roster. Shawne Williams and the newly acquired Shelden Williams, who are both 6-9, will be the top big men on the bench. In trading Gallinari and Chandler,
the Knicks also lost 3-point shooting, a staple of D’Antoni’s offense. Walsh will try to address some needs before Thursday’s 3 p.m. trade deadline. The Knicks are trying to package Corey Brewer, a forward acquired from Minnesota, in another deal, perhaps for a center. But Walsh said he can address the gaps this summer, when the Knicks expect to have ample salary-cap room. According to some internal estimates — which could change depending on the new labor deal — the Knicks could have up to $16 million in cap room in 2012, when Paul, Williams and Dwight Howard could enter free agency. No one was happier Tuesday than Stoudemire, who is close friends with Anthony and has been pushing to get him here. The scoring burden will now be shared, along with the intense spotlight. “New York City was on fire, even before this trade happened with Carmelo,” said Stoudemire, who received the news in a call from Dolan. “I think now, with the help of Carmelo and Chauncey and the rest of the guys, we have a great shot at it.” Expectations will rise proportionally, putting the pressure on Anthony and Stoudemire to mesh quickly and on D’Antoni to orchestrate it all. The Knicks are sixth in the Eastern Conference, at 28-26. They have 28 games left and very little practice time on the calendar. “We know we have a lot of work to do,” Walsh said.
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March 3 - 9, 2011
Year After a Scandal, Woods Will Test His Progress at the Site of a Triumph By LARRY DORMAN
T
he first clue was the view. Pounding golf balls off the pristine turf on the range at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club at Dove Mountain Tuesday was one great ball striker after another: Robert Allenby of Australia, Rory McIlroy from Northern Ireland, the Colombian Camilo Villegas, the teenage sensation Ryo Ishikawa of Japan and, way on the far end, in a formfitting golf shirt and wraparound shades, Tiger Woods. It is not merely the presence of Woods at this World Golf Championship event, returning to the desert after a two-year absence, that makes this week special. Every one of the top 50 golfers in the world, and 62 of the top 64, are here in the Oro Valley in the shadow of Dove Mountain for the W.G.C.-Accenture Match Play Championship. For Woods, being here is the latest signpost on a journey back. One year ago this week, he was appearing on live television to admit to multiple extramarital affairs, taking the blame for the fallout that led to the loss of his marriage and a number of his key sponsors, including Accenture. On Tuesday, he was hitting balls into a light wind, painting 3-wood shots high and low against the cloudless desert sky and hoping, he said, to return to contention soon, starting with his opening match against Thomas Bjorn of Denmark. “Got to take it one match at a time,” said Woods, whose 32-7 individual match
record is the best in this event. “One opponent at a time. I’ve got Thomas tomorrow. Looking forward to it. He won a tournament, what, three weeks ago? He is obviously playing better.” So is Woods. At his last outing in Dubai two weeks ago, he outperformed both golfers above him in the World Golf Rankings — No. 1 Lee Westwood and No. 2 Martin Kaymer — but failed to turn a onestroke deficit going into Sunday into his first victory since November 2009. Form, whether current or past, is not always the best predictor of how a player will perform in match play. The vagaries of constant pressure and sudden death are what set this event apart. On Wednesday, 32 of the 64 golfers in the field will be gone after the first day in the only match play event of this magnitude on the schedule in the United States this year. The likelihood that at least some of the higher seeds will meet their match early in the event is the double-edged sword to match play. On a Friday in 1999, on the eve of the quarterfinals, all but one of the top seeds was eliminated. When the possibility was raised to Ian Poulter, the defending Accenture champion, that his 7:42 a.m. first-off-thetee time against Stewart Cink could result in his being the shortest-lived defending champion of the year, he had a typically droll reply. “Could be, could be on an airplane by midafternoon, I guess,” he said. “I hadn’t really thought about that until you just mentioned it, but thanks, well done.
I’d rather be having a nice salmon for a starter and filet steak for dinner tomorrow night.” Poulter’s preference, of course, would be for the meal to be served in his suite at the Ritz rather than on a flight back to his Florida home. But his chances of working through the draw the way he did last year, which culminated with a 4-and-2 victory over Paul Casey in an all-England final, are not good. To do so he will first have to get past Cink, the 2008 finalist whose form is on an uptick. Phil Mickelson, who meets Brendan Jones in the first round, also is on Poulter’s side of the draw. So is Westwood, who faces Henrik Stenson. “There are no easy games,” Westwood said when asked about Stenson, an alternate who got in the field when Japan’s Toru Taniguchi, the No. 64 player in the
rankings, withdrew with a shoulder injury. “Everybody expects the top 64 is capable of shooting 65, 64. You get lucky in this format, but you also know you have to play well.” Westwood has not yet run into any luck in this event. In 10 prior appearances, he has yet to advance past the second round. “Yeah, I’m wondering what Friday looks like in this tournament,” he said. After two years away, Woods will be trying to remember what it was like to get to the finals and drub Cink, 8-and-7, in 2008, which seems like a long time ago. “Game is progressing, no doubt,” Woods said. “Had to work on a few things that we found were not right at Dubai, which was good. It feels like we’re heading in the right direction. Just have to work on it and solidify it.”
Caltech Scores First Conference Victory Since 1985 By JOHN BRANCH
T
he California Institute of Technology men’s basketball team won a conference game Tuesday night for the first time since 1985, breaking a losing streak believed to have stretched to 310 games. The team’s 46-45 home victory over Occidental, in the final game of the season, was the first Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference victory for Caltech since a 1-point win over La Verne more than 26 years ago, before any of the current players were born. Ryan Elmquist scored the winning point by making
the first of two free throws with three seconds left. He missed the second, and Occidental’s desperation shot from halfcourt was off target, sending students and fans in the small Braun Athletic Center gym onto the court for a celebration of hugs and whoops. “Tonight’s win is a testament to the hard work each member of this team, the alumni and the supporters have put into this program,” Coach Oliver Eslinger said after the game, according to the athletic department’s Web site. “I hope that everyone who has participated in Caltech men’s basketball is able to celebrate a little bit tonight.” Caltech scored the final 9 points in front of an announced crowd of 387. “It felt like a championship atmosphere,” Eslinger, 35, said in a phone interview Wednesday. He said he could not fall asleep until nearly 5 a.m., and spent the early part of Wednesday going through all the congratulatory messages. “The alums I’m getting e-mails from — it’s slowing down my computer, there are so many,” Eslinger said. Eslinger and the Caltech team, profiled in December by The New York Times, thought this would be the season the streak would end. It had been 14 years since the Beavers won three games in a season, yet they won four nonconference games in December and early January. “It’s not if we’re going to win,” the freshman guard
Mike Paluchniak said in December. “It’s how many we’re going to win.” Once conference play began, however, Caltech found itself in its usual place — on the wrong end of the score, if only barely. It lost an overtime game to Redlands on Jan. 12. It lost by 2 points at Whittier on Jan. 29, followed by a 1-point home loss to La Verne. When Caltech played at Occidental on Jan. 26, the Beavers lost, 53-43. Eslinger, a former assistant at M.I.T., brought a doctorate in counseling and sports psychology three seasons ago to Caltech, home of 32 Nobel prizes and an undergraduate population of about 950. He also brought an unusual emphasis on recruiting basketball players. The team he inherited had only five players with high school basketball experience. Now, he recruits basketball players who happen to be among the nation’s top academic minds. “We want to win with the smartest students in the world,” Eslinger said in December. Caltech finished the season 5-20, 1-13 in conference. The basketball team has not had a winning season since 1954. Occidental finished 12-13, 6-8 in the conference. Attention may now shift to the school’s baseball team, which has lost 412 consecutive conference games since 1988, and 170 consecutive games over all, dating to 2003.
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Sports
Alomar and Criollos Host Clinic By: Daniel Morales Pomales
H
undreds of children from the central region of the island visited baseball star Roberto Alomar Velázquez at the Caguax Baseball Park in Caguas. These youngsters, also enjoyed a sports clinic offered by the players of the winning team of the ‘Criollos de Caguas’, among which were, Richie Mendoza, Julio Rivera, Ronald San-
chez, Freddie Thon, Kenny Vargas, Alexis Oliveras, Jose Rivera, Angel Gomez, Kevin Torres. Senator Norma Burgos Andújar (PNP), who is rumored to be planning to run for mayor of Caguas organized the event. Senator Burgos distributed to the champion Caguad ballplayers a resolution of congratulations. The resolution highlighted the Criollos and how Quique Hernandez was an inspiration to achieve their accom-
plishments. The Senator gave a copy of the document to the widow and children of Quique Hernández. About 20 teams from different Caguas little leagues including Caguax, Villa Blanca, Villa Nueva, Turabo Gardens, Turabo Heights and the League of Aguas Buenas, Gurabo, etc participated. The little leaguers took pictures with their idols. Roberto Alomar autographed baseballs, shirts, etc. Senator Burgos announced the
allocation of funds to the league for improvements to sports facilities. The activity of recognition with Alomar, was an acquired compromise by Senator Burgos, the day she visited the inauguration of the league of Caguax, and did so as part of its commitment to children and sports. Roberto Alomar was inducted recently to the Hall of Fame for Sport, which will be made official in a ceremony on 25 July this year in Cooperstown New York.
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Louganis Is Back on Board By KAREN CROUSE
T
he Olympic-size outdoor pool at Fullerton College on a recent afternoon was an aquatics diorama, with a beginners swim class sharing space with a group of seasoned competitors churning out laps. At the far end, in the deep water, three divers practiced their springboard takeoffs. It might have been an ordinary winter scene in Southern California except for one detail. The coach leaning forward in his chair and speaking so softly that his voice was barely audible over the medley of old pop hits blaring from the loudspeakers was Greg Louganis, considered diving’s Michael Jordan — or Michelangelo. Louganis, a five-time Olympic medalist, was hired last November by SoCal Divers to coach athletes with wideranging ages and abilities. To watch him dissecting a beginner’s front dive tuck during a practice last month was like observing Meryl Streep teaching an introductory acting class. Louganis became the first man to win consecutive Olympic gold medals (1984 and 1988) in the platform and springboard events, a feat never equaled. He achieved his springboard victory at the Seoul Games in 1988 despite striking the board with his head on his ninth qualifying dive. In 1982, Louganis became the first diver to be awarded a perfect 10 from all seven judges while performing a reverse two-and-a-half pike at the world championships. After retiring in 1988, he became a phantom presence in USA Diving, ubiquitous in the record books but otherwise invisible. In the past 23 years, Louganis acknowledged his homosexuality and revealed that he had AIDS, accepted acting jobs and trained dogs for agility competitions. It never occurred to him to train people until he showed up to watch a competition last year in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and his spot-on assessments of the divers led someone to ask, “Why haven’t you been coaching?” The seed, once planted, sprouted when Chris Mitchell, who started SoCal Divers, approached Louganis with a coaching offer. Louganis accepted after gaining assurances from Mitchell that he would be free to follow his buildingblocks philosophy, which is at odds with some American coaches who stress acrobatics over mechanics. Louganis insists his divers show
proficiency in one fundamental before moving on to the next. “I’m not surprised,” his former coach Ron O’Brien said in a telephone interview, “because he’s a perfectionist, and that was the way he was taught in dance and acrobatics.” As a competitor, Louganis’s mechanics were so sound that China’s national coaches in the 1980s pored over film of his dives and tailored their programs to match his technical precision. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Chinese have dominated diving much as Louganis did. They have excelled at the expense of the United States, which did not win a diving medal at the past two Summer Olympics. Louganis emphasizes practice over competition and the whole person over the athlete. He encourages his divers to keep daily journals in which they write their intentions for each practice, then critique their performances. “A lot of the parents say they’re on board with it,” Louganis said. “We’ll see how well they can hang in there.” Louganis never expected to still be around. In 1993, he gave himself a spectacular party for his 33rd birthday because he did not think he would live to see another year. With little fanfare, Louganis turned 51 last month. Except for a scare two years ago, when his T-cell count dropped dangerously low, he said his health had been so good “you kind of forget about it.” He practices yoga, part of a fitness program that is coupled with an aggressive drug regimen. He has sought medical help for depression and is in a stable relationship with Daniel McSwiney. Louganis said the abusive relationships and the substance abuse that pockmarked his
youth were behind him. Over lunch at a Thai restaurant near Fullerton, a two-year college, Louganis appeared the picture of health. His face was tanned and unlined, and his saltand-pepper hair, mustache and goatee were neatly groomed. He ordered panang curry, and the waitress asked how spicy he wanted it on a scale of 1 to 10. “Ten,” he replied. Taken aback, she said, “You tried 10 here before?” When his meal came, Louganis finished it without breaking a sweat. His move into coaching has been smooth, but not entirely stress free. In response to a mass e-mail Louganis sent about a winter camp, another coach replied using an off-color remark about his sexual orientation. Louganis has been accused of stealing divers from other teams. “There’s certain coaches who feel insecure about their own abilities,” said Louganis, whose only previous coaching experience was working with his high school team, at Valhalla in San Diego, after returning from the 1976 Summer Olympics. What he lacks in experience, Louganis says, he makes up for in empathy. “I kind of speak their language,” he said. “I know what it is to be afraid of a dive. I know what it’s like to put a new dive in a competition. I know what it’s like to feel a little insecure about a dive.” This emotional connection is important. The best athletes do not always make the best coaches because their genius is so ingrained or intuitive that they find it hard to express it in words. Even if Louganis has the answers, his style is to ask questions, to make his athletes feel as if they are co-pilots on a journey.
“I want them to understand I don’t know everything,” Louganis said. “I don’t have a magic wand. We’re in this together. A lot of times I’ll say: ‘How can we get you to make this adjustment? How’s this going to make sense to you?’ ” Megan Neyer was close to Louganis when they were divers; both qualified for the 1980 Summer Olympic team that did not compete because of the United States boycott of the Moscow Games. She was initially surprised to hear he had decided to coach. The more she considered it, the more sense it made. “I’ve watched him with his dogs,” she said in a telephone interview. “I think a really critical component of being a good coach is being clear in your commands, which he is extraordinarily good at with his dogs. He’s also very warm, and it’s a very good balance, being clear in his expectations and using warmth to reinforce the behavior.” The youngsters in Louganis’s evening group encircled him like seagulls around an abandoned picnic. Between giggles, they say he is a very nice man. Raquel Corniuk, 14, who commutes 30 miles each way twice a week to be coached by Louganis, is quieter than her splash-free entries. She wordlessly performed one dive after another, nodding at whatever Louganis said. He recalled being the same way, to the point that his coaches told him he was difficult to coach because he was so uncommunicative. As the practice was winding down, Corniuk smiled at a comment made by Louganis, who in turn beamed at her. “You get her to say anything, it’s a big deal,” he said. “I really relate to her.” Corniuk is a national-caliber diver whose primary coach is Hongping Li, who runs a club at the University of Southern California. Hopscotching between coaches, with the blessing of each, is an arrangement that her mother, Diane, described as unprecedented in diving. Corniuk said that since she started working with Louganis, her mechanics and mental approach had improved, especially on the more difficult dives on her list. “When I was working on my optionals and I was frustrated, he was giving me tips on what he used to do,” she said. “It’s stuff that’s more in your head, and he says it in a way I can understand.” With the sun high in the sky on this unseasonably warm day, Louganis stepped on the one-meter springboard and performed one forward pike, followed by another. In the crowded pool, his dives barely caused a splash.
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Games
Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game
Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Crossword
Wordsearch
Answers on page 62
62 March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
HOROSCOPE Aries
(Mar 21-April 20)
Libra
(Sep 24-Oct 23)
Do not resist what is going on. Appreciate what you have and what you are working with. The raw materials you have are more than adequate to be going on with. Focus on what feels right. The Universe is asking you to reach out and connect, so do not shy away from your responsibilities or from what is expected. Seize the moment.
If you keep your head down and do the right thing, there is bound to be significant recognition finally. Do not blow your own trumpet. Making a big noise will get you attention, but will not win you many friends. Be nifty and diplomatic in all dealings. If a golden opportunity presents itself simply say ‘yes’. Make things easier on yourself.
Taurus
Scorpio
(April 21-May 21)
(Oct 24-Nov 22)
Do not assume things will automatically come back around. You get your chances one time, usually, so never mind the ‘what ifs’. Get on with the present and let go of any angst you may be feeling about what did or didn’t happen. Be mindful of how your actions and decisions will affect others. Always take others into account.
Your talents may fall on deaf ears if the company you keep is not well disposed towards you. Anything is possible at the moment; so live with a sense of not knowing for a while longer. Ok, this is torture, but trust me, if you exercise patience, you will be glad you did! Are your head and heart in two different places? Be careful and try to work it out.
Gemini
Sagittarius
(May 22-June 21)
Remember the law of cause and effect. This is really important if you are on the brink of major change. Dreams are worth following up in realistic ways: be circumspect. Embrace the winds of change as your hair gets well and truly ruffled! There is no point resisting the inevitable. So adjust and adapt to what is happening, as you will.
Cancer
(June 22-July 23)
Open up to new possibilities and do not dismiss anything out-of-hand. Anything is possible. You just need to know who your friends are. Do not let a disruptive influence throw you off track. There is time enough for a load of old nonsense. Rest easy amidst tension: do not give it much energy and it will naturally disperse. Love deserves you.
Leo
(July 24-Aug 23)
(Nov 23-Dec 21)
If you are standing at a crossroads, choose your direction carefully. It is advisable not to turn back. Leave the past well enough alone. The most obvious choice may not be the most fortuitous. Freedom does not have to be daunting, so relax into unusual experiences. Look and plan ahead by all means, but remember to reflect on it.
Capricorn
(Dec 22-Jan 20)
Life provides opportunities to break old or bad habits. There is much love, light and laughter hovering in the ether, if you care to access it! Keep those people that get up your nose guessing. You hold the trump card anyhow. Introspective moments keep you occupied and your privacy will be currently crucial to your equilibrium.
Aquarius (Jan 21-Feb 19)
Where there is a will, there is a way: be determined and do not let anyone or anything drag you down. Place the emphasis on co-operation. Do not feel you have to put on an act to be impressive; just be yourself. Be aware of agendas and watch those on the make: are they really? Be open to the fact that you may have misjudged someone.
Do not chase your luck away with stupid behaviour. Boldness can be appealing and compelling. However, at times you can go too far, which leaves you in a heap. Do not even think about following a significant temptation. This is a potentially tricky time and you may feel more vulnerable than usual. Pace yourself and get through it step by step.
Virgo
Pisces
(Aug 24-Sep 23)
The surface appearance of things is likely to be very misleading; so sit loose before you condemn anything out-of-hand. You will need extra special powers of judgement. Stay on the ball and do not make a mistake by acting or thinking too quickly. Be grateful for the truth, even if it hits you right between the eyes. Stay level-headed.
(Feb 20-Mar 20)
A long-term situation may be challenged, but it is nothing you have not faced before in another time and another place. Remember that you are intrinsically formidable and keep your spirits high! Get down to business. The practical stuff needs some attention. You can be assured of your natural wit, charm and allure at this point.
Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 61
The San Juan Weekly
March 3 - 9, 2011
Herman
Speed Bump
Frank & Ernest
BC
Scary Gary
Wizard of Id
Two Cows And A Chicken
Cartoons
63
Ziggi
64
March 3 - 9, 2011
The San Juan Weekly