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Puerto Rico Replaces Captain Morgan

Muñoz Marín International Airport

Buyers Solicited P13 6

The Fajardo Lighthouse

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The Battle of Treviño

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By Francisco Oller y Cestero Ponce’s Art Museum Most Important Recent Acquisition

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Aggressive Ruling on Clean Air

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July 21 - 27, 2011

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Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport Soliciting Buyers T

he Fortuño Administration continues selling assets. The Central Government took another step this week in its effort to privatize the Luis Muñoz Marín airport, issuing a request for qualifications from interested for-profit investors.

The firms have until Aug. 8 to submit documents showing they have the financial wherewithal and technical expertise to operate and maintain the International Airport. Those deemed qualified then will bid for a 40- to 50-year airport concession.

“We do believe that there is tremendous interest in the market” from potential bidders, said Joe Seliga, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP, which is advising Puerto Rico’s privatization effort.

Seliga said bidding likely will be concluded by the end of the year If all goes as planned, with a winner selected and financial close sometime in the first quarter of 2012.

The timeline likely would make Luis Munoz Marin International Airport the first sizable airport privatized under a test Federal Aviation Administration program.

Chicago’s Midway airport is technically part of the program, but a once high-profile effort to privatize it has run into repeated lengthy delays and

currently is in a holding pattern while new city leadership decides whether to proceed. Two other airports are in the program, tiny Briscoe Field near Atlanta and AirGlades Previously the government won approval from over 65% of the airlines at San Juan’s Luis Munoz Marin Airport, a key step in selling the rights to run the Caribbean’s busiest airport.

In a bid to cover a big & growing deficit, the Government agreed to a $1.08 billion private concession to operate two toll roads Rt. 5 and Rt 22. The

deal is the first in a planned series of asset sales public-private partnerships (PPP) the government plans to use to find its financial needs.

Governor Luis Fortuno told island business leaders that officials would begin the process to solicit private investors to run the airport after having secured the required 65 percent support of airlines operating at the airport.

“For the first quarter of next year, we will have a private Concession operating the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport. That’s where we are going.” Fortuno said before the Puerto Rico Chamber of Commerce’s

annual convention.

After lining up qualified bidders, the island government will now solicit proposals.

David Alvarez, the executive director of the commonwealth’s PublicPrivate Partnership Authority said the PPP could become a template for other government entities seeking private capital for public infrastructure.

Fortuno’s administration had previously announced it selected Autopistas Metropolitanas de Puerto Rico, a consortium including Abertis Infraestructuras and Goldman Sachs Infrastructure Partners for a 40-year highway concession contract.

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The San Juan Weekly

The Museo de Arte de Ponce Presents Its Most Important Recent Acquisition:

The Battle of Treviño W

ith the unveiling of The Battle of Treviño, by Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller y Cestero (1833–1917), the Museo de Arte de Ponce celebrates the acquisition of a nineteenth-century masterpiece that has never before been exhibited publicly — a painting whose very existence, in fact, was unsuspected until just a few years ago. The work was part of a private collection that had been in the hands of a single family in Spain for over 130 years.

“We are celebrating the arrival in Puerto Rico of The Battle of Treviño, a masterpiece by the island’s most talented and beloved nineteenth-century painter. It is a source of great pride for our institution that we are able to give both scholars and the public in general access to this important work, which now becomes a part of Puerto Rico’s artistic patrimony,” said Dr. Agustín Arteaga, director and chief executive officer of the Museo de Arte de Ponce.

The Battle of Treviño represents a very significant historical moment.

During much of the nineteenth century, Spain was in the midst of a series of civil wars, the Carlist Wars of Succession, waged between the supporters of Isabel II (the “Isabelino Liberals”) and the supporters of Infante Carlos (the “Carlists”) over who would succeed Ferdinand VII, the father of Isabel and

brother of Carlos. On July 7, 1875, during the third Carlist War, Liberal troops fought for control of the town of Vitoria, south of Bilbao. Colonel Juan Contreras y Martínez, with fewer than a hundred lancers against the manytimes-greater Carlist army, attacked the enemy troops on the left flank of a mountain and overcame the powerful battalion. The victory in the Battle of Treviño became a rallying point and propaganda coup for the Liberal government of Spain and opened the door to Col. Contreras’ appointment as King Alfonso XII’s aide-de-camp.

Stylistically, the painting represents Oller’s mature style. The subject matter and mood of the work are clearly inspired by aspects of Spanish Realism, while the loose, rapid brushwork and the atmospheric qualities of the scene suggest Oller’s assimilation of the principles of Impressionism. All this creates a style that reflects Oller’s desire to capture on canvas the visual aspects of action, the imbalance between the contending sides, and the immediacy of the chaotic moment.

This painting is the last of the four versions of the battle done by Oller; it is recognized as the finest, and certainly the largest, of the four. The third version, in a smaller format, was painted

Continues on page 6

Francisco Oller y Cestero (1833–-1917), The Battle of Treviño (detail).

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

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The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Comes from page 4

by Oller in 1877 and, now hanging in the collection of the Royal Palace in Madrid, is considered part of Spain’s national heritage. Although it is true that the choice of subject by Oller may have been motivated by his desire to be named official painter to the court of Alfonso XII, it should be noted that Oller and Contreras were contemporaries, and that they had been friends since 1855, when Contreras’ father had been second-in-command of the Spanish forces in Puerto Rico. Oller knew and enormously admired Contreras, the hero of this battle, and with this painting he paid homage to his friend while at the same time showing his loyalty to and support for the newlyproclaimed king of Spain.

The unveiling of this work took place in a moving ceremony at the Museo de Arte de Ponce with lectures

by Haydée Venegas, art historian and

Oller specialist, and Dr. Edward Sullivan, who holds the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair in Art History at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. The titles of their presentations were, respectively, “Oller and the Battle of Treviño: A Visual Genealogy” and “Preparing for the Battle: Oller’s Studies and Sketches for The Battle of Treviño.”

“Oller’s monumental Battle of Treviño is an extraordinary piece, and quite unusual in the career of this master of Realism and Impressionism, whose main subjects were still-lifes, landscapes, and portraiture. This painting presents a challenge to those who wish to study the precedents, influences, and meanings of the artist’s complex career. It exhibits many similarities to works by Oller’s contemporaries such as Mariano Fortuny, and even to French artists that Oller admired, such as Ernest Meissonier,” noted wellknown historian Edward Sullivan.

Professor Haydée Venegas called The Battle of Treviño “a revelation of the enormous talent of Francisco Oller, who here demonstrates his gift for handling subjects, forms, and ideas simultaneously.”

Doctor Arteaga in turn, shared with the audience the great enthusiasm felt by the Museo de Arte de Ponce’s entire staff, for “after the long and intense process of acquisition, we have finally managed to repatriate this painting to Francisco Oller’s homeland, to the delight of all Puerto Ricans. The Battle of Treviño continues the Museo de Arte de Ponce’s long tradition of supporting and promoting Puerto Rico’s artistic heritage and adds to the impressive list of seven hundred new acquisitions by the Museum over the last five years. We invite the public to visit us, and to discover this museum that belongs to all of us, and to continue to celebrate and share the island’s artistic legacy.”

The Francisco Oller y Cestero Collection at the Museo de Arte de Ponce The Museo de Arte de Ponce owns ten other works by Francisco Oller, among which, à propos of the unveiling of The Battle of Treviño, is a portrait of Colonel Francisco Enrique Contreras painted in 1880, a year after The Battle. The other paintings by Oller in the Museum’s collection are Cats Playing (ca. 1892–93), oil on wood panel; Hacienda Aurora (1898–99), oil on wood panel; Governor George W. Davis (ca. 1900), oil on canvas; Portrait of Governor Beekman Winthrop (ca.

1905), oil on canvas; Hacienda Esmeralda in Santa Isabel (ca. 1886–88), oil on dinner plate; Monte de las Cabras (ca. 1886–88), oil on dinner plate; The Ponce Ceiba (ca. 1887–88), oil on canvas; Portrait of José Pratts (n.d.), oil on canvas; and Still Life (n.d.), oil on canvas.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

7 Mainland

An Aggressive Ruling on Clean Air T

he Environmental Protection Agency issued a welcome and overdue rule compelling power plants in 27 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smokestack emissions that pollute the air and poison forests, lakes and streams across the eastern United States. The regulation reflects the E.P.A.’s determination to carry out its mandates under the Clean Air Act despite fierce Congressional opposition, and bodes well for progress on a host of other regulatory challenges the agency faces.

The rule, which takes effect in 2012, would cut emissions of sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain, and nitrogen oxide, a component of smog, by more than half by 2014 compared with 2005 levels. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa Jackson, said the rule would improve air quality for 240 mi-

llion Americans in the states where the pollution is produced and in areas downwind.

As is true of nearly every regulation spawned by the landmark 1970 Clean Air Act, the rule’s benefits will greatly outweigh its costs to industry — a truth routinely ignored by the act’s critics, most recently the Tea Party supporters in Congress. The E.P.A. estimates annual benefits at $120 billion

The Forgetful Mr. Smith P resident Obama’s top immigration enforcer, John Morton, recently instructed his officials to take mitigating factors into account, like an immigrant’s family ties in the United States and education status, when deciding which deportation cases to pursue. It was not a major breakthrough, but it was sensible and humane, which is why it drew the ire of Representative Lamar Smith, who thinks Mr. Obama is too soft on illegal immigrants.

Mr. Smith, who heads the House Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday introduced a bill to suspend the executive branch’s ability to use discretion in immigration cases. He would not suspend it for every president, just this one.

In a memo to colleagues, he said his proposed law would expire at the end of Mr. Obama’s term, when it would “restore these powers to the next president whom the American people elect — on January 22, 2013.”

The idea behind the discretion is that immigration officials cannot go after everybody, so it makes sense to focus resources on people worth wo-

rrying about, like drug dealers, gang members and violent criminals. This is standard practice everywhere in law enforcement.

Without this authority, the administration would be barred from deferring the removal of people who it decides should be low priorities on the deportation list. They could be stable members of their communities, with citizens in their families; or students brought here as children by their parents. They could be temporarily stuck here because their home countries were devastated by natural disasters.

Back in 1999, Mr. Smith was one of several members of Congress who wrote the attorney general and the head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, arguing that “unfair” deportations had caused “unjustifiable hardship” for otherwise law-abiding immigrants who had jobs and families and close citizen relatives.

“True hardship cases call for the exercise of discretion,” the letter said.

Hard to explain the change, although hypocrisy and rank opportunism seem likely.

to $240 billion, mostly from fewer premature deaths, hospital visits and lost work days associated with respiratory illnesses.

By contrast, the costs of new pollution controls and plant retirements are estimated at $800 million annually, on top of about $1.6 billion in capital improvements already under way in anticipation of the rule.

There were predictable complaints from industry lobbyists and some in Congress that the rule would impede economic growth. Those groups are likely to be even more critical of the rest of the agency’s clean-air agenda.

Over the next few months, the E.P.A. will propose new “performance standards” governing largely unregulated greenhouse gas emissions from power plants; issue a final rule mandating reductions in toxic pollutants like

mercury; and propose new state and local health standards for ozone.

In addition, President Obama has asked that the agency, in conjunction with the Department of Transportation, set new mileage and emission standards for cars and light trucks manufactured from 2017 to 2025. An earlier round of fuel efficiency standards in 2009 remains Mr. Obama’s single most impressive environmental achievement, but he and the auto industry are nowhere near agreement on what the new standards should be.

Taken together, these rules should lead to cleaner air, a reduction in greenhouse gases and, in the case of the automobile standards, reduced dependence on foreign oil. Given the political obstacles, completing all these will be a remarkable achievement. The new power plant rule is a promising start.

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The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Senate Bill Seeks to Raise Revenue by Closing Tax Havens

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

W

ith officials in Washington struggling over a deal to cut the nation’s deficit, two senior Senate Democrats on Tuesday urged the federal government to focus on the billions of dollars in revenue lost to offshore tax havens.

A bill introduced by Carl Levin of Michigan and Kent Conrad of North Dakota would tighten rules that allow hedge funds and corporations in the United States to skirt federal taxes by opening shell companies overseas.

The measure would also change the I.R.S. regulations that allow traders of creditdefault swaps to avoid paying federal taxes on many transactions that begin in the United States. And to help tax collectors track down hidden assets overseas, the proposal would empower the Treasury Department to ban any foreign bank that refused to cooperate with the I.R.S. By closing the loopholes, the plan could bring the Treasury as much as $100 billion a year, according to various estimates cited by Mr. Levin.

“The idea that we have all these companies that avoid paying taxes through all

these gimmicks is disgraceful,” said Mr. Levin, the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. “And that we tolerate it is disgraceful.”

Mr. Conrad, who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said that by cracking down on offshore abuses, Congress and the Obama administration could make a substantial reduction in the deficit without resorting to either tax increases or severe cuts to programs like Medicare or Social Security.

Mr. Conrad said the proposal might also break the logjam that has stalled the deficit negotiations. Mr. Obama has refused to approve a deal that does not include increased revenue, while Congressional Republicans have said they will oppose any measure that increases taxes.

The proposal got a cool reception from House Republicans, some of whom of consider ending any tax break a form of tax increase. Representative Eric Cantor, the Virginia Republican who is majority leader, has vowed to oppose any deficit reduction plan that includes tax increases and has said that loopholes can be addressed in some future debate on tax reform.

“As Eric has made clear, tax increases cannot pass the House,” said his spokeswo-

man, Laena Fallon. “While the president has been seemingly obsessed with certain special-interest loopholes in the debt-limit debate, Eric believes the broad discussion of tax policy belongs in the larger debate on fundamental tax reform.”

While Mr. Levin has sponsored an assortment of bills to limit offshore tax havens over the last decade, the plan introduced Tuesday included several sweeping new features.

One provision would change the way the tax code treats derivatives trades. Under current law, the I.R.S. defines the “source” of derivative income as the location where a trade is paid rather than where the money originates. That allows many traders to legally sidestep federal taxes by routing trades offshore.

Mr. Levin called that “absurd” and said his proposal would institute a common sense source rule for trades involving credit-default swap: sourcing — and taxing — it according to where the money originates.

Another proposal would try to discourage United States companies from using bookkeeping maneuvers to shift their profits to tax havens. In recent years many multinationals — including pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and technology companies like

I.B.M. — have cut their United States taxes by booking increasing amounts of their profits abroad. Mr. Levin’s proposal would require all United States multinationals to provide more information in their regulatory filings, including a country-by-country breakdown of their sales, employment, financing and tax payments.

The bill would also prevent companies and hedge funds from escaping American taxes by filing incorporation documents abroad and declaring themselves foreign companies. During public hearings in 2008, Mr. Levin’s subcommittee heard testimony from three hedge funds — Highbridge Capital, Angelo Gordon and Maverick Capital — which were incorporated in the Cayman Islands, but had no offices or employees there.

Mr. Levin’s proposal would allow the I.R.S. to define a domestic company as one that is managed and controlled within the United States.

Mr. Levin said he was “hopeful” that President Obama, who supported two similar bills when he was a senator, would make the issue of offshore tax havens a part of the deficit negotiations. When asked if the president intended to do so, an administration official declined to comment.

G.O.P. Bid to Void Light Bulb Law Fails

By SEAN COLLINS WALSH

H

ouse Republicans on Tuesday failed to advance a measure that would repeal regulations that increase efficiency standards for light bulbs, rules that they have assailed as an example of government overreach.

“The 2010 elections demonstrated that Americans are fed up with government intrusion,” Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican who proposed the repeal, said in a debate on Monday. “The federal government

has crept so deep into our lives that federal agencies now determine what kind of light bulbs the American people are allowed to purchase.”

But Democrats, despite being in the minority in the House, were able to defeat the repeal on a vote of 233 to 193 because the measure was brought up under rules that require a two-thirds majority for passage.

The Democratic whip, Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said Republicans were wrong to propose the repeal at a time when Congress should be focusing on creating jobs and on the

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debt-limit negotiations. “By bringing misguided bills like this one to the floor instead of a comprehensive jobs plan, it is clear that House Republicans are still in the dark,” Mr. Hoyer said in a statement titled “Not the Brightest Idea.”

The first stage of the standards, which will be phased in from Jan. 1 through 2014, requires bulbs to be 25 to 30 percent more efficient. The second stage could require bulbs to be 60 percent more efficient by 2020. The law includes exceptions for specialty lights, like candelabra lamps, three-way bulbs and black lights.

The restrictions could eliminate the familiar incandescent bulbs, which have used essentially the same technology since Thomas Alva Edison invented them.

Republicans have also said the new types of bulbs are too expensive. Prices range from about $1.50 for a halogen incandescent to $20 for light-emitting diode, or LED, bulbs, which are supposed to last 10 years. Regular bulbs today cost about 35 cents.

Democrats countered that the higher cost of the new bulbs would be offset by savings on the energy bills of consumers and cited Congressional testimony from Kathleen Hogan, the Energy Department’s deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency. Using the new bulbs could save households about $50 a

year by 2015, Ms. Hogan said. Nationally, consumer savings could be $6 billion a year.

The standards were part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, a broad update of the country’s energy policy signed into law by President George W. Bush. Thirtysix House Republicans voted for the standards in an amendment offered by Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan.

“This common-sense, bipartisan approach partners with American industry to save energy as well as help foster the creation of new domestic manufacturing jobs,” Mr. Upton said in a December 2007 statement. He is now chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Upton has removed the old statement from his Web site and posted a new one that says, “The public response on this issue is a clear signal that markets — not governments — should be driving technological advancements.”

Seventeen Republicans who voted for the original law ended up voting for repeal of the standards on Tuesday.

When Congress acted in 2007, many people assumed the incandescent bulb was on its way out. But electric companies have since invested in new technologies that increase bulb efficiency.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

9 Mainland

Big Business Leaves Deficit to Politicians

By DAVID LEONHARDT

I

f you want to understand why cutting the deficit is so hard, you can’t do much better than to look at the Business Roundtable.

The roundtable is one of the more moderate big-business lobbying groups. Its president is John Engler, the former Michigan governor, and its incoming chairman is James McNerney, the chief executive of Boeing.

When roundtable officials talk about the deficit, they use sober, common-sense language that can make them sound more reasonable than either political party.

But the roundtable is actually part of the problem.

Rhetoric aside, it consistently lobbies for a higher deficit. The roundtable defends corporate tax loopholes and even argues for new ones. It pushes for a lower corporate tax rate. It favors the permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts. It opposes a reduction in the tax subsidy for health insurance, a reduction that was part of the 2009 health reform bill.

Oh, and the roundtable also favors new spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

It’s easy to look at the squabbling politicians in Washington and decide that they are the cause of the country’s huge looming budget deficit. Certainly, they deserve some blame. The larger problem, though, is what you might call roundtable syndrome.

In short, there isn’t much of a constituency for deficit reduction. Sure, plenty of people and special-interest groups say that they are deeply worried about the deficit. But they are not lobbying for specific spending cuts or tax increases. They aren’t marshaling their resources to defend politicians who take tough stands, like President Obama’s 2009 Medicare cuts or Rand Paul’s proposed military cuts.

Instead, many of the officially nonpartisan groups in Washington are even less fiscally responsible than the partisans. Public sector labor unions have fought changes to pensions and work rules that could lead to less expensive, more effective government.

Private sector unions — along with the roundtable — have defended the huge tax subsidy for health insurance, which drives up health costs.

Labor groups have at least been willing to push for some tax increases. Today’s business groups struggle to come up with any specific deficit plan. Last year, the Business Council — a group of top corporate executives headed by Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase — and the roundtable released a 49-page plan that simultaneously warned that projected deficits would “retard future growth” and called for policies that would add hundreds of billions of dollars a year to the deficit. That’s the essence of roundtable

syndrome.

When I ask roundtable officials and other lobbyists about this contradiction, they show an impressive ability to avoid specifics and stick to their talking points. Mr. Engler, by e-mail, said, “A simpler, flatter tax system can be enacted in a fiscally responsible manner that better serves American workers and supports economic growth.”

Taken by itself, this statement is entirely accurate. The corporate tax code is a mess. A better code, say both conservative and liberal economists, would be flatter — that is, have a lower rate and fewer loopholes. Companies would then waste less time complying with the code and could still help reduce the deficit.

But the roundtable is not pushing for the simpler, flatter, fiscally responsible code that Mr. Engler mentions. It’s pushing for tax cuts for its members: a lower rate, the continuation of existing loopholes and the creation of new ones, like a permanent credit for research and a tax holiday for overseas profits. Mr. Engler and his colleagues, in other words, are lobbying for a more complex, less fiscally responsible tax code.

Given how much we’re going to talk about the deficit, I’d suggest requiring any self-proclaimed fiscal conservative to give specifics. You’re against the deficit? Great.

How do you want to cut it?

The fact is, naming specific ways to reduce the deficit is no more technically challenging than naming new spending programs or tax cuts. To take the current debt ceiling negotiations as a benchmark, White House officials and Congressional leaders are looking for about $200 billion a year in deficit reduction. They could get it any number of ways.

Two different bipartisan groups — the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission and the Sustainable Defense Task Force — have called for roughly $100 billion a year in cuts to the military budget. Getting rid of farm subsidies would save about $15 billion. So would cutting the federal work force by 10 percent.

Allowing the expiration of the Bush tax cuts on income above $250,000 a year would raise about $60 billion a year. The expiration of all the other Bush tax cuts would bring in another $200 billion or so. Various changes to Medicare and Social Security — raising the retirement age, reducing benefits for the affluent, cutting back on some forms of health care — could cut spending even more. In the long term, with projected deficits well above $1 trillion a year, such changes will surely be necessary.

By the standard of specificity, a few of the most prominent politicians in the deficit debate end up looking more serious than many outside groups. Representative Paul Ryan, the

Wisconsin Republican who heads the House Budget Committee, has called for the effective elimination of Medicare for everyone under 55 years old. Mr. Obama favors some Medicare cuts, the closing of several modest tax loopholes and tax increases on the affluent.

There are many potential objections to the Obama plan and to the Ryan plan. And neither would eliminate the deficit. But both plans would at least reduce it, which is more

than you can say about corporate America’s deficit plan.

The deficit is one of those national challenges that will require tough choices and courageous leadership. Many of those choices and much of that leadership will have to come from politicians. But I’m guessing we won’t solve the deficit until the politicians get some help — and simply calling yourself a fiscal conservative doesn’t count as help.

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The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

For Children Who Want Pets and Parents Who Don’t

By PAMELA PAUL

P

et-averse parents (or people who simply believe feeding and caring for two-legged creatures is enough) dread the moment when their children make the transition from “Will he bite me?” to “Why can’t we get a dog?” Eventually, it seems, every child wants a dog,, a cat or at the very least a fish. Whatt to do?

Fortunately, children’s book au-thors helpfully provide backup for almost any excuse: Too big! Too hairy!

Too loud! And the old, Who will empty the litter box?

Into the pantheon of “The Pigeon Wants a Puppy!” come four new entrants. “A Pet for Petunia,” by Paul Schmid, matches a charming girl named Petunia with a thoroughly inappropriate pet: a skunk. The protests of Petunia’s parents (“They stink”) are borne out as Petunia confronts the rea-

lit off her h colity veted woodland friend. erred Rightfully deterred t l skunk, k k P t from adopting an actual Petunia instead sticks to a stuffed skunk, which suffices until, of course, the last page, when Petunia decides she wants a porcupine (the star, conveniently, of Schmid’s next, yet unpublished picture-book tale).

Strikingly similar in terms of its

petite format, precious pe prénom and largely purpr ple pl palette is “Prudence Wants a Pet,” written by Wa Cathleen Daly, author of a Ca middle-grade novel, “Flirt mid Club.”

Sweetly illustrated Clu

by Stephen Michael King (“Leaf”), “Prudence” deftly (“Le combines funny and cute, com and has a resourceful heroine too. to She faces some fierce oppo opposition.

“Pets cost too much to keep,” Prudence’s s dad says.

They make noise, her mom m complains. So Prudence instead adopts various substitutes, including a branch and a shoe. At last the parents cave, and Prudence gets a new pet cat. Whether this is a happy ending or a sad one depends on your point of view.

Either way the book is clever and endearing.

If only matters could be as easily resolved as they are in “Gilbert Goldfish Wants a Pet,” written by Kelly DiPucchio (“Grace for President”) and illustrated “Jetsons” cartoon style by Bob Shea (“Dinosaur vs. Bedtime”).

Gilbert, a domesticated goldfish, longs for company. But a dog is too barky, a mouse too unfriendly and a fly is a threat to his well-being. A surprise ending neatly solves the problem. Gilbert is rewarded with much-needed water-bound company, and Gilbert’s owners catch a break.

And you can add an eco-friendly flourish to the message! In “Melvin and the Boy,” the first book to be both written and illustrated by Lauren Castillo (who previously illustrated “What Happens on Wednesdays,”

A PET FOR PETUNIA Written and illustrated by Paul Schmid 32 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $12.99. (Picture book; ages 3 to 7) PRUDENCE WANTS A PET

By Cathleen Daly Illustrated by Stephen Michael King 32 pp. A Neal Porter Book/Roaring Brook Press. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 7) GILBERT GOLDFISH WANTS A PET

By Kelly DiPucchio Illustrated by Bob Shea 30 pp. Dial Books for Young Readers. $16.99. (Picture book; ages 4 to 8) MELVIN AND THE BOY Written and illustrated by Lauren Castillo 40 pp. Henry Holt & Company. $16.99.

(Picture book; ages 4 to 8) among others), a boy’s parents tell him he can’t get a dog, a monkey or a bird.

But when the nameless boy (substitute your child’s name here) is captivated by a turtle in the park, he’s allowed to bring a pet home.

Alas, the turtle, which the boy names Melvin, seems unhappy in his new environs. This awakens an empathetic awareness in the child: “In the morning, I tell Mom and Dad that Melvin isn’t having much fun at our house,” he says, and then willingly releases Melvin back into the park, where he is probably better off, as endpapers describing the lives of turtles make clear.

Now, what to do with an unwanted pet pig?

The San Juan Weekly

Jult 21 - 27, 2011

11

Hitler’s Weird Oddities

By MAUREEN DOWD

A

t this late date, when we believe we know absolutely everything about Adolf Hitler, could it be that he was even crazier than we thought?

From Caligula to Nero to Qaddafi, dictators are often not just cruel and evil, but lunatics. It’s very rare to find a rational dictator. Absolute power deranges them and gives them delusions and fantasies. So we shouldn’t be surprised by news reports suggesting the Führer was batty beyond even Mel Brooks’s satire.

First, an MI5 document was declassified in London in April, revealing megalomaniacal schemes for Nazis to rise again if they lost the war by scattering sleeper agents around the world; and by killing Allied officers with poison infused in sausages, chocolate, Nescafé coffee, cigarettes, schnapps and Bayer aspirin.

German agents said they were instructed to first offer Allied targets a cigarette treated by Nazi scientists to give the smoker a headache, then finish the job with a poison aspirin that would kill within 10 minutes.

Secret weapons included a pellet that would emit a fatal vapor when heated by cigarette ash; poison for books, desks and door handles; a tablet of exploding powder that would activate when placed next to a wet glass; and a belt buckle with a silver swastika that concealed a .32 pistol that could fire two shots.

“The Werewolf organization, a network of Nazi saboteurs who would fight to create a Fourth Reich in the event Hitler’s empire crumbled, were to leave tins of instant coffee powder and other foods laced with toxins where they could be found by British and

American soldiers,” The Daily Mail of London wrote, describing the declassified dossier.

Four German spies captured after they parachuted into France in 1945, including one woman, spilled some of the assassination plots. Female agents were given purse mirrors with microbes hidden inside them, so they might infect top Allied occupiers with deadly bacteria.

British military officials at the time considered the agents’ stories “somewhat fantastic,” but were worried enough to prohibit “the eating of German food or the smoking of German cigarettes” by advancing Allied troops.

A new book, “Amazing Dogs,” by Dr. Jan Bondeson, a senior lecturer at Cardiff University School of Medicine in Wales, reveals that Hitler supported a German school that tried to teach large, muscular mastiffs to “talk” to humans. This story set off a panting spate of “Heel Hitler,” “Furred Reich,” “Wooffan SS” and “Arf Wiedersehen” headlines in British tabloids and plenty of claims that Hitler was “barking mad.”

“There were some very strange experiments going on in wartime Germany, with regard to dog-human communication,” Bondeson writes, wondering: “Were the Nazis trying to develop a breed of super-intelligent canine storm troopers, capable of communicating with their human masters of the Herrenvolk?”

He discovered a 1943 Nazi magazine piece about the headmistress of the canine school, a Frau Schmitt, claiming that some of the dogs spoke a few words. “At a Nazi study course, a tal-

king dog was once asked ‘Who is Adolf Hitler?’ and replied ‘Mein Führer!” Bondeson writes of these claims, noting that “the Nazis, who had such conspicuous disregard for human rights, felt more strongly about the animals.”

Nazi propaganda dwelled on Hitler as a dog lover. He owned two German shepherds named Bella and Blondi.

He tested a cyanide capsule on Blondi and killed her just before he committed suicide.

The Nazis took their dogs seriously. As The Guardian reported in January, the Nazi government was so furious about a dog in Finland that had been trained to imitate Hitler with a Nazi salute that the foreign office in Berlin started “an obsessive campaign” to destroy its owner.

Bondeson writes that in Germany in the early 20th century, some people had a strong belief in the potential of super-intelligent animals. He said that along with Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, an Airedale terrier named Rolf was considered one of the leading German intellectuals of the time. Rolf’s ow-

ner said she taught him his own alphabet with a system of taps of his paw on a board and, Bondeson notes drolly, “he successfully dabbled in mathematics, ethics, religion and philosophy.”

The latest wacky Hitler story comes from the British author Graeme Donald. He says that, while researching a military book, he stumbled across a story that Hitler and Heinrich Himmler were so worried about German soldiers’ getting sexual diseases from French hookers that they cooked up a plan for soldiers to carry small blow-up blond, blue-eyed dolls called “gynoids” in their backpacks to use as sex “comforters.”

Donald said Himmler ordered 50 dolls but the soldiers were too embarrassed to carry them. “In the end the idea fizzled out,” Donald told The Sun, “and the place where they were made and all the dolls were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden.”

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The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

‘We There Yet?’ When ‘There’ Is the Arctic Circle

By DANIELLE BELOPOTOSKY

S

IPPING my coffee at the Cookie Jar, a delightful diner full of Air Force families on the outskirts of Fairbanks, I was in the third round of negotiations with Mark, my travel companion, over whether we should drive to the Arctic Circle.

We were on Day 7 of a 10-day road trip that started in Seattle last summer, and we had already covered 2,890 miles — about 60 hours on the road. Our mantra: “The journey is the destination.” Driving to the Arctic Circle was on his bucket list — and a distant hope for this trip. But the additional distance, let alone seven more hours in the car listening to him whistle, was not what I had imagined.

I knew we had a lot of ground to cover in the days ahead, and the idea of driving on a partly unpaved road for another 199 miles, only to jump out of the car to snap a few photographs while battling a swarm of mosquitoes, was not as appealing as, say, the nearby hot springs that I had read about in my Alaska guidebook.

I looked at the map and the line that marked a latitude of 66 degrees 33 minutes — the Arctic Circle. There are only two roads in North America that cross the famous line, and even those can become impassible in the winter.

In the end, Mark— and the lure of reaching the Circle — won out: we would end up driving a total of roughly 5,600 miles, about the distance from Seattle to New York and back.

Our preparations began last June, when we dismantled the seats in the back of Mark’s van. We added layers of blankets, in case we went without shelter (we didn’t), a spare can of gas in case we ran out (we did), and some bear spray in case of a close encounter (it didn’t happen).

After leaving Seattle, we made our way through British Columbia on Route 97, then 16, riding alongside Canadian National Railway trains that stretched for what seemed like miles. The buzz of our cellphones faded as we went off the grid. The geolocating iPhone apps that I downloaded for the trip became useless; Mark’s idea to rent a satellite phone — I had talked him out of it — suddenly sounded reasonable.

When we reached Highway 37, near Kitwanga, the only thing standing between the Yukon Territory and us was 448 miles of rough road that most travelers avoid: while less than 10 percent of the highway is unpaved, the mountainous route is narrow and lacks shoulders.

We zigzagged through Indian reservations and logging and mining towns, but signs of human life were few and far

between. Yet it was along Highway 37 that we saw the richest array of wildlife: bears, moose, foxes, wild horses, eagles and caribous.

After 14 hours on the highway, as we drove into the Yukon, it started to sink in: we were edging closer to the land of perpetual daylight. It was midnight, but the sun was still hanging low in the sky, providing enough illumination to navigate the road, which had no lights or reflectors or bright yellow lines down its middle.

We pulled into Whitehorse, across the Yukon border, around 2 a.m. Driving through its downtown at that desolate hour, you could sense how it might have been back in its gold-mining heyday. Sure, there was a Starbucks on Main Street, but

its presence didn’t make Whitehorse feel any less remote.

We continued. The portion of the Alaskan Highway beyond Whitehouse provided one of the most scenic sections of the drive, particularly as we passed Kluane Lake, with its 42 miles of shoreline and pristine blue waters framed by rolling mountains. Despite its impressive-sounding name, the highway also provided perhaps the roughest roads of the trip. This patch of Yukon is largely uninhabited, and there are a few side roads that just simply end.

Two and a half days into our journey, we finally crossed the Alaskan border. At the small town of Tok, a crossroads of sorts where the highway meets Route 1, we opted to head south to Anchorage, mainly in search of a decent meal. We spent two days in Anchorage and Seward before heading to Denali National Park and Preserve — home of Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak. At 20,320 feet, it dwarfs surrounding mountains.

But the most memorable thing I saw in the park was of a completely different scale. Alone outside of the empty visitors’ center, I came face-to-face with a beautiful red fox. I didn’t know the rules for a fox encounter; so there I stood, silently snapping photographs, waiting for it to move on, which it eventually did.

That evening we stayed in a yurt. It was the last vacancy at Carlos Creek Lodge, along Highway 3, and Denali’s only yurt rental. Sparsely furnished, its skylight was a constant reminder of the ever-present sun. While our yurt had no running water or a phone, it did have free Wi-Fi and some welcome heat.

Across the road at Panorama Pizza, we found an upbeat crowd, live music and cornhole, a game I had always associated with the Midwest. Enjoying the midnight sun out on the restaurant’s deck, we fortified ourselves with a PMS pizza (pepperoni, mushroom and sausage) and beer on tap.

From Denali, we drove north 71 miles to Fairbanks. It was there, sitting in the Cookie Jar, that Mark acknowledged that the Arctic Circle was his real goal. I was along for the ride.

During the first 84 miles of the remaining drive, we passed through towns like Livengood (pronounced “Livin’ good”), and over small bodies of water like No Name Creek. At Mile 73, the Elliot Highway ends and the James W. Dalton Highway begins. The sign for Dalton Highway had been covered with bumper stickers by fellow journeymen: It is the sole road in Alaska that leads north.

The highway follows the path of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline; both pass over the Yukon River, which flows northwest from Canada’s Yukon Territory into the Bering Sea. Forests along the road alternated between torched skeletons of trees, destroyed by wildfires in 2004 and 2005, and fields of pink fireweed.

Looking into the distance, it was easy

to imagine that, just beyond the horizon, lay a vast land of tundra, polar bears and, eventually, the Arctic Ocean. The road was lonely, but seeing another dust-covered truck made me feel like I was part of a tribe.

Soon, a sign appeared indicating a turnoff for the Arctic Circle marker. At long last, we had reached our goal.

The marker itself, which stood amid gravel and weeds in a dusty parking area, was less than remarkable. Sure, there was a lookout point, but not much else. We took a few obligatory pictures and gazed north.

Ten minutes later, we were back on Dalton Highway, watching the fireweed blow gently in the wind.

For our last night in Alaska, we found a room at the Aurora Express, a bed-andbreakfast nestled in the forest about six miles outside of Fairbanks. Its guest rooms, renovated Alaska Railroad train cars, were each named for a distinct décor: Bordello, CanCan, Gold Mine. We slept in the Bordello, a converted 1956 Pullman sleeping car. The room was outfitted with blackout window shades and running water and decorated with lace-covered silk hangers, a crystal chandelier and gaudy paintings.

That evening, over salmon dip and crackers, Susan Wilson, who operates the inn with her husband, shared tales of early statehood, the 1964 earthquake, interactions with Eskimos and stray polar bears.

After a final sunlit night, we started our return back through Tok, where we picked up the Alaskan Highway and headed back into the Yukon, retracing our steps as we approached darkness, slowly reconnecting to the grid.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

13

Wine & Liquor

Puerto Rico Replaces Captain Morgan A

new rum distillery will open in a former pharmaceutical plant in central Puerto Rico, helping to offset the loss of Captain Morgan rum from the island, economic officials said Wednesday.

The Club Caribe LLC distillery is scheduled to open in early 2012 in the mountain town of Cidra and will produce 2 million gallons of rum its first year as part of a 20-year deal, said senior vice president Alberto Rivera.

The local company is affiliated to Cc1, a Puerto Rican company that distributes Coca-Cola products in the U.S. territory.

Club Caribe expects to employ 25 people and invest $10 million in machinery and equipment as it moves into the old GlaxoSmithKline factory.

“We’re going to have a significant production of rum on a global level,” said Jose Perez-Riera, Puerto Rico’s economic development secretary.

The distillery eventually will produce up to 10 million gallons of rum, both to sell in bulk and as private labels including Club Caribe, a white rum; Black Roberts, a spiced rum; and Carlos Rum, a gold rum, Rivera said.

The company will target the U.S. mainland market.

“Vodka is the most consumed liquor in the U.S., but that is changing,” Rivera said.

The anticipated production of 2 million gallons next year will eventually generate $20 million in revenue for the island, said Jorge Junquera, deputy executive director of the Puerto Industrial Development Company, a state corporation that promotes business on the island.

The type of affiliation that Club Caribe Distillers, LLC, has with Cc1 is unclear, and a spokeswoman for the company did not clarify the relationship.

Puerto Rico is expected to lose $140 million next year as a result of the lucrative production of Captain Morgan rum moving to the neighbo-

ring U.S. Virgin Islands.

In January 2009, liquor company Diageo PLC signed a long-term lease to build a Captain Morgan rum distillery in the Virgin Islands in exchange for a portion of the territory’s excise-tax revenue, estimated at $2.7 billion over 30 years.

The distillery opened in late 2010 on the island of St. Croix and is expected to generate more than $100 million a year in revenue for the next 30 years.

“We are losing a mountain of money with Diageo’s departure,” Junquera said, referring to Diageo terminating its rum production contract in Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico has argued that its neighbor unfairly lured away business by using revenue from a tax levied on every bottle produced in the two Caribbean territories.

All but 25 cents of the $13.50 in federal excise taxes levied on per proof gallon of rum produced in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands goes back to the local governments to spend on

infrastructure and public services.

After the loss of Captain Morgan rum, Puerto Rico pursued several deals to help generate revenue.

In November 2010, legislators voted to increase the amount of money spent on promoting the island’s rum industry from 10 percent to 25 percent of federal excise taxes.

In February, the government awarded Bacardi a $95 million grant

to renovate its production plant in exchange for maintaining a minimum level of production for the next 20 years, which translates into more than $230 million in yearly revenue through excise taxes.

Puerto Rico’s rum industry employs about 4,500 workers and generates $400 million annually, more than 70 percent of which comes from Bacardi.

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The San Juan Weeekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

LETTERS God Almighty, Free at Last!

The leisure class and their muddled right-wing hacks fret over “virulent entitlement fever,” as Robert Licalzi of Garden Hills put it. Frills like unemployment insurance, subsidized higher education, social security, the dole. Stuff that would be unneeded were there a measure of social justice to begin with. If not for a squalid underclass, unemployment sought to keep wages down to sate big-business megalomania rather than full employment. If private health and disability insurance weren’t outrageous Swiss-cheese-coverage larceny.

And were the potentiality of cyberspace made good to render university an inexpensive endeavor, rather than jack up tuition to exclude the riff-raff.

A hierarchical socioeconomy abetted by law-ofthe -jungle governance cannot be conducive to anything but class strife, what we label crime and in our blind desperation blame drugs for.

It’s all so simple. Dislodge the monkeys on our backs and the house of cards will come tumbling down.

Only then will we harvest our own fruitfulness and that of our nurturing island and will relentless angst give way to happiness and peace.

Anita Roig, Santurce

Memories of Memorial Days Passed To Rafael Ramírez of the Veterans Administration: You write that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor “without warning or provocation” and that’s wrong.

Britain and the United States had a policy of pressuring sneaky treaties upon countries that had the natural resources Japan needed to industrialize and compete, that kept Japan from access to them, to hog the markets for themselves. Thus the Japanese faced a future of poverty and exploitation. So Japan went to where the resources were--China and the Phillippines--and simply took them. It was a choice between a rock and a hard place, as that meant probable war with the imperialist Western powers. Then the U.S. and Britain slapped an economic blockade on Japan. The Japanese figured that war was inevitable and that if they got a head start by destroying the U.S. Pacific fleet, they might even win it. Actually they did, insofar as they managed to free themselves from economic strangulation.

It’s either disingenuous or naive of you to portray that the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor because it was a Sunday morning and the sun was out and they had nothing better to do. Nations are like people, they do things for reasons.

And your romantic praise of the American fighting man is plain insulting in that Uncle Sam treats his veterans with brazen shabbiness. Remember Agent Orange?

Agent Orange was a defoliant used massively in the Vietnam War. Early studies of populations exposed to dioxin, an Agent Orange component, indicated increa-

sed risk of cancer and genetic defects. In the 1980s U.S vets filed lawsuits against the companies who produced Agent Orange and obtained a 1984 settlement whereby most affected Vietnam vets received a miserable lump sum payment of $1,200 each. In addition to compensation, these veterans sought treatment for maladies they and their children suffered resulting from their exposure to Agent Orange, but they never received promised medical care through the Veterans Administration medical system, and only with rare exceptions have their affected children gotten health care asssistance from the fed. As the Agent Orange plaintiffs of 25 years ago once put it, “The government is just waiting for all of us to die.” It’s expected that most still alive will succumb to the effects of the toxic exposure over the next few years, before age 65.

Elsewhere, Australian, Canadian and New Zealander veterans obtained compensation. And the Korean Appeal Court ordered Monsanto and Dow Chemical to pay South Koren vets US$62 million in compensation. But natch, the Vietnamese, the worst victims by far, got zilch.

Rocco Sastre, Ponce

More Predatory Banking It’s little known that in liquid assets European Jews lost more to Swiss bankers than to the Nazis.

When you open an account at a bank in Puerto Rico, even for checking, the fellow routinely suggests that a close relative be empowered to sign on your behalf, in case you’re unconscious in a hospital bed or something like that.

What he doesn’t tell you is the instant the bank learns online that the relative has died, gone to jail, become legally incapacitated or been deported, your account is frozen pending inheritance/court resolution.

Not a penny. And we all eat and pay rent from our bank accounts, don’t we?

Then months of waiting and thousands in legal fees and many hours of travail through offices and courtrooms lie ahead. And if things get really messy, like a pending civil suit, tax issue or foreign entanglement--all this having nothing to do with you---the bank gets to keep your life savings for all that time and for good in the likely event that the paper trek outlasts you. What they had in mind to begin with.

So if you have any sense, no co-signers ever. And we could use an Hugo Chávez. Much better than a Luis Fortuño.

Julián Acevedo, Ocean Park

Fortaleza Fluke To Gov. Fortuño: I was aghast. You did something for us the little folks, and that’s virtually everybody, that in no way pandered to Milla de Oro money. You dispatched a

couple of your aids in jeans and T-shirts to call on Commonwealth agencies. And they got treated like garbage.

No surprise.

Wasn’t there a silent satisfaction in for once acting like a leader? I’ve read Fidel used to do this sort of thing all the time, as did Jefferson. And Muñoz Marín. Try it again sometime. You might get to like it. Maybe make a human being out of you.

Casiopeia Martínez, San Juan

Beware of 2012 No matter how uneducated the Dept. of Uneducation here keeps each generation, nobody likes to live under oppression. Hence the NPP’s sinking beneath 25% in the pols. So the corrupt rascals are scrambling to cheat their way back into office come 2012. They’re starting by manipulating election rules, among other things invalidating---un-Constitutionally doubtless---the split ballot.

The penepeístas are the party of the wealthy and are devilishly clever and every resource from McConnell-Valdés to a lawless and brutal police is at their beck and call.

Would the FBI look into election fraud? The Aníbal caper tells me they’ve been bought off. What then?

Without Uncle Sam nevertheless, we’d surely be a place of the cruelest tyranny. 2012 might turn out a palma win. But it won’t be legit.

Eleuterio Serpieri, Santurce

Re: “Tube out, take home” Hospital Nightmare The lady who wrote that the hospital forced her father through a painful and humiliating death, though she’s a physician, does not fathom how you deal with such people here. You have to show the hospital that the medical insurer will not cover futile “heroic efforts.”

And then that the hospital won’t be able to sue for moneys owed for the unwanted treatment after the patient’s demise. Bear in mind that the hospital might require a “co-signer” as a condition for admission. You have to be swift, admittedly quite a feat at such a moment. Best consult a litigation lawyer, one you know and trust, well before the brown hits the fan.

Agustín Manzano , Santurce

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San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

15

FASHION & BEAUTY

How High Can You Bounce?

By SUSAN JOY

R

UBBER crept up on us this summer. Neon-bright rubber accessories, as delectable as ice pops on a steamy day, turned up in fashion collections high and low, and without any of the drippy mess.

Not that rubber is new to fashion. “Rubber in jewelry was revolutionary in the 1980s,” said Justin Giunta, the design director of jewelry for Tory Burch, as well as for his own Subversive Jewelry line. He recalled the Maripol black rubber bracelets that Madonna wore and André Ribeiro’s diamonds set in rubber tubes. Since then, he explained, a new kind of coated rubber tubing with brightly

saturated color has been developed. At Tory Burch, he mixed the rubber with semiprecious stones and puka shells in statement necklaces.

This time around, rubber has even found favor in the high-end shoe market. And not just on soles. Inspired perhaps by the innovations of the Brazilian rubber-shoe line Melissa, which has collaborated with many designers, including Jean Paul Gaultier this season and Jason Wu for the next one, designer shoe departments are awash in rubber: Valentino, Chanel, Chloé, Givenchy, Burberry, Sergio Rossi and Jimmy Choo. None are the sweaty jellies of our youth, but covetable sandals that wouldn’t mind a dip in the pool.

Can Shoes Really Tone the Body?

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

N

ew scientific experiments can be inspired by a simple question, and in the case of John Mercer, that question was, “So, John, do toning shoes work?”

Dr. Mercer, a professor of biomechanics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was talking with a friend who runs an athletic shoe store. The friend told him that customers were coming in and requesting toning shoes, which are soft sneakers, often with a rockershaped sole, that promise to exercise and tighten muscles in the calves, thighs and buttocks. (“Your boobs will be jealous,” a refined advertising campaign for one of the shoes declared.) Many manufacturers make them: Reebok, New Balance, MBT, FitFlops and Crocs, among others.

The store owner carried various models of the toning shoes. But, he told Dr. Mercer, he was uncomfortable recommending them to his customers, because he didn’t know if they actually functioned as claimed.

Dr. Mercer didn’t know, either. So he recruited a group of healthy young female students (toning shoes are marketed almost exclusively to women) and had them walk on a treadmill for 10 minutes at a time while wearing, alternately, a walking shoe or a toning shoe — in this case, the Skechers Shape-ups. He and his colleagues attached sensors to the women’s legs to measure the electrical impulses generated as their muscles contracted.

They also determined the women’s oxygen consumption, to see if they worked

harder and burned more calories with one shoe rather than the other.

But as it turned out, according to results presented in June at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine, muscle activation and oxygen consumption were almost identical whether the women wore walking shoes or Shape-ups. The finding “was a little surprising,” Dr. Mercer said, since his volunteers commented that the toning shoes, with their bowed, unstable bottoms, felt different underfoot from the walking shoes. But that difference didn’t change how they moved in the various models, he said.

Dr. Mercer’s study joins a small but growing body of science about toning shoes, much of which does not support the makers’ claims. A study conducted last year by exercise physiologists at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, for instance, found that muscle activation and calorie burning did not change whether people wore ordinary athletic shoes or any of three different models of toning shoes. “There is simply no evidence to support the claims that these shoes will help wearers exercise more intensely, burn more calories or improve muscle strength and tone,” the authors conclu-

ded.

Other results have been a bit more equivocal. A 2009 study showed greater muscle activation when women wore the Reebok toning shoe, but it involved only five women and was financed by the shoe company, as my colleague Tara ParkerPope reported at the time. A newer experiment presented in June at the sports medicine meeting showed that when someone walks in a rocker-style toning shoe, forces generated by the foot striking the ground move up the leg differently than if that person wears a walking shoe.

But this shifting of forces had little discernible effect on muscle activation.

“We know that the force value changed,” said Heidi A. Orloff, a professor at the University of Puget Sound who oversaw the study. “We can’t say whether there are benefits to that or not.”

Meanwhile, in perhaps the most telling and longest-term study of the shoes, Canadian researchers at the University of Calgary last year had volunteers wear a rocker shoe throughout the day for six weeks. In the beginning, the volunteers wobbled in the unstable shoes, activating and strengthening small, underused muscles in the feet and ankles that stabilize balance. But after six weeks, the swaying had diminished and those stabilizing muscles were not being exercised to the same extent. The toning shoes, in other words, had provided benefits, but for a limited time and not to the big, showy muscles in the wearers’ calves and buttocks.

(Both the University of Puget Sound and the University of Calgary studies

were financed in part by shoe companies.)

Disappointment with the performance of toning shoes has begun to percolate into the wider world. This year lawsuits were filed against several makers of toning shoes, claiming that the shoes had not fulfilled their promises or had caused injury.

Little scientific evidence exists yet about injury risk from the shoes, and Dr. Mercer said there was no obvious biomechanical reason why the design of the shoes would contribute to such problems.

(His work was not financed by shoe companies.)

Meanwhile, those finding fault with the shoes may be missing a broader lesson, he continued. The subtext of his and other studies, he said, is that the human body is endlessly ingenious and utterly indolent. “Humans are quite lazy, from a physiological standpoint,” he said.

“Our bodies will try to do the least work possible in any situation.” So in even as short a time as the 10-minute walks that his subjects completed, people’s large leg muscles adjusted to the rounded soles of the toning shoes and expended no more energy than in everyday shoes.

That finding does not mean that toning shoes have no utility, he added, which is the message that he ultimately passed along to his store-owning friend.

Toning shoes, in his study, might not have functioned as advertised, but “some people love how they feel,” Dr. Mercer said, “and if that’s enough to get those people out and moving, then, in my opinion, the shoes are working fine.”

FASHION & BEAUTY

16

San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Does This Swimsuit Make Me Look Fat?

By HENRY ALFORD

I

N its Platonic ideal, a bathing suit removes you momentarily from yourself, and unleashes heretofore dormant aspects of your personality. Wriggle into a great-looking suit that’s black and snug and tailored, and suddenly you’re ready for an underwater cocktail party; rock a pair of floral Hawaiian board shorts and suddenly you’re convinced that the only way to spell “dude” is with two o’s.

My quest for such a garment got its kickstart in May when a friend e-mailed me a link to a site called Socialite Life, which featured a folio of 23 photos breathlessly headlined “Jude Law: Shirtless in Cannes!” Squinting rakishly in the brilliant Mediterranean light, Jude looked worldly, post-coital, regnant.

When you clicked on the upper left hand of the first photo, you learned that Jude’s fetching canary-yellow bathing suit was from Dsquared2 and cost $268. I downloaded the image, and hied myself to Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue, where I showed it to a smiley salesman in his 20s named Beau.

I told Beau, “I want to be mistaken for Jude Law.” “My looks are kind of preppy and innocent, so I need a suit that will take me to ‘wayward English schoolboy’ rather than ‘toffee-nosed prat.’ ” Beau said, “I understand.”

The store was, alas, out of the Dsquared2 suit, but Beau whisked me through the men’s department, showing me other options.

We hit Etro, Michael Bastian, Thom Browne.

When we saw six black, slinky suits coiled like snakes in the Dolce & Gabbana section, I said, “Ooh, these might be too Jude Law.” In the dressing room with Beau’s and my three picks, I came face to face with a thorny verity: It is the curse of the middle-aged male body simultaneously to shrink and enlarge.

Your belly pooches out, ever more parabolic, while your legs dwindle down to mere sticks, two knobby rods with the surface tension of plucked poultry. One day you look down at your half-sphere atop its two spindly rods and realize, “I’ve turned into a Weber grill.”

The suit most flattering to my Weber grill was a pair of belted, snug-fitting, midthigh $230 Orlebar Brown trunks. “These are Jude-like,” I told Beau as we gazed into the fitting rooms’ mirror. “Jude would accessorize with designer shades, a shirt unbuttoned to the navel, and a whisper of Drakkar Noir masking a base of animal ripeness.” Beau’s eyes widened, and I sensed he wanted to introduce me to a professional who could tell me all about lithium.

The color of the Orlebar Brown trunks (fiery tomato) was too bracing for my Pepperidge Farm brand of wholesome. I headed on to Saks, where I showed my Jude photo to three

salesmen. But they had also run out of the yellow Dsquared2 trunks. A thin, expressionless young Michael York look-alike showed me other possibilities, but I demurred. I apologized and said, “I think I’m hung up on looking like ...” “... Yeah, yeah, yeah: Jude Law.” Eager not to beat a dead horse, I left my photo of Jude at home for my next two bouts of shopping. During the course of two days, I would visit eight more stores and try on 26 more suits. I loved the festive, Lilly Pulitzeresque prints at Vilebrequin, but the suits’ puffy, bustle-like silhouettes vaulted my pear shape from Bosc to Bartlett; I loved the contained but non-packagey look of one pair of Marc Jacobs’s trunks, but wondered if I wanted to pay $345 for something that would be riding shotgun with a lot of cocoa butter and PABA. A perfect fit kept eluding me. A pair of shorts in a floral print at Osklen in SoHo looked great except for a strange gap they created between their waistband and my spine.

“These make me look like I have a little storage area,” I said to the salesclerk, a sly brunette in her 20s. “A place for pencils.

The fit and the fit’s attendant implications slowed me in my tracks. “I can’t tell what the look is,” I said to an H & M salesclerk referring to a pair of $17.95 tight navy squarecut nylon trunks with a red, white and blue rope belt. I asked, “Is it randy French sailor, or is it Fourth of July picnic on the town green?”

Harried, she told me: “They’re Swedish, that’s all I know.”

My favorite salesclerk was a middleaged woman who was eating a salad when I walked into her tiny, messy boutique, Pesca.

“I like the elastic waistband,” I said of one of her suits, all made by a company called Sauvage; “they use a very good Lycra.”

She left her desk to come look at me standing in front of the mirror in a sky-blue mid-thigh number. “I’m 49 years old, but in these I look 48.” She said I looked sexy. I thought of my Jude fixation and confessed to her, “I probably want the world to think I’m sauvage, but in reality I’m more domestique. In reality, I’m more médecin de campagne.” She asked if I was a doctor.

I finally hit pay dirt at Parke & Ronen, a Chelsea boutique that sells many scanty men’s clothes hammered in the forge of brazen confidence. The store’s fitting mirror, faces out onto the street. The mirror’s daunting amount of requisite exhibitionism rattled me when I skittishly looked at myself in the first suit, but by suit No. 5, calmed by the store’s friendly staff, I was shirtless, unfazed and furtively bopping to the Lady Gaga throbbing over the sound system.

I loved a pair of fitted $95 Parke & Ronen four-inch trunks in a blue, green and purple floral paisley on a white background;

they had a two-grommet tie waist that cinched away all Weber-based impurity. The suit’s overall effect was slightly ... swinging London. Slightly ... Jude Law dirty weekend.

Kuh-ching.

I first wore the suit to the N.Y.U. pool, where its comparative jauntiness, against a backdrop of collegiate Speedos and board shorts, was galvanizing. I can’t say I swam any faster, but I certainly swam with more verve.

I wore it one sunny afternoon on my building’s roof deck, where I didn’t need to sip at a Pimm’s Cup or a Campari; both were implied. I wore it to my office one hot day.

Indeed, so comfortable and unbosomed was I in it that I decided to wear it for a trip I’ve happily made four times before: out to where I like to spend the night on the beach.

I made a reservation on the jitney. Doubting that any changing room would be open by the time I reached the beach at 7 p.m., I wore the suit under my pants to make the trip out to Long Island; as I boarded the bus, I found myself smiling slightly, and thought, “I am wearing very exciting underpants!”

I spent a lovely, contemplative evening picnicking and walking around a deserted beach in the suit (though it was, alas, too cold to swim); I crawled into my sleeping bag at 10 p.m. The suit’s smoothness felt satiny and delightful against the sleeping bag’s slippery insides: a hot dog in a bun. The surf raged, the stars twinkled. I felt new and brimming.

Jude at last.

But then, just after midnight: blindingly bright car headlights aimed at my head.

“Hey! Hey!” yelled a male voice from inside an East Hampton Marine Patrol vehicle.

The officer then asked, with some irritation, “Why are you sleeping on the beach?” Groggily, I explained, “I just bought a new bathing suit.” He snorted and said: “You just bought a new bathing suit! What kind of reason is that?” I mumbled an incoherent answer. He wrote me a summons.

It was too late to call anyone. Back up in Amagansett, I sat on a bench on Route 27 and waited for a 4:20 a.m. jitney back home.

“Jude, Jude, Jude,” I thought, “Where have you taken me?” Many inebriated 20-something revelers sauntered by, including a young woman skittering in high heels who, on hearing that I was waiting for a 4:20 bus, gushed: “Oh my God. Oh my God.” Moments later, I took my summons out of my pocket and gazed at it. I contemplated the embarrassment of a forthcoming appearance at the East Hampton Town Justice Court. I thought, I’ll definitely need to be at my most confident and cool for that. I thought, I’ll definitely need to be at the top of my game. I thought, I’ll definitely need to wear the suit.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

17

Kitchen

Throw Another Melon on the Barbie

By MARK BITTMAN

T

he grill, as everyone knows, is the best place to cook a steak, but that doesn’t mean you have to cook a steak every time you fire up the grill.

Putting aside the philosophical reasons to avoid beef, let’s discuss the practicality and appeal of those foods that take on a delicious, chewy, steaklike texture when grilled — for example, vegetables.

I don’t mean your basic Tuscanstyle grilled vegetables. This is about thicker, meatier “cuts” that may not remind you of a real steak but that might mean you don’t miss your steak either.

The most famously meaty vegetable is actually a fungus. Longtime vegetarians may groan at the prospect of eating anything resembling a portobello-mushroom burger — which remains the only meatless option on many casual-dining restaurant menus — but everyone else should give them a try. Brushed with an intense marinade flavored with fish sauce (and loads of black pepper) or soy sauce and charred

over an open flame, portobello mushrooms expertly mimic the darkly savory flavor and chewy texture of steak.

As long as you’re willing to challenge your preconceived notions about slabs of flesh, there are unexpected vegetables that can fill in for steaks as well. Take sweet potatoes and jicama. Each is naturally starchy, not meaty, but when you cut them into planks and sear them just until tender inside, they develop a fabulously smoky crust.

Eggplant slices can also be grilled until tender without losing a certain rugged chew. And thick hunks of cabbage can be nearly as much fun to tear into as a porterhouse.

Watermelon is not a vegetable, obviously, but it’s so wonderful when grilled that it must be included here. Grill a watermelon slice, and it dries out and sobers up, losing its sloppy sweetness, and it takes surprisingly well to savory accompaniments. Add a slice of good melting cheese, a hard roll, a few pickles and a lettuce leaf, and look out: watermelon burgers.

Miso-Glazed Eggplant Slices Time: 30 minutes, plus optional time for salting 2 medium or 1 large eggplant (11/2 to 2 pounds), cut into 1/2-inch slices 3 tablespoons neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn, or more as needed 1 tablespoon sesame oil Salt and black pepper 1/2 cup miso 1/4 cup honey 1/4 cup hot water 1. If time allows, sprinkle the eggplant liberally with salt, put it in a colander in the sink and let it sit for 20 to 30 minutes; rinse and pat dry with paper towels. Heat a charcoal or gas grill to mediumhigh heat and put the rack about 4

inches from the flame.

2. Combine the neutral and sesame oils and brush the eggplant on both sides with the oil mixture. Sprinkle with salt (if you salted the eggplant, hold off) and pepper, then brush with more oil. Grill until browned on both sides, about 10 minutes total, turning once or twice and brushing with more oil if it looks dry.

3. When the eggplant is almost done, whisk together the miso, honey and hot water and generously brush the eggplant with this mixture. Continue to grill for another minute or two, then serve hot, warm or at room temperature, drizzled with any remaining miso sauce.

Yield: 4 servings.

Curry-Rubbed Sweet-Potato Planks Time: 40 to 45 minutes 2 teaspoons curry powder 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground coriander Salt and black pepper 2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cut lengthwise into 1/2-inch slices 2 tablespoons neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn Lime wedges for serving 1. Heat a charcoal or gas grill to moderately high heat, keeping part of the grill cool for indirect grilling, and put the rack about 4 inches from the flame. Combine the curry powder, cu-

min, coriander and a good sprinkle of salt and pepper in a small bowl. Brush the sweet-potato slices with the oil and rub all over with the spice mixture.

2. Put the sweet-potato planks on the cool part of the grill and close the grill cover. Cook, checking and turning occasionally, until the flesh is very tender all the way through, 20 to 25 minutes. Move the planks to the hotter part of the grill and cook, turning once or twice, until golden brown on both sides, 3 to 5 minutes.

Serve hot, warm or at room temperature with lime wedges.

Yield: 4 servings.

Watermelon Burgers With Cheese Time: 30 minutes 1 small watermelon 1/4 cup olive oil 1 tablespoon minced onion Salt and black pepper 4 ounces mozzarella, Monterey Jack, Gruyère or other melting cheese, grated or sliced 1. Heat a charcoal or gas grill to moderately high heat and put the rack about 4 inches from the flame.

Cut the watermelon lengthwise, into halves or quarters, depending on the size of the melon. From each length, cut 11/2-inch-thick slices; remove the

rind from each slice. If there are black seeds, use a fork to remove as many of them as you can without beating the flesh up too much.

2. Mix the olive oil with the onion and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Brush or rub the mixture all over the watermelon slices. Grill or broil for about 5 minutes on each side. The flesh should be lightly caramelized and dried out a bit. Sprinkle each slice with cheese, cover the grill and cook just until the cheese melts, about a minute.

3. Serve on buns, toast or hard rolls with the usual burger fixings.

Kitchen

18

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Teriyaki Cabbage Steaks Time: 1 hour 1/2 cup soy sauce 1/2 cup mirin (or 1/4 cup honey mixed with 1/4 cup water) 1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger 1 teaspoon minced garlic 2 tablespoons chopped scallions 1 small green or white cabbage, cored and cut crosswise into 11/2-inch slices 2 tablespoons neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn Salt and black pepper Lemon wedges for serving 1. Heat a charcoal or gas grill to moderately high heat, keeping part of the grill cool for indirect grilling, and put the rack about 4 inches from the flame. Combine the soy sauce and mirin in a small saucepan over medium-low

heat and cook until the mixture begins to bubble, 2 to 3 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and add the ginger, garlic, and the scallions.

2. Brush the cabbage slices with the oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Put the cabbage on the cool part of the grill and close the grill cover. Cook, checking and turning occasionally, until you can pierce the leaves easily with a sharp knife, 40 to 45 minutes. When the cabbage is tender, brush it liberally with the teriyaki mixture and move it to the hotter part of the grill. Cook, turning once or twice and brushing with more of the sauce, until it’s browned, 3 to 5 minutes.

3. Drizzle the cabbage with any remaining teriyaki sauce, and serve hot or warm with lemon wedges.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Shrimp, Sugar-Snap Pea and Potato Salad With Mint and Pecorino 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for serving 1 pound new fingerling or small yellow potatoes 1 1/2 pounds large shrimp, peeled 3/4 cup loosely packed mint leaves 3/4 cup coarsely grated young pecorino (or 1/2 cup aged) Crusty bread, for serving.

Time: 45 minutes 3/4 pound sugar-snap peas 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard 3 tablespoons red-wine vinegar, plus

more for serving 1 1/4 teaspoons coarse sea salt 3/4 teaspoon pepper, plus more for serving

Fried Zucchini Rounds Time: 20 minutes plus 20 minutes’ salting 3 small zucchini, trimmed and sliced into 1/2-thick rounds Kosher salt, to taste Vegetable oil, for frying 1 cup flour 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 cup plain dried bread crumbs Black pepper, to taste

Lemon wedges, for serving (optional).

1. Place the zucchini into a colander in the sink, and lightly sprinkle with salt, tossing to coat. Let sit for 20 minutes, then pat very dry with paper towels.

2. In a deep fryer or saucepan, heat 4 inches of oil to 375 degrees.

1. Trim and string the peas, then thinly slice them crosswise. Place them in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, vinegar, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and pepper to taste. Slowly whisk in the oil.

2. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the potatoes until tender, about 15 minutes. Transfer with a slot3. Place flour, eggs and bread crumbs into three separate, wide bowls; season bread crumbs with salt and pepper.

Dip each zucchini round into flour, then egg, then bread crumbs (repeat for an extra crispy coating).

Working in batches, fry until golden-brown, about 2 minutes, turning once.

While warm, season with kosher salt. Serve with le-

ted spoon to a cutting board. Add the shrimp to the pot and cook until opaque, 2 minutes. Transfer with a slotted spoon to the bowl of peas.

3. While the potatoes are warm, slice them into 1/2-inch rounds, and place them in a small bowl. Gently toss them with 1/2 cup of the vinaigrette, 1 teaspoon salt, and 3/4 teaspoon pepper. Spread them on a large platter to cool.

4. When the shrimp are cool, toss with the peas and remaining vinaigrette. Spoon the mixture over the potatoes.

Tear the mint leaves, and scatter the pieces over the salad. Sprinkle with cheese and pepper. Drizzle with oil and add a little vinegar to taste, if needed.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

mon wedges if desired.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

19

HEALTH & SCIENCE

Human Swallows Pill. Mosquito Bites Human. Mosquito Dies.

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

S

cientists have proposed an intriguing new way to fight malaria: turning people into human time bombs for mosquitoes.

A cheap deworming pill used in Africa for 25 years against river blindness was recently shown to have a power that scientists had long suspected but never before demonstrated in the field: When mosquitoes bite people who have recently swallowed the drug — called ivermectin or Mectizan — they die.

Other scientists caution that while the mosquito-poisoning trick is pretty nifty, it is not very practical: For it to work effectively, nearly everyone in a mosquito-infested area must take the pills simultaneously.

Getting thousands of villagers to do that even in annual deworming campaigns is a logistical nightmare, scientists said. The mosquito-killing effect appears to fade out within a month, so it would need to be repeated monthly.

Also, in rare cases, the otherwise safe drug can be lethal.

The new study, published last week by The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, was carried out by scientists

from Senegal and Colorado State University.

They vacuumed mosquitoes from the walls of huts in three villages whose inhabitants had recently been given ivermectin and three whose had not, and tested to see how many mosquitoes contained malaria parasites.

The ivermectin villages had almost 80 percent fewer.

The drug was shortening the mosquitoes’ lives, explained the lead author, Brian D. Foy, a Colorado State mosquito expert.

Only older insects transmit malaria, since they must get it from humans first.

Dr. Peter Hotez, president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, was enthusiastic about the study, saying it showed that deworming drugs “could have a lot of collateral effects.”

Dr. Lee Hall of the National Institutes of Health, which helped finance the study, was more cautious, saying a clinical trial might be warranted once more is known about how long ivermectin kills.

But a worm expert from the Carter Center in Atlanta was very skeptical.

At present, millions of free doses are gi-

A Memory Tonic for the Aging Brain

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

W

hy, as we grow older, do we forget where we parked the car, and could exercise sharpen our recall? Considerable interest to any of us with a series of remarkable new experiments by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, during which young and older volunteers watch pictures flash onto a screen, while the scientists watch their brains.

Creating and accessing memories are complicated processes, with the specific physiological mechanisms still largely unknown.

But, using brain scans, neuroscientists already have established that quite a bit of the electrical activity and blood flow associated with memory processing occurs in the dentate gyrus, a part of the brain within the hippocampus, a larger portion of the brain known to be involved with learning and thinking.

So for their latest study, published this month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers used advanced magnetic resonance imaging machines to scan the dentate gyrus and other areas within the brains of people at the very moment that they were in the process of trying to create and store certain new memories.

Specifically, the volunteers, wearing

head sensors, were shown a series of pictures of everyday objects, like computers, telephones, pineapples, pianos and tractors, and asked to press a button indicating whether each object typically was found indoors or outside. They were not asked to remember the images. But later they were shown another set of images and asked whether they remembered seeing that specific photo before or a similar photo, or whether the picture was completely new to them. The researchers tracked brain activity throughout both tasks.

It turned out that young adults were quite good at differentiating the images into those brand-new, already seen or similar to but not exactly the same as earlier pictures (a baby grand piano instead of a full grand, for instance). The brain activity in each young person’s dentate gyrus responded accordingly. “There would be a lot of activity when young people saw either new or similar objects,” said Michael A. Yassa, professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins. The young people’s brains were, learning and storing the new images as new images, even when they were quite similar to the images they had seen before.

The brains of the older volunteers, ages 60 to 80, though, did not seem to work as well. Their dentate gyri typically showed far less activity when they were shown a similar but not identical image. Their brains appa-

rently did not create a completely new memory to correspond to the slightly different picture, so that the photo of the baby grand registered as no different than the one of the full grand. In turn, they usually referred to pictures that were similar but not identical to ones they’d seen earlier as “old” photos.

None of these lapses were severe. But they do indicate, Dr. Yassa said, that the older adults were less successful at pattern separation, or the ability to differentiate between things that are quite similar.

There are many different types of memory processing, of course, but one of the more important for everyday functioning is pattern separation. “Take breakfast,” Dr. Yassa said. Most of us follow a routine and eat much the same thing at the same time for breakfast most days, he said. But each morning’s meal is unique and should produce a unique set of memories. “You need to be able to separate those memories and keep them apart,” Dr. Yassa said. “Otherwise they can override one another and confuse things.”

Aging, Dr. Yassa’s work suggests, blunts our ability to separate yesterday’s corn flakes from last Wednesday’s raisin bran, or today’s parking slot from Monday’s. The problem is, in part, structural, he believes. In a separate part of his experiments, using newly developed M.R.I. scanning technology, he found that the dentate gyrus in many of the older

ven out to fight onchocerciasis, or river blindness, which is caused by tiny worms migrating into the eye.

“We hand it out once a year,” said the parasitologist, Dr. Frank O. Richards Jr. “I’m pushing for twice a year, and people want to kill me. It’s very difficult to imagine a once-amonth program anywhere.”

It might be useful, he suggested, in areas with brief, intense malaria seasons.

Also, when people with lots of worms are treated, they suffer fever and intense itching as the worms die. Though that might be bearable once a year, it discourages people from seeking treatment more frequently. And ivermectin is dangerous for a few people — those infested with large numbers of a relatively rare West African worm, the loa loa. These worms circulate in the blood and lungs and may jam capillaries when they die, potentially causing coma or death. Detecting them means drawing blood and viewing it under a microscope.

“It’s very difficult to say, ‘Let’s treat a million people’ — and then have to test each one for loa loa,” Dr. Richards said. volunteers was not connected as robustly to the rest of the brain as in young people. Messages did not flow as easily from elsewhere in the brain to the dentate gyrus memory center, and vice versa.

But there is hope, Dr. Yassa said. “Exercise is one of the things that might directly change this process,” he said. In other experiments, exercise has been found to jump-start neurogenesis, or the creation of new brain cells, especially in the dentate gyrus, he said, potentially improving that area’s health and functioning.

The process has worked in rodents. A heartening study from last year conducted at the National Institute on Aging found that mice voluntarily scampered on running wheels displayed an “enhanced” ability to separate closely spaced squares on a display screen, the animal equivalent of pattern recognition, compared with sedentary animals. The runners had far more new neurons in their dentate gyri than the mice that didn’t run.

The extent to which exercise improves pattern recognition processing in people is still unknown. But Dr. Yassa is including measures of physical fitness and exercise history as part of his continuing research. The results so far look encouraging, he said.

“You can’t go wrong by exercising.” “We don’t know if it can reverse” damage if you already have memory slips. There are indications it might slow or prevent memory deterioration, if you begin exercising early enough among the many benefits of a health club membership, your workout may help you recall where in the parking lot you left your car.

SCIENCE & Art

20

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Science to Art, and Vice Versa

By AMY WALLACE

N

ATHALIE MIEBACH uses science to make art. A sculptor who lives in Brookline, Mass., she translates weather data and other scientific measurements into three-dimensional objects that accurately display temperature variations, barometric pressure and moon phases, among other things.

Matthew McCrory, on the other hand, uses art to benefit science. A former lighting artist at DreamWorks Animation, he now uses his skills at the Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging at Northwestern University to help researchers in Chicago see their work in 3-D. Ms. Miebach and Mr. McCrory may appear to be engaged in very different pursuits, but their goal is the same: to promote understanding by finding new ways of seeing the world. They’ve never met, but both are invested in the idea that better visualization leads to better thinking.

“You make discoveries much quicker when you have a different way of viewing your data,” says Mr. McCrory, whose official title is lead visualization engineer. “And your brain doesn’t have to work as hard to try to figure out what things are really like.”

Both have been in the news of late.

In March, Northwestern unveiled what it calls a classroom unlike any other: a room that Mr. McCrory designed and outfitted with 46-inch televisions — 25 of them, stacked five by five — that operate as a huge, high-resolution canvas upon which atoms, proteins and even whole animals can be displayed in all their three-dimensional glory.

For her part, Ms. Miebach was named one of 20 fellows who will participate in the annual TEDGlobal conference, which promotes the convergence of technology, enter-

tainment and design.

Before she headed to Edinburgh, where this year’s conference convenes on Monday, she spent some time with me on the phone describing her work. She said her sculptures, while representations of meticulously gathered data, seek less to teach viewers explicitly about science than to make them think about how they think.

“The purpose of these pieces is not a didactic one: to explain a specific act of weather or climate change,” she says. “It really is to reveal the beauty of complexity. The work addresses broader questions than the numbers I’m translating. It forces the viewer to think about the visual vocabulary they associate with science versus art.”

That phrase “science versus art” could be an accurate summary of Mr. McCrory’s work, too. While getting his bachelor’s degree in computer science (and for some time after he graduated), he was a researcher at Argonne National Laboratory, doing software development and design for visualization devices. Then he spent a year as a lighting technical director at DreamWorks, working on the movie “Shark Tale.” Then he toggled back again, working at the University of Chicago on visualizing of CAT scans and M.R.I.’s for surgeons. Then he returned to DreamWorks for a few more years, working on “Flushed Away” and “Kung Fu Panda.”

With each job change, he kept returning to a single frustration: “the trailing gap between what was coming out of Hollywood visually and what was coming out of the scientific realm.”

“The scientists at Northwestern do physics, chemistry and biology really well, but they generally don’t have a clue when it comes to making good-looking images,” he said. “A lot was getting lost in translation.”

So when he had a chance to join the university’s information technology wing to try to correct that problem, he jumped at it.

His first assignment was in the astronomy department, visualizing the evolution of binary star systems. Then he reconnected with one of the professors who’d helped recruit him, Thomas J. Meade, who was in the midst of designing the Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging, with the goal of having biologists, chemists, engineers and theoreticians work together. Mr. McCrory’s dream of creating a 3-D display for scientific data fit directly into Dr. Meade’s vision.

“I said: ‘I don’t care what it costs.

Nathalie Miebach wearing her basket We’ve got to do this,’ ” Dr. Meade said of sculpture, which plots astronomical data. that $350,000 project. He hasn’t been disappointed. “If we put glasses on you and display a rabbit brain on the screens,” he which has created 3-D representations of tisaid, “you’re no longer looking at it, you’re dal rhythms in the Antarctic and Cape Cod, the ecological conditions that attract right walking around in it.”

Coincidentally, astronomy is what Ms. whales, and the type and speed of clouds.

To Ms. Miebach, accessibility is key.

Miebach was studying at Harvard Extension School when she discovered her life’s She incorporates what she calls “the lanwork about a decade ago. She was learning guage of play” into her pieces: beads, rods basket-weaving at the time, too, and would and wheels in primary colors that evoke arrive at her evening astronomy classes with Tinker Toys or Legos. “When you present the viewer with graphs and charts and data all her art materials and tools in tow.

“I’d be looking at these incredible ima- sheets full of numbers about climate changes of the deepness of space and time projec- ge, say, that’s an incredibly intimidating ted against a flat wall. And it was very frus- thing,” she said. “But you present that same trating,” she said. “I decided the only way I information through this weird, almost rocould really understand it was if I could find ller-coaster-y looking organic form, it lures them in.” a way to make it three-dimensional.”

Dr. Meade says the same of Mr. Instead of a final paper, she submitted a woven basket that was her 3-D translation McCrory’s wall. “On the one hand, it’s eye of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, a scat- candy,” he said. “Undergrads in front of a ter graph used to track evolutionary stages big 3-D display? They’re going to be pulled of stars by luminosities, among other things. in.” But that’s just the beginning. “We are Her teacher loved it and asked her to present translating computational theoretical data it to a conference of science teachers. She that could not be seen in any other way,” he has also spoken at Harvard Medical School continued. “Astronomy, chemistry, biology and the M.I.T. Lincoln Lab about her work, — there isn’t any place we can’t touch.”

The San Juan Weeekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

21 EDUCATION

School Counselors Fear They Will Bear Burden of Budget Cuts and New Exams

By MORGAN SMITH

I

n the fall, the anticipated consequences of a $4 billion reduction in state financing to school districts will begin to become apparent to Texas students and their parents: fewer teachers, bigger classes and sparse extracurricular programs.

For some, though, the most drastic change will come in the spring, when the state’s approximately 350,000 new ninth graders will be the first to take the end-ofcourse exams that are part of the new standardized testing system known as Staar, the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.

The new assessment program, which is so complex that the superintendent of the Perrin-Whitt school district nicknamed it the Franken-Staar, was established during the 2009 legislative session. Some educators welcome the program, a significant overhaul of the current system, but others view it with trepidation.

Outside the classroom, the burden of

rolling out the new exams will fall primarily on counselors, who help students meet graduation requirements, and on curriculum specialists, who make sure what students are being taught matches with what they are being tested on. Some districts also employ testing coordinators, who handle scheduling and the actual administration of the exams.

But predicting reduced state aid, many districts have already eliminated many nonclassroom positions for the coming school year. That means remaining employees will have far more responsibilities, a particular concern for school counselors, who have long worked to define their role as separate from that of testing coordinators.

“With finances like they are, there’s not going to be extra people to help,” said Sherry Sunderman, the coordinator of guidance and counseling at Conroe Independent School District in Montgomery County, north of Houston.

Many counselors worry they will be given more duties on the testing side and that instead of advising students, their jobs

will become “more clerical,” said Sylvia Lopez, the director of Dallas I.S.D.’s counseling services. Resources traditionally devoted to counseling students on career and college plans may now be used to explain and administer the new testing system, which includes complicated new graduation requirements.

Counselors “are going to have to be really monitoring students’ graduation programs to make sure they are taking the right courses and passing the right exams,” said Casey McCreary, an assistant executive director at the Texas Association of School Administrators who advises districts on accountability issues.

Students adjusting to the new exams face a “triple jeopardy,” Ms. McCreary said.

With Staar, high school students will have to perform better on harder tests and take more of them. Under the current system, standardized tests do not count toward final grades, and students must pass four exit-level exams to graduate. Now, for the first time, students will have to achieve a cumulative score across 12 end-of-course exams to graduate. And

their scores on the exams will count toward 15 percent of their final grade, with the option to retake the exam three times if they do not pass.

That could have students playing a game of risk with their scores — opting not to retake one test with the hope of scoring higher on a future one. Setting up a process to guide students through these decisions, one that involves parents and a “team effort” between curriculum specialists and counselors, is crucial in preparing for the new tests, said Sara McAndrew, the executive director of curriculum and instruction at Northside I.S.D., the state’s fourth-largest district, in San Antonio.

As the new school year draws closer, Ms. McAndrew said, schools are still missing details about how the rollout will work.

Though the Texas Education Agency will unveil sample questions in August, it will not publicly release full-length primary test forms until 2014. “We are still a little in the dark about exactly what these tests are going to look like,” she said.

22

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

Europe Tries to Curb U.S. Role in Tracking Terrorists’ Funds

By JAMES KANTER

T

he European Commission on Wednesday presented proposals for tracking the finances of terrorists in Europe that are aimed at ending the primary role of the United States in those efforts.

The European Union needed “to find a European solution for extracting the requested data on European soil,” said Cecilia Malmström, the E.U. commissioner for home affairs.

Many E.U. lawmakers have long objected to an existing program that sends information on financial transactions in bulk to the United States where it is sifted for evidence of terror plots.

That program was established by the administration of George W. Bush in the wake of the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The program became a symbol of differences between the

United States and the European Union over how to balance personal privacy guarantees with concerns on national and international security.

Ms. Malmström’s proposals could help to quell criticisms that financial tracking jeopardizes European standards of privacy by establishing a parallel system that would share tips with the United States and other powers.

Any European system “would need to fully respect fundamental rights, and in particular ensure a high level of data protection,” said Ms. Malmström.

A key objective would be “limiting the amount of personal data transferred to the U.S.,” according to a statement by Ms. Malmström’s department.

The commission already has discussed plans to create a so-called European Terrorist Finance Tracking System with the American authorities who have participated in expert meetings on the

initiative.

But a European system still could cost nearly 50 million euros to implement and about 11 million euros in annual running costs. Depending on how a European system was designed, it also could require unprecedented cooperation among the security services of fractious E.U. member states, raising questions about feasibility.

The current program allows American agencies to get access to European banking data held by a cooperative — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift — which is responsible for routing trillions of dollars daily among banks, brokerage houses, stock exchanges and other institutions.

But members of the European Parliament and other campaigners have complained for years that the program undermines privacy because it requires

large batches of information to be sent to the United States for analysis and storage there.

Frustration among members of the Parliament welled up in February 2010, when they vetoed a previous accord and deprived the United States of access to the information.

The European Commission, the E.U. executive, then led negotiations with the United States to win assurances that any requests for information would be evaluated by the European police agency, Europol.

The European Parliament approved a revised agreement in July 2010.

But some lawmakers who approved that agreement have criticized Europol for too readily approving American requests for large amounts of data, and they have suggested they could withdraw their support again in the future.

Vaccination Ruse Used in Pursuit of Bin Laden

By MARK MAZZETTI

I

n the months before Osama bin Laden was killed, the Central Intelligence Agency ran a phony vaccination program in Abbottabad, Pakistan, as a ruse to obtain DNA evidence from members of Bin Laden’s family thought to be holed up in an expansive compound there, according to an American official.

The vaccination program was set up as the C.I.A. was struggling to learn whether Bin Laden was hiding in the compound, and adds a new twist to the months of spy games that preceded the nighttime raid in early May that killed the Qaeda chief.

It has also aggravated already strained tensions between the United States and Pakistan. The operation was run by a Pakistan doctor, Shakil Afridi, whom Pakistani spies have since arrested for his suspected collaboration with the Americans. Dr. Afridi remains in Pakistani custody, the American official said.

Getting DNA evidence from the people hiding in the Abbottabad compound would have been a significant coup, because it would have allowed the C.I.A. to match the samples with DNA from other members of the Bin Laden family that are on file at the C.I.A. — providing the first hard evidence in years of his whereabouts.

The American official said that the doctor managed to temporarily gain access to the compound, but that he never saw Bin Laden and was not successful in getting DNA samples from any Bin Laden family members. Obama administration officials have said publicly they were not sure whether Bin Laden was in Abbottabad when dozens of Navy Seals commandos stormed the house in May. The existence of the vaccination program was first reported by a British newspaper, The Guardian. A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment.

It is unclear how the C.I.A. first recruited Dr. Afridi to work for the United States. The Guardian reported that he used a team of nurses and other health workers to administer Hepatitis B vaccinations throughout Abbottabad, even starting the program on poor fringes of the town to maintain a low profile.

Pakistani military and intelligence operatives were furious about the American raid that killed Bin Laden, and relations between the United States and Pakistan have only plummeted since. Pakistani officials have suggested that they might use troops to repel another incursion into Pakistan, and many American officials believe that Pakistan seems more concerned with hunting C.I.A. informants than with finding Qaeda operatives.

American officials said they plan-

ned to suspend as much as $800 million worth of military aid to Pakistan — a move partly designed to chasten Islamabad for expelling American military trainers — and several influential American lawmakers have suggested attaching more strings to the billions of dollars sent each year to Pakistan.

Also at stake is the C.I.A.’s armed drone program, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Pakistan in recent years and has killed several senior operatives from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistan has threatened to expel C.I.A. operatives working on the drone program from a base in southern Pakistan, and the C.I.A. has set up contingency

plans to run more flights from a base in eastern Afghanistan.

American officials said that they have seen no hard evidence that Pakistani officials knew that Bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad. However, American intelligence officials said that Bin Laden appeared to have been supported for years by militant groups with longstanding ties to Pakistan’s military spy agency.

That agency arrested several suspected C.I.A. collaborators shortly after the Bin Laden raid, but according to the American official only the doctor who ran the vaccination program is still in custody.

Pakistan: U.S. Missiles Kill 42

F

our United States missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan in less than 24 hours killed at least 42 people, Pakistani intelligence officials said.

The attacks indicate the White House has no intention of stopping its drone program even though the attacks have caused tension with Pakistan.

The United States refuses to publicly acknowledge the drone attacks, but officials have said privately that the strikes have killed senior officials for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

23

Prodigio Claudio ‘37 years exposing the Puerto Rican Cuatro to the World’ By: Daniel Morales Pomales

T

he extraordinary and talented performer of our national string instrument, the Puerto

Rican cuatro, has released recently his first DVD in which he makes a biographical account and a compendium of hundreds of presentations in Puerto Rico and all over the world. There are 37 years documented as the title of the audiovisual work reads, and it will be his twenty-sixth album.

It is amazing how countries as distant and culturally different as Japan, has enjoyed and admired his musical work. As the performer says, “the cuatro is manufactured in Japan for Puerto Rico, so, no wonder why they have the desire to learn how to play it; even if they have different techniques and our cuatro will never sound like theirs. Here in the Island our wood and craft artisans make them unique with its peculiar sound”, Claudio said.

This documental intends to perpetuate the characteristics of the Puerto Rican Cuatro and the talent of its leading exponent, as a symbol of the vital role of music as the identity of a people. The project has been possible thanks to friends of the culture such as Ramón Calderón, Pueblo Supermarkets president and Miguel A. Torres, president of the Engineers Association of Puerto Rico, whom choose him themselves as the ideal

SE VENDE ESTUDIO DE GRABACIÓN Para más información llame al:

(787) 203-6245

performer.

Both works are now available in Pueblo Supermarkets, Plaza Pharmacies and any favorite record store. “I hope that some day governments do not measure our music and culture based on color.

The Puerto Rican Cuatro will always be the engine that moves my heart. The day i left physically this world, I hope i have contributed to the growth of the Puerto Rican Cuatro for future generations. I will always be a cuatro hearted boricua “, said the famous Cuatro performer.

24 July 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Fajardo Lighthouse L

as Cabezas de San Juan Nature Preserve (Las Cabezas means “the headlands”) consists of 3 promontories extending into the Atlantic Ocean north of Fajardo near Las Croabas. A nature-lover’s paradise,

from the trails and boardwalks you can observe every major tropical habitat that exists on the island, except a rain forest. Trained guides, ample signs, demonstrations, and special programs and exhibits help visitors understand and appreciate this fragile ecology. To protect the sensitive eco-system, visitors are transported through the park and to the lighthouse on open trams.

The Fajardo Lighthouse, located within the reserve, is one of many

lighthouses built by the Spanish in the 19th century around the perimeter of Puerto Rico. This one is a jewel, both for its setting and the care with which it was restored a few years ago by the Conservation Trust.

In addition to visiting the small nature center on the lower level of the

Fajardo Lighthouse, be sure to climb the antique iron staircase to the observation deck. The view of the 316-acre preserve with El Yunque towering behind it is extraordinary. Even more breathtaking is the seeming endless expanse of sea, dotted with islets and far off islands.

San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

25

modern love

Wearing Your Heart on Your Skin

By PATRICIA STACEY

B

Y the time the scabies entered our house, my husband, Cliff, and I were already occupying two separate orbits, rarely intersecting. A few months earlier he had stopped saying goodbye when he left for work, and I tended to look away when he came home. I couldn’t stand to see the disdain — imagined or not — that colored his face when he looked at me.

After we determined that the scabies had come from my visits to care for my mother, Cliff blamed me for their arrival, and I blamed him for our inability to get rid of them. The scabies didn’t seem to care who was right. They seeped out of our clothes, burrowed into our skin, and woke us in the night to fits of scratching. I didn’t go out much, only to buy groceries or plastic sheeting for our furniture.

While the parasites munched at my skin, I lost my taste for food, books, anything. Instead, I donned rubber gloves and soaked our bedding and clothes in scalding hot water.

I stirred the caldron of nearly boiling borax with the gall of a necromancer, invoking help for murder. Fittingly, I used the handle of a broom. After the soaking, I transferred the laundry to the front loader, where I poured more borax into the mix. Later, I transferred everything into the dryer, folded it, and remade the beds.

I couldn’t hire anyone to do the work. I was terrified of contaminating people. While I worked, Cliff came home and disappeared into the guest room, or sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands, or leaned over his iPhone, rarely looking up.

Months passed. We covered our bodies with pesticide cream and slept in it. We visited countless doctors. Still the scabies remained. I began to wonder if we hadn’t become scabies ourselves. We stopped inviting guests over, canceled our son Walker’s piano lessons and all hair-cutting appointments, and ultimately, as some kind of poetic expression of alienation, we decided, at one doctor’s suggestion, to forgo all expectation of touching one another. Cliff moved into the guest room.

During this time, Walker and I created an innovative way to give each other hugs, developing what we called the “eye hug.” He approached me, fixed me in his gaze, and let his eyes go soft and loving. His eyes are huge like my husband’s, and when they pierced mine I felt something like the presence of his soul. I felt seen.

No such accommodations were made in my marriage.

Then one day my scabies disappeared.

Cliff’s, however, did not.

I eagerly went to have my hair done and at the salon actually looked at myself in the mirror. My blondish hair had grown long. The beautician insisted I keep it that way. Friends invited me to lunch. I decided to dress up and pulled on the first skirt I’d worn in months. Meant to hang on the hips, it slid to my knees. I had lost weight without realizing it.

I searched my closet and pulled out a miniskirt from my 20s, put on a tight ribbed sweater and a belt. I hadn’t had so much fun in years. At lunch a friend told me my stomach looked “rock hard.” During dessert a man stared at my legs. I felt myself sinking into a profound sensuality, a warm bath. That sense of being seen was a moment from other days, one I didn’t want to lose.

I went home in my newly rediscovered skirt hoping Cliff would say something. He didn’t.

At a fund-raiser, a man asked if he could get me a drink. A woman gently grazed my jutting hipbone with the back of her hand, and I almost jumped from the electric deliciousness of her touch. On the street, an elegant woman asked if I was wearing a Diane Von Furstenberg. I felt as alive and open to the erotic as I have ever been. Sometimes I passed my hand over my stomach and wished a man were looking at my new body.

One night Cliff and I were at the kitchen table. Through the corner of my eye, I saw him consider me.

“You’re really angry at me, aren’t you?” he said fiercely.

Given the vastness of our apparent disconnect, how could I tell him the truth of my longing? “No, I’m not,” I insisted.

Later that night, I put on a ridiculously low-cut shirt and asked him to go out for a drink. Over pinot noir I tried to establish an “eye hug,” but he seemed more interested in the olive tapenade. When I hinted that I was hoping for some kind of romantic response from him, he said sarcastically: “What do you want me to say? That you look ravishing tonight?”

I didn’t respond, but I wanted to say: “Why not? Can’t you just lie?”

When he went to the men’s room, I slumped over in my tight shirt. I hated the thought that I might someday completely lose my sexuality. That it wouldn’t just be hiding, but gone. First it would be a subtle trimming of expectations, then a desire without sanction. Then memory.

Cliff returned from the men’s room jauntily, came up to me and leaned forward.

He was standing over me, and it occurred to me he might be looking at my thighs.

“This is so hot,” he said.

“What?”

“Feel this.” He handed me his iPhone.

“The battery’s overheated.”

Cliff rarely arranged dates for us, but one day not long after he told me over the phone, “We’re going out to dinner after we do our taxes.”

I was standing in the kitchen wearing a tight sweater, medium-high boots and a pencil skirt. Holding the receiver, I felt a nervous energy. My pulse charged forward and I found myself lost in a hunger so immediate I could barely keep track of the ensuing conversation.

I was imagining us in the restaurant with its low lights, music, mixed drinks: a bourgeois ritual as common as dirt, but it didn’t feel that way. It wasn’t sex I was thinking about, or even foreplay, but simple attention. Attention is what held my desire.

“I’d better go,” he said, the sound of city streets in the background.

“Cliff?”

“What?” He was walking fast, huffing into his iPhone.

I didn’t know how to say it. The things I most needed from him could not be spoken.

The light of day would destroy them, like the sensitive silvers on photographic paper. Silence and obscurity seemed safer. Besides, I couldn’t handle being teased again.

It wasn’t a question of whether he’d ever touch me. I knew that would happen.

But how? And who would he be touching really? Me, or his own desire?

After we hung up, I thought about my mother, who spent years wearing curlers all day trying to get my father’s attention when he came home. Finally, after four plastic surgeries (she was strikingly beautiful to begin with), she discovered that the most direct path to getting it — an attention she no longer wanted — was by removing the marriage contract.

I couldn’t bear the thought of spending

years trying for something I might never find.

I envisioned half a century of loneliness, and then spent the day researching marital separations.

WHEN Cliff came home, I walked up as he sat at the table doing a crossword puzzle. He didn’t look up. I hovered near him, not touching, and said, “How’s your body doing?” I meant the scabies.

“It’s hot,” he joked suggestively.

And suddenly — for the first time, really — it struck me that he might be feeling the same way I was. Maybe he also wanted to be noticed.

I looked at him then, a handsome middle-aged man with a salt-and-pepper beard and thick black hair. This was less an eye hug and more what philosophers call “bracketing.” It’s when you look at something in a concentrated, conscious way, so much so that it becomes new and strange.

As I did this, a strong sense of Cliff’s humanity came rushing toward me. His body seemed to fill the room, to take form, as if a cardboard cutout had turned to spirit in our kitchen.

Here was a man with hopes and dreams, a child’s large curious eyes, a man who worked hard and needed a vacation. Not just his body but some essence of him was present to me, and I was lost not in wanting to be known but in knowing. I was struck by the otherworldly quality of someone else. I had been so lost in my desire to be seen that I had almost become blind.

A few weeks ago a spiritual healer friend said about scabies: “Nothing can hurt you if you are grateful.”

I laughed at the time, but now I lie in this large bed at night and thank my mother, for the creepy pathogen with its secret gifts — for the time alone, the Size 4 skirts, and the distance to really look at my husband.

26 July 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

Why Taxes Will Rise in the End

By DAVID LEONHARDT

P

olls show that most Americans are opposed to raising the federal debt ceiling. Even when the Pew Research Center included the consequences in its question — a national default that would damage the economy — slightly more people were against raising the ceiling than were for it.

How could this be? Above all, I think it reflects a desire to return to the good old days. Not so long ago, nobody was talking about tax increases or Medicare cuts, and the federal budget seemed to be in fine shape.

If only we could get back to the past — get spending under control, as the cliché goes — we’d be O.K. The debt ceiling, with its harsh finality, offers the chance.

Unfortunately, this nostalgic view depends on a misunderstanding of the budget.

It imagines a budget in which the United States indefinitely has the world’s highest mediJohn Boehner, left, the speaker of the cal costs, its largest military, an aging popuHouse, with Eric Cantor, the No. 2 lation and, nonetheless, taxes that are among House Republican. the world’s lowest. Economists have a name for that combination: a free lunch.

In the near term, Congressional RepuFree lunchism is ultimately the problem with the no-new-taxes pledge that so blicans have decided to play down the Ryan many politicians have adopted. A refusal to plan. Most continue to oppose new taxes, raise taxes, no matter how principled, cannot without going so far as to explain the consetake us back to the good old days. It would quences. They will have little trouble sticking instead lead to a very different American to that position through the current debt ceisociety. For taxes to remain where they are, ling fight, because the deficit does not need to Washington would need to end Medicare as be solved immediately.

Eventually, though, drawing up a crewe know it, end Social Security as we know it, severely shrink the military — or do some dible deficit plan with neither Ryan-like cuts nor higher taxes will be impossible. And you combination of the above.

“We cannot repeat the past when it co- can already see the start of a potential Repumes to the federal budget,” Douglas Elmen- blican compromise.

It revolves around raising taxes, on net, dorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, recently wrote. “The aging by shrinking corporate or individual loophoof our population and the rising cost of health les. The country’s highest-ranking Republicare have changed the backdrop for federal can, John Boehner, the speaker of the House, signaled his openness to such a deal last budget policy in a fundamental way.”

The most important part of the recent week. (Mr. Boehner abandoned the deal unRepublican budget plan, written by Repre- der pressure from Representative Eric Cansentative Paul Ryan, was that it acknowled- tor, the No. 2 House Republican and a Tea ged this reality (in its details, if not its packa- Party ally.)

Stalwart Republican economists — like ging). It called for no tax increases. To make the numbers come close to adding up, the Martin Feldstein, a chairman of the Council plan also called for eliminating the current of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan, Medicare and replacing it with a system in and Gregory Mankiw, who held the same job which the elderly would buy less generous under George W. Bush — also favor raising private insurance plans. Such is the price of taxes by closing loopholes. So did most of the Republicans from the bipartisan Simpsonno new taxes.

Early indications are that Americans Bowles deficit commission, including Senadon’t like Mr. Ryan’s plan all that much. In tor Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Senator Mike upstate New York this spring, a Democrat Crapo of Idaho, former Senator Judd Gregg won a typically Republican House district of New Hampshire and David Cote, the chief by campaigning relentlessly against the plan. executive of Honeywell.

One obvious compromise along these National polls show huge majorities favor keeping Medicare and Social Security in so- lines would follow the outline sketched out mething approaching their current form — by the Simpson-Bowles plan. Marginal tax much larger majorities, tellingly, than oppose rates could actually fall. But the closing of loopholes would more than make up for the an increase in the debt ceiling.

loss in revenue from lower tax rates.

Conservatives might accept the deal, partly because it would satisfy their longtime desire for a simpler tax code with lower rates and partly because spending cuts would still make up the bulk of any deal. Liberals might accept the deal because tax loopholes disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and a simpler code — even one with lower rates — could be more progressive.

The mortgage interest deduction, for example, saves more than $5,000 a year for the typical household in the top 1 percent of earners. Most middle-income households don’t benefit from the deduction at all, because they instead claim the standard income tax deduction. And the mortgage deduction is the second-largest tax break for individuals, costing about $80 billion a year, more than the budgets for the Education Department and Justice Department combined.

Yet despite all the substantive arguments for such plans, I still wonder whether one of them is the most likely outcome.

The truth is, closing loopholes has much stronger support among economists and columnists than it does among voters. Only 23 percent of Americans benefit from the mortgage deduction, but 93 percent support it. Other

big breaks, like the exclusions for health insurance and 401(k) contributions, are popular, too. On the corporate side, Eric Toder of the Urban Institute has pointed out that the biggest breaks also tend to be popular, like the credit for research and development.

So what kind of tax increases do Americans support? The old-fashioned kind. Seventy-two percent support raising taxes on income above $250,000, according to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, and a large majority likewise favor raising Social Security taxes on the affluent.

In the end, the most likely tax increase may be the one that’s already on the books.

On Jan. 1, 2013, all the Bush tax cuts — on the affluent and nonaffluent alike — are set to expire, which would solve roughly onequarter of our long-term deficit problem. If Republicans have their way, all the tax cuts will be extended. If the Democrats have their way, most of them will be.

But if the two parties each control a branch of government after the 2012 elections, neither may be able to get their way.

Instead, they would have to compromise — or a stalemate would cause the Bush tax cuts to disappear. After the last few days, a stalemate doesn’t seem like such a bad bet.

Fed Mulls Options in Face of Moderate Outlook

By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

T

he Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, gave a subdued account of the economy’s health, saying that he expected the economy to grow at a moderate pace during the rest of the year, with unemployment declining “only gradually.”

The unexpected weakness is forcing the Fed to reconsider its determination early this year to refrain from new efforts to stimulate growth. While no additional actions appear imminent, Mr. Bernanke said in congressional testimony Wednesday that the Fed would be prepared to act if necessary.

He described options including an explicit commitment to maintain its stimulus efforts for a longer period, the resumption of asset purchases or steps that would encourage commercial banks to use the reserves they current keep on deposit with the central bank.

“Prudent planning requires that we evaluate the efficacy of these and other potential alternatives for deploying additional stimulus if conditions warrant,” Mr. Bernanke said.

Members of the Fed’s policy-making committee discussed the possibility of additional efforts at their most recent meeting, at the end of June, but they were divided regarding the costs and benefits, according to minutes of that meeting, which the Fed released on Tuesday.

Mr. Bernanke maintained his view that a recent rise in inflation is unlikely to persist, consistent with his view that the overall health of the economy remains weak.

He said that consumers hold the key to renewed growth.

“The ability and willingness of consumers to spend will be an important determinant of the pace of the recovery in coming quarters,” Mr. Bernanke said.

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

27

ARCHITECTURE

Koolhaas, Delirious in Beijing

By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF

A

side from the new World Trade Center, it’s hard to think of a more contentious architectural project in the last few years than the CCTV building, the headquarters of China Central Television here.

After Rem Koolhaas, the project’s architect, unveiled the design in 2003 he was pilloried by Western journalists for glorifying a propaganda organ of the Chinese government. Several years later a fire at the site nearly burned down a neighboring building, also designed by Mr. Koolhaas, landing the director of the project and 19 others in prison for negligence and significantly delaying construction.

And then there’s something about the building’s appearance that seems to unsettle people. Just when things got back on track after the fire, a Chinese critic published an article saying that the building’s contorted form, which frames an enormous void at its center, was modeled on a pornographic image of a naked woman on her hands and knees. The piece ignited a storm of negative press, forcing Mr. Koolhaas to issue a denial.

Yet for all that, the CCTV headquarters may be the greatest work of architecture built in this century. Mr. Koolhaas, of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, has always been interested in making buildings that expose the conflicting energies at work in society, and the CCTV building is the ultimate expression of that aim, beginning with the slippery symbolism of its exterior. At moments monumental and combative, at others strangely elusive, almost retiring, it is one of the most beguiling and powerful works I’ve seen in a lifetime of looking at architecture.

What grabs the imagination as much as anything is the vision the building offers of this particular period in history. Mr. Koolhaas has created an eloquent architectural statement about China’s headlong race into the future and, more generally, life in the developed world at the beginning of

the 21st century. It captures our era much as the great works of the early Modernists did theirs.

Mr. Koolhaas has been one of architecture’s most influential thinkers since the late 1970s, when his book “Delirious New York” offered a celebration of the “culture of congestion” in Manhattan at a time when many middle-class New Yorkers were still fleeing to the suburbs.

Over the next few decades he established himself as both an architect of extraordinary talent and the profession’s reigning enfant terrible. His 1997 competition entry for an expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, which would have sunk the museum’s beloved sculpture garden into the ground and stowed curators in a tower labeled MoMA Inc., enraged many people at that institution but could well have reinvigorated an institution struggling to reimagine its identity. The 2004 Seattle Central Library, an uneven stack of slabs shrink-wrapped in a glass-and-steel web, was at once an evocative memorial to the conventional library and a monument to the new Information Age. Mr. Koolhaas was offered the CCTV commission in late 2002, around the time he was invited to participate in redevelopment plans for ground zero in Lower Manhattan, and he immediately decided he could not take on both. “It was a matter of focus,” he said. By then the redevelopment plans at ground zero had become so politically and emotionally heated that Mr. Koolhaas was skeptical that anything of real architectural value could be produced there.

CCTV had its own problems; for one, its construction was widely seen as part of a huge public relations campaign in the runup to the 2008 Olympic Games here. But Mr. Koolhaas was fascinated by Beijing’s mix of ancient hutongs, Stalinist-era workers’ housing and 1960s megastructures. And unlike New York, an aging city that was becoming increasingly nostalgic, Beijing was in the midst of a major modernization push.

“I was aware of negative developments

there, of course,” Mr. Koolhaas said. “But on the whole there was also an incredible sense of change at that moment. There was a real desire to improve things, especially in Beijing.”

No building has since done more to burnish the reputation of Beijing as a city of the future than Koolhaas’s. His CCTV building, nearing completion, has been a highly visible part of the cityscape in this nation’s capital since late in the last decade, rising across an elevated freeway from the generic towers of Beijing’s new business district. Its two 50-story legs, which house offices and production studios, are joined at the top by a 13-story bridge whose angled form juts out precariously over a plaza.

The more time you spend with it, the harder it is to pin the building down. The legs, which taper as they rise to slightly different heights, distort your normal sense of perspective, and Mr. Koolhaas represses all the most obvious signs of human scale, like the repetitive windows and floor slabs of a conventional tower. From a distance it’s virtually impossible to get a grip on the building’s size — an apt metaphor for the way giant media companies like CCTV have collapsed the scale of our world.

Approaching from the direction of the freeway, with the massive bridge looming directly ahead, the building can look dark and menacing. From another angle the legs seem almost fragile. And from yet another the bridge’s tilted roof gives the building a strangely two-dimensional quality.

These distortions are reinforced by the structural system, an irregular network of steel cross-bracing that looks as if it were etched into the building’s skin. Because the cross-bracing becomes denser where the stresses are most severe — for example, where the bridge connects to the towers — at certain points the structure seems to be straining against all odds to stay up.

The forms are a reworking of classical perspective; the irregular structure is an attack on Modernist ideas about structural purity. Both are an effort to break down what Mr. Koolhaas, like a number of other architects of his generation, sees as the oppressiveness of the Cartesian order that has shaped architecture for centuries. The design is also striving to make room for the impurities and imperfections that make us human.

Mr. Koolhaas, of course, also had to deal with the mundane issues of how the building works. It is raised on a concrete plinth, contributing to a sense that it is a monolithic world, disconnected from the life of the city. But that impression changes once you walk inside.

The main lobby, in a low structure at the base of one of the towers, is classic Koolhaas: a montage of colliding forms. Light pours in through big rhomboid-shaped skylights.

Walls tilt on two sides, creating a slight sense of compression that nudges you forward. A walkway in front of you cuts across the room toward the elevator banks. Stepping onto it, you look down several stories into a vertiginous underworld of escalators, beams and bridges.

The view is startling, not least because it undermines the impression of CCTV as a walled compound. Every morning a subway station will disgorge thousands of workers who will climb the escalators up to the lobby, passing through a security barrier and a row of 50-foot-tall yellow travertine pillars, to the elevators beyond.

A separate entry to one side of the lobby leads down a wide staircase to an exhibition space for tourists and other visitors.

Above the stair, a glass-enclosed V.I.P. lounge overlooks the lobby. Another staircase leads up to a garden on the plaza for employees.

People in these spaces will be in constant eye contact with one another, although they will rarely mix.

The limited interaction of disparate social groups becomes far more limited higher in the building. The doors that separate executives from their underlings are as firmly shut as they would be in any Western corporation.

The director’s office, a sequence of spacious rooms clad in more yellow travertine, comes equipped with a plush apartment. Executives lunching in the V.I.P. dining room — a spectacular space braced by heavy steel columns — can stare up through a big skylight at other V.I.P.’s landing on a helipad.

And public access to the building will be limited to what Mr. Koolhaas calls “the loop”: a sequence of exhibition spaces, restaurants and viewing areas that climb up one tower, cross the bridge and descend the other.

At one point you end up at a public observation deck, a cavernous room crisscrossed with beams and columns at the angle of the bridge. Three big round windows are cut into the deck’s floor, with views down to the employees’ garden. Seen from here, the garden turns out to be a blown-up version of Piranesi’s 18th-century map of an imaginary Rome from his engraving series “Il Campo Marzio dell’Antica Roma.” The map represents an urban ideal, one in which the greatness of cities is seen to arise from a clash of architectural visions built up over centuries, and where each of these visions is given equal weight.

In its allusion to a vital city built from the ruins of a once mighty empire, the garden is an obvious allegory for China. Mr. Koolhaas seems to be reminding us that all empires fade; it is the cultural triumphs — including the great buildings — that will remain the most enduring testament to who we were and what we hoped to become.

Games

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July 21 - 27, 2011

The San Juan Weekly

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 29

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

HOROSCOPE Aries

(Mar 21-April 20)

Libra

(Sep 24-Oct 23)

You can expect a sudden improvement in your financial dealings, so make pertinent choices regarding contracts. You have reason to be proud of an improved appearance; looking good. Get practical in your love life. If you have to timetable a rendezvous, bear with the situation, as any upheaval is only temporary.

Work contracts abroad and a romantic reunion are all part of destiny’s plan. Stop feeling hard done by and expect the best. If you gave your heart away to the wrong person do not waste any more energy on them. No-one should be allowed to damage your self-esteem in that way, so make sure it does not happen again.

Taurus

Scorpio

(April 21-May 21)

(Oct 24-Nov 22)

Do you really have to do everything on your own terms? Give love a chance and display more trust in the universe, as life is not out to get you. A person you have misjudged misses you madly. Do not worry, making a romantic promise does not have to rob you of your treasured freedom. In fact, you will feel strangely relieved if you take the leap of faith.

Try to remain objective and neutral in emotive situations, as victory is yours if you keep a cool head.

A new love interest is worth waiting for. It might be timely to review your priorities. Are you focusing upon finances, work and success at the expense of loved ones? Security is important, but so are love, sex and romance. How true to yourself are you being when you neglect these?

Gemini

Sagittarius

(May 22-June 21)

Consider going back into employment rather than put yourself on the line financially.

If unemployed, work offers are forthcoming; perhaps take a job offering in-house training.

Make positive judgments within relationships and communication may move up a notch. It is time to forgive and forget, so stop tying yourself up in knots. Work abroad looks good.

Cancer

(June 22-July 23)

Approach contracts with caution. Be careful of hidden agendas at work. Make sure that you get justice this week Personal space will breathe new life into a relationship. Romance is on the way, if you want it. Do not grieve family losses forever or you will rob yourself of life’s joy. Smile and the world will smile back. Cynicism and bitterness do not become you, so do not get stuck in sticky emotions.

Capricorn

Leo

Aquarius

(July 24-Aug 23)

Proud and determined you may be, but sometimes admitting defeat is the lesser of two evils. Peace of mind will be a deserved reward, if you can find the courage to stand up for yourself, despite the complications. Stand in your own power and remember it is not in your nature to be floored by anything.

Virgo

(Aug 24-Sep 23)

Await opportunities, for they are hovering and imminent. However, you must not upset the balance of things by being too hasty. An unexpected injection of cash could see you heading for the hills, but make sure that you tie up the loose ends before you go. Work uncertainty should be sorted by the end of the month, so you can take time out to relax.

(Nov 23-Dec 21)

Imminent work or travel abroad may put a relationship under stress, but the contract is important. Loved ones will benefit from some independence and what seems like a pain will turn into something positive for everyone. Passionate encounters are likely and your powers of attraction strong, so take your pick. Purchase of a property is worthwhile and recognition, with added status, is winging your way.

(Dec 22-Jan 20)

Do not allow insecurities that have their roots in the distant past to mess up the present. Make sure that you are direct and honest with those who are dependent on you. Expect things to move very quickly as this is not a time to sit back complacently on your laurels. Be on the alert for atypical behaviour in loved ones.

(Jan 21-Feb 19)

Shed tears, if necessary, so that you can move forward refreshed. An important career decision will be made soon, but a few things have to happen first. A romantic encounter beckons which you should embrace; never mind all the questions. Move forward at this point to preserve your dignity and reputation.

Pisces

(Feb 20-Mar 20)

You may need to extricate yourself legally from a sticky situation. Leave behind frustration and anger, as it is not doing you any favours. Everything is not as it seems in your life and don’t you know it! Perhaps it is time to reveal yourself and let the truth be told. Honesty in relationships is essential to future happiness. Work may jog along while you reassess priorities.

29 Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 28

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July 21 - 27, 2011

Herman

Speed Bump

Frank & Ernest

BC

Scary Gary

Wizard of Id

Two Cows And A Chicken

Cartoons

The San Juan Weekly

Ziggi

The San Juan Weekly

July 21 - 27, 2011

31

Sports

Over the Years, Close Finishes but No Title

By LARRY DORMAN

T

hree decades ago, when Bernhard Langer showed up at the British Open, he was a skinny 23-year-old with a pile of thick, curly hair, a thin mustache and two obscure victories on the European Tour.

When Langer plays the Open at Royal St. George’s for the sixth and probably final time, he will be a fit 53-year-old with a pile of thick, curly hair and a clean-shaven face.

He also has a bust in the World Golf Hall of Fame, 40 European Tour victories, 2 Masters titles, a regular PGA Tour win, 14 Champions Tour victories, 3 straight Champions Tour money titles and 1 hole in his résumé.

He has never won a British Open. He finished second in 1981 at St. George’s and has had four other finishes in the top three, including twice here. He also finished fifth at the 2005 Open at St. Andrews at age 48.

He has a full, balanced life that includes family, faith and the knowledge that he has accomplished almost everything he set out to and other things he did not.

All the while, Langer has been an integral part of golf at the highest levels, for one stretch as the world No. 1.

He said he was too inexperienced to

win in 1981, but he should have in 1984 at the Old Course or in 1985 at Royal St. George’s.

In 1984, Seve Ballesteros beat him and Tom Watson by two strokes with a putting display otherworldly, even by Ballesteros’s standards. Langer laughs in disbelief.

“I was paired with Seve and outplayed him from tee to green, by four shots, but he outputted me by six,” Langer chuckling.

“Everyone remembers, Seve was quite a putter; he had a wonderful short game.”

In 1985, Langer went into the last round tied for the lead with David Graham. Sandy Lyle of Scotland trailed by three strokes. Graham and Langer each shot 75. Lyle shot 70 for a two-over 282, beating Payne Stewart by a stroke and Langer and Graham by two.

“It was the one that got away,” Langer said. He missed a 3-fowoter on the opening hole Sunday and bogeyed the fourth when his ball hit a marshal’s foot and bounced into a bad lie.

The one Langer remembers most, more for the way it was won than for his disappointment at not winning, is the 1993 Open. He was paired with the winner, Greg Norman, who shot a closing 64 on a windy Sunday to finish at 13 under, an Open record.

Norman’s 64 also was the lowest final

round shot by an Open champion in history.

All the more memorable because he did it when the best players in the game were arrayed against him: Nick Faldo, then ranked No. 1, shot 67 and finished second; and Langer, the world No. 2, shot 67 and placed third.

Nearly as memorable as the feat was Norman’s assessment of it: “I was in awe of myself,” he said, and few who saw it could really blame him.

“I told Greg, ‘You played some flawless golf,’ ” Langer said. “That was the best round of golf I’ve seen, ever, the best that I was part of or that I witnessed.

“He just never missed a shot. He hit perfect drives, he hit very good iron shots, he made some important putts. He just did everything very well on a very punishing golf course.”

He added, “It looked more like golf with a couple of friends for $20 or something, not like the final round of a major championship.”

The championship was over for Langer when he made a double bogey at the par-5 14th hole. He was two strokes back and was trying to make something happen.

Langer missed the cut in 2003, the last time the Open was at St. George’s, but he earned his way back with a victory at last year’s

Senior British Open at Carnoustie and added a victory at the 2010 United States Senior Open at Sahalee.

If his thumb holds up during the last days of preparation, it was surgically repaired in March but is still sore, he will tee off with Jim Furyk and Tadahiro Takayama.

His hopes are for a good showing, his expectations realistic. But can a man one month away from his 54th birthday win the Open Championship at the course that has tantalized him for three decades?

As many know, a 59-year-old came within a putt at the last hole of winning at Turnberry two years ago. That man, Tom Watson, earned his way back into the field here with a victory at the Senior P.G.A. Championship in May. The one certainty in all of this: if Langer were to somehow defy the odds and win, he could replace a lot of good memories with a great one.

Tailoring the Tees to the Players to Bring the Fun Back to Golf

By LARRY DORMAN

L

ong odds never seemed to bother Barney Adams, the amiable inventor, club maker and founder of Adams Golf, a company that defied experts to become one of the top sellers of hybrids and fairway woods.

Adams’s new quest is to change the attitudes of millions of recreational golfers by persuading them to Tee It Forward. As the point man in a national effort to, among other things, “put the fun back into golf,” Adams is working pro bono with the P.G.A. of America, the United States Golf Association and the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America to introduce golfers to a whole new world: the enjoyment of hitting shorter clubs into greens, the opportunity for more birdies and pars, and the prospect of faster rounds.

He and the organizations are hoping this also will address the decline in rounds played and the net loss of a million golfers last year.

The first step will be the toughest: moving up to tees that correspond with the actual distance average golfers hit their tee shot; not how far they think they hit it, how far they would like to hit it or how far they hit their Sunday best on a downhill hole with a big tailwind.

That most male golfers average 200 to 230 yards off the tee may be ego deflating for the guys who, armed with the latest technology, routinely play off the blue tees or even the tips. Adams, who hopes to replace the current color-coded tee system with tees that correspond to the Tour Distance system he has calculated, said years of fitting clubs taught him that many men with double-digit handicaps firmly believed — despite evidence to the contrary — that they averaged from 250 to 280 yards off the tee and hit their 5-irons 20 yards farther than they actually did.

Armed with calculations. He compared the distances professionals drive the golf ball and how far they hit their irons with where most amateurs hit their shots He determined a pro would play a course measuring 8,100 yards to use the same clubs on approaches as

an amateur who drives the ball 230 yards on a 6,700-yard course.

From that, he arrived at the converse: for an amateur who averages 230 yards off the tee to hit the same clubs into greens as a pro does on a 7,300-yard layout, the amateur would have to play no more than 6,200 yards.

And amateurs who average 200 yards off the tee should play 6,000-yard courses.

And women who average 140 yards off the tee should be playing courses at about 3,500 yards rather than the red-tee average of 5,600.

Flogton, which is not golf spelled backward. Flogton, advocated by the Alternative Golf Association, believes it can increase participation with guidelines that include allowing players to use one mulligan on every hole on any shot they choose; letting players move their ball 6 feet in any direction except closer to the hole; using tees in the fairway; and conceding any third putt, regardless of distance from the hole.

The decline in golf participation in the United States over the last two years — with the National Golf Foundation reporting about three million fewer golfers in 2009 than in 2005 and 24 million fewer rounds played in 2010 than in 2005 — has spawned other

unorthodox approaches, like the revival of the self-correcting Polara golf ball, which is virtually impossible to slice.

The U.S.G.A. has made it clear it will not embrace Flogton or the Polara ball, and it recently turned down a financing request from SNAG — “starting new at golf” — because the plastic clubs used in the program intended for children ages 4 to 12 are “nonconforming to the rules of golf.”

Still, many traditionalists are open to making the game more inviting and fun.

Programs like TGA Premier Junior Golf, a California-based company with more than 50 franchises around the country, are already making an impact with children and were using some of Adams’s ideas before Tee It Forward was born. Dave Robinson, whose two Michigan courses have programs for 1,600 children up to age 14 this summer, said it was working well.

For most golfers, seeing if they can do what the tour players do with their approach shots is a lot more likely from the vantage point of teeing it forward. That’s the whole idea. It will take a while before it sinks in, but this month, coinciding with the P.G.A. of America’s Family Golf Month, more than 2,200 courses are registered and many will have versions of Tee It Forward on display.

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The San Juan Weekly