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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Jennifer Lopez and Hubby Marc Anthony Team Up With Simon Fuller J ennifer Lopez, left, and husband Marc Anthony attend a signing ceremony for filmmaking incentive legislation Bayamon, Puerto Rico. Jennifer Lopez is teaming up with “American Idol” creator Simon Fuller for another TV show _ and this time she’s bringing husband Marc Anthony into the fold. The trio announced they are creating “Q’Viva! The Chosen.” The show would feature the superstar couple as they travel 21 countries
to find the best performers in Latin music, dance and other arts with the goal of creating a live extravaganza. The show’s director will be Jamie King. It will be filmed in three languages. Lopez said the show will be groundbreaking. “This is a show for the 21st century with an unprecedented global and local story. The Latin culture is a tapestry that is rich in passion,
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Exquisite Cuisine in an Oppulent Setting tradition and artistry,” she said. “We are going to places where all of this talent lives and wouldn’t have otherwise been discovered.” Anthony said the show will “provide an outlet to a whole new generation that have been waiting to have their voices heard.”
“Q’Viva!” is sponsored by BlackBerry. A statement said more than one network will be involved, but they have yet to be announced. It’s unclear when the show will air. Lopez became a judge on “American Idol” this year, and has a new album, “Love?” out next week.
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The San Juan Weekly
The Bigger the Obstacle the Greater the Glory of Having Overcome It
S
o reads the quote attributed to Moliere. The Escuela Libre de Música Ernesto Ramos Antonini de San Juan Symphony Orchestra (ELMERA) won First Prize in an international Competition held at Carnegie Hall. The Puerto Rican orchestra beat 8 other very talented groups representing their respective countries. The contest was organized by the International Festival of Music. The 67 students from Puerto Rico led by teacher Fermín Segarra, beat well disciplined orchestras such as Japan & Switzerland. Their repertoire included “España” of the composer Manuel Chabriel and “Finlandia” by Jesus Sibelius. The Julliard School of Music professors forming the jury were very impressed. Not withstanding when they played their third piece. “Cumbanchero” from the inmortal Rafael Hernández with a special arrangement by José Pujals the audience voiced overwhelming ovations for the 67 puertorican musicians of ages between 12 and 17. The schools director, Victor Rodríguez Deynes expressed almost incredulously: “this is like a dream, it is an achievement that validates our school as an asset for all of America, as thus it should be appreciated and supported”. He expressed his emo-
tions this way since regardless of the obstacles, these young students together with their directors achieved glory. Rodríguez Deynes emphasized that “we invested 2 years for this goal, breaking barriers, the most of which were economic”. Fermín Segarra Vázquez the group’s director added “this triumph says that, no matter the problems that one encounters in life, if you keep focussed and a good work ethic, one can achieve good things”. The orchestra obtained 95% from 100% potencial points, which provides evidence and validates Segarra Vazquez’s quote. The swiss orchestra won the silver medal and California won the bronze medal. Our island orchestra was able to compete thanks to many donations collected during the course of the preliminary preparations. Albeit the warm reception and great moment that these students are living they will have to return to a deteriorated school of music. A popular old spanish saying went: You can take the crown and wealth from a King; but you cannot take away the glory of having ruled. Our most sincere congratulations to these very talented young students and their directors who should serve as examples for our island youth.
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Youth Crime on the Rise in Puerto Rico P uerto Rico is seeing an alarming rise in the number of minors mixed up in crime, police superintendent Jose Figueroa Sancha said, citing the arrest of a 14-year-old suspect for a killing last week in San Juan’s upscale Condado neighborhood.
Julian Romero Rodriguez, 21, was relaxing on the beach with his girlfriend when he was fatally stabbed in the course of a robbery. The teen suspect was arrested the next day as he was trying to carry out another robbery in Condado, the police superintendent said.
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Romero’s slaying alarmed Puerto Rican authorities, who promptly beefed up police patrols in Condado in a bid to reassure tourists, while the Puerto Rico Hotel and Tourism Association has convened a meeting to consider the possible negative impact on the island’s vital tourism industry. Most robberies are linked to the drug trade and the gang bosses prefer to use minors because they are treated far more leniently by the justice system, Figueroa Sancha said.The suspect in the Romero killing already has a substantial criminal record, the secretary of the Puerto Rican Department of Families, Yanitsia Irizarry Mendez, said. Though her department has taken charge of the suspect, she acknowledged that in a case like this one, where the youngster began getting into trouble as a pre-teen, rehabilitation is very difficult. She said Puerto Rico needs a prevention program focused on eliminating the rampant criminality that has become a “lifestyle” in thousands of households on the Caribbean island. The Department of Families has an initiative, Educating Families, conceived as a way of battling family disintegration, seen by many analysts as Puerto Rico’s biggest social problem.
Authorities say 124 of the 357 homicides registered so far this year in Puerto Rico are related to a battle between gangs for control of drug corners. A police operation launched in December 2009 has led to the elimination of 300 drug corners and the arrest of nearly 1,200 people. Despite those efforts and a heightened police presence, 11 people were slain during Holy Week.
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
South Assesses the Toll After a Deadly Barrage of Tornadoes By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON AND KIM SEVERSON
A
day after enduring a terrifying bombardment of storms that killed hundreds across the South and spawned tornadoes that razed neighborhoods and even entire towns, people from Texas to Virginia to Georgia searched through rubble for survivors and tried to reclaim their own lives. At least 285 people across six states died in the storms, with more than half — 195 people — in Alabama. This college town, the home of the University of Alabama, has in some places been shorn to the slab, and accounts for at least 36 of those deaths. Thousands have been injured, and untold more have been left homeless, hauling their belongings in garbage bags or rooting through disgorged piles of wood and siding to find anything salvageable. While Alabama was hit the hardest, the storm spared few states across the South. Thirty-four people were reported dead in
Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 7 in Virginia and one in Kentucky. With search and rescue crews still climbing through debris and making their way down tree-strewn country roads, the toll is expected to rise. Cries could be heard into the night here hope was dwindling. Mayor Walt Maddox said that the search and rescue operation would go for 24 to 48 more hours, before the response pivoted its focus to recovery. “They’re looking for five kids in this rubble here,” said Lathesia Jackson-Gibson, 33, a nurse, pointing to the incoherent heap of planks and household appliances sitting next to the muddled guts of her own house. “They’re mostly small kids.” President Obama announced that he was coming to Alabama, saying in a statement that the federal government had pledged its assistance. Gov. Robert Bentley toured the state by helicopter along with federal officials, tracking a vast scar that stretched from Birmingham to his hometown, Tuscaloosa. He declared Alabama “a major, major disaster.”
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“As we flew down, the track is all the way down, and then when you get in Tuscaloosa here it’s devastating,” Mr. Bentley said at an afternoon news conference, with an obliterated commercial strip as a backdrop. An enormous operation was under way across the South, with officials working alongside churches, sororities and other volunteer groups. In Alabama, more than 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed. Across nine states, more than 1,680 people in Red Cross shelters. The last time the Red Cross had set up such an elaborate system of shelters was after Hurricane Katrina, a comparison made by those who had known the experience firsthand. “It reminds me of home so much,” said Eric Hamilton, 40, a former Louisianan, who was sitting on the sidewalk outside the Belk Activity Center, which was being used as a Red Cross shelter in south Tuscaloosa. Mr. Hamilton lived in a poor area of Tuscaloosa, which residents now describe merely as “gone.” He wiped tears off his cheeks. “I’ve never seen so many bodies”. “Babies, women. So many bodies.” Officials at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said they had received 137 tornado reports, with 104 of them coming from Alabama and Mississippi. Over all, there have been 297 confirmed tornadoes this month, breaking a 36-year-old record. Southerners, watched with dread as the shape-shifting storm system crept eastward across the weather map. Upon hearing the rumble of a tornado, or even the hysterical barking of a family dog, people crammed into closets, bathtubs and restaurant coolers, clutching their children and family photos. Many of the lucky survivors found a completely different world when they opened their closet doors. Some opened the closet to the open sky, where their roof had been, some yelled until other family members pulled the shelves and walls off them. Others never got out. Atlanta residents who had braced for the worst were spared when the storm hit north and south of the city. Across Georgia, many schools in rural areas sustained so much damage they will close for the rest of the year. In Mississippi, the carnage was worst in the piney hill country in the northeastern part of the state. Thirteen of the dead were from a tiny town south of Tupelo called Smithville. Most of the buildings in Smithville,
which has a population of less than 800, were gone. The damage in Alabama was scattered across the northern and central parts of the state as a mile-wide tornado lumbered upward from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham. More than 1,700 people have been examined or treated at local hospitals. The deaths were scattered around the state: six in the small town of Arab, 14 in urban Jefferson County. More than a million people in Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee were left without power, with much of the loss caused by severe damage to transmitters at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant west of Huntsville, Ala. The plant itself was not damaged, but the dozens of poles that carry electricity to local power companies were down. In Tuscaloosa, Governor Bentley, a Republican, made it clear that Alabama would need substantial federal assistance. Mr. Fugate, the FEMA administrator, emphasized in a number of appearances that the agency’s job at this stage was to play “a support role” to the states in recovery efforts, not to lead them. “Everybody wants to know who’s in charge. I can tell you this. Alabama’s governor is in charge. We’re in support,”. The University of Alabama campus here was mostly spared, said Robert E. Witt, the president, but about 70 students with no other place to stay spent the night in the recreation center on campus. He also said final exams had been canceled and the May 7 commencement had been postponed. Along with the swath of destruction it cut through Tuscaloosa, the tornado smashed up the town’s capacity to recover. The headquarters of the county emergency management agency was badly damaged, as well as the city’s fleet of garbage trucks. At Rosedale Court, a low-income housing project, large crowds of former residents walked aimlessly back and forth in front of the mangled buildings where they had woken up the day before. A door-to-door search was continuing.
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
9 Mainland
Public Pensions, Once Off Limits, Face Budget Cuts By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
W
hen an arbitrator ruled this month that Detroit could reduce the pensions being earned by its police sergeants and lieutenants, it put the struggling city at the forefront of a growing national debate over whether the pensions of current public workers can or should be reduced. Conventional wisdom and the laws and constitutions of many states have held that pensions being earned by current government workers are untouchable. As the fiscal crisis has lingered, officials in strapped states have begun to see whether there might be loopholes allowing to cut the pension benefits of current employees. The mayors of some hard-hit cities have said that the high costs of pensions have forced them to lay off workers: Oakland, Calif., laid off one-tenth of its police force last year after failing to win concessions on pension costs. Elsewhere there is pension envy: some private sector workers, who have learned the hard way that their companies can freeze or reduce their pensions, resent that the pensions of public workers enjoy stronger legal protections.
But government workers, many of whom were recruited with the promise of good benefits and pensions, say that it would be unfair — and in many cases, very likely illegal — to change the rules in the middle of the game. It has been far more common for cities and states to adopt more modest retirement plans for future workers. But the savings from new plans are initially small, growing only over time. Other states have gone further, requiring workers to work more years before retiring, or to contribute a higher portion of their salaries toward their pensions. A few states have rolled back cost-of-living increases for retirees, prompting lawsuits. Reducing the rate at which government workers earn pension benefits — even modestly, as Detroit did — has been rare. Pension funds can run out of money. In Prichard, Ala., a small city outside of Mobile, the fund ran out in 2009. The city stopped sending pension checks to its 150 retired workers, defying a state law that requires it to pay what it has promised. In the 19 months since the checks stopped, 18 retirees have died while waiting for their money. When Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a Republican, moved to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public worker unions, he
exempted police and fire unions. They often have the most expensive pension benefits. They must be paid for more years. Police work and firefighting are dangerous, physically demanding jobs, it is not uncommon for cities to promise workers full pensions after as little as 20 years of service, even if that means paying retirees from their 40s until they die. Such pensions are powerful recruiting tools. When the mayor of Jacksonville, Fla., addressed a conference for the trustees of police and fire pension funds, he said he would not attend the “Guns ’n’ Hoses” boxing tournament on the last night. The mayor, John Peyton, spent the past year in rancorous, fruitless negotiations to get his local unions to agree future police officers and firefighters should work 25 years before getting full pensions, instead of 20, among other things. In Omaha, the police union recently agreed to reduce the benefits being earned by current officers after the city agreed to put more money into the teetering pension fund. The struggles of Detroit are extreme. Although the city’s unemployment rate was officially 28 percent, less than 37 percent of residents were actually working. The population crashed. Property tax revenues were dwindling.
Detroit drained its rainy day fund, reduced overtime, offered property-tax amnesty, sold public assets, borrowed money, casinos set up shop and still deficits kept growing. The average pension for retired police officers is not especially rich: it is $28,501 a year. But with more than twice as many retirees as active workers the costs of paying for the pensions “threaten both the city’s fiscal viability, as well as its wherewithal to provide public safety for its citizens.” The city sought to freeze its pension fund, which is unheard of in the public sector. The arbitrator rejected that proposal, but agreed the city reduce the rate lieutenants and sergeants earn pension benefits from 2.5 percent of salary to 2.1 percent. Although rare, the reduction is not particularly large. The arbitrator did not try to find a solution to the fund’s imbalance. Michigan’s new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, has taken a carrot-and-stick approach to troubled cities. He scrapped the old way of distributing aid, and wants aid contingent on having cities adopt “best practices,” he says should include reducing the rate workers earn pension benefits. The stick: A new law allowing the state to appoint fiscal managers with broad powers over distressed local governments.
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
In Budget’s Fine Print, Real and Illusory Cuts By ERIC LICHTBLAU and RON NIXON
F
ew financial problems have generated more public attention in the last few years than mortgage fraud, one of the triggers for the nation’s housing collapse. But even government officials seeking to combat a front-burner issue like that one are feeling the sting of the budget deal struck last Friday to avert a federal shutdown. With the line-by-line details of the deal finally made public, budget documents show that a $20 million program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development meant to root out mortgage fraud is being reduced to zero. That was just one of hundreds of budget reductions to emerge Wednesday, as agencies and groups relying on federal money scoured the fine print of the 459-page budget to determine which cuts would hurt the most — and which ones were more illusory than real. A variety of organizations — including local police agencies and community service groups providing federally financed job training or housing assistance — found that the budget deal reached in Washington would cut deeply into their own budgets. But other reductions appeared less than meets the eye, even as the White House and Congressional leaders have emphasized the austerity they say the budget reflects. For instance, the “reductions” included $630 million for unspent earmarks sponsored by individual lawmakers in past budgets. But in reality, little if any of that money was likely to be spent, analysts said. Much of it involved earmarks that have been included in past budgets without the money ever being spent — sometimes because the recipients did not want to move ahead with the projects. The Commerce Department, meanwhi-
le, is “losing” $6.2 billion that was included in the last budget for its once-a-decade census — money that would not have been spent anyway this budget cycle because the census has already been completed. “In some cases you have real cuts, like the budget of the Army Corps of Engineers, which will have less money to work with,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington watchdog group that advocates for greater fiscal restraint. “But in other cases,” Mr. Ellis said, “you have cuts that aren’t really cuts.” At the housing department, officials said they considered it a real cut to lose $20 million for their mortgage fraud program, which was started just last year to help detect abusive lending practices. “It’s a painful cut,” said Jerry Brown, a spokesman for the housing department. While mortgage fraud will continue to be a top priority for the department, “we’re just going to have to find other ways of doing it,” he said. Kathleen Day, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit Washington group that works on mortgage issues, said such a cut appears shortsighted and reckless given the damage done by fraudulent mortgages and the potential losses to taxpayers. “You might save $20 million in the short run,” Ms. Day said, “but you lose a lot more in the long run.” State and local police will be losing more than $900 million this year — a 25 percent reduction — in Justice Department money used to hire hundreds of local police officers, pay for new technology and provide other services. The cuts come at a time when many departments are already facing state budget crunches. “This will make an already-difficult si-
tuation much worse for state and local law enforcement,” said Gene Voegtlin, director of state programs for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which is based outside Washington. “People will have to find a new way to police their communities.” Even weather forecasters stand to take a big hit, with the budget deal slashing money that the Obama administration had initially sought for a satellite-building program considered vital to forecasting. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, warned in a Senate hearing on Wednesday
that the cutbacks would likely lead to a serious gap in satellite data starting in 2016, undermining National Weather Service forecasts. Research by her agency suggests that without coverage from the new satellites that were to be built with the money, the weather service might fumble forecasts of future storms. Dr. Lubchenco also warned that search-and-rescue missions relying on those satellites could be undermined. The reduction in satellite coverage, said Daniel Sobien, head of the union that represents government weather forecasters, represents “a big risk.”
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
A Real Choice on Medicare W e know it is not how most people want to spend their time, but Americans need to give a close reading to the Democrats’ and Republicans’ plans for Medicare reform. There are stark differences that will profoundly affect all of our lives — and clear political choices to come. The Democratic approach is mostly imbedded in the broader health care reforms enacted last year. The Republicans’ approach — including a call to repeal reform and ultimately privatize Medicare — was fashioned by Representative Paul Ryan and adopted by the House. Here are some of the most significant elements: FOR BENEFICIARIES, OR THOSE WHO WILL SOON BE During last year’s Congressional campaign, Republican leaders claimed to be Medicare’s stalwart defenders — conveniently ignoring their historical animosity toward the program. Older voters overlooked that history and flocked to the party in large numbers. Now the Republicans have embraced many of reform’s changes for Medicare — without, of course, advertising their flip-flop. One of the biggest differences, under both parties’ plans, would be a large reduction of unjustified subsidies to private Medi-
care Advantage plans that serve 11 million of Medicare’s 46 million enrollees. Last year, those plans were paid 9 percent more per enrollee, on average, for coverage comparable to what traditional Medicare would provide. By eliminating most of the subsidies, the Democrats hope to save $136 billion over 10 years. The Republicans plan to cut only $10 billion less. The Republicans have also embraced health care reform’s necessary plan to slow the growth rate of payments to health care providers, which was expected to save hundreds of billions over the next decade. House Republicans would make another deep cut — definitely not in the Democrats’ plan — that would hit many current and future Medicare users hard. The reform law provides subsidies to help close a gap in prescription drug coverage, known as the doughnut hole, that poses a hardship for millions of patients who need lots of medicine and often cannot afford to pay for it. The Republicans would repeal that subsidy. Perhaps most significant, the two parties have very different approaches to what they would do with their savings. The Democrats would use the savings to extend coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans, a goal we heartily endorse. The Republicans say only
that they would use the money in some way to bolster the solvency of Medicare. That is not good enough. MEDICARE IN THE FUTURE The differences get even bigger over time. President Obama wants to retain Medicare as an entitlement in which the federal government pays for a defined set of medical services. The Ryan proposal would give those turning age 65 in 2022 “premium support” payments to help them buy private policies. There is little doubt that the Republican proposal would sharply reduce federal spending on Medicare by capping what the government would pay at very low levels. But it could cause great hardship by shifting a lot of the burden to beneficiaries. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that by 2022 new enrollees would have to pay at least $6,400 more out of pocket to buy coverage comparable to traditional Medicare. Huge numbers of Medicare beneficiaries live on modest incomes and are already struggling to pay medical bills that Medicare does not fully cover. We should not force them into private health plans that would charge them a lot more or provide much skimpier benefits. CONTROLLING REAL COSTS The country cannot wrestle the deficit under control unless a way is found to slow the rise in medical costs — and Medicare’s demands on the federal budget. President Obama is clearly dedicated to reforming the health care system. Mr. Ryan relies mainly on the idea that costs will come
11 Mainland
down because of competition among private plans and more judicious use of health care by patients who are forced to pay more. His proposal is too sketchy to determine whether he would repeal or retain most of the reform law’s quality-improvement efforts, consumer protections and pilot projects to reduce costs. What is clear is that House Republicans are determined to repeal reform’s strongest costcontrol measure: an independent board that would monitor whether Medicare is on track to meet spending targets and, if not, propose further reductions that Congress would have to accept or replace with comparable savings. Republicans charge that this would allow “unelected bureaucrats” to “ration” health care, and members of both parties object to relinquishing any power over federal spending. But Congress has shown it is far too susceptible to lobbying by insurers, hospitals, patients and other special interest groups. It makes sense to let experts drawn from diverse backgrounds set a course for Congress based on the best available evidence of what might work. We were skeptical when the Republicans suddenly claimed to be Medicare’s great defenders. We are even more skeptical now that we have read their plan. We are also certain that repealing reform — the Republicans’ No. 1 goal — would do enormous damage to all Americans and make it even harder to wrestle down health care costs, the best way to deal with the country’s long-term fiscal crisis.
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
House G.O.P. Members Face Voter Anger Over Budget By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and CARL HULSE
I
n central Florida, a Congressional town meeting erupted into near chaos as attendees accused a Republican lawmaker of trying to dismantle Medicare while providing tax cuts to corporations and affluent Americans. At roughly the same time in Wisconsin, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the architect of the Republican budget proposal, faced a packed town meeting, occasional boos and a skeptical audience as he tried to lay out his party’s rationale for overhauling the health insurance program for retirees. In a meeting between Representative Allen B. West and his constituents began on a chaotic note, audience members heckling him and others loudly defending him. After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks. The proposed new approach to Medicare — a centerpiece of a budget that Republican leaders have hailed as a courageous effort to address the nation’s long-term fiscal problems — has been a constant topic at town-hall-style sessions and other public gatherings during a two-week Congressional recess that provided the first chance for lawmakers to gauge reaction to the plan. An example of the response came as Representative Daniel Webster, a freshman Republican from Florida, faced an unruly crowd at a packed town meeting in Orlando. Mr. Webster sought to defuse the situation saying any changes were years away current retirees would not see a difference. “Not one senior citizen is harmed by this budget,” noting his new granddaughter was “looking at a bankrupt country.” Under the Republican proposal, Medicare would be converted into a program that would subsidize health coverage for retirees rather than provide coverage directly, a change that many Democrats say would risk leaving the elderly with inadequate health care as costs rise over the long run. The Republican budget would also transform Medicaid, which pays for nursing homes for low-income residents, into a grant program to states, raising the possibility that states, under budget pressure, would cut back on coverage. Democrats face political pressure to show they can bring spending under control and rein in the growth of the national debt, and there are fissures within the party about whether to back tax increases and raise the national debt ceiling without concrete steps to bring down the budget deficit. Before the release of Mr. Ryan’s propo-
sal, Republicans had expressed confidence that public opinion had turned in their favor, and on Tuesday House leaders sought to reassure Republicans that their budget approach would eventually carry the day. Led by Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio, Republicans held a conference call urging House members to tell voters that it is the Obama administration’s spending plan that would cost jobs and ration health care. Officials familiar with the call said that rank-and-file lawmakers did not seem alarmed at the response they were getting, and that Mr. Ryan told his fellow Republicans he had been successful in making the case that Medicare would go bankrupt without intervention. Mr. Ryan said he stressed with his constituents that those over 55 or currently on Medicare would still be covered under the existing program. But news reports noted that Mr. Ryan himself faced a mixed response Tuesday as he held tense meetings with voters, some of whom were turned away because of overflow crowds. It was another indication that Republicans still have a big selling job to do on their budget, especially to older constituents who tend to turn out to vote at higher rates than younger people. “I think what we have in Washington right now working on Medicare are a bunch of clowns,” said Robert Murphy, 73, a retiree in Fort Lauderdale. “I know they can’t leave it the way it is.” At Mr. West’s meeting on Tuesday evening here, he took only written questions submitted by the audience. The queries were largely friendly, but some people did pipe up loudly about Medicare, accusing him of making misleading remarks. Several were escorted out by security. Democrats and their allies are stepping up their efforts to organize opposition at public events. They hope to put Republicans back on their heels much as Republicans did to Democrats in the angry town-hall-style meetings conducted during consideration of the health care law. “We have said from the moment the gavel came down on the vote to end Medicare we would hold them accountable every day in every way,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “That is precisely what we are doing. We encourage everyone to attend these meetings.” Democrats and other interest groups are mobilizing a campaign that includes automated phone calls, radio and television ads and protests to keep the pressure on Republicans. Americans United for Change, a liberal group, was running automated calls in 23 Republican House districts and television ads in four districts in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, in which an announcer says that
a House-approved budget amounts to “ending Medicare so millionaires can get another tax break.” As they begin a lengthy battle for public opinion on budget issues, many Republicans say much of the outrage at their meetings stems from Democratic plants sent by MoveOn.org and other liberal groups. “My town halls are being disrupted by
Democrats,” said Representative Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, whose meetings have been peppered with complaints about Republican policies. “They are apparently being sent to us to do just that. I am not sensing the general public is angered over Medicare reform. When I explain that people over 55 are not affected there is almost a sigh of relief.” He added, “I am not going to do anything different.”
Comparing Republican and Obama Budget Plans
San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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modern love
Hearts, and Lives, Out of Step By LAUREN BOYLE
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AST May I was like a balloon without a string, in desperate need of some tie to the earth. Set to graduate from college a semester early, I had no job lined up and no prospects. And I was suffering from the kind of acute loneliness that comes from dating college guys for whom the word “girlfriend” does not exist and whose idea of a proposal is sending a graphic, indecent late-night text message. I’d had a high school boyfriend, my first real love. But he and I hadn’t spoken in years, not since he abruptly broke up with me. We had both stayed in the Philadelphia area for college (in my case just 20 minutes from home) so our paths still crossed at parties with our old crowd, but our eyes hardly ever met. All I knew from friends was that he planned to go to a Roman Catholic seminary to become a priest. It had taken me a long time, but I had moved on. I went to college, met other guys, but didn’t find what I was looking for. And lately I had noticed myself marveling at my cousins’ engagement rings, cooing at their infants and congratulating them on their careers. It’s not that I wanted all those things immediately. I just wondered when my life was going to cross the precipice into true adulthood. Then my 84-year-old grandmother had a catastrophic stroke, just two days after she and I had laughed and talked about my best friend’s resemblance to Tom Hanks. We had originally expected her to pull through with physical therapy, but even her magnificent mind could not overcome the damage caused by 12 hours of unconsciousness on the bedroom floor. Though her heart and lungs had survived, her brain — the brain that had once been able to recall my birthday, my middle name and the red dress I wore for Christmas in 1990 — had not. And just like that, my balloon acquired some strings, as I assumed the daytime vigil at my grandmother’s bedside along with the rest of my large close-knit family. My lack of direction or a solid relationship had twisted itself into an enormous gift, one that would allow me to spend three full days with my grandmother before she died. Each night after leaving the hospital, I would join some of my dearest (and mostly male) high school friends at parties and bars, in a crowd that sometimes included my old boyfriend. The Flyers had made it to the Stanley Cup finals, and we were excited by the possibility of an unlikely championship. I had never much enjoyed hockey, but now I craved the distraction, familiarity and
company I knew the games would bring. And though I tried to lose myself in the action as the boys did, I kept my cellphone close, just in case my father called from the hospital with the bad news I knew would come by week’s end. One night, just after the Flyers had won the second game, I feigned sleepiness, stood up from my friend’s couch and rummaged in my purse for my car keys. It was a perfect night in late spring. As I walked to my car, I wondered how the weather could be so perfect when I was so brokenhearted. “Wait, Lauren,” a voice called out. You could blindfold me, fly me halfway around the world and dump me into a crowd of a billion people, and I would know the timbre and urgency of that voice within a millisecond. I’d seen my old boyfriend fleetingly at the party, but I didn’t know he had followed me out. While we dated, he once told me after a particularly heated argument that someday we would marry. Then, two days later, he said we would never speak again. Yet here we were, to my amazement, speaking. We chatted for a few minutes, about what I cannot remember. I think we exchanged jokes about stunting each other’s emotional growth in adolescence. Then, out of nowhere, a confession that killed the semi-jovial mood. “I love you,” he said. “I never loved anyone the way I love you.” “And everybody else I’ve dated,” he added, shifting his eyes downward, “was a mistake.” Briefly, I wondered if grief was hallucinatory. “You’re going to be a priest, though,” I said. He suggested that I could change that with one word, and that someday we could join my cousins in ring-shopping and babyraising. So my life wasn’t like a balloon in need of a string — it was actually like those cylindrical balloons that clowns twist into shapes and contort beyond recognition. As if on cue, I burst into tears. He offered a hug, the kind that enveloped and mussed hair and smeared tears and mascara. He knew my grandmother was dying. He apologized, knowing how bad his timing was. I conceded: it was. He leaned in for a kiss. I balked. We lingered uncomfortably. I left. Alone in my childhood bedroom that night I laughed out loud, half amused, half bewildered, as my cellphone offered up text after text in which he elaborated on his confession and promised prayers for my grandmother and love (that word again!) for me. What were these romantic 2 a.m. texts?
I don’t know how my cellphone, so often a vessel for crude come-ons, tolerated such pure affection without combusting. The next day was spent among palliative-care nurses, grief counselors and family members crowding my grandmother’s hospital room. As expected, her breathing had worsened; in one of our moments alone together, when her heart had stopped for just a moment, I held her hand and begged her to hold on, if only to wait for us to be ready. She did, miraculously. Even the doctors wondered how her body had not given out just yet when her brain had suffered so much. I prayed the rosary with her prayer group, a handful of tearful elderly ladies, and listened to them reminisce about the woman my grandmother had been. “I remember Peggy from high school,” one lady said, clutching my hand. “What a wonderful, sweet girl she was.” As I watched her chest barely rise and fall, I considered my grandmother, a junior in high school, slow dancing to Glenn Miller with the young soldier who would become my grandfather. They married at 19, hardly cognizant of their choices, she in a simple dress and gloves, he in his military uniform. Fifty-six years after their wedding, my grandmother told me that she had married my grandfather because “he was a really nice boy.” Even at 14, I didn’t believe it was quite as simple as that. Yet here I had my own “nice boy.” He was the “I love you” in a barrage of “Come over; I’m drunk.” He had considered dedicating his life to God; he was intelligent and loved children as much as I did. He knew what I wanted from my life, the pain I had been feeling from waiting to begin but having no one with whom to do so. I had asked the universe for someone like him to come along and to allow me to eventually join the ranks of my marrying, procreating cousins. This “nice boy” had promised me
just that. What my grandmother didn’t know on her wedding day was that her “nice boy” would wage a battle with alcoholism that would strain their marriage and destroy his paychecks before he was able to summon the strength to quit. They would stay together another 36 years before he died, raising seven children in a happy, crowded house. AND she loved him; we knew that. But we also knew that when my grandfather died, she experienced a liberation that had been impossible while married. She had said once, about a year after he died: “I miss Joe. I do, every day. But I like being able to go wherever I want. And have dinner whenever I want. I don’t even have to cook.” I realized, while holding my grandmother’s hand and counting the seconds between her breaths, that I, too, still wanted that freedom. So that night I offered my “nice boy” the sad, palliative smile that the nurse had shown me. I didn’t have to say anything for him to know that something between us was lost: a way of gently breaking terrible news that I had learned from my days with my grandmother’s nurses. He understood. We performed a reprise of the complicated linger-and-stutter dance that had followed his initial declarations of love, until we knew it was time for us to go. At my grandmother’s funeral a week later, I greeted the dozens of mourners who had come to say goodbye to the woman they loved. The church organist, shaking the rain off her umbrella, approached me. My family and I had decided that my sister and I would sing at the Mass, and it was almost time. “Are you ready to begin, Lauren?” she asked. I was.
14 May 5 -11, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
15
Joint Replacements Keep Dogs in the Running By VINCENT M. MALLOZZI
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r. Melvyn Pond performed total hipreplacement surgery on a patient who had been hobbled from years of exercise and competition. Now the patient is competing again — on all fours. “She’s doing very well,” Pond said of Lily, a 9-year-old pug who participates in agility contests. “For her to be able to run, jump and climb again is pretty exciting news.” Pond is among a handful of veterinarians who have been replacing hips, elbows and knees in dogs like Lily, allowing them to prolong their competitive careers. Joint replacement has helped larger working dogs return to hunting, aiding the blind and assisting in search-and-rescue missions and other police activities, not to mention relieving the pain of beloved pets. Although hip-replacement surgery for bigger dogs has been performed since the mid1970s, micro-hip replacement for cats and dogs weighing 6 to 30 pounds began in the last five years. “I was totally shocked to see that Lily was walking so well almost immediately after the surgery,” said her owner, Kathleen Dooley. “She is happiest when she is training and competing. It keeps her mentally and physically fit.” That sentiment is familiar to Dr. Pamela Schwartz, who specializes in soft tissue and orthopedic surgery at the Animal Medical Center.
“Many people treat their dogs as if they were their own children,” she said. “So when it comes to the health of their dogs, owners are more inclined than ever before to seek out specialized care.” According to the American Pet Products Association, spending in the industry — including food, supplies, veterinary care, live animal purchases and services like grooming and boarding — grew by 5.4 percent to more than $45.5 billion in 2010 from $43.2 billion the year before, with no declines in any category from 2007. The average cost of replacement surgery is about $5,000, not including any physical therapy that may follow. Lily, who weighs 18 pounds, is one of about 200 dogs around the world who have had a micro-hip replacement since the product was licensed in 2005, by BioMedtrix, that designs, develops and manufactures veterinary orthopedic implants and the surgical tools used in such procedures. The primary materials used in the prosthetics — titanium and cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloys — are the same as those for humans. “While the short-term results have been very good,” Pond said, “I think there aren’t many other veterinarians doing these types of surgeries because they seem to be hanging back, waiting on the long-term results.” Indeed, six months after Lily’s replace-
ment surgery, she still limped occasionally. Pond found a gap between the artificial socket and the bone, so he recemented the socket into place. Lily has had no problems since. “This is a relatively new science,” said Dr. William D. Liska, a veterinary orthopedic surgeon who performed the first micro-hip replacement there in April 2005 on a Shetland sheepdog named Champ. Two months later, Liska made an international house call in Helsinki, Finland, to perform the first knee replacement on a Karelian bear dog named Jere, a national moose hunting champion, as part of clinical trials for the prosthetics. Total knee replacements became available for all dogs in 2007. Since then, about 120 dogs have had the operation. Among Liska’s 1,500 surgical patients over the years are a black Labrador retriever from Rome, a yellow Labrador from Mexico and a Lhasa apso from Japan. “I don’t think the general public is very aware of these surgical procedures,” he said. “When they find out, they are wowed by it and pleasantly surprised.” Three years ago, Liska replaced a hip on a 7-year-old Australian shepherd named Zydeco, whose career as a champion Frisbee dog was in jeopardy. “She did this particular trick during competitions where she caught a Frisbee and rolled over on her back,” said Mark McNitt of Houston, who owns Zydeco. “Suddenly, she wasn’t able to do that anymore, and over time, I noticed she started limping and I realized she was in pain.” Six months after the operation, Zydeco was working out again in her backyard. Shortly thereafter, she was back on the Frisbee circuit. In August, Zydeco and McNitt finished 12th among 69 teams at the Colorado Canine Challenge in Denver. “I don’t know what we would have done if this surgery wasn’t available,” Mc-
Nitt said. “She’s just tearing it up now, no more pain, and she will probably be competing for another three or four years.” Pond said that, unlike humans, most athletic dogs who had joint-replacement surgery could return to top-level competition. “As long as these dogs are not involved in a contact sport, they should be fine,” he said. “Bo Jackson had hip-replacement surgery and could not return to football, but Tom Watson was able to return because golf does not have the same physical demands.” Total elbow replacements for dogs weighing 50 to 80 pounds began in the late 1980s, but only since a minimally invasive procedure was developed in 2008 has it become a generally accepted method of treating severe disease in the joint. Since then, 90 dogs worldwide have had total elbow replacements, the first performed by Dr. Randall L. Acker in 2007 on a black Labrador, named Otis. Acker was inspired by his yellow Labrador, Tate, who suffered greatly from elbow tendinitis before dying of cancer in 2003. He worked with Greg Van Der Meulen, a biomedical engineer, to create a cementless total elbow prosthesis. Now known as the Tate Elbow, it was eventually licensed by BioMedtrix. “I didn’t want to see any more dogs going through what Tate went through,” Acker said. “More and more people who consider their dogs to be a part of their families are now opting for this surgery, and they are willing to pay for it.” “It’s well worth it,” said Dr. Jim Sabshin, a neurosurgeon. Five years ago, Liska performed a double hip replacement on his 7-year-old Labrador retriever, Leia. “She was having trouble hunting, swimming and walking up stairs, just sort of bunny-hopping around, which is a sign of hip dysplasia,” Sabshin said. “I thought I had two really bad options: letting her live with the pain or having to put her down. She’s now running around like a normal dog. You could never tell she has artificial hips.” The same could be said for Lily, who was gnawing on a bone at home a few hours before a recent training session at the Obedience Training Club. An inch-long scar on her left hip was the only sign of her operation. “My local veterinarian said Lily would never again be able to do agility exercises,” Dooley said, watching Lily scoot around her apartment. “But my husband and I kept searching for help. We never gave up. “Just look at her now.”
Wine
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Vouvrays With an Element of Surprise By ERIC ASIMOV
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ERHAPS you have not yet been bitten by the chenin blanc bug and transported to a world of luminous wines made in an astounding range of styles. If so, then opportunity is about to pull a cork for you. Right now in the marketplace are a bevy of superb Vouvrays, many priced gently given their high quality, especially in comparison with those other white grapes of note, riesling and chardonnay. If I sound a tad breathless, well, so be it. It’s simply that chenin blanc wines offer so much pleasure and intrigue, yet are so underappreciated. I have no doubt that their time will come soon enough, and not just for Vouvray but for the entire cluster of chenin blancs from the Loire: Savennières, Montlouis, Anjou, Jasnières and the rest. Consider how long people were trumpeting the virtues of riesling before consumers began to discover them for themselves. But chenin blanc wines seem not to have the determined support that riesling did before it took off. Chenin blanc has a lot in common with riesling. Both grapes are versatile, making wonderful wines that encompass the range from bone dry to richly, unctuously sweet. And the wines from both rely on a pulsing acidity for structure, balance and freshness. But when it comes to achieving widespread popularity, riesling has a significant advantage. Distinctive versions come from many places in the world, from Germany and Alsace to New York to Western Australia. By contrast, apart from a few lonely outposts scattered here and there, chenin blanc shines only in the Loire Valley. And while the wines can differ significantly depending on where along the Loire the grapes are grown and by whom they are tended, only Vouvray has achieved any sort of name recognition beyond the ring of worshipers. Nonetheless, the wine panel did not come to proselytize, but to assess Vouvrays now on the market. For a recent tasting of Vouvrays from the 2008 and 2009 vintages, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by two committed chenin blanc lovers: Michael Madrigale, the sommelier at Bar Boulud, and Pascaline Lepeltier, wine di-
rector of Rouge Tomate. Our intention was to taste only dry Vouvrays. But in his quest to accumulate 20 bottles, our tasting coordinator, Bernard Kirsch, ran into one of the frustrations sometimes experienced by Vouvray buyers: It’s not easy to tell by looking at the label whether wines will be dry or display some sweetness. Because dryness designations are not required, dry Vouvrays are sometimes but not always labeled sec. Compounding that problem, there is a lot of wiggle room between sec and demi-sec, which can have quite a bit of residual sugar. Many wines end up in an in-between area known unofficially as sec-tendre. Only occasionally will you see this term, or simply tendre, on a label. Aside from the confusion that consumers may experience, the difficulty in determining which Vouvrays are truly dry is not necessarily a bad thing. The crucial point rests on that much-abused term, balance. Chenin blanc, with its powerful acidity, can sometimes be punishingly austere. With proper balance, Vouvrays with a little sweetness can still feel dry and be thoroughly refreshing. Nevertheless, it can be daunting, in a mass tasting faced with an array of wines, to try a bone-dry Vouvray after one with a little sweetness. As a further complication, the characteristics of a particular vintage can dictate to a certain degree the choices producers make. Among our 20 bottles, 12 were from 2009, a hotter year than the rain-dampened 2008, producing grapes that were often quite a bit riper. Many producers found it harder to make dry wines in 2009. Fermenting out all the sugar to the point of dryness might have produced ungainly highalcohol wines, so many ’09s have more sweetness than might be typical. Again, not necessarily a bad thing. While our top 10 wines were split evenly between ’09s and ’08s, our four favorites were all ’09s. In fact, these included two wines each from two of the top Vouvray producers: the legendary Huet and the not-yet-legendary François Pinon. The Huets were labeled sec, but nonetheless showed a discernible bit of sweetness. The Pinon wines, I think, would have fit into the sec-tendre category. But enough of this. Let’s talk about the wines themselves. Our favorite, the ’09
Sec 2009 Firm and very young with complex flavors of lemon, honey, chamomile and minerals. (Vieux Vins, Vineburg, Calif.) François Pinon Vouvray, $23, ✩✩✩ Silex Noir 2009 Rich and succulent with lingering flavors of honeysuckle, minerals, citrus and ginger, and a touch of sweetness. (Louis/ Dressner Selections, New York)
BEST VALUE
Huet Clos du Bourg, was stunning in its complex, intense flavors of lemon, honeysuckle, mint and minerals. These, along with apple and a sort of wet wool flavor, are the typical characteristics of chenin blanc, and we saw them again and again, with varying degrees of complexity and intensity. The Clos du Bourg’s sibling, Huet’s ’09 Le Haut-Lieu, was our No. 4 wine, slightly less complex with a little spice and a palpable bit of sweetness. In between were the two Pinons, the succulent Silex Noir at No. 2, tasting slightly of ginger, and the more savory Cuvée Tradition, which, at $20, was also our best value. Our No. 5 wine, Les Caburoches from Jacky Blot’s Domaine de la Taille aux Loups, was also our top 2008. Unlike the more voluptuous ’09s, it offered a pleasant austerity, with a rich texture typical of chenin blanc and chalky mineral flavors. This wine was labeled sec, and so followed through on its billing. But an ’08 like our No. 7 wine, from Benoit Gautier, carried no designation, and showed a touch of sweetness, which was hardly a drawback in this balanced, inexpensive wine. Almost every wine on our list is a great value. Even the Huets and the No. 10 wine, the ’08 sec from Philippe Foreau’s Domaine du Clos Naudin, both renowned Vouvray producers, are great deals considering the quality of the wines and the care that goes into the production. This, alas, is a consequence of the grim lack of demand for chenin blanc wines in general. You may as well take advantage of it.
Tasting Report
Huet Vouvray Clos du Bourg, $30, ✩✩✩
François Pinon Vouvray, $20, ✩✩ ½ Cuvée Tradition 2009 Dense and savory, with rich texture and aromas of citrus, flowers, wool and minerals. (Louis/Dressner Selections, New York) Huet Vouvray Le Haut-Lieu, $32, ✩✩ ½ Sec 2009 Spicy, energetic and juicy with flavors of honey and lemon, and a touch of sweetness. (Vieux Vins, Vineburg, Calif.) Domaine de la Taille aux Loups (Jacky Blot), $28, ✩✩ ½ Vouvray Sec Les Caburoches 2008 Richly textured yet chalky, dry and a bit austere with flavors of lemon and honey. (V.O.S. Selections, New York) Domaine des Aubuisières Vouvray, $20, ✩✩ ½ Cuvée de Silex 2009 Smoky and savory with a waxy texture and earthy mineral flavors. (WeygandtMetzler/Weygandt Selections, Unionville, Pa.) Benoit Gautier, $14, ✩✩ ½ Vouvray 2008 Balanced and pleasing with spicy citrus flavors and more than a touch of sweetness. (Martin Scott Wines, Lake Success, N.Y.) Marc Brédif, $19, ✩✩ ½ Vouvray 2008 Mellow and substantial with bright citrus and mineral flavors. (Maisons Marques & Domaines U.S.A., Oakland, Calif.) Champalou, $19, ✩✩ Vouvray 2008 Tart, dry and pleasing with flavors of flowers, apples and lemon. (Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, Berkeley, Calif.) Domaine du Clos Naudin (Philippe Foreau), $30 Vouvray Sec 2008 Spicy with mineral flavors, and energetic if a bit austere. (Rosenthal Wine Merchant, New York)
May 5 - 11, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
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ART
Treasures Pose Ethics Issues for Smithsonian By KATE TAYLOR
Belitung wreck, Seabed Explorations, is run by a German engineer, Tilman Walterfang. In the early 1990s Mr. Walterfang was a director at a concrete company in Germany when his Indonesian employees’ stories about the rumors of shipwrecks lying on the bottom of the ocean in Indonesia prompted him to move across the world. Although a 2001 Unesco convention outlawed the commercial trade in un-
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mid mounting calls by scientists for the Smithsonian Institution to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck, the institution will hold a meeting on Monday afternoon to hear from critics. The contents of the exhibition, “Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds,” were mined by a commercial treasure hunter and not according to academic methods, a practice that many archaeologists deplore, equating it with modern-day piracy. In an April 5 letter to the top official at the Smithsonian, G. Wayne Clough, a group of archaeologists and anthropologists from the National Academy of Sciences — including Robert McCormick Adams, a former leader of the Smithsonian — wrote that proceeding with the exhibition would “severely damage the stature and reputation” of the institution. The members of the National Academy of Sciences are not alone. In recent weeks organizations including the Society for American Archaeology, the Council of American Maritime Museums and the International Committee for Underwater Cultural Heritage, as well as groups within the Smithsonian, including the members of the anthropology department and the Senate of Scientists at its National Museum of Natural History, have urged Mr. Clough to reconsider. The exhibition was conceived by the government of Singapore, which owns the artifacts, and Julian Raby, the director of the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Smithsonian’s two Asian art museums. It is on display in Singapore through July and will then travel internationally. Although the Smithsonian says it has not made a final decision, the exhibition — which includes glazed pottery, rare pieces of early blueand-white porcelain and the largest gold cup ever found from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) — is tentatively set to arrive at the Sackler in the spring of 2012. Monday’s meeting was called by Mr. Raby and Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for history, art and culture. A final decision about whether to proceed will likely be made in late May, according to a Smithsonian spokeswoman, Linda St. Thomas. The probable historical importance
Part of a Chinese cup found in a Tang Dynasty shipwreck off Indonesia. of the shipwreck, which was discovered by fishermen off Belitung Island in Indonesia in 1998, has only inflamed the debate. The ship, which is believed to be Arab, was filled with a cargo of ninthcentury Chinese ceramics and gold and silver vessels. Its discovery suggests that Tang China had substantial sea trade with the Middle East; scholars had previously thought that the trade routes were primarily over land, along the Silk Road. The exhibition “brings to life the tale of Sinbad sailing to China to make his fortune,” Mr. Raby said this year. (Mr. Raby declined to be interviewed for this article, according to a spokeswoman, because he wanted to keep an open mind for Monday’s discussion.) Archaeologists, however, say that because the shipwreck was commercially mined within a period of months, rather than the many years that a more structured archaeological excavation would have taken, much of the information it might have provided about the ship’s crew and cargo was lost. Kimberly L. Faulk, a marine archeologist and vice chairwoman of the nongovernmental Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology, said in an e-mail that by proceeding with the exhibition the Smithsonian — which is a research institution as well as a network of museums — would be violating its own set of professional ethics and promoting the looting of archaeological sites. Commercial treasure hunting is a high-stakes world. Companies sometimes spend millions of dollars searching for and mining a shipwreck and then cleaning up the finds in the hope of selling the artifacts for a huge profit at the end. The company that salvaged the
Silver decoration on Tang-era boxes found in the wreck. derwater heritage, Indonesia has not ratified it. (Neither has the United States.) Indonesia allows commercial mining of shipwrecks as long as a company is licensed and splits its finds with the government. In an e-mail Mr. Walterfang said that when fisherman first discovered the shipwreck in early August 1998, the Indonesian government, fearful of looting, ordered Seabed Explorations to begin an immediate round-the-clock recovery operation. It started within days. Although Mr. Walterfang eventually brought in a pair of archaeologists, including one, Michael Flecker, who wrote two journal articles about the ship, Mr. Walterfang conceded that, from an academic standpoint, “the overall situation would without doubt be described as ‘less than ideal.’ ” After fielding interest from China, Seabed Explorations sold the majority of the 63,000 artifacts recovered to a company owned by the Singapore government, for $32 million. The Indonesian government kept slightly more than 8,000 objects from this ship, along with $2.5 million and finds from another ship excavated by Mr. Walterfang. Some artifacts have ended up on eBay and other online sites; Mr. Walterfang said that these were probably looted by fishermen while the recovery process
was halted for the monsoon season, between December 1998 and March 1999. Mr. Walterfang was dismissive of the exhibition’s critics, suggesting that the exhibition was being used as a “PingPong ball in yet another political game for the social climbers in Washington, D.C.” Mr. Flecker, the archaeologist who studied the ship, argued in a 2002 article in The International Journal of Nautical Archaeology that the purist approach of many archaeologists was not practical in developing countries like Indonesia, where governments are poor and the risk of looting is high. In those circumstances, he wrote, archaeologists and commercial salvagers should cooperate “to document those sites and the artifacts recovered from them before too much information is lost.” But in the eyes of archaeologists like James P. Delgado, the director of maritime heritage at the United States Department of Commerce National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, allowing any of the finds from an excavation to be sold betrays the most basic aspects of research, in which “sometimes it’s the smallest things that we come back to that make the great leaps forward.” Mr. Delgado said he wished the Belitung shipwreck had been academically excavated. But unlike some of his colleagues, he said that instead of canceling the exhibition, the Smithsonian could use it to educate the public about the consequences of the commercialization of underwater heritage. If, however, the exhibition merely celebrates the discovery without addressing the problematic context, Mr. Delgado added, “there will be a clear message to Indonesia” that these practices “are fine,” and to other countries with rich maritime heritage to “engage in these things and sell it off.” Ceramic pots were among the 63,000 artifacts in the haul.
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
New York Times Editorial Questioning America’s Faith in Air Power By MICHAEL BESCHLOSS
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hen President George W. Bush launched his war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with an incandescent burst of “shock and awe,” political commentators marveled at the seemingly magical impact of modern air power. Some forecast that, as with the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and the Kosovo war of 1999, airstrikes by the United States and its allies would do most of the work required for an early, absolute victory. Well, 2003 was a very long time ago. As Martin van Creveld shows in this brisk, original and authoritative history, since its zenith during World War II, when two United States B-29s ended the global struggle by dropping their payloads on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the value of air power has largely fizzled. McGeorge Bundy observed in 1988, after his own harsh experience as an architect of the Vietnam War, that the “surgical airstrike” deserved its name because surgery is bloody, messy and never final. Van Creveld would emphatically agree, and “The Age of Airpower” demonstrates the difficulty of winning a modern war from the skies. It is not by accident that the author is so fascinated by aerial combat. He is a well-respected Israeli historian and strategist, and some of the most important milestones in his country’s military history have to do with air power — the quick pre-emptive strike against Egypt that won Israel the Six-Day War of 1967; the surprise attack of Yom Kippur 1973 by Egypt and Syria that gravely jeopardized the Jewish state; the 1976 hostage rescue at Entebbe, Uganda; the 1981 raid against Iraqi nuclear facilities at Osirak; and the similar raid against Syria in 2007. Van Creveld traces aerial fighting machines back to 18th-century ballooning and to the Wright brothers, who, after lofting their “flier” at Kitty Hawk in 1903, shrewdly decided that the big money would be found not in passenger aircraft but warplanes. And indeed near the start of World War I, a French pilot flying near Paris could warn his country’s generals that German tro-
ops were moving to the east. Since Britain, France and Germany owned most of the aircraft in that war, some of history’s earliest air battles took place on the Western Front. But van Creveld believes that the biggest impact of air power in World War I was in bombing submarines. Van Creveld acerbically notes that World War II began with Hermann Goering, commander of Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe, directing his pilots to strike only military targets, and effectively ended with the Enola Gay releasing history’s deadliest weapon on the nonmilitary target of Hiroshima and immediately killing about 75,000 civilians. Van Creveld credits early Luftwaffe victories not to the number or quality of German planes but to a unified military command, good planning and the passion to expand the German Reich. Hitler’s “final conquest of England” failed because British morale was too strong to break under repeated bombing and because the Royal Air Force downed so many Nazi planes that the Germans had to start attacking at night. This meant they had a much smaller chance of hitting their assigned targets. In America, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared his resolve to build 50,000 warplanes — a number that sounded reassuring until it was later revealed that Roosevelt had simply made it up. Two moments in World War II were expected to prove the invincibility of military air power. Instead, they showed its limitations. Late in the struggle, American war planners oversaw the intense strategic bombing of German targets chosen to bring Hitler’s regime to its knees. But many of the night bombers missed their targets; although 350,000 Germans were killed, Hitler and his government survived. And in the spring of 1945, to forestall an Allied land invasion of Japan that might have doomed millions, Gen. Curtis LeMay sent B-29 firebombers over Tokyo and 63 other Japanese cities in the largest bombing campaign attempted to that time. By the summer, LeMay said that he had run out of targets. Much of Japan’s war industry was destroyed, and perhaps half a million
people killed, but the country’s will to fight showed few signs of flagging. Even before nuclear-equipped bombers gave way to nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in the 1960s, the cold war hastened the warplane’s decline. As van Creveld notes, during the entire 45-year conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, not once did combat aircraft of the two countries directly fight each other as part of their own air forces (though Soviet pilots did fight Americans as part of the Chinese and North Korean air forces). The nuclear balance of terror dictated that air power’s real use was restricted to waging war against countries that lacked the ultimate weapon. But even many of those conflicts showed that air power was no panacea. During the Korean War, the United States military, equipped with new jet bombers, eliminated almost all the enemy’s railway traffic and rendered most of its military airfields useless — with little apparent result. This reputedly led the Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, to doubt the impact of air power on ground combat, and Chinese warplanes played little part in his country’s successful Korean offensive of 1950-51. If only the champions of America’s adventure in Indochina had absorbed the historical lessons of these earlier experiences. Perhaps Robert S. McNamara, defense secretary under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, had the least excuse for this neglect. Having helped to supervise the strategic bombing of Nazi Germany and Japan, he, of all people, should have known that Operation Rolling Thunder and his blueprint for the gradual escalation of bombing against North Vietnam would not
make Ho Chi Minh and the Vietcong give up. (The United States ultimately employed more tonnage on the Vietnamese than all the bombs dropped in World War II.) Van Creveld might have added the telling fact that two of the most prominent early critics of the Vietnam War, Under Secretary of State George Ball and the Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith, had been part of a group that studied the effects of the strategic bombing of Germany. Unlike McNamara, they seem to have remembered its frustrations. Van Creveld does not quite say so — he is more interested in military strategy than politics — but the widespread faith of the American people and the American political class in air power’s potential to win quick victories has been a dangerous delusion, especially when combined with the eagerness of presidents to plan military engagements that will be finished swiftly and with few casualties. Much-ballyhooed successes — like bombing Saddam Hussein’s armies out of Kuwait and helping to drive Slobodan Milosevic from power — as well as minidramas like the 1975 rescue of the American cargo ship Mayagüezfrom the Khmer Rouge and the 1983 invasion of Grenada, have encouraged Americans to go on believing that our awe-inspiring air power will enable us to win major wars without paying a heavy price. As Iraq has most recently shown, it won’t. I hope that this spring, van Creveld’s timely book will remind NATO leaders supervising the bombing campaign in the Libyan civil war of how often in history we have watched air power lead unexpectedly to ground fighting on quicksand.
The San Juan Weeekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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LETTERS Bad Old Days To Gilberto Oliver Campos: You romanticize kids who collect stamps and coins. Well, I collected comic books. In the early 60s we baby boomers were in late childhood, and comics blossomed, Green Lantern, The Flash in his new incarnation, Hawkman, Adam Strange, Aquaman, the Fantastic Four, Spiderman, Hulk, all of them save Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, who’d already been around a while. Even the Justice League of America. Because local pharmacies carried them only in Spanish and I wanted the real McCoy, I subscribed to like 20 of them, they were cheap and even cheaper that way. My collection reached 1,200 issues, I had them all neatly stacked on the floor of the closet. You extoll as well when parents were totalitarian. And a child un/a pila de mierda. I got belted every day. I made nothing of it because the other kids were having it no better. My mother ever insisted that I was incorregible because what was needed behind a belt was “the hand of a man,” and my father had long since fled the household. At school Spaniard nuns slapped you in the face for talking back or otherwise annoying them. When I turned 10 I discovered I could outrun Mom and she had to turn resourceful. She took it out on what I loved, my comic book collection, she tore a few of them in two and if I didn’t walk up to get strapped, she tore up some more. Later when I went off to college she gave them away, all they did was gather dust, she said, and I was a man now and it was inappropriate to not let go of childhood. Two years ago a Spiderman #1 was auctioned in the States for $30,000. I had that one. And last week WOSO Radio reported Amazing Tales #15 went for a whopping $1.4 million. Subscriptions mean you don’t miss issues and I collected Amazing Tales, so I surely had it. My mother’s 88 now. I take care of her as best I can, which isn’t saying much, given her special needs. We’d be looking forward to a more comfortable life for both of us, had some respect been due to me back then. Agustín Manzano, Guaynabo
The Rich Get Richer, the Pols Get Dumber Why can’t you see the obvious? Public services here are bad because they’re meant to be bad. The honchos of the private sector----the men who finance the expensive election campaigns----want to make more and more money. Which they wouldn’t if pu-
blic services and utlities weren’t kept substandard. Would you send your kids to that costly private school if public education were adequate? Would you pay half a grand a month for Swiss-cheesecoverage medical insurance for you family if we had socialized medicine? Would you spend all that boodle on a car and its upkeep, and to replace it when it inevitably gets stolen, if you could hop on a bus/train and get quickly anywhere you want to go like in Madrid? When the Govenor holds those $1,000 a-platedinners, are you going to tell me people who pay all that don’t expect something for themselves in return? So then what’s left for you and me? Don’t kid yourself into thinking politicians don’t give us our due that we pay for in taxes because they’re incompetent and don’t know how to do their jobs. Are you old enough to remember Romero jokes? He played the retard adroitly, only when the Cerro Maravilla Senate hearings came around, he outpsyched his inquisitors, and then we knew he’d been keeping his brain all to himself. But God inflicted poetic justice on him in the form of his daughter Melinda. Anita Roig, Santurce
Radio Crass The morning after Elizabeth Taylor’s death, Sherman Wildman of WOSO Radio announced on the air that had she ever visited Puerto Rico she would’ve stayed at Número Uno Guest House in Ocean Park.
And that she would’ve dined at Pignoli’s Ristorante Italiano. He was using her memory to improvise commercials. Now that was gross. Lisa Bay, Caparra Heights
Roosey Roads, An Ant Hill? Apparently the transfer of Roosey Roads is good news. According to the press, the government anticipates, in accordance with its strategic economic model for sustainable economic development, attracting private and entrepreneurial investment of $2.5 billion within 20 to 25 years for an economic and tourist center for Ceiba. The government’s proposals include also ecotourism and conservation. What is not apparent is that the development proposed and the physical attractions of Roosey Roads may be at odds. Simple economic incentives for private investors would gradually create in Roosey Roads a concrete ant hill, as in the Mediterranean (or Calle Norzagaray), without a tree or a bird. All that is required is for the people, through their government, as reported in the press, to list conservation last among the objectives of development. Conservation, only one purpose for the use of Roosey Roads, is nevertheless the most basic. The physical and biological resources there, immovable, irreplaceable, and fragile, are what make Roosey Roads attractive for development. And these are among the best of the island, benthic marine life, taino remains, mangroves, wetlands, dry forests, rare species, and an unsurpassed bird list. To persist, these also require investments, in scientific management as well as protection. They need not be obstacles to sound development but their welfare must be assured at the planning tables for all developments proposed. Frank H. Wadsworth, San Juan
The San Juan Weekly Send your opinions and ideas to: The San Juan Weeekly PO BOX 6537 Caguas PR 00726 Or e-mail us at:
sanjuanweeklypr@gmail.com Telephones: (787) 743-3346 · (787) 743-6537 (787) 743-5606 · Fax (787) 743-5500
LEGAL
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Lobbyist Fires Warning Shot Over Donation Disclosure Plan S By ERIC LICHTBLAU
o much for détente. After a brief truce of sorts between the White House and business leaders, the top lobbyist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce took aim at President Obama over an as-yet unannounced plan to force government contractors to disclose their political giving. The lobbyist, R. Bruce Josten, said in an interview that the powerful business bloc “is not going to tolerate” what it saw as a “backdoor attempt” by the White House to silence private-sector opponents by disclosing their political spending. “We will fight it through all available means,” Mr. Josten said. In a reference to the White House’s battle to depose Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, he said, “To quote what they say every day on Libya, all options are on the table.” While no final decision has been announced, the White House has acknowledged that Mr. Obama is considering issuing an executive order requiring all would-be federal contractors to disclose direct and indirect political spending of more than $5,000. The order could, for instance, force a military contractor or an energy company seeking federal work to report money it gave to the Chamber of Commerce or another advocacy group to help finance political ads and expenditures. After tens of millions of dollars in anonymous political spending flooded the 2010 elections following a landmark
Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case, Democrats tried to pass a bill known as the Disclose Act to require greater reporting of political spending, only to see it blocked by Senate Republicans. Democrats are now turning to other means, including the possible White House order and a lawsuit filed last week against the Federal Election Commission, to achieve similar ends. When asked about the possible order this week, the White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said, “What the president is committed to is transparency, and he certainly thinks that the American taxpayer should know where his or her money is going.” The sparring over the issue disrupts several months of relative calm between the White House and business leaders. The two sides clashed last year over Congressional action on health care and business regulations, with the chamber spending $42 million on the 2010 midterm elections to push its opposition to administration policies. But in February, Mr. Obama crossed Lafayette Park for a speech at the chamber at which he promised to be “more neighborly” with business leaders. Elizabeth Warren, the administration official in charge of setting up a consumer protection bureau, delivered a similar message of partnership in another speech before the group last month, and chamber executives also pledged to work cooperatively with the White House. Mr. Josten, in an interview at his spa-
cious office in view of the White House, said the chamber was concerned about a variety of Obama administration policies that it considered potentially damaging to businesses in a time of economic uncertainty. Those concerns include the efforts to carry out last year’s health care plan, a vast expansion of business regulations under the Dodd-Frank measure passed by Congress and the slow pace of new trade agreements with foreign nations. American businesses “are losing market share” globally to countries like Canada that have enacted new trade pacts, Mr. Josten said. “The rest of the world — while we’re sitting around doing nothing — is racing ahead.” But much of the renewed tension can be traced to the prospect of the White House order on political disclosures — first disclosed last week in a blog posting by Hans von Spakovsky, a conservative lawyer who worked on election law in President George W. Bush’s administration. The Business Roundtable, another powerful business association made up of leading chief executives, also urged the White House on Tuesday not to move ahead with the draft order. It called the proposal “yet another example of regulatory over-reach” and said it would increase paperwork and drive up costs for businesses. On Tuesday, 27 Republican senators
R. Bruce Josten is an executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. also sent Mr. Obama a letter accusing him of playing politics through the proposal. Mr. Josten said that the order as now drafted would also stifle free speech rights for businesses that worked with the government by subjecting them to harassment and protests if their political spending were disclosed. As one example, he pointed to the Target Corporation, which was the object of boycotts and protests at its stores last year after reports said that the company gave $150,000 to a Minnesota business group that supported a Republican candidate opposed to gay marriage. “This is meant to have a chilling effect,” he said of the disclosure plan.
Anti-Abortion Ad Provokes Lawsuit A
mother sued an anti-abortion group for using her 6-year-old daughter’s image on a giant billboard in SoHo that some people denounced as racist and offensive. The girl’s mother, Tricia Fraser, sued the Texas group Life Always over the billboard, which went up briefly in February. Life Always did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The billboard pictured Ms. Fraser’s daughter, who is black, and the words, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb.” Some officials called it offensive to women and minorities, and it was quickly taken down by the advertising company. The lawsuit called the billboard racist+ and the use of Ms. Fraser’s daughter’s image defamatory.
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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Kitchen
‘Bouillabaisse’ of Fresh Peas With Poached Eggs By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN
I
n the Provence region of France, it is a peasant tradition to make “poor man’s bouillabaisse” with vegetables. For this soup, only fresh peas will work — don’t try it with frozen. 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 medium onion, chopped 3/4 pound fingerling potatoes or Yukon golds, scrubbed and sliced 4 large garlic cloves, minced 4 cups freshly shelled peas (about 4 1/2 pounds) Generous pinch of saffron 1 1/2 quarts water or chicken stock Salt and freshly ground pepper 4 to 5 eggs 3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley, or a mixture of parsley, tarragon and chives 4 to 5 thick slices country bread, toasted and rubbed with a cut clove of garlic 1. In a heavy soup pot, heat the olive oil over
medium heat, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes, and add the potatoes and garlic. Cook, stirring, until the garlic begins to smell fragrant, about one minute. Add the water, saffron and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 15 minutes. Add the peas, cover and simmer another 15 minutes or until the vegetables are tender and the broth is sweet. Taste, adjust salt and add pepper. 2. One by one, break each egg into a teacup, then tip into the soup. Poach the eggs for four minutes until just set. Place a crouton in each bowl and, using a skimmer or a slotted spoon, scoop out a poached egg and place it on top. Stir the herbs into the soup, then ladle the soup into the bowls and serve. Variation: Omit the eggs and sprinkle each crouton with Parmesan cheese. Yield: Serves four to five. Advance preparation: You can have the peas shelled and ready hours ahead of time, but the soup is best served right away. You could also poach the eggs ahead of serving, keeping them in the refrige-
rator in a bowl of water. Drain and dry on paper towels before serving. Nutritional information per serving (four servings): 399 calories; 3 grams saturated fat; 2 grams polyunsaturated fat; 7 grams monounsaturated fat; 186 milligrams cholesterol; 54 grams carbohydrates; 11 grams dietary fiber; 254 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 18 grams protein
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May 5 - 11, 2011
The San Juan Weekly
Genie: Feral Child G
enie is the pseudonym for a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom straWpped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation in American history. Genie was discovered by Los Angeles authorities on November 4, 1970. Genie’s discovery was compared extensively with that of Victor of Aveyron, about whom a film was made, The Wild Child. Psychologists, linguists and other scientists exhibited great interest in the case due to its perceived ability to reveal insights into the development of language and linguistic critical periods. Initially cared for in the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Genie later became the subject of acrimonious debate over where and with whom she should eventually live, moving between the houses of the researchers who studied her, to foster homes, to her mother’s house, and finally to a sheltered home for adults with disabilities in California. Funding and research interest in her abilities eventually ceased and she quickly regressed to her previous state. In 1994 a book was written about her case by Russ Rymer.
Early history Parents and child abuse Genie’s parents lived in Arcadia,
ir California. Genie was their ifourth (and second surviving) child and had an older er brother who also lived in thee home. Genie spent the nextt d 12 years of her life locked in her bedroom. During thee day, she was tied to a child’s potty chair in diapers; some nights, when she hadn’t been completely forgotten, she was bound in a sleeping bag and placed in an enclosed crib with a cover made of metal screening. Indications are that Genie’s father beat her with a large stick if she vocalized, and he barked and growled at her like a dog in order to keep owed his her quiet. He also rarely allowed wife and son to leave the house or even to speak, and he expressly forbade them to speak to Genie. By the age of 13, Genie was almost entirely mute, commanding a vocabulary of about 20 words and a few short phrases (nearly all negative, such as “stop it” and “no more”).
Rescue Genie was discovered at the age of 13 when her mother left her husband and took Genie with her. On November 4, 1970, the two entered a
welfare office in Temple City, California to seek benefi benefits blind fornia, ts for the blind. A social worker met them and guessed that Genie was 6 or 7 years old and possibly autistic. When it was revealed that she was actually 13, the social worker immediately called her supervisor, who then notified the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Genie had developed a characteristic “bunny walk”, in which she held her hands up in front, like paws. Although she was almost entirely silent, she constantly sniffed, spat, and clawed. Many of the items she coveted were objects with which she could play. In spite of her condition, hospital staff hoped they could nurture her to normality. When interest in the case widened, Genie became the focus of an investigation to provide evidence supporting the theory that humans have a critical age threshold for language acquisition. Within a few months of therapy, she had advanced to one-word answers and had learned to dress herself. Her doctors predicted complete success. Doctors screened François Truffaut’s movie The Wild Child for ideas. Genie was initially moved out of the hospital to the home of Jean Butler, and later was moved to live with psychologist David Rigler, his wife and children, where she remained for four years.
Characteristics and personality Though initially nearly silent, Genie later learned to vocalize and express herself through signs. While under captivity she was provided with few toys or objects to stimulate her, the majority of her time was spent in a dark room staring at a yellow plastic raincoat. After her rescue, attempts were made to help her speak
Genie displaying her characteristic “bunny walk” shortly after she was rescued at the age of 13.
The San Juan Weekly and socialize. Her demeanor changed considerably, and she became sociable with adults she was familiar with. Colorful plastic objects became her favorite objects to collect and play with, and she demonstrated a deep fascination with classical music played on the piano (one of the neigh boring children practiced piano re-gularly, and this was speculated to o be the source of her fascination ass it was one of very few sensationss available to her). Genie developed d remarkable nonverbal communi-cation skills; repeatedly she and d her caretakers were approached by y strangers who would, without be-ing asked, spontaneously give Genie gifts or possessions in which she exhibited an interest.
First foster home Jean Butler was Genie’s teacher at Children’s Hospital. Butler became Genie’s foster parent by accident or by, as members of the Genie team suspected, a scheme that Butler concocted to allow Genie to stay with her. Butler claimed that she herself had a rash that was likely measles, and thus when Genie had visited her home, Genie may have contracted it. Genie was moved to Butler’s home with the initial intent of a temporary quarantine, but the stay became prolonged when Butler petitioned to make it permanent. Butler became very protective of Genie and resisted visits by other members
May 5 - 11, 2011
of the Genie team including Susan Curtiss and James Kent. Butler’s personal journal recorded concern that Genie was taxed too greatly by the Genie team and experiments; however, Butler didn’t hide the fact that she hoped Genie would help make her famous. According to Curtiss, Butler frequently stated that she was “going to be the next Anne Sullivan.” Her true intentions may never be known because she died in 1988, but many members of the Genie team claimed genuine affection for Genie and an overwhelming desire to “rescue” her. Butler did, however, continue the essential practice of observing and documenting Genie’s behavior while in her home. One such behavior Butler documented was Genie’s practice of hoarding, a behavior typical of children who have been moved from abusive homes. When Butler applied to be Genie’s legal foster parent, she was rejected.
Second foster home Genie returned to the hospital and was handed over to a new foster parent, therapist David Rigler. His wife, Marilyn, became Genie’s new teacher. Marilyn found the need to teach Genie unconventional lessons, for example, in anger management. Genie would go into a fit of rage and act out against herself, so Marilyn taught Genie to direct her frustrations outward by jumping, slamming doors, stomping her feet and generally “having a fit.” Marilyn noted that Genie had a stronger command of vocabulary than most children acquiring language. During this
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period Genie was even able to discuss her life before language was a part of it. Marilyn Rigler: Where did you stay when you lived at home? Where did you live? Where did you sleep? Genie: Potty chair. Marilyn Rigler: You slept in the potty chair? Genie: Mmm-hmm. Potty chair. She stayed with the Rigler family for the next four years. During that period she began to learn some language, and the Riglers arranged for her to learn sign language. She also learned to smile. If she could not express herself in language, she would try to communicate by drawing pictures.
Loss of funds and interest Despite Genie’s relative success, the National Institute of Mental Health, which had funded the project, grew concerned about the lack of scientific research data generated, as well as the unprofessional manner in which records were being kept. In 1974, the Institute cut off funding for the research. The following year the Riglers decided to discontinue their foster parenting. Genie had not yet learned full grammatical English and only went so far as phrases like “Applesauce buy store.” However, Jones (1995) contends that her linguistic skills have
been underestimated.
Later childhood In 1975, Genie was returned to the custody of her mother, who wished to care for her daughter. After a few months, the mother found that taking care of Genie was too difficult, and Genie was transferred to a succession of six more foster homes. In some of the homes she was physically abused and harassed, and her development regressed severely. She returned to her coping mechanism of silence and gained a new fear of opening her mouth. This new fear developed after she was severely punished for vomiting in one of her foster homes; she didn’t want to open her mouth, even to speak, for fear of vomiting and facing punishment again. The original research team heard nothing more about Genie until her mother sued them for excessive and outrageous testing and claimed the researchers gave testing priority over Genie’s welfare, pushing her beyond the limits of her endurance. According to ABC News, the suit was settled in 1984. However, in a 1993 letter to the New York Times, Dr. Rigler wrote, “The case never came to trial. It was dismissed by the Superior Court of the State of California ‘with prejudice,’ meaning that because it was without substance it can never again be refiled.”
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The San Juan Weekly
Your Summer, Your Way at Robinson School
R
emember how much you enjoyed summers as a child? Lazy days spent in the sun with old and new
friends, cooling off in the pool, playing outside, eating ice cream and going to the movies. These are just a few of the activities that keep summer memories alive in our mind. Your children can create the same kind of experiences in Robinson School Summer Camp. This year, the Robinson Summer School Camp will be offering a variety of activities for its participants. Among these are Jiujitsu, LEGO creations, sailing, dancing, wacky science, basic architectural design, French, digital photography, music, sports, crafts, drawing, computers and more. The activity session provides fullday opportunities for children ages 3 to 12. In addition, to having fun on a daily
and quality. Located in the heart of Condado, school facilities provide for the enjoyment of all kinds of summer activities regardless of the weather, either in the indoor court with air conditioning or in the green areas in the school grounds. All activities and classes are in English.
basis with new friends, participants go on at least two ďŹ eld trips during the course of the camp. Other exciting surprises will be brought to the facilities. Do you have a tween 13 or older? The Robinson School Summer Camp also has activities that they can enjoy. Robinson School is also offering an academic session for students in elementary and secondary school. Students can take remedial and enrichment courses in English, Math and Writing Skills, among others. Classes will be taught by the Robinson School faculty, many of whom have advanced degrees in the subjects they teach. What is the most innovative aspect of the summer program at Robinson School? Participants 8 years and over can choose the activities they participate in. Moreover, any academic reinforcement can be combined with the activities program, making this an enriching and fun experience. As the oldest American independent school in Puerto Rico, Robinson School has a long history of excellence
Do a little of everything and enjoy your summer, your own way at Robinson School. For more information about the summer program may call 787-999-4604. Additional information on the Summer Camp Robinson School can be obtained by visiting http://www.robinsonschool.org .
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
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Athletic and recreational activities to enjoy
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f you’re looking for your child to enjoy his summer days in a safe environment and in direct contact with nature, look no further. The Palmas Academy Summer Camps – The Dolphin Camp & The High Performance Camp – are your best options. Both of them offering a wide variety of athletics, recreational and artistic activities that promote your child’s hild’ socializing skills. You can be sure they will have the time of their life in the best resort facilities in Puerto Rico, Palmas del Mar, as they play tennis in Puerto Rico’s largest tennis center, enjoy the Beach Club pools and the Academy’s soccer court. The Dolphin Camp starts June 6, 2011 and runs up to July 1, from 8:00 a.m.to 3:00 p.m., with an extended program from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The program is desig-
ned for children between ne the ages 5-13, with a Mini Camp for kids 3-4 years old. Ca Activities include, amongst Ac others, aerobics, arts and oth crafts, dance, hiking, excra cursions, swimming, talent cu show and sports such as sh soccer, volleyball, tennis so and basketball. an The Palmas Academy High Performance Camp Hi opens d during the month of July and will i th give your children the opportunity to practice and improve their athletic skills in their preferred sport. The HPC will offer clinics in soccer, basketball and volleyball. The camp will run from 9:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. (Soccer and Basketball) and from 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (Volleyball); ages for the soccer and basketball sessions are from 8-14, for volleyball 10-14. In both summer programs you will
find excellent and competitive professors and camp counselors trained to take good care of your child and assure them the best experience of their life. For more information regarding The
Dolphin or The High Performance Summer Camps, please contact The Palmas Academy weekdays at 787.850.9130, 850.9120 or 850.9140. You can also contact them through thepalmasacademy@yahoo.com.
Saint John’s School Summer Program “Saint John’s School is hosting a summer program from June 6th through July 1st. All students PPK through 12th grade are welcome to enjoy recreational activities, trips, and enrichment courses. The school is also offering Spanish and English as second language, as well as an SAT Prep course. Call 728-5343 ext.3265 or email msegurola@sjspr.org to register or for more information. Don’t miss out!”
SUMMER 2011 PROGRAM P @ Saint John’s School
WHEN
June 6 - July 1 8:00am - 3:00pm ext. hours 7:00am-4:00pm (at no extra cost)
WHERE
1454 Ashford Avenue San Juan, PR 00907
FOR WHOM All children PPK - 12th grade
EXTRAS
COURSES
To register, please contact Marialina Segurola : (787) 728-5343 ext. 3265 msegurola@sjspr.org
Elementary - High School Pre-calculus, SAT Prep, Remedial Algebra, Remedial Spanish & English, Spanish & English as a 2nd language
Snacks & Lunch included RECREATIONAL Arts 2 Free T-shirts Sports Kickboxing
Field Trips Inflatables Photography
Limited spaces — Must register soon !
www.sjspr.org
Awakening Individual Talents, Elevating Learning for All
FASHION & BEAUTY
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San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
A Mannequin in Every Sense By ERIC WILSON
L
ITTLE more than a year ago, during a small posthumous presentation of the collection Alexander McQueen had been designing in the days just before he killed himself, Polina Kasina, one of his favorite models, appeared in a form-fitting coat made of thousands of gold-painted duck feathers, worn over a full white skirt embroidered with gold threads. It was the final look of what would be Mr. McQueen’s final show. So, by all accounts, it was an emotional moment when Ms. Kasina wore that outfit once again, in December, at a photo shoot in the London studio of Solve Sundsbo. Mr. Sundsbo, a photographer known for a style of digitally manipulated imagery that could be described as a modern mannerism, had been asked to document the designs that will be in the McQueen retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Polina Kasina looking statuesque in McQueen.
Art for an accompanying catalog, “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty” ($45). It was a rare opportunity for the museum to photograph the clothes it will exhibit on a live model because most of the collection belongs to the McQueen archives, rather than the Met’s Costume Institute, which prohibits a garment from ever being worn after its acquisition. But you would hardly recognize Ms. Kasina in the images that appear in the finished book, which show the same pieces, seemingly photographed on a mannequin. At first glance, they look as if they had been composed in the traditional academic style of previous exhibition catalogs, one that suggests historically important clothing exists in an environment of perpetual sterility. It is only when you recognize that the mannequin actually is Ms. Kasina, transformed through a combination of makeup, lighting and Photoshop, that the beauty of Mr. Sundsbo’s approach and its relevance to the work of Mr. McQueen begin to become apparent. “You are not certain whether it is real or fake,” said Andrew Bolton, the curator of the McQueen exhibition, which opens on May 4. The rather difficult objective of the catalog was to illustrate a departed designer’s life in a way that was both editorially interesting (in the interest of the exhibition’s chief sponsor, the Alexander McQueen company) and academically sound (in the interest of the Costume Institute’s reputation). It is intended to be a reference book upon which future explorations of Mr. McQueen’s importance may be weighed, so it was important that its imagery convey the authority of the museum, not a fashion magazine. At the same time, Mr. Bolton was intrigued by Mr. Sundsbo’s proposal to make models look like mannequins because it spoke to the blurring of boundaries — between good and evil, angels and demons, nature and technology, permanence and decay — that was a consistent theme of the McQueen collections. “The beauty of McQueen is that simultaneous feeling of awe and wonder mixed with fear and terror,” he said.
Polina Kasina, looking human, in the McQueen dress. To create the images, Mr. Sundsbo photographed the collection on four models, including Ms. Kasina. Their bodies were coated with an alabaster acrylic paint, a new product from MAC cosmetics that, once dried, would not rub off on the clothes. Strings were tied around their wrists, waists and necks to suggest the joints where a mannequin’s parts would be assembled, details that were later emphasized with digital retouching during a laborious process that lasted more than two
months. In the final images, the models’ heads were replaced with featureless dummy heads or, in some cases, their heads were chopped off. The only evidence of their humanity is seen in the spaces where the paint, during the long shoots, began to chip off, a detail that Mr. Sundsbo found particularly appealing. “The human started to break through,” Mr. Sundsbo said. “She is both artificial and flesh and blood.”
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To Fanfare, Prince William and Kate Middleton Marry visage of the monarchy once dismissed as aloof. On the final stretch of their brief, first journey as man and wife, the couple passed along the broad ceremonial avenue called the Mall leading to the palace, with the national anthem playing, the crowds cheering and, after fears of rain, a sliver of sunlight nudging past the clouds. The wedding service had begun with a psalm and a hymn, “Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer.” The couple stood side by side before the altar. As she arrived to join him, William whispered to her, and onlookers said he seemed to be saying, “You look beautiful.” The service followed Anglican tradition, with the prince and Miss Middleton both declaring “I will” to the wedding vows pronounced by the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head of the Anglican denomination. Miss Middleton did not pledge to “obey” Prince William, as was once usual, but instead to “love, comfort, honor and keep” him. “I pronounce that they be man and
By ALAN COWELL and RAVI SOMAIYA
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ith fanfare and flags under cool, gray skies, Prince William and his longtime girlfriend, Kate Middleton, were married on Friday in one of the largest and most-watched events here in decades — an interlude of romance in a time of austerity and a moment that will shape the future of the British monarchy. Just 90 minutes after they completed their wedding service, the couple stepped onto a balcony at Buckingham Palace, flanked by the royal family, to greet an enormous crowd stretching along the Mall toward Trafalgar Square — a traditional moment at royal weddings. When they kissed for the first time in public as a married couple, a cheer went up from the crowd and the prince blushed. Then — also a recent tradition — the newlyweds peered skyward to observe a 66-year-old Lancaster bomber from World War II flanked by Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes from the same era flying over the palace in salute. While they waited, they kissed again and the crowd roared. In one brief morning, the ceremony brought a sense of pomp and pageant to Britain’s straitened circumstances, lifting the mood of many and seeming to strengthen the royal family’s enduring struggle against skeptics critical of its unelected and privileged status in a constitutional monarchy that offers monarchs little real power. A little over one hour after they arrived at Westminster Abbey to be married, the newlyweds emerged on a red carpet and onto the streets to a peal of bells, stepping into a 99-year-old open horse-drawn carriage. They had started the ceremony as a prince and what the British call a commoner. They emerged as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, their new titles granted earlier on Friday by
Queen Elizabeth II. As much as the ceremony itself, Britons and many others had been fascinated by the closely held secret of what Miss Middleton’s wedding dress would look like. The curiosity was satisfied when she rode to the abbey wearing a creation by Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen in white and ivory, with a train about two yards long. Traveling in a Rolls-Royce limousine and escorted by her father, Michael Middleton, she wore a delicate veil with intricate lace on the neckline and a diamond tiara lent for the occasion by Queen Elizabeth. The ceremony — a British specialty in the choreography of royalty — was designed as much to celebrate the marriage as to inject national pride after years of discord and divorce within the queen’s family. Reveling in the pageantry after the ceremony in the abbey, the couple waved to jubilant crowds as their procession, escorted by equestrian guardsmen in scarlet tunics and silver breastplates, traversed the streets of London toward Buckingham Palace. Their open landau was closely followed by a closed carriage for the queen and her husband, Prince Philip. For a time, the streets more used to black cabs and trundling red buses echoed to the clip-clop of hooves from trotting chargers and antique carriages. Flanked by liveried footmen in gold and red tunics, the newly married couple smiled and waved, offering what some commentators have depicted as a more open and modern
wife together,” the archbishop said. The service continued with the hymn “Love Divine, All Loves Exceling.” Some onlookers noted that while the prince placed a wedding ring on his bride’s finger, she did not reciprocate the gesture. “With this ring I thee wed; with my body I thee honor; and all my worldly goods with thee I share,” William said, repeating the words of the archbishop. After the ceremony the couple were to host a reception at Buckingham Palace. Before the service, in ascending order of royal rank, Miss Middleton’s in-laws-to-be and members her own family had driven to the abbey in a variety of Rolls-Royce, Bentley and Jaguar cars, cheered on by crowds standing 10 or 15 deep along the way. Just before the bride reached the abbey, the queen arrived wearing a primrose dress and hat and accompanied by Prince Philip at the same place they were married in 1947 and where she was crowned in 1953.
Continues on page 28
28 Comes from page 27 For the last time as a bachelor, William, the second in line to the throne, left his father’s residence, Clarence House, to travel with his younger brother, Prince Harry, his best man, to marry Miss Middleton, a daughter of a millionaire couple who made their money with an Internet business — a fusion, in British parlance, of a commoner and, potentially, a future king. Wearing a bright red military uniform as Colonel of the Irish Guards, the prince traveled in a plum-colored Bentley limousine. Bells pealed and cheering crowds lined the Mall as the his procession — the limousine, a lone motorcycle outrider and a single sport utility vehicle carrying security personnel — drove past. The couple’s relationship, which began when they were both students of art history at St. Andrews University in Scotland more than nine years ago, has been broadly welcomed among Britons who have followed the royal family through tortured years of dashed hopes and scandal, much of it centering on the doomed marriage of William’s mother, Princess Diana, to his father, Prince Charles. Charles himself attended the ceremony with his second wife, the former Camilla Parker-Bowles, now the duchess of Cornwall, whom he married in 2005 and who was once criticized by Diana as the “third person” in her marriage. Earlier on Friday, the queen announced that William would assume three new titles — the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. A dukedom is the highest rank in British peerage. Miss Middleton will now be known as the Duchess of Cambridge, but she will also have the titles of the Countess of Strathearn and Baroness Carrickfergus. According to British protocol, she will not be able to formally call herself Princess Catherine because she was not born a princess. Newspaper headlines celebrated the wedding on Friday with words like “storybook” and “fairytale” — terms that were applied in earlier times to the marriage of Charles and Diana in 1981 at St. Paul’s Ca-
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thedral, an event that also seized the nation with enthusiasm. “The transition of Miss Middleton from a young woman from the Home Counties to being our future queen is the stuff of fairy tales,” The Daily Telegraph said. But some struck a note of caution. “These are tough times for millions of British people,” The Guardian said in an editorial. “This is not a day for demented princess worship or for in-your-face state extravagance. Even if it was, the recent past inevitably casts a shadow over the occasion. As far as dream royal weddings are concerned, Britain is a once-bitten-twice-shy country.” Hundreds of thousands of people converged Friday on London’s streets, craning for a glimpse of the royal family and the 1,900 other invited guests holding the hottest ticket in town inviting them to the ceremony at the centuries-old abbey. The early arrivals — queens, kings, dukes and emirs arrived later — filed into the abbey under the soaring columns supporting its 102-foot-high Gothic vault, treading carefully along a red carpet, many of the women wearing bright, broad-brimmed hats. As the morning progressed, the bride’s family and junior members of the royal family traveled to Westminster Abbey. Inside, the abbey was transformed by four tons of foliage, including eight 20-foot-
high English field maple trees. The abbey has been the coronation church since 1066 and 17 monarchs are buried there, according to its Web site. Construction of the present-day building began in 1245 during the reign of Henry III. Despite falling overnight temperatures, thousands of spectators had been camping out for two days in tents festooned with the Union Jack to secure a good view of the pageantry. Tens of thousands more people gathered to watch the ceremonies on huge television screens in venues like Hyde Park. The closely scripted event began with the arrival of some members of the congregation at 8:15 a.m., watched by 5,000 police officers and chronicled by an estimated 8,500 journalists and support staff members from around the world. Hundreds of millions tuned in on television around the world, and dozens of temporary studios, filled with presenters speaking dozens of languages, have been built against the backdrop of a floodlit Buckingham Palace, one of the queen’s homes and, for many, the focus of the British monarchy. With many Britons facing hard times because of government austerity plans, the wedding has been pitched by politicians as an occasion for national celebration and rejuvenation amid the economic gloom. The wedding day has been declared a public holiday and more than 5,000 people have been given official permission to close off roads for street parties. Some have taken the opportunity for unlikely rebels. Hugo Millington-Drake, 21, a student, walked down Parliament Street in a full tuxedo, with bow tie, and a bowler hat. “If I wasn’t invited I thought I would at least dress up,” he said, adding that he had been separated from other formally dressed friends. Mr. Millington-Drake said that he did not usually attend royal events, but that
“everyone is here and it’s an excuse to drink Pimm’s at 8 a.m. And it’s the fairytale — the commoner becoming princess. Actually, I hate that word, ‘commoner,’ but you know what I mean. These two are really in love, unlike Charles and Diana.” The new royal couple have also set a different tone, living together before their marriage at a remote Royal Air Force base on the island of Anglesey, where William, 28, is based as a search-and-rescue helicopter pilot. Britain’s often-intrusive press has granted them a degree of privacy, both in the early days of their relationship at St. Andrews and since then. While their relationship was widely known, it was only in December 2006 that Miss Middleton, now 29, attended William’s final parade at Sandhurst, Britain’s premier military academy. In 2007, the couple seemed to drift briefly apart for several months before reuniting. For some, their relationship has been haunted by comparisons with the travails of Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, a year after her glaringly public divorce from Charles. Diana had been popular among many Britons. The queen’s stiff and formal initial response to her death seemed to divide the nation and even threaten the monarchy. Indeed, even now, the memory of Diana rarely seems far away. Her brother, Earl Spencer, was among the guests on Friday at Westminster Abbey, where he addressed her funeral service with an emotional eulogy in 1997. When the royal family announced the wedding plans last November, William gave Miss Middleton the sapphire and diamond ring that his father had given his mother for their engagement, saying it was “my way of making sure my mother didn’t miss out on today and the excitement.”
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Technology Advances; Humans Supersize By PATRICIA COHEN
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or nearly three decades, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert W. Fogel and a small clutch of colleagues have assiduously researched what the size and shape of the human body say about economic and social changes throughout history, and vice versa. Their research has spawned not only a new branch of historical study but also a provocative theory that technology has sped human evolution in an unprecedented way during the past century. Next month Cambridge University Press will publish the capstone of this inquiry, “The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700,” just a few weeks shy of Mr. Fogel’s 85th birthday. The book, which sums up the work of dozens of researchers on one of the most ambitious projects undertaken in economic history, is sure to renew debates over Mr. Fogel’s groundbreaking theories about what some regard as the most significant development in humanity’s long history. Mr. Fogel and his co-authors, Roderick Floud, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong, maintain that “in most if not quite all parts of the world, the size, shape and longevity of the human body have changed more substantially, and much more rapidly, during the past three centuries than over many previous millennia.” What’s more, they write, this alteration has come about within a time frame that is “minutely short by the standards of Darwinian evolution.” “The rate of technological and human physiological change in the 20th century has been remarkable,” Mr. Fogel said in an telephone interview from Chicago, where he is the director of the Center for Population Economics at the University of Chicago’s business school. “Beyond that, a synergy between the improved technology and physiology is more than the simple addition of the two.” This “technophysio evolution,” powered by advances in food production and public health, has so outpaced traditional evolution, the authors argue, that people today stand apart not just from every other species, but from all previous generations of Homo sapiens as well. “I don’t know that there is a bigger story in human history than the improvements in health, which include height, weight, disability and longevity,” said Samuel H. Preston, one of the world’s leading demographers and a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Without the 20th century’s improvements in nutrition, sanitation and medicine, only half of the current American population would be alive today, he said. To take just a few examples, the average adult man in 1850 in America stood about 5 feet 7 inches and weighed about 146 pounds; someone born then was expected to live until about 45. In the 1980s the typical man in his early 30s was about 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighed about 174 pounds and was likely to pass his 75th birthday. Across the Atlantic, at the time of the French Revolution, a 30-something Frenchman weighed about 110 pounds, compared with 170 pounds now. And in Norway an average 22-year-old man was about 5 ½ inches taller at the end of the 20th century (5 feet 10.7 inches) than in the middle of the 18th century (5 feet 5.2 inches). Mr. Fogel and his colleagues’ great achievement was
to figure out a way to measure some of that gain in body size, Mr. Preston said. Much of the evidence — childhood growth, mortality, adult living standards, labor productivity, food and manufacturing output — was available, but no one had put it all together in this way before. Over the years Mr. Fogel and his colleagues have pored over a monumental amount of raw data to piece together the health records of thousands of people in different countries. When he won the Nobel in economics in 1993, the Swedish committee stated it was “for having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change.” “The Changing Body” is full of statistical tables and graphs that include the heights of girls in Croatia and Germany; the caloric energy derived from potatoes, fish and wine; and the average annual allowance of grains and meat for widows in Middlesex County, Mass., from 1654 to 1799 — a testament to both the staggering accumulation of information and the collaborative nature of the enterprise. But the basic argument is rather simple: that the health and nutrition of pregnant mothers and their children contribute to the strength and longevity of the next generation. If babies are deprived of sufficient nutrition in the womb and early in life, they will be more fragile and more vulnerable to diseases later on. These weakened adults will, in turn, produce weaker offspring in a self-reinforcing spiral. Technology rescued humankind from centuries of physical maladies and malnutrition, Mr. Fogel argues. Before the 19th century, most people were caught in an endless cycle of subsistence farming. A colonial-era farmer, for example, worked about 78 hours during a five-and-ahalf-day week. People needed more food to grow and gain strength, but they were unable to produce more food without being stronger. The new book is not yet available, but experts familiar with Mr. Fogel’s work say that disagreements have arisen over his explanations for improved health in the West. Mr. Preston agrees that technology has superpowered human evolution over the past hundred years, but in his view the prevention of infectious diseases has not received sufficient credit. “In many parts of the world, including the United States in the 20th century, medical advances appear to be at least as important as improvements in nutritional intake,” he said. Mr. Preston pointed in particular to public health practices — like protecting water supplies, installing sewage systems and hand washing and quarantining in hospitals — that were instituted in American cities, beginning in the 1890s. An infinite supply of food is irrelevant, for example, if you can’t prevent chronic childhood diarrhea. Height dipped in the late 18th century when poor sanitation and infectious diseases plagued crowded new cities. Angus Deaton, an economist at Princeton University who researches health in rich and poor countries, says he admires Mr. Fogel’s work as well, but he too is skeptical about the emphasis on nutrition, as well as about some of the conclusions researchers have inferred from height. “We don’t really understand why African adults and children are so much taller than Indian adults and children, but it can’t be their income, because Indians are much ri-
cher,” he said. India has twice the per capita income of Kenya and about three times that of Tanzania. Mr. Fogel’s work could have significant consequences for determining policies for the developing world. Just last week researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health published a paper that used the height of women in 54 low- and middle-income countries to indicate how children in Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East were faring. (The answer was not good: height had stayed the same or declined, particularly in Africa, suggesting that living conditions and disease controls for children have deteriorated.) The best way to combat such decline depends on the cause-and-effect relationships among economic growth, nutrition and health, Mr. Deaton said. If food production is the most important factor, then focusing on economic growth might be the best policy, but if infectious disease is a major reason for chronic illness and premature death, then more aggressive public health measures might also be needed. To Carole Shammas, an expert in socioeconomic history at the University of Southern California, the problem in her field is that historians have not paid enough attention to changes in height (as a useful measure of nutrition and disease) or in lifespan. History textbooks, she complained, almost completely ignore the topic. One thing Mr. Fogel did not expect when he first started his research was that “overnutrition” would become the primary health problem in the United States and other Western nations. Obesity, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension and some cancers, threatens to upset the links in the upward march of size, health and longevity that he and his colleagues have spent years documenting. But Mr. Fogel said that he remained an optimist at heart. The human body is enormously flexible and responsive, he said, a fact that fills him with confidence that “the trend of larger bodies and longer lives will continue into the future.”
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The San Juan Weekly
For a Sex Survey, Privacy Goes a Long Way By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
I
t is not easy to ask people about their sex lives, and getting honest answers may be even harder. But there are ways to do it. One good method is to have a computer ask the questions, while the interviewee listens through earphones and enters the answers on the screen — without the intervention, or even the presence, of another human. Last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on sexual behavior that used this technique with laptops to gather data on Americans’ sexual behavior, attraction and identity by age, marital status, education and race. Anjani Chandra, the lead author, said the process was developed to assure total anonymity for the respondents. Dr. Chandra, a demographer with the agency, explained: “The computer tells the interviewees what key to press to lock away the responses. When they return the laptop to the interviewers, they can’t get in. It’s transmitted to a central place where the data processing happens without names or addresses. We get a file that can’t be linked back to the person.”
The researchers got a 75 percent response rate, very high for a household survey, when they interviewed more than 13,000 people ages 15 to 44 from 2006 to 2008. They found a large reduction in sexual activity among young adults ages 15 to 24. According to the survey, about 29 percent of women and 27 percent of men had not had sexual contact with the opposite sex. This was a sharp increase from 2002, when about 23 percent of young adults had never had sex. Among men and women older than 25, about 99 percent had had vaginal intercourse. About 90 percent of men and 89 percent of women had had heterosexual oral sex, and 44 percent of men and 36 percent of women had had anal sex with an opposite-sex partner. Forty-year-old virgins were rare: In the 40-to-44 age group, only 1 percent of men and even fewer women had never had relations with the opposite sex. But in the 15-to-19year-old group, 43 percent of males and 48 percent of females reported never having an opposite-sex partner. Over all, about 13 percent of women and 5 percent of men reported same-sex sexual behavior.
Does Exercise Really Boost Your Mood? By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS
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here exists a large and soothing body of scientific literature suggesting that regular exercise can improve someone’s mood and fight anxiety. And then there is this experiment from Germany, in which researchers placed running wheels in the cages of a group of laboratory mice and let them exercise at will. Mice generally love to run, and these rodents spent almost every waking hour on their wheels, skittering through more miles than most animals are allowed to complete during exercise studies, averaging about seven miles per mouse per day. The scientists, from the Central Institute of Mental Health at the University of Heidelberg, then placed these avid runners in unfamiliar situations. What they found was surprising, in part because it contradicted earlier experiments by other researchers. The mice froze or quickly fled to dark corners, behaviors considered by some researchers to signify anxiety. It was as if the marathon runners in this experiment had become more anxious and neurotic than the nonrunners, presumably because of the volume of their running. The apparent implication of that finding — that too much running makes an animal a nervous wreck — might seem disconcerting. But as this study, published in the journal Hippocampus, and additional new research makes clear, a great deal still needs to be understood about just how exercise affects mood.
To date, most research into the interplay of exercise and anxiety has focused on the actions of various neurotransmitters or chemical messengers within the brain, like serotonin and dopamine. But the German researchers weren’t looking at neurotransmitters. Their interest was in a different brain mechanism. They were trying to determine whether the formation of new brain cells, a process called neurogenesis, was making their lab animals nervous. Exercise spurs neurogenesis, a finding confirmed by seminal research completed a few years ago. This neurogenesis would seem to be completely laudable, since it occurs mostly in the hippocampus, a portion of the brain associated with memory and thinking. Rodents that have exercised and that have brains fizzing with new neurons tend to score well on tests of memory and cognition. But the effects of neurogenesis on mood are murkier. A number of neurological case studies have reported that people and animals with lesions in the hippocampus — meaning fewer brain cells in that region — are less prone to anxiety than other people. So could high volumes of running and the commensurately large amounts of neurogenesis in the hippocampus produce anxiety? The German work seemed to say yes, particularly a follow-up experiment by the same scientists published in September in the online journal PLoS One. In that study, the researchers radiated the brains of mice to prevent neurogenesis, and then let them run. The treated mice eagerly took to their wheels,
but grew almost no new neurons. Afterward, placed in stressful situations, they remained calm, reacting much like sedentary mice. It seemed that neurogenesis had been the culprit behind the earlier runners’ excessive anxiety. But the scientists are quick to point out that these findings do not mean that human marathon and ultramarathon runners are necessarily at risk of developing mood problems. The “exercise schedule of mice is not comparable to human fitness training,” wrote Dr. Johannes Fuss and Dr. Peter Gass, the primary authors of the two studies, in a shared e-mail response to questions. With very rare exceptions, humans will not spend their entire waking hours running. More important, it’s not clear whether the behavior of the nervous mice was necessarily anxiety as we might experience it. The exercised mice did frequently freeze and hide, but they are prey animals, a situation that does not reward insouciance. To be less anxious, if you are a mouse, Dr. Fuss and Dr. Gass wrote, “might not always be the best survival strategy.” The German scientists, in focusing narrowly on neurogenesis, may also have underestimated the intricate and broad ways in which exercise affects the brain’s mood centers. A fascinating series of experiments conducted at Princeton University and presented at the 2010 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in November showed that neurons born from running actually behave differently from other neurons. They are not
as physiologically excitable, even in stressful situations. The Princeton scientists showed that after a rodent stress test, the hippocampi of running mice contained fewer proteins associated with neuron activity than the brains of sedentary mice, even though the runners had more neurons over all. The runners’ brain cells had remained, it seemed, more calm in the face of stress. Similarly, the scientists found, areas of the brain that would normally shoot stimulating messages to the hippocampus during and after stress were quieter in exercised mice. “Thus,” the Princeton researchers concluded, “running may reduce anxiety-like behavior” despite increasing the number of new brain cells. Exercise had recalibrated the animals’ brains so that they were more serene. What this emerging science means for those of us who regularly exercise is, admittedly, still being teased out by researchers. But other recent studies are encouraging. A review article published last year in The Archives of Internal Medicine, for instance, concluded that compared with sloth, “exercise training significantly reduced anxiety symptoms” in a group of people at risk for mood problems. And in a beguiling experiment also presented at the 2010 Society for Neuroscience meeting, scientists from the University of Oklahoma found that female rats allowed to run at a moderate pace for 10 to 60 minutes several times a week — my exercise regimen, in fact — behaved with robust mental health in stress tests. So whether you run on two legs or four, the message may be: relax.
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Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden By MARK MAZZETTI, HELENE COOPER and PETER BAKER
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or years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital. On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program. And just like that, history’s most expansive, expensive and exasperating manhunt was over. The inert frame of Osama bin Laden, America’s enemy No. 1, was placed in a helicopter for burial at sea, never to be seen or feared again. A nation that spent a decade tormented by its failure to catch the man responsible for nearly 3,000 fiery deaths in New York, outside Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001, at long last had its sense of finality, at least in this one difficult chapter. For an intelligence community that had endured searing criticism for a string of intelligence failures over the past decade, Bin Laden’s killing brought a measure of redemption. For a military that has slogged through two, and now three vexing wars in Muslim countries, it provided an unalloyed success. And for a president whose national security leadership has come under question, it proved an affirming moment that will enter the history books. The raid was the culmination of years of painstaking intelligence work, including the interrogation of C.I.A. detainees in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, where sometimes what was not said was as useful as what was. Intelligence agencies eavesdropped on telephone calls and e-mails of
the courier’s Arab family in a Persian Gulf state and pored over satellite images of the compound in Abbottabad to determine a “pattern of life” that might decide whether the operation would be worth the risk. As more than a dozen White House, intelligence and Pentagon officials described the operation, the past few weeks were a nerve-racking amalgamation of what-ifs and negative scenarios. “There wasn’t a meeting when someone didn’t mention ‘Black Hawk Down,’ ” a senior administration official said, referring to the disastrous 1993 battle in Somalia in which two American helicopters were shot down and some of their crew killed in action. The failed mission to rescue hostages in Iran in 1980 also loomed large. Administration officials split over whether to launch the operation, whether to wait and continue monitoring until they were more sure that Bin Laden was really there, or whether to go for a less risky bombing assault. In the end, President Obama opted against a bombing that could do so much damage it might be uncertain whether Bin Laden was really hit and chose to send in commandos. A “fight your way out” option was built into the plan, with two helicopters following the two main assault copters as backup in case of trouble. On Sunday afternoon, as the helicopters raced over Pakistani territory, the president and his advisers gathered in the Situation Room of the White House to monitor the operation as it unfolded. Much of the time was spent in silence. Mr. Obama looked “stone faced,” one aide said. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. fingered his rosary beads. “The minutes passed like days,” recalled John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief. The code name for Bin Laden was “Geronimo.” The president and his advi-
sers watched Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, on a video screen, narrating from his agency’s headquarters across the Potomac River what was happening in faraway Pakistan. “They’ve reached the target,” he said. Minutes passed. “We have a visual on Geronimo,” he said. A few minutes later: “Geronimo EKIA.” Enemy Killed In Action. There was silence in the Situation Room. Finally, the president spoke up. “We got him.” Years before the Sept. 11 attacks transformed Bin Laden into the world’s most feared terrorist, the C.I.A. had begun compiling a detailed dossier about the major players inside his global terror network. It wasn’t until after 2002, when the agency began rounding up Qaeda operatives — and subjecting them to hours of brutal interrogation sessions in secret overseas prisons — that they finally began filling in the gaps about the foot soldiers, couriers and money men Bin Laden relied on. Prisoners in American custody told stories of a trusted courier. When the Americans ran the man’s pseudonym past two top-level detainees — the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; and Al Qaeda’s operational chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi — the men claimed never to have heard his name. That raised suspicions among interrogators that the two detainees were lying and that the courier probably was an important figure. As the hunt for Bin Laden continued, the spy agency was being buffeted on other fronts: the botched intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction leading up to the Iraq War, and the intense criticism for using waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods that critics said amounted to torture. By 2005, many inside the C.I.A. had
reached the conclusion that the Bin Laden hunt had grown cold, and the agency’s top clandestine officer ordered an overhaul of the agency’s counterterrorism operations. The result was Operation Cannonball, a bureaucratic reshuffling that placed more C.I.A. case officers on the ground in Pakistan and Afghanistan. With more agents in the field, the C.I.A. finally got the courier’s family name. With that, they turned to one of their greatest investigative tools — the National Security Agency began intercepting telephone calls and e-mail messages between the man’s family and anyone inside Pakistan. From there they got his full name. Last July, Pakistani agents working for the C.I.A. spotted him driving his vehicle near Peshawar. When, after weeks of surveillance, he drove to the sprawling compound in Abbottabad, American intelligence operatives felt they were onto something big, perhaps even Bin Laden himself. It was hardly the spartan cave in the mountains that many had envisioned as his hiding place. Rather, it was a threestory house ringed by 12-foot-high concrete walls, topped with barbed wire and protected by two security fences. He was, said Mr. Brennan, the White House official, “hiding in plain sight.” Back in Washington, Mr. Panetta met with Mr. Obama and his most senior national security aides, including Mr. Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. The meeting was considered so secret that White House officials didn’t even list the topic in their alerts to each other. That day, Mr. Panetta spoke at length about Bin Laden and his presumed hiding place. “It was electric,” an administration official who attended the meeting said. “For so long, we’d been trying to get a handle on this guy. And all of a sudden, it was like, wow, there he is.” There was guesswork about whether Bin Laden was indeed inside the house. What followed was weeks of tense mee tings
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32 Comes from page 31 between Mr. Panetta and his subordinates about what to do next. While Mr. Panetta advocated an aggressive strategy to confirm Bin Laden’s presence, some C.I.A. clandestine officers worried that the most promising lead in years might be blown if bodyguards suspected the compound was being watched and spirited the Qaeda leader out of the area. For weeks last fall, spy satellites took detailed photographs, and the N.S.A. worked to scoop up any communications coming from the house. It wasn’t easy: the compound had neither a phone line nor Internet access. Those inside were so concerned about security that they burned their trash rather than put it on the street for collection. In February, Mr. Panetta called Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, commander of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., to give him details about the compound and to begin planning a military strike. Admiral McRaven, a veteran of the covert world who had written a book on American Special Operations, spent weeks working with the C.I.A. on the operation, and came up with three options: a helicopter assault using American commandos, a strike with B-2 bombers that would obliterate the compound, or a joint raid with Pakistani intelligence operatives who would be told about the mission hours before the launch. Weighing the Options On March 14, Mr. Panetta took the options to the White House. C.I.A. officials had been taking satellite photos, establishing what Mr. Panetta described as the habits of people living at the compound. By now evidence was mounting that Bin Laden was there. The discussions about what to do took place as American relations with Pakistan were severely strained over the arrest of Raymond A. Davis, the C.I.A. contractor imprisoned for shooting two Pakistanis on a crowded street in Lahore in January. Some of Mr. Obama’s top aides worried that any military assault to capture or kill Bin Laden might provoke an angry response from Pakistan’s government, and that Mr. Davis could end up dead in his jail cell. Mr. Davis was ultimately released on March 16, giving a freer hand to his colleagues. On March 22, the president asked his advisers their opinions on the options. Mr. Gates was skeptical about a helicopter assault, calling it risky, and instructed military officials to look into aerial bombardment using smart bombs. But a few days later, the officials returned with the news that it would take some 32 bombs
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of 2,000 pounds each. And how could the American officials be certain that they had killed Bin Laden? “It would have created a giant crater, and it wouldn’t have given us a body,” said one American intelligence official. A helicopter assault emerged as the favored option. The Navy Seals team that would hit the ground began holding dry runs at training facilities on both American coasts, which were made up to resemble the compound. But they were not told who their target might be until later. The day after the president released his long-form birth certificate — such “silliness,” he told reporters, was distracting the country from more important things — Mr. Obama met again with his top national security officials. Mr. Panetta told the group that the C.I.A. had “red-teamed” the case — shared their intelligence with other analysts who weren’t involved to see if they agreed that Bin Laden was probably in Abbottabad. They did. It was time to decide. Around the table, the group went over and over the negative scenarios. There were long periods of silence, one aide said. And then, finally, Mr. Obama spoke: “I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now — I’m going to go back and think about it some more.” But he added, “I’m going to make a decision soon.” Sixteen hours later, he had made up his mind. Early the next morning, four top aides were summoned to the White House Diplomatic Room. Before they could brief the president, he cut them off. “It’s a go,” he said. The earliest the operation could take place was Saturday, but officials cautioned that cloud cover in the area meant that Sunday was much more likely. The next day, Mr. Obama took a break from rehearsing for the White House Correspondents Dinner that night to call Admiral McRaven, to wish him luck. White House officials canceled all West Wing tours so unsuspecting tourists and visiting celebrities wouldn’t accidentally run into all the high-level national security officials holed up in the Situation Room all afternoon monitoring the feeds they were getting from Mr. Panetta. A staffer went to Costco and came back with a mix of provisions — turkey pita wraps, cold shrimp, potato chips, soda. At 2:05 p.m., Mr. Panetta sketched out the operation to the group for a final time. Within an hour, the C.I.A. director began his narration, via video from Langley. “They’ve crossed into Pakistan,” he said. Across the Border The commando team had raced into the Pakistani night from a base in Jalalabad, just across the border in Afghanistan. The goal was to get in and get out before Pakistani authorities detected the breach of their territory by what were to them
unknown forces and reacted with possibly violent results. In Pakistan, it was just past midnight on Monday morning, and the Americans were counting on the element of surprise. As the first of the helicopters swooped in at low altitudes, neighbors heard a loud blast and gunshots. A woman who lives two miles away said she thought it was a terrorist attack on a Pakistani military installation. Her husband said no one had any clue Bin Laden was hiding in the quiet, affluent area. “It’s the closest you can be to Britain,” he said of their neighborhood. The Seal team stormed into the compound — the raid awakened the group inside, one American intelligence official said — and a firefight broke out. One man held an unidentified woman living there as a shield while firing at the Americans. Both were killed. Two more men died as well, and two women were wounded. American authorities later determined that one of the slain men was Bin Laden’s son, Hamza, and the other two were the courier and his brother. The commandos found Bin Laden on the third floor, wearing the local loosefitting tunic and pants known as a shalwar kameez, and officials said he resisted before he was shot above the left eye near the end of the 40-minute raid. The American government gave few details about his final moments. “Whether or not he got off any rounds, I frankly don’t know,” said Mr. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief. But a senior Pentagon official, briefing on the condition of anonymity, said it was clear Bin Laden “was killed by U.S. bullets.” American officials insisted they would have taken Bin Laden into custody if he did not resist, although they considered that likelihood remote. “If we had the opportunity to take Bin Laden alive, if he didn’t present any threat, the individuals involved were able and prepared to do that,” Mr. Brennan said. One of Bin Laden’s wives identified
his body, American officials said. A picture taken by a Seals commando and processed through facial recognition software suggested a 95 percent certainty that it was Bin Laden. Later, DNA tests comparing samples with relatives found a 99.9 percent match. But the Americans faced other problems. One of their helicopters stalled and could not take off. Rather than let it fall into the wrong hands, the commandos moved the women and children to a secure area and blew up the malfunctioning helicopter. By that point, though, the Pakistani military was scrambling forces in response to the incursion into Pakistani territory. “They had no idea about who might have been on there,” Mr. Brennan said. “Thankfully, there was no engagement with Pakistani forces.” As they took off at 1:10 a.m. local time, taking a trove of documents and computer hard drives from the house, the Americans left behind the women and children. A Pakistani official said nine children, from 2 to 12 years old, are now in Pakistani custody. The Obama administration had already determined it would follow Islamic tradition of burial within 24 hours to avoid offending devout Muslims, yet concluded Bin Laden would have to be buried at sea, since no country would be willing to take the body. Moreover, they did not want to create a shrine for his followers. So the Qaeda leader’s body was washed and placed in a white sheet in keeping with tradition. On the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, it was placed in a weighted bag as an officer read prepared religious remarks, which were translated into Arabic by a native speaker, according to the senior Pentagon official. The body then was placed on a prepared flat board and eased into the sea. Only a small group of people watching from one of the large elevator platforms that move aircraft up to the flight deck were witness to the end of America’s most wanted fugitive.
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33 SCIENCE / TECH
Languages Grew From a Seed in Africa, Study Says By NICHOLAS WADE
A
researcher analyzing the sounds in languages spoken around the world has detected an ancient signal that points to southern Africa as the place where modern human language originated. The finding fits well with the evidence from fossil skulls and DNA that modern humans originated in Africa. It also implies, though does not prove, that modern language originated only once, an issue of considerable controversy among linguists. The detection of such an ancient signal in language is surprising. Because words change so rapidly, many linguists think that languages cannot be traced very far back in time. The oldest language tree so far reconstructed, that of the Indo-European family, which includes English, goes back 9,000 years at most. Quentin D. Atkinson, a biologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, has shattered this time barrier, if his claim is correct, by looking not at words but at phonemes — the consonants, vowels and tones that are the simplest elements of language. He has found a simple but striking pattern in some 500 languages spoken throughout the world: a language area uses fewer phonemes the farther that early humans had to travel from Africa to reach it. Some of the click-using languages of Africa have more than 100 phonemes, whereas Hawaiian, toward the far end of the human migration route out of Africa, has only 13. English has 45 phonemes. This pattern of decreasing diversity with distance, similar to the well-established decrease in genetic diversity with distance from Africa, implies that the origin of modern human language is in the region of southwestern Africa, Dr. Atkinson says in an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. Language is at least 50,000 years old, the date that modern humans dispersed from Africa, and some experts say it is at least 100,000 years old. Dr. Atkinson, if his work is correct, is picking up a distant echo from this far back in time. Linguists tend to dismiss any claims to have found traces of language older than 10,000 years, “but this paper comes closest to convincing me that this type of research is possible,” said Martin Haspelmath, a linguist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig,
Germany. Dr. Atkinson is one of several biologists who have started applying to historical linguistics the sophisticated statistical methods developed for constructing genetic trees based on DNA sequences. These efforts have been regarded with suspicion by some linguists. In 2003 Dr. Atkinson and Russell Gray, another biologist at the University of Auckland, reconstructed the tree of Indo-European languages with a DNA tree-drawing method called Bayesian phylogeny. The tree indicated that Indo-European was much older than historical linguists had estimated and hence favored the theory that the language family had diversified with the spread of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, not with a military invasion by steppe people some 6,000 years ago, the idea favored by most historical linguists. “We’re uneasy about mathematical modeling that we don’t understand juxtaposed to philological modeling that we do understand,” Brian D. Joseph, a linguist at Ohio State University, said about the Indo-European tree. But he thinks that linguists may be more willing to accept Dr. Atkinson’s new article because it does not conflict with any established area of linguistic scholarship.“I think we ought to take this seriously, although there are some who will dismiss it out of hand,” Dr. Joseph said. Another linguist, Donald Ringe of the University of Pennsylvania, said, “It’s too early to tell if Atkinson’s idea is correct, but if so it’s one of the most interesting articles in historical linguistics that I’ve seen in a decade.” Dr. Atkinson’s finding fits with other evidence about the origins of language. The bushmen of the Kalahari desert belong to one of the earliest branches of the genetic tree based on human mitochondrial DNA. Their languages belong to a family known as Khoisan and contain many click sounds, which seem to be a very ancient feature of language. And they live in southern Africa, which Dr. Atkinson’s calculations point to as the origin of language. But whether Khoisan is closest to some ancestral form of language “is not something my method can speak to,” Dr. Atkinson said. His study was prompted by a recent finding that the number of phonemes in a language is related to the number of people who speak it. This gave him the idea that phoneme diversity would increase as a population grew but fall again when a small group split off and migrated away from the parent group. Such a continual budding process, which is how the
first modern humans expanded round the world, is known to produce what biologists call a serial founder effect. Each time a smaller group moves away, there is a dilution in its genetic diversity. The reduction in phonemic diversity over increasing distances from Africa, as seen by Dr. Atkinson, parallels the reduction in genetic diversity already recorded by biologists. For either kind of diversity dilution to occur, the population budding process must be rapid, or diversity will build up again. This implies the human expansion out of Africa was very rapid at each stage. The acquisition of modern language, or the technology it made possible, may have triggered the expansion, Dr. Atkinson said. “What’s so remarkable about this work is that it shows language doesn’t change all that fast — it retains a signal of its ancestry over tens of thousands of years,” said Mark Pagel, a biologist at the University of Reading in England who advised Dr. Atkinson. Dr. Pagel sees language as central to human expansion across the globe. “Language was our secret weapon, and as soon we got language we became a really dangerous species,” he said. In the wake of modern human expansion, archaic human species like the Neanderthals were wiped out and large species of game, fossil evidence shows, fell into extinction on every continent shortly after the arrival of modern humans.
Particle Hunt Nets Almost Nothing; the Hunters Are Almost Thrilled By DENNIS OVERBYE
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his could have been the day they discovered dark matter. On the morning of April 4, a dozen or so graduate students and postdoctoral fellows gathered in the offices of Elena Aprile, a physics professor at Columbia University, to get their first look at the data from an experiment on the other side of the world. In a tunnel deep under Gran Sasso, Italy, Dr. Aprile and an international team of scientists had wired a vat containing 134 pounds of liquid xenon to record the pit-pat
of invisible particles, the so-called dark matter that astronomers say constitutes a quarter of the universe. Photographers were on hand to record the action — after all, you never know — although theoretical calculations suggested that with only 100 days of observation, the xenon experiment was probably still shy of the time necessary to see dark matter. “We will not discover dark matter today,” Dr. Aprile said. “We will be doing this again and again.”
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SCIENCE / TECH 34 Comes from page 33 Dark matter has teased and tantalized physicists since the 1970s when it was demonstrated that some invisible material must be providing the gravitational glue to hold galaxies together. Knowing what it is would provide a roadmap to new particles and forces, a new view of what happened in the Big Bang, and more Nobel Prizes than you can count. Failure to find it would mean that Einstein did not get the laws of gravity quite right. The best guess is that this dark matter consists of clouds of exotic subatomic particles left over from the Big Bang and known generically as wimps, for weakly interacting massive particles, which can pass through the Earth like smoke through a screen door. Some particle physicists hope to produce them in the Large Hadron Collider outside Geneva or to read their signature in cosmic rays from outer space. An experiment to do just that, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, is scheduled to be launched into space and installed on the International Space Station at the end of this month. Other physicists, including Dr. Aprile’s team, have been trying to catch the putative particles in detectors set
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far underground to guard against contamination from cosmic rays. For the last year the eyes of the physics world have been on Dr. Aprile’s experiment in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, part of Italy’s National Institute of Nuclear Physics, which is widely acknowledged as the biggest and most sensitive detector out there. She hopes to record the characteristic signal — a bump and a flash — of the rare collision of a wimp with a xenon nucleus. The experiment began last year and ran for 100 days. At the push of a button the data, unseen until now to guard against unconscious bias, would begin flowing through an analysis pipeline and show up as red dots on a big computer screen. On a table in the corner was a stack of folded yellow notepapers, on which collaboration members had written their bets on how many events — putative dark matter detections — would be recorded. They ranged from 20, by an optimistic graduate student, to 2 from a skeptical astrophysicist. The tension and giddiness in the room rose as the 10:30 deadline came and went, due to computer glitches. Finally, the promised graph appeared on the screen, showing the first of 91 batches of data. A red dot appeared, the first event
signal. It was rapidly joined by another, and then another, each accompanied by a sharp intake of breath in the room. “Oh, God,” Dr. Aprile said as the count rose to four. “I can’t sit anymore.” She got up from her chair. There were more oohs and ahs as the count climbed to six, more than would be expected from background radioactivity in the detector, and finally stopped. Everybody clapped, and Dr. Aprile went around the room offering hugs and kissing cheeks. But the results, she admitted, were ambiguous. “Six points mean nothing until they have been analyzed,” she said. “I feel optimistic about the future. We have a lot more to do.” Indeed, the collaborators soon threw out three of those points, concluding that they had been caused by noise in the electronics. “We knew within 10 minutes,” said Rafael Lang of Columbia. “It was totally obvious.” That left them with three events, compared with two expected from background, not a large enough disparity to claim evidence of a wimp. On Wednesday evening Dr. Aprile’s group posted a paper on the physics Web site www.arXiv.com saying it had not
detected any wimps yet; the paper has also been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. But the group refused to be disappointed. The results, members said, had set new and stringent limits on the nature of the putative dark matter particles, eliminating some theoretical models, as well as showing that their detector was performing up to snuff. Dr. Aprile called it “a spectacular result.” Neal Weiner, a particle theorist at New York University, agreed, noting that these were only the first results from an experiment that will go on for years and get more sensitive. If there is any dark matter in their data set, they will not have to wait years to find out, he said, “we just to have to wait for later this year.” Dr. Lang said: “It’s the feeling of the community that something new and big is just around the corner. We are not there just yet but maybe we are not far from it, and this is very exciting.” Dr. Aprile said they would definitely be doing this again. In an e-mail from Italy, she wrote, “I know there is nothing more exciting than a signal, but when we are searching for the unknown, the more we probe the closer we get to truth.”
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35
The Arecibo Observatory T
he Arecibo Observatory is a radio telescope near the city of Arecibo in Puerto Rico. It is operated by Cornell University under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The observatory is also called the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, although “NAIC” more properly refers to the organization that runs both the observatory and associated offices at Cornell. The observatory’s 305 m (1,001 ft) radio telescope is the largest single-aperture telescope (cf. multiple aperture telescope) ever constructed. It carries out three major areas of research: radio astronomy, aeronomy (using both the 305 m telescope and the observatory’s lidar facility), and radar astronomy observations of solar system objects. Scientists who want to use the telescope submit proposals, which are evaluated by an independent board. Visually distinctive, the telescope has been used in the filming of notable motion picture and television productions. The telescope received additional international recognition in 1999 when it began to collect data for the SETI@home project. The center was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 2008. It was the featured listing in the National Park Service’s weekly list of October 16, 2009.
Angel Ramos Foundation Visitor Center
Opened in 1997, the Angel Ramos Foundation Visitor Center features interactive exhibits and displays about the operations of the radio telescope, astronomy, and atmospheric science. The center is named after the foundation created by Ángel Ramos, the founder of Telemundo, which provided half of the money to build it. The admission fee is $10 to $15.
General information The Arecibo telescope is enormous; the main collecting dish is 305 m (1,001 ft) in diameter, constructed inside the depression left by a karst sinkhole.[4] It contains the largest curved focusing dish on Earth, giving Arecibo the largest electromagnetic-wave-gathering capacity. The dish surface is made of 38,778 perforated aluminum panels, each measuring about 1 by 2 metres (3 by 7 ft), supported by a mesh of steel cables. The telescope has three radar transmitters, with effective isotropic radiated powers of 20 TW at 2380 MHz, 2.5 TW (pulse peak) at 430 MHz, and 300 MW at 47 MHz. The telescope is a spherical reflector, not a parabolic reflector. To aim the telescope, the receiver is moved to intercept signals reflected from different directions by the spherical dish surface. A parabolic mirror would induce a varying astigmatism when the receiver is in different positions off the focal point, but the error
of a spherical mirror is the same in every direction. The receiver is located on a 900-ton platform which is suspended 150 m (500 ft) in the air above the dish by 18 cables running from three reinforced concrete towers, one of which is 110 m (365 ft) high and the other two of which are 80 m (265 ft) high (the tops of the three towers are at the same elevation). The platform has a 93-meter-long rotating bow-shaped track called the azimuth arm on which receiving antennas, secondary and tertiary reflectors are mounted. This allows the telescope to observe any region of the sky within a forty-degree cone of visibility about the local zenith (between -1 and 38 degrees of declination). Puerto Rico’s location near the equator allows Arecibo to view all of the planets in the solar system, though the round trip light time to objects beyond Saturn is longer than the time the telescope can track it, preventing radar observations of more distant objects.
Design and architecture A detailed view of the beam-steering mechanism and some antennas. The triangular platform at the top is fixed, and the azimuth arm rotates beneath it. To the left is the Gregorian sub-reflector, and to the right is the 96-foot-long (29 m) line feed tuned to 430 MHz. Just visible at the upper
right is part of the rectangular waveguide that brings the 2.5 MW 430 MHz radar transmitter’s signal up to the focal region. The Arecibo telescope was built between the summer of 1960 and November, 1963, by William E. Gordon and Zachary Sears of Cornell University, who intended to use it to study Earth’s ionosphere. Originally, a fixed parabolic reflector was envisioned, pointing in a fixed direction with a 150 m (500 ft) tower to hold equipment at the focus. This design would have limited its use in other areas of research, such as planetary science and radio astronomy, which require the ability to point at different positions in the sky and to track those positions for an extended period as Earth rotates. Ward Low of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) pointed out this flaw, and put Gordon in touch with the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory (AFCRL) in Boston, Massachusetts, where one group headed by Phil Blacksmith was working on spherical reflectors and another group was studying the propagation of radio waves in and through the upper atmosphere. Cornell University proposed the project to ARPA in the summer of 1958 and a contract was signed between the AFCRL and the Uni
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36 May 5 - 11, 2011
The San Juan Weekly adjustable aluminum panels replaced the old wire mesh, and the highest usable frequency was raised to about 5,000 MHz. A Gregorian reflector system was installed in 1997, incorporating secondary and tertiary reflectors to focus radio waves at a single point. This allowed the installation of a suite of receivers, covering the whole 1–10 GHz range, that could be easily moved onto the focal point, giving Arecibo a new flexibility. At the same time, a ground screen was installed around the perimeter to block the ground’s thermal radiation from reaching the feed antennas, and a more powerful 2,400 MHz transmitter was installed.
Research and discoveries
Comes from page 35 versity in November 1959. Cornell University and Sears published a request for proposals asking for a design to support a feed moving along a spherical surface 435 feet (133 m) above the stationary reflector. The RFP suggested a tripod or a tower in the center to support the feed. At Cornell University on the day the project for the design and construction of the antenna was announced, Gordon had also envisioned a 435 ft (133 m) tower located in the center of the 1,000 ft (300 m) reflector for the feed’s support. George Doundoulakis, who directed research at General Bronze Corporation in Garden City, New York, along with Sears, who directed Internal Design at Digital B & E Corporation, New York, received the RFP from Cornell University for the antenna design, and studied the idea of suspending the feed with his brother, Helias Doundoulakis, a civil engineer. George Doundoulakis identified the problem that a tower or tripod would have presented around the center, the most important area of the reflector, and devised a more efficient, cost-effective approach by suspending the feed. He presented his proposal to Cornell, by using a doughnut truss suspended by four cables from four towers above the reflector, and providing along its edge a rail track for the azimuthal positioning of the feed. A second truss, in the form of an arc, or arch, was to be suspended below, which would rotate on the rails through 360 degrees. The arc also provided rails onto which the unit supporting the feed would move to provide
for the elevational positioning of the feed. A counter-weight would move symmetrically opposite to the feed for stabilitiy, and the entire feed could be lowered and raised if a hurricane were present. Helias Doundoulakis ultimately designed the cable suspension system which was adopted in the final construction. Although the present configuration is substantially the same as the original drawings by George and Helias (with the exception of the suspension of the feed positioning assembly by three towers rather than the four towers in the original proposal), the U.S. Patent office granted Helias a patent[9] for the brothers’ innovative idea. William J. Casey, later to by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Ronald Reagan, was also an assignee on the patent. Construction began in the summer of 1960, with the official opening on November 1, 1963.[10] As the primary dish is spherical, its focus is along a line rather than at a single point (as would be the case for a parabolic reflector); therefore, complicated line feeds had to be used to carry out observations. Each line feed covered a narrow frequency band (2-5% of the center frequency of the band) and a limited number of line feeds could be used at any one time, limiting the flexibility of the telescope. The telescope has been upgraded. Initially, when the maximum expected operating frequency was about 500 MHz, the surface consisted of half-inch galvanized wire mesh laid directly on the support cables. In 1974, a high-precision surface consisting of thousands of individually
Many significant scientific discoveries have been made using the Arecibo telescope. On 7 April 1964, shortly after it began operations, Gordon Pettengill’s team used it to determine that the rotation rate of Mercury was not 88 days, as previously thought, but only 59 days. In 1968, the discovery of the periodicity of the Crab Pulsar (33 milliseconds) by Lovelace and others provided the first solid evidence that neutron stars exist.In 1974, Hulse and Taylor discovered the first binary pulsar PSR B1913+16, an accomplishment for which they later received the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1982, the first millisecond pulsar, PSR B1937+21, was discovered by Donald C. Backer, Shrinivas Kulkarni, Carl Heiles, Michael Davis, and Miller Goss. This object spins 642 times per second, and until the discovery of PSR J1748-2446ad in 2005, it was the fastest-spinning pulsar known. In August 1989, the observatory di-
rectly imaged an asteroid for the first time in history: 4769 Castalia. The following year, Polish astronomer Aleksander Wolszczan made the discovery of pulsar PSR B1257+12, which later led him to discover its three orbiting planets and a possible comet. These were the first extra-solar planets discovered. In 1994, John Harmon used the Arecibo radio telescope to map the distribution of ice in the poles of Mercury. In January 2008, detection of prebiotic molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide were reported from Arecibo Observatory radio spectroscopy measurements of the distant starburst galaxy Arp 220.
Other usage The telescope also had military intelligence uses; among them, locating Soviet radar installations by detecting their signals bouncing off the Moon. Arecibo is also the source of data for the SETI@home and Astropulse distributed computing projects put forward by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and was used for the SETI Institute’s Project Phoenix observations. In 1974, the Arecibo message, an attempt to communicate with potential extraterrestrial life, was transmitted from the radio telescope toward the globular cluster M13, about 25,000 light-years away. The 1,679 bit pattern of 1s and 0s defined a 23 by 73 pixel bitmap image that included numbers, stick figures, chemical formulas, and a crude image of the telescope itself. Terrestrial aeronomy experiments include the Coqui 2 experiment.
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36 Hours in Panama City, Panama By FREDA MOON
A
T the crossroads of two oceans and two continents, Panama City is a dynamic metropolis. That’s never been truer than it is today. Everywhere in this steamy, tropical town are foreign investors talking shop in upscale cafes, expat fortune-seekers toasting their fates in wine bars, cranes stalking the rooftops of a skyline that seems to grow before your eyes and — on the downside — traffic that puts even the most congested American city to shame. Central America’s capital of international finance is in the midst of a prolonged boomtown fever. Right now, there are more than 30 skyscrapers under construction — among them the Trump Ocean Club and The Panamera, which will be Latin America’s first Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (both are set to open later this year). All of this building and hype has local re-
sidents calling Panama City the “Dubai of the Americas.” They’re only half-joking. Friday 3 p.m. 1) FAST BOAT, SLOW BOAT See the Panama Canal from the vantage of the ships that use it. From the Balboa Yacht Club (Amador Causeway; 507-228-5196) take the “rapida” (fast boat) to Taboga Island, the day trip of choice for beach-obsessed Panamanians. The 30-minute, 12-mile trip ($6) departs from the Amador Causeway, a palm tree-lined peninsula built from canal construction debris, and makes its way through the maze of freighters lined up at the waterway’s mouth. Taboga, nicknamed the Island of Flowers, is famous for its varied flora, its tan beaches and its fish shacks. Splash in the warm Pacific before returning on the 4:30 p.m. slow boat, the Calypso Queen Ferry (Isla Naos, Amador Causeway;
507-314-1730; $6). (The U.S. dollar is the paper currency of Panama, though it is also referred to as the balboa.) 6 p.m. 2) WINE, THEN DINE On the cusp of revival for years, Casco Viejo, the city’s formerly dilapidated colonial quarter, has turned the corner. The area still buzzes with a creative energy (and the saws of construction crews). But, for good or for ill, the old town seems comfortable in its newly painted, nouveau riche skin. Watch the sun set with a glass of wine ($3.50) or a cold Panamanian cerveza ($2.50) while neighborhood kids play among the mangroves in front of La Rosa de los Vientos (Calle Octava, Casco Viejo; 507-211-2065), a two-month-old Italian restaurant with waterfront seating. After sunset, explore the avant-garde art scene at Diablo Rosso (Avenida A and Calle 7, Casco Viejo; diablorosso.com), a gallery and cafe that sells retro-inspired clothes and accessories. Around the corner, Los del Patio (Calle 3, Casco Viejo; no phone; losdelpatio.org) is a just-opened coffeehouse with installation art.
8:30 p.m. 3) CARIBBEAN STYLE Like a sexy, tropical Chez Panisse, Casco Viejo’s Manolo Caracol (Avenida Central and Calle 3, Casco Viejo; 507-228-4640; manolocaracol.net) holds a mirror to the place it calls home, reflecting the country’s Caribbean-infused culinary traditions with a swaggering selfconfidence. Stashed away on a side street across from a ruined church, the restaurant takes its name from a famous Spanish flamenco singer. But the real star here is the restaurant’s Spanish owner, Manuel Madueño, whose 10-course, $30 chef’s menu offers simple preparations of seasonal ingredients, like essence-of-seafood soup or a salad of bitter lettuce and green mango. 10 p.m. 4) MOONLIT PROMENADE Walk off dinner on the promenade,
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Comes from page 37 where lovers canoodle in the moonlight. Then kill an hour at DiVino Enoteca (Avenida A and Calle 4, Casco Viejo; 507-202-6867; enotecadivino.com), a threemonth-old upscale wine bar with low light, Iberian ham hanging behind the counter and black-and-white movies playing silently on a far wall. Peruse the lounge’s art, food and design books, or schmooze with the crowd of urbane expats, artists and intellectuals. 11:30 p.m. 5) SHAKE A TAIL FEATHER In keeping with its old Cuba vibe, Habana Panama (Calle Eloy Alfaro and Calle 12 Este, Casco Viejo; 507-212-0152; habanapanama.com) blends in with the crumbling edifices at the edge of Casco Viejo’s refurbished core. Inside this retro dance hall, there’s a plush red interior featuring photographs of Cuban musical greats and hours of steamy salsa dancing. With live bands, a modest cover (from $10) and a clientele of limited inhibitions, this is one of the hottest dance spots in town. Saturday 7 a.m. 6) RISE AND SHINE Arrive early to avoid a wait at Lung Fung (Calle 62C Oeste, Los Ángeles, 507-260-4011), a busy dim sum palace that serves classic Cantonese small plates (shrimp shumai, pork buns, fish balls and chicken feet; starting at $2.10). The aesthetic is familiar — red lanterns, painted dragons and food carts — but the restaurant’s multinational clientele of Chinese immigrants, Panamanian businessmen, American expatriates and European tourists makes for great people-watching. 10 a.m. 7) EURO-PANAMANIAN MIX Set up in the home of the French de-
signer Hélène Breebaart, a former Christian Dior representative who has lived in Panama for more than 40 years, Breebaart Boutique (Calle Abel Bravo, Casa No. 5; Obarrio; 507-264-5937) produces custom clothing that incorporates the elaborate textile art of the country’s indigenous Kuna people with contemporary design. Embroidered napkins start at $30 a set; clothing prices vary, and the production time takes about a week. 1 p.m. 8) GEHRY TOURS Get an early glimpse of the new Frank Gehry-designed BioMuseo (Amador Causeway; biomuseopanama.org), which has recently completed the first phase of its multiyear construction. Though the interior, which will have exhibitions on natural history and science, won’t be done until 2012 or later, the museum began offering free tours (Spanish only) in January. Reservations should be made at least two weeks ahead. 3 p.m. 9) RAW FISH The Peruvian chef Gastón Acurio’s ceviche restaurant La Mar (El Cangrejo; 507-209-3323; lamarcebicheria.com) opened with much ado in 2009, serving an eclectic selection of citrus-marinated fish, from the classic ($7) to the Asian-inspired perú tai ($9). For Panamanian-style ce-
viche, walk the newly constructed Cinta Costera — a boardwalk park that follows the waterfront — to the Fish Market (Panamerican Highway and Calle 15 Este), where paper cups of shrimp, octopus, corvina or black conch ceviche start at $1. Or buy fresh fish or lobster and head upstairs to the restaurant, which will cook your catch for a modest fee ($6.50 to $8.50). 7 p.m. 10) RESERVATIONS REQUIRED La Posta (Calle Uruguay and Calle 49; 507-269-1076; is the flagship restaurant in the David Henesy-Carolina Rodriguez mini-empire. The place has an unpretentious air — fans whirring overhead, joshing guayabera-wearing servers — that belies its popularity. The fare is Caribbean-Italian, and reservations are a must on weekend nights. Try the garlicky camarones en hamaca (shrimp in a hammock, $8.50), house-made pastas (from $12.50) or jumbo prawns with passion fruit ($19.50). 9 p.m. 11) TOAST THE GOLDEN FROG Have an after-dinner beer at La Rana Dorada (Via Argentina and Calle Arturo Motta, El Cangrejo; 507-269-2989), a sixmonth-old Irish pub-style bar named for Panama’s most famous endangered species, the golden frog. Then move to the poolside lounge on the roof of the Manrey Hotel (Calle Uruguay and Avenida 5a Sur, Bella Vista; 507-203-0000; manreypanama. com), where D.J.’s play on weekends. Sunday 10 a.m. 12) PRIX FIXE BRUNCH For a leisurely meal, Las Clementinas (Avenida B and Calle 11, Casco Viejo; 507-228-7613; lasclementinas.com) has a prix fixe brunch ($24 adult, $12 child) that includes a selection of omelets, empanadas, risottos and parfaits. There are
38 English-language magazines to skim and a collection of New York-centric sketches and memorabilia on the bathroom walls. Noon 13) GREEN ZONE Succumb to the weekend’s lazy pace with a stroll through Parque Recreativo Omar (Avenida Belisario Porras), the recently renovated 140-acre expanse of green at the city’s center. Like New York’s Central Park, but with palm trees, Omar is a respite from urban life; it’s home to an impressive sculpture garden, the National Library and a prominent statue of the Virgin Mary. There are also soccer and baseball fields, tennis courts and a flower-lined swimming pool. Pick up a fresh fruit juice near the park’s entrance. Then savor your tropical elixir beneath a towering tree on a picnic-perfect lawn. IF YOU GO With three individually designed rooms, the Canal House Hotel (Calle 5A and Avenida A; 507-228-1907; canalhousepanama.com) holds court in a colonial mansion on a quiet corner in Casco Viejo. From $200. On a hopping night-life strip in Bella Vista, the new 36-room Manrey Hotel (Calle Uruguay and Avenida 5a Sur; 507-203-0000; manreypanama.com) has a spare, modern design, Bvlgari bath products and iPod docking stations. From $200.
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May 5 - 11, 2011
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Facebook Extends a Hand to Madison Avenue
By TANZINA VEGA
F
ACEBOOK is looking to make some new friends on Madison Avenue. The social media giant has started a Web site where ad agencies can display their work and is hosting live events for advertisers. It also has begun hiring staff to work with agencies, and for the first time it has allowed an agency to design a space for ads on the Facebook Web site. “When it comes to creativity and brands and the advertising world, there’s nobody better from a strategic perspective and creative perspective than the agency community,” said Blake Chandlee, the vice president for global agency relations at Facebook. Until now, at least in the United States, Facebook had account teams that worked directly with brands, in some cases bypassing agencies. “A lot of agencies came back and said ‘How can we make sure we’re leading this?’ ” Mr. Chandlee said. The sheer scope of Facebook — the company has more than 500 million users and the average user has 130 friends — makes it a logical place for advertisers, who typically have focused on consumers with one of seven types of ads on the right-hand side of a Facebook page. The ads appear in a space known as an ad unit, and in August, Facebook invited some of the biggest ad agencies and holding companies to create its eighth and newest ad unit. It received 100 responses from 10 major ad firms before choosing Leo Burnett Chicago, part of the Publicis Groupe. Leo Burnett’s ad
unit was chosen because it was innately social, personal and did not disrupt the user experience, Mr. Chandlee said. Using the existing interactive ad units, marketers can ask users to click that they “like” an ad, answer questions in a poll (Do you like movies?), respond to event ads (Are you going to see this movie?), accept free product samples, watch videos or use Facebook applications. While the name, look and release date of the new ad unit are still being wrapped up, the basic functionality is clear. Marketers will be able to use the ads to question users and those users will be able to type answers in response. The answers will then show up in a user’s news feed. “This is the first ad unit that will let brands do effective word-of-mouth marketing at scale,” said Mark Renshaw, the chief innovation officer for Leo Burnett Chicago. The answers to marketers’ questions will be analyzed by Facebook and Leo Burnett using sentimentanalysis tools, along with data from Nielsen on brand awareness and engagement. The new ad space will be used exclusively by a select group of brands for the first two months and will then be available to others. Brands participating in the initial phase include Hallmark, Sealy, Walgreens and the Ronald McDonald House Charities. “What drives our charity is true engagement of people,” said Doug Porter, the chief executive of Ronald McDonald House Charities in Chicago and northwest Indiana. The charity has taken its first foray into advertising on Facebook with the new ad unit
Who Cares About Inflation? By CASEY B. MULLIGAN
N
ormally, inflation is one of the most harmful taxes, but these days inflation may do less harm than good. During most of our lifetimes, the prices of things we buy have generally increased over time. We can name some exceptions, but most items (even houses) have prices that are higher now than they were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. This general increase in consumer prices is called inflation. The Federal Reserve is charged with limiting the rate of inflation, which it can do over the long run by limiting the supply of money and similar assets in the hands of the public. Inflation is widely disliked. A number of economists think that inflation’s bad reputation is undeserved, and that, while people complain that inflation makes things more expensive, they fail to recognize that inflation also raises their wages. The net result of inflation could be to increase wages and prices in the same proportion, without harming consumer’s purchasing
power. A person on a fixed income, such as a pensioner receiving a specific number of dollars a month – a so-called “defined benefit” pension – does have less purchasing power when prices rise. However, Social Security benefits automatically increase with wages in the economy, and thereby automatically increase with inflation in the long run. And these days defined-benefit pensions are less common than they used to be (and even many defined-benefit pensions were adjusted for inflation on an ad-hoc basis). We also have to remember that for everyone receiving a payment specified in dollars, there’s someone else making those payments. For example, a worker with a fixed mortgage payment sees that payment decline as a share of his income as inflation pushes up his wages. For this reason, inflation is said to favor debtors and harm creditors. The government is a major debtor, and some people suggest that sudden inflation would relieve the government’s debt burden and permit the government to spend more
and hopes to drive users to a Web site where they can make a donation or volunteer. The McDonald’s charity asks users “Who has your back?” and prompts them to name the person who helped them when they needed it most. “It’s a wonderful convergence of accountability and measurability on one side and engagement and viralness on the other,” Mr. Porter said. For marketers who want to show their peers how adept and creative they can be while using Facebook, the company created Facebook Studio, a Web page where agencies can post their most successful campaigns and learn how to use the tool for marketing. Agencies can create their own campaigns on the site, sort through a directory of agencies and even enter a contest
for the best Facebook campaign. On Tuesday, the page had 23,000 “likes” and a campaign from the Finnish agency Hasan and Partners was featured as the spotlight. The agency posted its campaign for the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, in which it tried to change the perception that it doesn’t take an artist to create modern art. They took the scathing criticism they’d received about the museum — “Just like a 2-year-old’s scribble” — and used it to invite people to submit their own works of art. The campaign — called “Make a better one yourself, then” — lets users vote and comment on the submissions. In addition to increasing traffic to the museum’s Web site, the campaign yielded 600 pieces of art and thousands of “likes” on the museum’s Facebook page. If the virtual coming together of Facebook and brands was not enough, the company has extended the Facebook Studio idea to a series of in-person events. The first Facebook Studio Live event was held in March in Toronto and was attended by about 80 people. A second event will be held in New York City in May and the company hopes to engage agency representatives and Facebook engineers in a creative “hacking session” where agencies can use the various marketing tools on Facebook to create advertising solutions on the fly. “It’s a pretty exciting model,” Mr. Renshaw said. “We want to do some things that are great, but we also want to do some things quickly.”
(prolonged inflation would just require the government to pay higher interest rates on its debt). More government spending is bad news for those who want the government to spend less, and good news for those who want the government to spend more. In any case, my research suggests that inflation is not associated with more government spending. Even if our government had no debt, inflation would increase tax revenue. Ronald Reagan famously complained about “bracket creep”: the personal income tax was not automatically indexed to inflation, so taxpayers moved into higher tax brackets as inflation raised their incomes, even though the extra income was barely enough to keep up with rising prices. Much of the personal income tax is now indexed to inflation. But interest and capital gains are not indexed (neither are some provisions of the corporate income-tax code), so inflation increases the tax burden on saving and investment. Consider, for example, a zero-inflation economy in which homes and business normally sell for what the seller paid when he originally purchased the property. According to our tax laws, those sellers would owe no capital
gains tax. In a 10 percent-inflation-rate economy, assets would appreciate in dollar terms at about 10 percent a year, even though their inflation-adjusted values were constant. When the assets were sold, their accumulated value, including that annual 10 percent gain, would be taxed. With saving being less profitable thanks to inflation’s back-door income tax hike, people will save and invest less. Inflation’s harm to capital accumulation reduces productivity, and ultimately the inflation-adjusted wages workers receive. Martin Feldstein of Harvard has stressed that America’s capital accumulation was the major loser from 1970s inflation. Without offsetting Congressional action to revise the tax laws, inflation today would increase the tax burden on capital, and that by itself would reduce investment. But what’s different today from the 1970s is how mortgage debtor troubles – foreclosures of underwater mortgages and the harmful economic activity surrounding them – have reduced gross domestic product and living standards. At this point, an inflation that harmed banks and helped homeowners might be an overall improvement.
Mark Renshaw of Leo Burnett
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Fallout From a Poor Credit Score
By MARYANN HAGGERTY
I
F you want to see how quickly you can ruin a great credit score, just skip a mortgage payment. Lenders use credit scores to measure how you handle debt. The number you’ll see most often is your FICO score. It runs from 300 to 850. The major credit reporting bureaus developed a rival, VantageScore, with scores from 501 to 990. Missed mortgage payments, serious loan delinquencies, loan modifications, short sales, foreclosures and bankruptcies all drag down credit scores. Because a mortgage is such a big slice of anyone’s credit profile, it carries more weight than other loans. Both FICO and VantageScore have studied and quantified those impacts. They reached similar conclusions: for people with near-perfect records, a single mortgage payment that’s 30 days late reduces a credit score enough to hurt. For anyone, a short sale — selling a home for less than the amount owed — can be almost as destructive as a foreclosure.
In contrast, a loan modification — when the lender approves new loan terms — can have a “very, very minimal” effect, said Sarah Davies, the senior vice president for analytics at VantageScore. In some cases, the borrower’s score might drop 10 or 15 points. With a loan modification, said Joanne Gaskin, the director of global scoring solutions at FICO, “the consumer does not have to go delinquent to get assistance.” Modification horror stories abound; some borrowers have been told they can’t be helped unless they’ve already missed payments. That doesn’t have to be the case, said Josh Zinner, the co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, a New York City nonprofit company active in foreclosure prevention. The government-backed Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP, specifically permits modifications for borrowers who can document hardship like a job loss, Mr. Zinner said. “What we advise people
in New York to do” he said, “is reach out to a nonprofit loan counselor or to Legal Services in order to get a modification with a servicer.” It’s not a perfect solution — HAMP has been criticized for not helping enough borrowers. There are plenty of paperwork hassles, and points in the process where credit scores are in peril. Still, because of “some really profound consequences” to bad credit, modification is worth pursuing, he said. Employers increasingly check credit. Housing options may be limited. “Virtually all landlords look at credit,” he said, adding that getting a mortgage can be difficult. Car loan and credit card costs jump. In a study last month, FICO looked at how choices would affect three hypothetical mortgage holders: One with a spotless 780 score; another with a good 720, who may have missed a couple of credit card payments three years ago; a third with a notgreat, not-toxic 680, who has sometimes fallen seriously behind on credit cards or a car loan. (Most lenders con-
sider poor credit about 650 and below, Ms. Gaskin said.) 30 days late: The gold-plated 780 drops to 670-690, the middling 720 becomes 630-650, and 680 is now 600-620. Effects are most significant for the strongest borrower. “A continued progression is going to have less and less impact on a score,” Ms. Gaskin said. 90 days late: This is seriously delinquent, and brings the onetime best borrower down to 650-670, the midlevel one to 610-630, and the weakest to 600-620. Short sale, deed in lieu of foreclosure, or settlement, assuming the balance has been wiped out: The result is just a bit less serious. The 780 score deteriorates to 655-675; 720 to 605-625; 680 to 610-630. Foreclosure, or short sale with a deficiency balance owed: For either, 780 is 620-640; 720 is 570-590; and 680 is 575-595. At a certain point it might seem as if there was not much difference between bad and worse, but remember that the lower the score, the longer it takes to climb back.
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May 5 - 11, 2011
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Games
Sudoku How to Play: Fill in the empty fields with the numbers from 1 through 9 Click the “check sudoku” button to check your sudoku inputs Click the “new sudoku” button and select difficulty to play a new game
Sudoku Rules: Every row must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every column must contain the numbers from 1 through 9 Every 3x3 square must contain the numbers from 1 through 9
Crossword
Wordsearch
Answers on page 42
42
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
HOROSCOPE Aries
(Mar 21-April 20)
Libra
(Sep 24-Oct 23)
Do not beat about the bush, especially not if you have a lot to get off your chest! Be gentle with you and yours. Your prosperity of spirit is guaranteed.
Ring the changes and make good decisions, but take it easy. You may well be introspective and there will be quite a lot to get your head around. You must keep your integrity intact. However, do not be obtuse or obscure in your requests. Keep it simple and work out what is going on: your circumstances hold all the clues.
Taurus
Scorpio
(April 21-May 21)
(Oct 24-Nov 22)
Leave an issue behind once and for all. It is better to ditch rumination and clear your head. Get a grip of the good things in your life and sift through the debris. De-clutter your environment and do not waste time on time wasters. You deserve the best. Go out there and get it. However, you may have to toe the line professionally.
Go for the damage limitation option. You may have listened to bad advice or put your foot in it (or both). Keep your sense of humour and all will be well. You love a challenge and often unconsciously choose tricky circumstances to stave off boredom! Blossom in your own sweet way and do not be afraid to express yourself.
Gemini
Sagittarius
(May 22-June 21)
This is the ideal moment to accept an offer. Do not be afraid to go after what you want. Be sure to follow through on your hunches and... who knows? If you act as though something has already happened, you double your chances of bringing it about. If you are being reasonable and it is within the Divine Plan, all will be well.
Cancer
(June 22-July 23)
Secure your assets and use your imagination with the love stuff. Do not even think about surrendering your principles. Plan your strategy carefully before you make a move. If you dramatically change your tack in the middle of a wobble, you will not make the desired impact and could make things worse. Do not fret. Just BE.
Leo
(July 24-Aug 23)
It is a bit unfair to visit someone in Dream time, unless you are prepared to follow through with some action! Only invade somebody’s head if you mean business in a good way. Until you really know what’s what, bring your feelings into the here and now and get busy on the material plane. Leave the astral stuff and let things be.
Virgo
(Aug 24-Sep 23)
Stimulation from outside forces is highly likely. Never mind the interference. At least you will not have to find your own entertainment for much longer. Sounds like perverse fun! Prepare to go behind enemy lines, in order to get the Victory you need. Reverse psychology will serve your purpose. Be on your guard and keep your wits.
(Nov 23-Dec 21)
Life will brighten up soon. You will get the turnaround you have wanted for a long time, but in the meantime, relax and enjoy the current vibe. Hang in there and prepare to celebrate when the blessings descend from the heavens. Your prosperity of spirit is guaranteed. Let material issues sort themselves: roll with it.
Capricorn
(Dec 22-Jan 20)
It would not do to get caught out by a premature action. Do not rush in with your guns blazing; it would surely backfire. Leave your pressing issues to one side and go have some fun. Get out and about and find a new perspective. There is no point putting further energy into a negative situation. Do the quick-step away from it all.
Aquarius
(Jan 21-Feb 19)
You know you can get what you want, if you try hard enough. Bend a situation to your will, in the nicest possible way of course. Devious manipulation will not get you very far. Be gentle with you and yours. It may not be possible to placate all and sundry. However, bend over backwards if you have been bold. You will be forgiven...
Pisces
(Feb 20-Mar 20)
Persistence will pay off, accepting second best will not. Do not be too open to an offer, until you have done your homework. It may not be quite what it seems. Use a beguiling demeanour to seduce someone special. The love stuff can be much more interesting if you put in an effort. Reach out, but be careful what you choose.
Answers to the Zudoku and Crossword on page 41
The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Herman
Speed Bump
Frank & Ernest
BC
Scary Gary
Wizard of Id
Two Cows And A Chicken
Cartoons
43
Ziggi
ARCHITECTURE & HOME DECOR
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Not a Bird or a Plane, but Home
By DINAH SPRITZER
P
erched at the base of the Beskydy Mountains in the Czech Republic is a titanium-plated house in the fanciful shape of a bird with wings extended. The steel-and-glass structure in the picturesque northeastern region is the home of Pavel Horak, the chief executive of PPL, an express mail firm. Mr. Horak is a man who, perhaps it goes without saying, has an earthy sense of fun. “I was really concerned about the winds, especially since here they blow up to 120 kilometers (74.56 miles) an hour,” he said with a chortle. “But after the first big storm, when the house didn’t fly away, I calmed down, sort of.” Two years ago, Mr. Horak, 58, and his wife Renata, 38, moved into the home to-
pped by titanium zinc canopies that provide the bird silhouette. The three-bedroom, three-story property, built for $6 million, sits on 42 acres of rolling greenery with a lake, tennis court and grounds keeper’s quarters. The project took flight five years ago when Mr. Horak bought land in the village of Kuncice pod Ondrejnikem, 27 miles from Ostrava, the mining and steel town where he grew up. He had only a vague notion to build a house that stood out. And he knew he wanted something spacious, after having spent a childhood squeezed into small quarters. He was raised, as was his wife, in two-room apartments in drab, prefabricated concrete residential buildings that were ubiquitous in the former Eastern bloc country.
Mr. Horak gave wide latitude to Roman Kuba, an architect and owner of the Atelier Simona Group in Ostrava. “Thinking about a design for Pavel, I noticed how a blackbird spread her wings over her nest on the balcony of my ranch,” Mr. Kuba said. “I went to see Pavel’s land with the mountains in the background. They reminded me of the bird’s beak, and it all came together.” The bird expressed Mr. Kuba’s “orga-
nic architecture” philosophy, which is that architecture should be inspired by natural surroundings.“Because Pavel had such a great sense of humor, I knew I could make this home for him,” Mr. Kuba said. Construction of the “bird,” as it came to be known, was not without obstacles. “It was very difficult to create a sense of lightness in the wings, but covering the supporting steel poles in wood provided airiness,” he said.
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Upon first seeing the bird design, Mr. Horak exclaimed, “holy hell,” with characteristic bluntness. But he liked it. Inside the bird, the focal point is a central glass stairwell framed by white pillars. Woods of varying shades — including a rare striped Indonesian Makassar, used for the dining room table and cabinet, and a dark tropical Wenge timber laid on the floors — are offset by vivid splashes of color, such as a second-floor acrylic-andsand wall hanging from Hawaii and Italian retro-style orange lights in the openplan dining room. The bright orange foyer lights, Mr. Horak said wryly, “first reminded me of a brothel. In the living room, beige marble is at the base of a gas fireplace in the shape of a pyramid. Yet it was another quirky feature, a wall-to-wall ocean-fish aquarium in the basement, that he and his wife saw as a stylistic necessity. This was particularly meaningful to the globe-trotting couple whose native country is landlocked.
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“It reminds us of our trips to Mauritius, the Seychelles, Greece and other far-flung shores,” said Mrs. Horakova, the bookkeeper for PPL. Before settling on the bird, Mr. Horak considered roughly 10 designs from different architects. “Some looked like they belonged in the Caribbean,” he said, “others looked too much like ski chalets.” Mr. Horak, a rugged man with a dry sense of humor, asked the advice of Mr. Kuba, a fellow Ostravan and member of his tennis club. Mr. Kuba initially was reluctant because he is an architect known for his industrial buildings, especially his award-winning reconstruction of a gas firm’s headquarters. “Finally I said, give me six months and I’ll create something for you never seen before,” Mr. Kuba said. Mrs. Horakova turned her attention to the interior of the structure, working with Atelier Simona to recreate the “soothing, relaxing” atmosphere of sea resorts she had visited. In particular, she had in mind a cir-
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cular interior design, reminiscent of what she had seen during a 2005 stay in Dubai at the Burj Al Arab Hotel, an architectural glass landmark in the shape of an ancient Arabian sail. Luxurious details are evident throughout the house, such as the swimming pool’s hand-crafted Spanish mosaics and the steam bath’s 18-karat-gold tiles. Mrs. Horakova explained why the entire basement is dominated by water: “When I go on holiday, I could spend it all in the spa.” The basement, in fact, was Atelier Simona’s greatest technical challenge. “It took us three years to figure out how to put the swimming pool next to the aquarium,” said Mr. Kuba. “When one body of water is empty, it puts overwhelming pressure on the barrier, so we built a thick acrylic glass divider to provide balance.” Mr. Horak added ruefully, “Originally I wanted a shark in the aquarium. But then Renata said she wouldn’t swim next to it.” Asked what he loved most about his
ARCHITECTURE & HOME DECOR
home, Mr. Horak lavished praise on the glass-ensconced living room, which he said makes him feel that he is “outdoors while still indoors.” “And that the house hasn’t flown away. Yet.”
Sports
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The San Juan Weekly
May 5 - 11, 2011
Before Manny Became Manny By SARA RIMER
H
ero. Cheat. Prodigy. Ingrate. Free spirit. Knucklehead. Hall of Famer. Pariah. Enigma. Manny Ramirez, one of the great right-handed hitters of his generation, who retired from baseball this month after once again testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, was many things to many people — fans and family and teammates from Santo Domingo to Washington Heights to Cleveland to Boston. Sara Rimer, then a reporter for The New York Times, met Ramirez in 1991 at George Washington High School in Manhattan. Over two decades, she enjoyed a memorable and mystifying acquaintanceship with Ramirez. When I heard that Manny Ramirez had retired, the first person I called was his high school coach, Steve Mandl. I reached him at George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan, where he has coached varsity baseball for 27 years. He was sad and stunned. I pictured him at the dented metal desk in his cramped office, where a 20-something Manny Ramirez in his Cleveland Indians uniform looms from the autographed poster that hangs on the wall. “Steve,” I said, “that was real, wasn’t it — the Manny in high school, that swing, his work ethic, all that pure talent?” “Oh, yeah,” Mandl said, “that was real.” And then the coach had to run. I stumbled upon the George Washington Trojans of Washington Heights in the spring of 1991. The high school was bursting with new immigrants, and the 25 varsity baseball players were all Dominican. Mandl invited me to spend the season following the team. He told me he had a great hitter, an 18-year-old from Santo Domingo who got the bat around faster than any other high school player he had seen. I knew next to nothing about baseball, but even someone with the scantest technical knowledge of the game or the mechanics of hitting could recognize that Ramirez was a star in the making. I don’t remember the first time I saw that quicksilver swing. What I remember is
what it felt like to be there on that rock-hard artificial surface atop the hill next to the high school, among his euphoric teammates and fans shouting his name, merengue blasting from someone’s boom box in the concrete bleachers behind the third-base line, the major league scouts lined up behind home plate as Manny came up to bat in his baggy black-and-orange secondhand uniform and red cleats and slammed one home run after another, day after day. Up in the stands Manny’s beautiful 16-year-old girlfriend, Kathy Guzman, would practically be swooning. A vendor in a Yankees cap would push a grocery cart serving pastelitos and the sweet, blended orange juice and milk concoction known as a morir soñando: to die dreaming. Manny, batting .650, walloped 14 home runs in 22 games. Not one of those home runs was on television or saved on videotape. Mandl could barely keep the team in baseballs and gloves let alone think about videotaping his future major leaguer. But maybe it’s better that way. Those home runs, the memory of them, are part of the Manny that belongs to Washington Heights. He was the shy, happy-go-lucky boy with the perfect swing who everyone knew was going to the major leagues. The boy who loved to hit more than anything else. The boy who worked harder than anyone else. The baby-faced boy who never drank anything stronger than the nonalcoholic Puerto Rican eggnog from the corner bodega he chugged to bulk up. That was the Manny who at least seemed knowable, before he disappeared behind the wall of all that surreal major league fame and money. Who is the real Manny? The 18-year-old prospect with everything ahead of him, or the 38-year-old major leaguer who walked away from baseball rather than face a 100-game suspension after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs for the second time in recent years? Who knows? ‘See the ball. Hit the ball.’ Far. But perhaps Manny was never more himself than when he was an adolescent, playing for George Washington and Washington Heights. Maybe that was Manny at his most essential, when more than at any other time he could live by what later became his maxim: “See the ball. Hit the ball.” One of the home runs: George Washington was playing Brandeis High School at home. The Brandeis pitcher, Kiki Valdez, was one of Manny’s best friends. His first time at bat, Manny clobbered a home run. The second time he came up, he tapped home plate with his bat, the way you would see him do it later in the majors. He was ready, as perfectly balanced as a ballerina, as Mandl put it. Then he called a timeout, taking his
By 2005, Ramirez, center, was the leader of a potent Red Sox lineup that included David Oritz, right. right hand off the bat. But the umpire did not give it to him. Everyone who was there swears Manny did not have time to get his right hand back on the bat, that he swung with one hand. I can’t really say that I saw it. Maybe I was too busy taking notes. The ball went over the left-field fence and all the way to the old handball courts on the street below. It had to be more than 400 feet. His teammates and the fans were screaming: “Oh my God! Oh my God!” Mandl, coaching third base, tried to maintain his cool. He may have muttered an astonished expletive under his breath as he waved home Rafael Gonzalez, who had been on first, followed by Manny. In those days Manny did not indulge in major league theatrics. He simply ducked his head and ran home, into the arms of his teammates. In the playoffs, the Trojans were facing their rival, Kennedy, on Kennedy’s turf in the Bronx. Manny slammed a shot that came so close to hitting the apartment building beyond the center-field fence that the people who had been watching the game from the building’s terrace ran for cover. Gonzalez had been standing behind home plate when Manny came up to bat that day. Fifteen years later, I sat with Rafael and his wife, Claribelkis, who had been his high school sweetheart, in their living room across from George Washington on a wintry February afternoon while Rafael, home from his Army tour of duty in Iraq with a Purple Heart, recalled the sound of Manny’s aluminum bat connecting with that ball. “I’ll never forget that sound,” Rafael said. “I’d never seen anything hit, thrown or shot that far.”
Manny hated being the center of attention. He just wanted to be one of the guys. That was one of the things people loved about him. He’d hit, say, two home runs and a triple for the Trojans. Then he’d go back to his block, and the men on the corner would ask how he had done. Manny would just shrug and say, “I went 0 for 3.” But you cannot have a swing like that, a swing that is going to take you to the majors and bring you a $160 million contract with the Red Sox, a $7 million penthouse at the Ritz-Carlton condominiums in downtown Boston and two World Series championships, and keep being one of the guys. I don’t think I ever got to sit down to talk with him for more than a few minutes at a time. It did not help that I did not know a word of Spanish, while Manny, who had arrived in Washington Heights at 13, spoke little English. He did invite me to his family’s sixth-floor walk-up tenement apartment to meet his father, who drove a livery cab, and his mother, who stitched blouses in a factory, and two of his three older sisters. It eventually dawned on me that I did not need to talk to Manny. The way to know him was to watch him hit — and run up a hill with a tire. Working on His Speed At the start of his senior season some of the scouts had put out the word that they thought he needed more speed on the bases. So he started running up the steep hill beside the high school in the early morning with an automobile tire roped around his waist. The cafeteria ladies on their way to George Washington, the factory workers heading to the subway for the morning shift downtown, everyone cheered him on. It was as if he
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were pulling all of them up the hill with him. Those were hard years in Washington Heights, when it seemed like the only people getting out of the barrio were the dealers selling crack cocaine to customers who poured in from the suburbs over the George Washington Bridge. That season sports did what it was supposed to do. Manny gave people something to feel hopeful about. Everyone could dream along with him. So much could have gone wrong. One day that spring a gun battle erupted a couple blocks from the high school. Gonzalez and another teammate, walking home after a game, had to jump under a parked car. Sure, there were some signs Manny was flaky and naïve and easily led by others. But for all his in-the-moment free-spiritedness, Manny must have already known something about protecting his talent. Back then the high school, with 4,000 students overflowing a building designed for 2,000, was a place where even the most committed students struggled to get an education. There may have been teachers who gave Manny a pass when it came to grades. Maybe that was when he began to realize that for a gifted athlete like him, the rules did not apply. Unless hitting was involved, he could be maddeningly unreliable. He didn’t show up for team pictures or meetings or even the day Ken Burns dispatched a film crew to George Washington to film the Trojans for his baseball documentary. He stood up the major league scouts, too. It wasn’t like they were going to stop coming to see him. Manny worshiped his mother, Onelcida. She and his sisters doted on him. His father, Aristides, however, seemed convinced that his son was a bum who would never amount to anything. Manny turned 19 at the end of that May. He did not graduate from high school. The Cleveland Indians drafted him in the first round, signing him with a $250,000 bonus. A Glowing Report Wary about taking on a kid from Washington Heights, the Indians had dispatched Winston Llenas, a Dominican former major leaguer, to visit Manny at home and size
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up his character. Llenas came back with a glowing report: Manny was a nice kid from a hard-working, immigrant family. A few weeks into June, Joe DeLucca, the Indians scout who had signed Manny, picked him up at his apartment in his blue Cadillac Seville. Manny was off to Burlington, N.C., to start his professional career in the rookie leagues. DeLucca had one rule for Manny: Don’t let anyone talk to you about changing your swing. Two years later, in September 1993, the Indians called up Manny to the majors, and within days he was back in New York, at Yankee Stadium. By then I had moved to Boston as The Times’s bureau chief. I flew to New York to write about Manny’s hometown debut. The afternoon of the game Manny showed up at his favorite neighborhood restaurant, Las Tres Marias, and ate fried steak and plantains with several of his high school teammates. A block away, his father stood on the sidewalk outside their apartment building, bragging to everyone who walked by. Manny’s mother and three sisters went to Ana’s beauty salon to get their hair done. Carrying homemade banners, a parade of his friends, and past and present Trojans, walked across the Harlem River Bridge to Yankee Stadium that night. Manny hit two home runs and a double that night. Then he went home and partied with his block into the early morning. Not long afterward, Manny presented Mandl with the oversize, autographed poster that still hangs on his office wall. Season after season, the varsity baseball players would stare at the poster and ask Mandl the same questions: Is it true Manny ran up the hill with the tire? How did he learn to get the bat around that fast? How does he wait for his pitch the way he does? How can he go 0 for 3 and not care? Why doesn’t he cut his hair? Coming Back The Trojans would fantasize about Manny coming back and helping them with their hitting. They would ask Mandl: Why doesn’t he come back? Mandl would shake his head. It was complicated and painful to talk about. He did not understand that part, either. In 1991, it was all about getting out of the barrio. That was the dream: getting as far away from Washington Heights as possible, or at least over the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. In the beginning, when he was still with the Indians, Manny did come back during the off-season. He took his former high school teammates shopping for the designer clothes he had taken to wearing. He would walk into the George Washington cafeteria
and the lunch ladies would ply him with pizza. Manny being Manny, he never called ahead. As he failed to do so again one winter afternoon when Mandl was in the gym after school talking to the team about — what else — hitting. Manny strolled into the old gym as casually as if he were just another Trojan. Mandl tried not to make a deal out of it. “Oh, speaking of hitting, ‘Hi, Manny,’ ” he said. The Trojans, huddled on the floor around Mandl, could not believe it. “Manny, want to say a few words about hitting?” Mandl said. The young Trojans were as focused on Manny as they had ever been on any fastball flying toward them at the plate. And then the great hitter spoke: “See the ball. Hit the ball.” Mandl had always assumed Manny would help out his old team, though he made a point of not asking him for anything. The players desperately needed new uniforms, at a cost of about $7,000. One of Mandl’s former assistant coaches put in the request to Manny. Manny said, “Sure.” But then he stuck Mandl with the bill. That was around the time he stopped talking to his former high school coach. It seemed to stem from a misunderstanding that started when sportswriters asked Mandl why his former star committed so many wacky errors in the field. Mandl gave what he thought was an honest explanation: Maybe Manny had attention deficit disorder. Mandl did not mean it as an insult. He would never hurt Manny. He was sure a lot of major league ballplayers had A.D.D. Mandl even wondered if A.D.D. had been his problem as a kid; maybe that was why he could never focus on school or anything except baseball. The comment was tabloid news, and somehow it got translated back to Manny that his high school coach was telling everyone he was stupid. Manny was sensitive about his intelligence and easily hurt. Mandl became a nonperson. Mandl wished he could talk to Manny, explain things to him. But you did not call Manny, Manny called you. A couple of weeks ago a friend gave me a gift: a pair of tickets to Fenway Park. The Red Sox were playing the Tampa Bay Rays, Manny’s latest team. They were the best seats of my life, right along the third-base line. My friend thought I would enjoy being that close to my favorite player. You could smell the grass. You could see Johnny Damon’s dimples when he came up to take his practice swings for the Rays. But Damon’s former Red Sox teammate was absent. Manny had retired from baseball that Friday. The game unfolded without Manny’s dreadlocks and goofy smile, the anticipation of what he might do with his bat. October 2003 I thought back to one of the last times I
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Sports
had talked to him. It was October 2003. The Red Sox were playing in the American League Championship Series against the Yankees. I had gone up to Washington Heights to check in on Manny’s former high school teammates. I found eight of them watching the first game of the series in the basement of a bodega near Manny’s old apartment. They sat on milk crates, glued to a 19-inch color television wedged on a shelf between cans of evaporated coconut milk and beans and bags of rice. Manny got his first hit, an infield single. In the basement of the bodega, the former Trojans, now in their early 30s, burst into cheers. Carlos Puello, who was on a break from his job as a hospital boiler room operator, said, “It’s the same swing.” When my article about Manny’s high school teammates ran in The Times a couple of days later, I happened to be in Vermont. My cellphone rang. “Hi,” said a familiar-sounding voice on the other end. “This is Manny Ramirez. Do you remember me? You wrote about me when I was a little kid.” His Dominican former Little League coach from Washington Heights, Carlos Ferreira, known by the nickname Macaco, had given Manny my number. “Are you going to the game tonight?” Manny asked me. I laughed. “Well,” I said, “I’d love to go, but who can get tickets?” Manny said: “I’ll leave you tickets for tonight’s game with Macaco.” So I flew to New York, and took a cab to Yankee Stadium. The whole time I was thinking it was a setup, some kind of Mannybeing-Manny joke. I stood in front of a Yankee Stadium gate and called Macaco on his cellphone. Macaco was waiting for my call. I sat with him and Carlos Puello in the stands behind the third-base line. Manny didn’t get a hit, but it didn’t matter. I know it was real; I still have the ticket stub. But it was something like a dream, which is what Manny is now for all of us who followed him, who were thrilled and saddened and confused by him. And who miss him, and will.
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