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MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 Copyright © 2009 The New York Times
Supplemento al numero
odierno de la Repubblica
Sped. abb. postale art. 1
legge 46/04 del 27/02/2004 — Roma
LENS
RUTH FREMSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES
The dress code or an exercise schedule may pale beside the economic crisis, but even in such minor areas, President Obama has changed the White House.
Rod R. Blagojevich, the disgraced
former governor of Illinois, was
caught on tape trying to “sell’’ Presi-
dent Obama’s old senate seat for a
high price. Yet he recently
compared himself to Gan-
dhi, Martin Luther King
and Nelson Mandela.
In a seemingly bottom-
less Ponzi scheme, Bernard
L. Madoff is accused of
swindling legions of in-
vestors to the tune of $50
billion. Yet despite the epic
scale of his fraud, and the inevitability
of its collapse, some experts speculate
that he may have had the psychopath’s
belief that he was invincible.
Such people “believe, ‘I’m above
the law,’ and they believe they can-
not be caught,” J. Reid Meloy, a fo-
rensic psychologist, told The
Times’s Julie Creswell and
Landon Thomas Jr. “But the
Achilles’ heel of the psycho-
path is his sense of impunity.’’
Self-delusion is not limited
to internationally notori-
ous scoundrels, however.
As several recent articles
have noted, so-called normal
people often engage in mental tricks,
whether they are looking in the mir-
ror, seeking a bit of extra motivation
or warding off a crushing blow to the
ego.
We can always put off that next bit
of work or our exercise regime for
another hour or another day, we con-
vince ourselves. Or can we?
As Alina Tugend reported in The
Times, most people procrastinate
at some time or other. But those who
believe they do their best work under
the frantic pressure of a deadline
may find that objective reality is not
on their side.
“My research showed that they do
not perform better,’’ Joseph R. Fer-
rari, a professor of psychology at De-
Paul University in Chicago, told Ms.
Tugend. “They just think they do.’’
Those very same procrastinators
may find that they are fooling them-
selves if they rationalize purchasing
another expensive home exercise
machine is the painless way to
achieve fitness, behavioral scientists
caution.
“When you buy these machines,
you probably end up focusing on one
or two attributes, like how easy it
is to use or having it in your home,’’
Ravi Dhar, a professor of marketing
and psychology at Yale University,
told Tara Parker-Pope of The Times.
“You’re not thinking about the bar-
riers, what you’re giving up, like the
time with friends or the Internet.’’
Those pesky behavioral scientists,
taking away our delusions.
For instance, a psychologist ex-
plained to The Times’s Benedict
Carey how many people “self-
handicap,’’ creating ready-made
excuses for their poor performance
or failure, even before they begin to
pursue a goal.
“This is real self-sabotage, like
drinking heavily before a test, skip-
ping practice or using really poor
equipment,’’ the psychologist, Ed-
ward R. Hirt of Indiana University,
told Mr. Carey.
Mr. Carey also wrote of people
with two opposite delusions: the
so-called “impostor phenomenon”
in which people envision their suc-
cesses as undeserved, and those who
see their achievements as greater
than they really are.
The “impostor phenomenon” may
lower expectations, to alleviate
pressure, Rory O’Brien McElwee,
of Rowan University in New Jersey,
told Mr. Carey. But for those who in-
flate their achievements, Mr. Carey
wrote that “self-serving delusion
probably helps people to get out of
bed and chase their pet projects.’’
Mr. Blagojevich of Illinois was no
doubt self-serving. At his impeach-
ment trial, he said in his own de-
fense: “I did a lot of things that were
mostly right.’’
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON
THE CAPITAL BECAME flustered when, on
his first full day in the White House, President
Obama was photographed in the Oval Office
without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logi-
cal explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had
cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior
adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but
strategically located office next door to his boss. “He
likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Thus did a rule of the George W. Bush administra-
tion — coat and tie in the Oval Office at all times —
come to an end, only the first of many signs that a more
informal culture is growing up in the White House un-
der new management. Mr. Obama promised to bring
change to Washington and he has — not just in sub-
stance, but in presidential style.
Some of Mr. Obama’s work habits are already be-
coming clear. He shows up at the Oval Office shortly
before 9 in the morning, roughly two hours later than
his early-to-bed, early-to-rise predecessor. Mr. Obama
likes to have his workout first thing in the morning, at
6:45. (Mr. Bush slipped away to exercise midday.)
He reads several papers, eats breakfast with his
family and helps pack his daughters, Malia, 10, and
Sasha, 7, off to school before making the 30-second
commute downstairs — a definite perk for a man try-
ing to balance work and family life. He eats dinner
with his family, then often returns to work; aides have
seen him in the Oval Office as late as 10 p.m., reading
briefing papers for the next day.
“Even as he is sober about these challenges, I have
Who’s Fooling Whom?
III VI VIIIWORLD TRENDS
Lithium is in demand.
Bolivia has a lot of it.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Stories of the oceans,
told grain by grain.
ARTS & STYLES
Recalling the glitter
of Busby Berkeley.
INTELLIGENCE: Overcoming irrationality in the Middle East, Page III.
For comments, write to nytweekly@nytimes.com.
Audacity in Shirt Sleeves
Con tin ued on Page IV
OBAMA’S WASHINGTON/PAGE IV
● Will stimulus plan bring a resurgence of liberal ideals?
● Envoys and cabinet members jockey for power.
Repubblica NewYork
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O P I N I O N & C O M M E N TA R Y
II MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009
Direttore responsabile: Ezio Mauro
Vicedirettori: Mauro Bene,
Gregorio Botta, Dario Cresto-Dina
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Caporedattore centrale: Angelo Aquaro
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Divisione la Repubblica
via Cristoforo Colombo 90 - 00147 Roma
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Francesco Malgaroli
Rules of the Game
New Day on Climate Change
President George W. Bush, and his
aides, could hardly wait to get rid of all
those tiresome arms-control treaties
when they took office. They tore up
the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty to
make way for a still largely imaginary
missile defense system. They opposed
the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban
Treaty and never made a serious ef-
fort to win a ban on the production of
fissile material (the core of a nuclear
weapon).
Mr. Bush grudgingly signed his one
and only arms-reduction treaty with
the Russians in 2002. That means that
today — 20 years after the fall of the
Berlin Wall — the United States and
Russia still have more than 20,000 nu-
clear weapons, with thousands ready
to launch within minutes.
The bad news, of course, didn’t stop
there.
While Mr. Bush and his team were
ridiculing treaties and arms control
negotiations as “old think,” North Ko-
rea tested a nuclear device, Iran has
been working overtime to produce
nuclear fuel (usable for a reactor or a
bomb) and many other countries are
weighing whether they need to get into
the nuclear game.
President Obama pledged to ad-
dress these dangers when he was
campaigning. In her recent confirma-
tion hearing, Secretary of State Hil-
lary Rodham Clinton argued that this
country’s best hope of doing that is to
restore treaties and a rules-based sys-
tem. Now they have to translate that
lofty intent into urgent action.
The first challenge is Russia, the
only other country besides the United
States with enough weapons to blow
up the planet. The administration can
start by negotiating a follow-on to the
1991 Start Treaty, which is set to expire
in December. The pact contains the
only rules for verifying any nuclear
agreement, and it provides an oppor-
tunity for making even deeper cuts.
The two sides could easily go to 1,000
weapons each in this next round, down
from the 1,700 to 2,200 deployed weap-
ons agreed on in the 2002 Moscow
treaty.
We applaud the administration’s
pledge to work for Senate ratification
of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and to revive negotiations on a fissile
material production ban. Neither will
be easy to achieve, but both are essen-
tial .
During the campaign, Mr. Obama
opposed plans to build a new nuclear
warhead. He was right. There is no
military or scientific need. Defense
Secretary Robert Gates is a strong
advocate of the program. Mr. Obama
should resist. If the United States is go-
ing to have any credibility in arguing
that others must restrain their nuclear
ambitions, it must restrain its own.
Mr. Bush repeatedly warned about
the dangers of nuclear weapons fall-
ing into the hands of terrorists. He
was right. But he never put in place
the strategy needed to ensure that
that never happens. President Obama
must do better. He can start by restor-
ing the rules of the game.
WASHINGTON
The president’s disgust at Wall
Street looters was good. But we need
more. We need disgorgement.
Disgorgement is when courts
force wrongdoers to repay ill-gotten
gains. And I’m ill at the gains gotten
by scummy executives while they’re
getting bailed out by us.
With the equally laconic Tim Gei-
thner beside him, President Obama
called it “shameful” and “the height
of irresponsibility” for Wall Street
bankers to give themselves $18.4 bil-
lion worth of bonuses for last year.
They should know better, he
coolly chided. But big shots — even
Mr. Obama’s — seem impervious to
knowing better. (Following fast on
Geithner’s own tax oversight, Tom
Daschle withdrew his nomination
after it was publicized that he was
forced to pay $140,000 in back taxes
he owed partly for three years’ use of
a car and a driver provided by a pri-
vate equity firm.)
At least the old robber barons made
great products. When you make mon-
ey out of money, unmoored from mo-
rality and regulators, it must unhinge
you. How else to explain corporate
welfare executives partridge hunt-
ing in England, buying French jets
and shopping for Lamborghinis?
Mr. Obama was less bracing than
during the campaign, when A.I.G.
executives were caught going to posh
retreats after taking an $85 billion
bailout. He called for them to be fired
and to reimburse the federal Trea-
sury. Now that he has the power to
act, Mr. Obama spoke, as his spokes-
man Robert Gibbs put it, “like that
disappointed parent that doesn’t em-
barrass you in the mall, but you feel
like you’ve let somebody down.”
That’s not enough, not with the pres-
ident and Geithner continuing to dole
out what may end up being a trillion
dollars to these “malefactors of great
wealth,” as Teddy Roosevelt put it.
USA Today, the national daily
newspaper wrote about “the A.I.G.
effect:” executives finding ways
to spend more discreetly, choosing
lesser-known luxury hotels and $110
pinot noir instead of the $175 variety.
More than a disappointed parent,
they need a special prosecutor. Any-
one who gave bonuses after accept-
ing federal aid should be fired, and
that money should be disgorged to
the Treasury.
Senator Claire McCaskill popped
out a bill to limit the pay of anyone
at firms taking federal money to no
more than the president makes —
$400,000. This was before Obama
proposed a cap of $500,000 in cash
compensation for executives.
“These people are idiots,” she said
on the Senate floor. “You can’t use
taxpayer money to pay out $18 billion
in bonuses. ... Right now they’re on
the hook to us. And they owe us some-
thing other than a fancy wastebasket
and $50 million jet.”
Senator Chuck Grassley urged the
administration to snatch back the
bonuses. “They ought to give ’em
back or we should go get ’em,” the Re-
publican told me. “If this were Japan
and a corporate executive did what
is being done on Wall Street, they’d
either go out and commit suicide or
go before the board of directors and
the country and take a very deep bow
and apologize.”
He added, “Once in a while, some
C.E.O. comes and talks to me and
I wonder if they’re laughing under
their breath at having to talk to some-
one who makes 1 percent of what they
make.”
Treasury officials and Representa-
tive Barney Frank are dubious about
recouping bonuses. “Paulson let the
cat out of the bag,” Frank said of Hen-
ry Paulson, Geithner’s predecessor,
“and it can’t be gotten back.”
But aren’t taxpayers shareholders
in these corporations now, and can’t
shareholders sue or scream “You
misspent my money!” like Judy Hol-
liday?
“In ‘The Solid Gold Cadillac,’ ” said
Frank, who knows the movie.
“We got some preferred shares,”
he mused, “but I don’t think we could
sue on that basis.”
Rudy Giuliani resurfaced recently
to defend corporate bonuses, telling
CNN that cutting them would mean
less spending in restaurants and
stores.
Stupid. Even without bonuses,
these gazillionaires can still eat out.
Some Obama policy makers still
buy into the notion that if they’re too
strict, these economic royalists, to
use F.D.R.’s epithet, might balk at
the bailout, preferring perks over the
prospect of their banks going out of
business.
The president needs to think like
New York state’s attorney general,
Andrew Cuomo. “ ‘Performance
bonus’ for many of the C.E.O.’s is
an oxymoron,” he said. “I would tell
them, a) you don’t deserve a bonus,
b) where are you going to go? and c) if
you want to go, go.”
E D I T O R I A L S O F T H E T I M E S
In one dramatic stroke, President
Obama has removed any doubts that
he intends to break sharply from
President George W. Bush’s passive
approach to climate change. At a news
conference on January 26, Mr. Obama
directed the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency to consider immediately
California’s application to set its own
rules on greenhouse-gas emissions
from cars and trucks. Mr. Bush had
rejected that application.
Once California receives permission
to move ahead — as it surely will — 13
states, and possibly more, are expect-
ed to impose similar rules. The result
will be to force automakers here and
overseas to begin producing cars and
trucks that are considerably more fuel
efficient than today’s models.
The California decision is of great
significance not only for that reason
but for what it says about Mr. Obama’s
commitment to the cause of reversing
the rise in greenhouse gases. Mr. Bush
began his tenure by breaking a cam-
paign promise to regulate carbon di-
oxide and by withdrawing the United
States from the Kyoto agreement on
climate change. Mr. Obama begins
his with a clear signal that he will not
hesitate to use the Clean Air Act and
other federal statutes to fight global
warming.
California has long had the right to
set stronger air pollution standards
than the rest of the nation, provided
it has federal permission. Its earlier
requests to set stronger air pollution
standards were routinely approved,
but in this case the Bush administra-
tion said no, dredging up all manner
of arguments to support its case. One
was that California had not demon-
strated “extraordinary and compel-
ling” reasons to limit greenhouse
gases; another was that a national
regulatory system was preferable to
state-by-state laws — even though the
administration itself had shown no in-
terest in a national system.
In a companion move, Mr. Obama
directed the Transportation Depart-
ment to finalize the interim nation-
wide fuel-efficiency standards called
for in the 2007 energy bill. These stan-
dards would eventually require fuel-
efficiency increases in the American
car and light-truck fleet to roughly 35
miles per gallon (15 kilometers per li-
ter) by 2020 from the current average
of 27 m.p.g. (11.5 k.p.l.). The California
standards would require automakers
to reach the same 35 m.p.g. target four
years ahead of the federal timetable.
The California rules cannot by them-
selves stop the rise in greenhouse gas-
es. In addition to regulatory controls,
Mr. Obama must eventually embrace
a broader strategy involving major
federal investments in clean-energy
technologies and, down the road, some
effort to put a price on greenhouse-gas
emissions in order to unlock private
investment. But after eight years of
inaction, this is a wonderful start.
MAUREEN DOWD
Disgorge, Wall Street Fat Cats
In the documentary film “Pray the
Devil Back to Hell,” a woman whose
family had endured the agony of civil
war in Liberia talks about a dream
she had in 2003 in which someone
urged her to organize the women of
her church to pray for peace.
“It was a crazy dream,” she said.
Prayer seemed like a flimsy coun-
terweight to the forces of Charles
Taylor, the tyrannical president at
the time, and the brutally predatory
rebels who were trying to oust him
from power. The violence was ex-
cruciating. People were dying by the
tens of thousands. Rape had become
commonplace. Children were starv-
ing. Scenes from the film showed
even small children whose limbs had
been amputated.
The movie, for me, was about much
more than the tragic, and then ulti-
mately uplifting events in Liberia.
It was about the power of ordinary
people to intervene in their own fate.
The first thing that struck me about
the film was the way it captured the
almost unimaginable horror that
war imposes on noncombatants: the
looks of terror on the faces of people
fleeing gunfire in the streets; chil-
dren crouching and flinching, almost
paralyzed with fear by the sound of
nearby explosions; homes engulfed
in flames.
It’s the kind of environment that
breeds feelings of helplessness. But
Leymah Gbowee, the woman who
had the crazy dream, would have
none of that, and she should be a les-
son to all of us.
The filmmakers Abigail Disney
and Gini Reticker show us how Ms.
Gbowee not only rallied the women
at her Lutheran church to pray for
peace, but organized them into a
full-blown, all-women peace initia-
tive that spread to other Christian
churches — and then to women of the
Muslim faith.
They wanted an end to the maim-
ing and the killing, especially the de-
struction of a generation of children.
They wanted to eradicate the plague
of rape. They wanted all the things
that noncombatants crave whenever
the warrior crowd — in the United
States, the Middle East, Asia, wher-
ever — decides it’s time once again to
break out the bombs and guns and let
the mindless killing begin.
When the Liberian Christians
reached out to “their Muslim sisters,”
there was some fear on both sides
that such an alliance could result in a
dilution of faith. But the chaos and the
killing had reached such extremes
that the religious concerns were set
aside in the interest of raising a pow-
erful collective voice.
The women prayed, yes, but they
also moved outside of the churches
and the mosques to demonstrate, to
protest, to enlist all who would listen
in the cause of peace. Working with
hardly any resources, save their ex-
traordinary will and intense desire to
end the conflict, the women’s initial
efforts evolved into a movement, the
Liberian Mass Action for Peace.
Thousands of women showed up
day after day, praying, waving signs,
singing, dancing, chanting and agi-
tating for peace.
Nothing could stop the rallies at the
market, not the fierce heat of the sun,
nor drenching rainstorms, nor the
publicly expressed anger of Mr. Tay-
lor, who was embarrassed by the pro-
tests. Public support for the women
grew and eventually Mr. Taylor, and
soon afterward the rebel leaders, felt
obliged to meet with them.
The moral authority of this move-
ment that seemed to have arisen
from nowhere had become one of the
significant factors pushing the war-
ring sides to the peace table. Peace
talks were eventually held in Accra,
the capital of Ghana, and when it
looked as if they were about to break
down, Ms. Gbowee and nearly 200 of
her followers staged a sit-in at the site
of the talks, demanding that the two
sides stay put until an agreement was
reached.
A tentative peace was established,
and Mr. Taylor went into exile in Ni-
geria. The women continued their
activism. Three years ago, on Janu-
ary 16, 2006, in a triumph for the
mothers and wives and sisters and
aunts and grandmothers who had
worked so courageously for peace,
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was sworn in
as the president of Liberia — the first
woman elected president of a country
in Africa.
“Pray the Devil Back to Hell” re-
minds us of the incredible power
available to the most ordinary of peo-
ple if they are willing to act with cour-
age and unwavering commitment.
BOB HERBERT
A Crazy Dream
Liberian women demonstrate the power of commitment.
Repubblica NewYork
W O R L D T R E N D S
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 III
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
MOSCOW — Over the last eight
years, as Vladimir V. Putin has
amassed ever more power, Russians
have often responded with a collec-
tive shrug, as if to say: Go ahead,
control everything — as long as we
can have our new cars and amply
stocked supermarkets, our sturdy
ruble and cheap vacations in the
Turkish sun.
But now the worldwide financial
crisis is abruptly ending an oil-driv-
en economic boom here, and the un-
spoken contract between Mr. Putin
and his people is being thrown into
doubt. In newspaper articles, among
political analysts, even in corners of
the Kremlin, questions can be heard.
Will Russians admire Mr. Putin as
much when oil is at $40 a barrel as
they did when it was at $140 a barrel?
And if Russia’s economy seriously
falters, will his system of hard, per-
sonal power prove to be a trap for
him? Can it relieve public anger, and
can he escape the blame?
“We talk about a lack of democracy
in Russia, but I like my own formula
for the country, which is authoritari-
anism with the consent of the gov-
erned,” said Dmitri Trenin, director
of the Carnegie Moscow Center. “And
it can be taken away.”
“The present rulers know they
will not be toppled by Kasparov,” Mr.
Trenin said, referring to Garry K.
Kasparov, the former chess cham-
pion whose political challenges to
Mr. Putin can seem quixotic. “But if
the working people of Russia decide
that they have had enough, that will
be the end of it. It happened to Gor-
bachev, and it almost happened to
Yeltsin.”
Few are predicting Mr. Putin’s
downfall any time soon, especially
considering how methodically he has
undermined the opposition. Many
Russians believe he rescued them
from the misery of the 1990s, and the
polls say his popularity remains very
high.
But those polls also show his popu-
larity slipping a bit, amid far darker
indicators. The unemployment rate
is soaring, banks are failing and the
ruble has dropped so fast in value
that Russians are again hiding their
money in dollars in their apartments.
Sporadic protests have broken out as
some factories close or cut produc-
tion.
For now, the Kremlin is desper-
ately spending down the hundreds of
billions of dollars in reserves that it
put away in good times, all the while
trying to quell comparisons to Rus-
sia’s economic meltdown in 1998,
when the government, under Boris
Yeltsin, defaulted on its debt. Mr. Pu-
tin, the current prime minister and
former president, and his protégé,
President Dmitri A. Medvedev, try
to assure the public that they are ad-
dressing its pain.
Yet Mr. Putin has created a gov-
ernment so highly centralized and so
resistant to criticism that it is unclear
whether it can respond adeptly to
rising dissatisfaction. Government
officials are unaccustomed to vying
in contested elections, let alone to
reaching out for popular support.
Aleksandr A. Auzan, an econo-
mist at a research institute set up by
President Medvedev, said that in the
Putin system, “there is not a relation-
ship between the authorities and the
people through the Parliament or
through nonprofit organizations or
other structures. The relationship to
the people is basically through televi-
sion. And under the conditions of the
crisis, that can no longer work.”
In other words, if people feel their
government is not heeding their
complaints, they may think their
only option is to take to the streets.
Recently, Mr. Putin has begun
blaming the United States. He began
his keynote address at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Swit-
zerland by saying, “In the last few
months, virtually every speech on
this subject has started with criti-
cism of the United States. But I will
do nothing of the kind.” And then he
went on to do just that.
By SIMON ROMERO
UYUNI, Bolivia — In the rush to
build the next generation of hybrid
or electric cars, a sobering fact con-
fronts both automakers and govern-
ments seeking to lower their reli-
ance on foreign oil: almost half of the
world’s lithium, the mineral needed
to power the vehicles, is found here in
Bolivia — a country that may not be
willing to surrender it so easily.
Japanese and European companies
are busily trying to strike deals to tap
the resource, but a nationalist senti-
ment about the lithium is building
quickly in the government of Presi-
dent Evo Morales, an ardent critic
of the United States who has already
nationalized Bolivia’s oil and natural
gas industries.
Adding to the pressure, indigenous
groups here in the remote salt desert
where the mineral lies are pushing
for a share in the eventual bounty.
“We know that Bolivia can become
the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said
Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of
Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and
quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar
de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat.
“We are poor, but we are not stupid
peasants. The lithium may be Boliv-
ia’s, but it is also our property.”
The new Constitution that Mr. Mo-
rales managed to pass last month
bolstered such claims. One of its pro-
visions could give Indians control
over the natural resources in their
territory .
None of this is dampening efforts
by foreigners, including the Japanese
conglomerates Mitsubishi and Sumi-
tomo and a group led by a French in-
dustrialist, Vincent Bolloré. In recent
months all three have sent represen-
tatives to La Paz, the capital, to meet
with Mr. Morales’s government about
gaining access to the lithium, a criti-
cal component for the batteries that
power cars and other electronics.
“There are salt lakes in Chile and
Argentina, and a promising lithium
deposit in Tibet, but the prize is clear-
ly in Bolivia,” Oji Baba, an executive
in Mitsubishi’s Base Metals Unit, said
in an interview in La Paz.
Demand for lithium, long used in
small amounts in mood-stabilizing
drugs and thermonuclear weapons,
has climbed as makers of batteries
for electronic devices use the miner-
al. But the automotive industry holds
the biggest untapped potential for
lithium, analysts say. Since it weighs
less than nickel, also used in batter-
ies, it would allow electric cars to
store more energy and travel longer
distances.
With governments, including the
Obama administration, seeking to
increase fuel efficiency and reduce
their dependence on imported oil, pri-
vate companies are focusing their at-
tention on this desolate corner of the
Andes, where Quechua-speaking In-
dians subsist on the remains of an an-
cient inland sea by bartering the salt
they carry out on llama caravans.
The United States Geological Sur-
vey says 4.9 million metric tons of
lithium could potentially be extracted
in Bolivia, compared with 2.7 million
in Chile, 1 million in China and just
370,000 in the United States.
Amid such potential, foreigners
seeking to tap Bolivia’s lithium re-
serves must navigate the policies of
Mr. Morales, 49, who has clashed re-
peatedly with American, European
and even South American investors.
Mr. Morales shocked neighboring
Brazil, with whom he is on friendly
terms, by nationalizing its natural
gas projects here in 2006 and seeking
a sharp rise in prices. He carried out
his latest nationalization before the
vote on the Constitution, sending sol-
diers to occupy the operations of Brit-
ish oil giant BP.
Comibol, the state agency that
oversees mining projects, is invest-
ing about $6 million in a small plant
near the village of Río Grande on the
edge of Salar de Uyuni. It hopes to
begin Bolivia’s first industrial-scale
effort to mine lithium from the white,
moon-like landscape. Mr. Morales
wants the plant finished by the end of
this year.
Over a meal of llama stew and a
Pepsi, Marcelo Castro, 48, the manag-
er overseeing the project, explained
that along with processing lithium,
the plant had another objective.
“Of course, lithium is the mineral
that will lead us to the post-petroleum
era,” said Mr. Castro. “But in order to
go down that road, we must raise the
revolutionary consciousness of our
people, starting on the floor of this
very factory.”
Geologists and economists are
fiercely debating whether the lith-
ium reserves outside of Bolivia are
enough to meet the climbing global
demand.
On the flat salt desert of Uyuni,
such debate seems remote to those
still laboring as their ancestors did,
scraping salt off the ground into cone-
shaped piles. The lithium found under
the surface of this desert seems even
more remote for these 21st-century
salt gatherers.
“I’ve heard of the lithium, but I only
hope it creates work for us,” said Pe-
dro Camata, 19, his face shielded from
the unforgiving sun by a ski mask.
“Without work out here, one is dead.”
Growing up in Israel, we heard one
piece of news almost as predictably
as the arrival of Hanukkah. Amid
fanfare and expectations, a United
States president would announce
plans to broker Mideast peace. But
with the exception of Jimmy Carter’s
Egypt-Israel accords, these ambi-
tious attempts have fallen short. As
recent violent eruptions in Gaza dem-
onstrate, the Israelis and Palestin-
ians are just as entangled in conflict
as they have ever been.
As President Obama begins his
own efforts, placing calls to Mideast
leaders on his first day in office, we
fear he may follow in his predeces-
sors’ footsteps. His biggest challenge
isn’t finding a reasonable solution —
there have been plenty of those. It’s
overcoming human irrationality.
From a purely rational perspective,
the Mideast problem has at least one
obvious solution: Israel agrees to give
the Palestinians autonomy over Gaza
and the West Bank and the Palestin-
ians cease their aggression against the
Jewish state. Negotiators and presi-
dents must have felt bewildered at the
rejection of such perfectly reasonable
solutions. Two findings in behavioral
economics help explain the problem.
In one study, researchers gave
subjects $10 to split with another,
unknown, participant in the next
room. They could split the money any
way they wanted ($5 and $5, $7 and
$3, etc.). The catch was that the other
subject could decide whether to accept
the split. If the “decider” accepted
the split, each subject got to keep the
money. But if the decider declined,
both parties left empty-handed. There
was only one round to the game, and
no negotiation was allowed.
Most people presented their coun-
terparts with a 50/50 split, which was
always accepted. But when a splitter
got greedy and kept a larger portion of
the money, the decider almost always
rejected the offer. From a rational
perspective, of course, it made sense
to accept any monetary offer, however
uneven, because some money is bet-
ter than none. But the receivers could
not help feeling a small cut was just
not fair. Fairness overrules economic
sense.
In the Mideast conflict, negotiators
should focus on perceptions of fair-
ness, and specifically on framing any
proposal as a 50-50 split.
The second force in play is process.
Researchers find that employees up
for a raise care as much about the
evaluation process and whether they
felt heard as about the amount of the
raise.
While it would be naïve to imagine
that Mideast peace could be achieved
just by giving each side a voice, as
long as either side feels the process is
unfair, no solution, however reason-
able, will be accepted. Perhaps the
answer, counterintuitive as it sounds,
is to stop looking for a solution and
focus on the process.
We hope President Obama tackles
the issues of fairness and process
underlying any peace negotiation. As
long as these core issues of human be-
havior are not addressed, any compro-
mise, even a reasonable one, will fail.
Bolivia Keeps Tight Grip on Resource of the Future
NOAH FRIEDMAN-RUDOVSKY FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Demand is soaring for lithium to make batteries, and Bolivia controls almost half of the world’s supply. The mineral lies beneath flats like these in Uyuni, Bolivia, where residents harvest salt into large piles.
NEWS ANALYSIS
Harsh Times Present a Threat to Putin’s Plans
For the Mideast,process matters asmuch as solutions.
JAMES HILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
INTELLIGENCE
ORI AND ROM BRAFMAN
SeekingPeace
Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman are co-authors of “Sway: The IrresistiblePull of Irrational Behavior.” Ori is aninternational speaker on manage-ment; Rom is a psychologist who lec-tures on interpersonal dynamics. Sendcomments to brafmans@nytimes.com.
Moscow’s nightlife still thrives, but economic strains are growing.
Repubblica NewYork
O B A M A' S WA S H I N G T O N
IV MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009
By PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — In her first days
as America’s top diplomat, Secretary
of State Hillary Rodham Clinton found
the Middle East portfolio handed off
to a special envoy. Afghanistan and
Pakistan were assigned to a special
representative. And administration of-
ficials expect another special envoy to
be tapped soon to deal with Iran.
So with much of her turf already par-
celed off, Mrs. Clinton made a bid to
take over the China file, which in recent
years has been primarily the respon-
sibility of the Treasury Department
since the major issues with Beijing
tend to be economic. Mrs. Clinton said
the administration needed “a more
comprehensive approach.” The only
problem is that Treasury Secretary
Timothy F. Geithner has no intention of
giving that up.
The opening phase of any admin-
istration involves a certain amount
of jockeying as new players struggle
to define their territory and establish
boundaries with colleagues.
Under Mr. Obama, that may prove
even more complicated. More than any
president in years, he came into office
creating new White House czars and
special envoys to supervise various
issues at home and abroad, overlaying
an additional set of actors upon a bu-
reaucracy already wondering who’s in
charge. Mr. Obama concluded that new
high-powered figures were needed to
force change, but they pose a delicate
management challenge for a president
with no real management experience
beyond his presidential campaign.
“I think it’s actually quite a work-
able model,” said John D. Podesta, who
helped design it as Mr. Obama’s transi-
tion co-chairman. “It doesn’t subjugate
the cabinet officers.” While there will
be multiple players in every key arena,
Mr. Podesta said the new White House
chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, would
be a firm umpire. “It puts a burden
on Rahm to discipline the intramural
sports,” Mr. Podesta said, “but he’s a
strong chief of staff and I don’t think it’s
going to be a problem.”
In addition to naming special envoys
for critical regions, Mr. Obama also cre-
ated a new White House office to over-
see health care, a new White House
office to oversee climate change and
energy, a new White House office to
oversee urban policy and a new White
House office to oversee technology. He
also created a new group of economic
advisers to go along with the two eco-
nomic councils the president already
has. He plans to name a czar to oversee
the economic rescue of the auto indus-
try.
Many of the players bring long, inter-
woven histories to the table. Mrs. Clin-
ton, for example, reportedly once got
Mr. Emanuel demoted when he worked
in Bill Clinton’s White House, though
they later grew closer. And when Mr.
Clinton considered making former
Senator George J. Mitchell secretary
of state, Mrs. Clinton was believed to
have favored Madeleine K. Albright.
Now Mr. Mitchell is the special envoy
to the Middle East.
The economic arena had the most
potential for overlap overload, particu-
larly because Mr. Obama appointed
Mr. Geithner to be Treasury secretary
but recruited Lawrence H. Summers,
a former Treasury secretary himself,
to head the National Economic Council
in the White House. In theory, Mr. Gei-
thner has the more prominent position.
Mr. Summers, who once had all that,
now officially has a staff job charged
with coordinating policy across agen-
cies. But anyone who knows Mr. Sum-
mers understands the outsize role he
will play.
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON — As President
Obama and Congress barrel toward the
latest emergency program to resusci-
tate the American economy, one ques-
tion is looming over their search for a
cure: Can the government fashion a fast
and efficient economic stimulus while
also seizing the moment to remake
America?
For now, Mr. Obama and his aides
are insisting they can accomplish both
goals, following their mantra of using
the urgency of the economic crisis to ac-
complish larger — and long-delayed —
reforms that never garnered sufficient
votes in ordinary times.
In fact, at various times in American
history, moments like this one have
been used for big programs, from in-
tegrating the armed forces to creating
Social Security and, later, Medicare.
So it is little wonder that everyone
with a big, stalled, transformative proj-
ect — green energy programs, broad-
band networks that reach into rural
America, health insurance for the newly
unemployed or uninsured — is citing
the precedent of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
and declaring that a new New Deal is
overdue.
But the question that the Senate has
begun debating is whether grand ambi-
tions are getting in the way of pulling
the United States out of a downward
spiral. And so there are warnings that
much of his social experimentation did
not have a big impact on America’s eco-
nomic recovery, which took years.
“When you are filling a hole this
big and adding to America’s debt on
such a large scale, you need to make
sure every dollar is aimed for the eco-
nomic boost you need,” said Martin S.
Feldstein, a Harvard economist who
warned more than a year ago that the
United States economy was about to
be hit.
Mr. Feldstein has provided the eco-
nomic arguments behind Republican
objections that Mr. Obama is starting
a long-term expansion of government,
after decades in which the United States
has relied on market solutions and en-
couraged nations around the world to
do the same.
After years of battling with a White
House that questioned the science be-
hind global warming, Democratic law-
makers see a chance to begin programs
aimed at environmental protection,
using economic justifications for efforts
like developing low-emission cars. And
with a Democrat in the White House,
they also see an opening to push for in-
creased spending on education.
The efforts are fueled by a liberal base
that supported Mr. Obama’s promise
that he would tackle the biggest issues.
That same base is concerned that the
long slog ahead will force a delay or an
abandonment of those ambitions.
As a result, there is $54 billion in the
House bill for new forms of “American
energy,” a phrase with an air of na-
tionalism, along with a series of “Buy
America” requirements of dubious le-
gality under trade treaties; $141 billion
for education; $24 billion for lowering
health care costs; and $6 billion for
broadband service.
A piece of “emergency” legislation
that would spend heavily to stanch the
killing of jobs is now transforming into
a series of long-term commitments
that are sure to add enormously to the
national debt, and keep adding to it long
after the Panic of 2008 and the reces-
sion — or worse — that it set off are con-
signed to history.
In the Republican response to Mr.
Obama’s address, Senator Mitch McCo-
nnell of Kentucky argued that “perma-
nent spending would be expanded by
about $240 billion” in the House, which
would “lock in bigger and bigger deficits
every year.”
Alice M. Rivlin, an economist at the
Brookings Institution, an independent
research and policy institute, and a
former member of the Federal Reserve,
supports a major stimulus package.
“Because we’re doing this outside the
budget process, it means no one has to
talk about what the long-term effects of
any of this might be,” she said.
She testified recently in Congress
about the need to separate short-term
economic stimulus from a broader
agenda — which embraces everything
from fixing America’s schools to im-
proving health care for children.
“We seem to be counting on the Chi-
nese to keep investing to pay for this,”
Ms. Rivlin said, referring to the huge
amount of United States government
debt held by China, “and we’re assum-
ing that the rest of the world isn’t going
to lose confidence once we use this mo-
ment to spend on a whole range of pro-
grams. And I’m just not sure that’s the
right assumption.”
PETE SOUZA/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY—WHITE HOUSE PHOTO
George W. Bush required a coat and tie at all times, but Mr. Obama has loosened that dress code.
NICHOLAS KAMM/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE—GETTY IMAGES
NEWS ANALYSIS
In a Stimulus Package,Reinvention or Recovery?
Audacious, and Dressed in Shirt Sleeves
New White House Structure Creates Potential for Conflicts
Pushing green energy, health insurance and broadband networks.
never seen him happier,” Mr. Axel-
rod said. “The chance to be under the
same roof with his kids, essentially
to live over the store, to be able to see
them whenever he wants, to wake up
with them, have breakfast and din-
ner with them — that has made him
a very happy man.”
In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is
a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush
wanted to see a staff member, the
aide was summoned to the Oval Of-
fice. But Mr. Obama roams the halls;
one day he turned up in the office of
his press secretary, Robert Gibbs,
who was in the unfortunate posi-
tion of having his feet up on the desk
when the boss walked in.
“Wow, Gibbs,” the press secre-
tary recalls the president saying.
“Just got here and you already have
your feet up.” Mr. Gibbs scrambled
to stand up, surprising Mr. Obama,
who is not yet accustomed to having
people rise when he enters a room.
Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a
virtue. Meetings started early — the
former president once locked Secre-
tary of State Colin L. Powell out of
the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell
showed up a few minutes late — and
ended on time. In the Obama White
House, meetings start on time and
often finish late.
When the president recently in-
vited Congressional leaders to 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue to talk about
his economic stimulus package, the
session ran so long that Mr. Obama
wound up apologizing to the law-
makers — even as he kept them talk-
ing, engaging them in the details of
the legislation far more than was
customary for Mr. Bush.
“He was concerned that he was
keeping us,” said Representative
Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republi-
can whip. “He said, ‘I know we need
to get you all out of here at a certain
time.’ But we continued the discus-
sion. What are you going to say? It’s
the president.”
If Mr. Obama’s clock is looser than
Mr. Bush’s, so too are his sartorial
standards. His aides did not quite
know how to dress. Some showed up
in jeans (another no-no under Mr.
Bush), some in coats and ties.
So the president issued an infor-
mal edict for “business casual” on
weekends — and set his own ex-
ample. He showed up for a Saturday
briefing with his chief economic
adviser, Lawrence H. Summers,
dressed in slacks and a gray sweater
over a white buttoned-down shirt.
Veterans of the Bush White House
are shocked.
“I’ll never forget going to work on
a Saturday morning, getting called
down to the Oval Office because
there was something he was mad
about,” said Dan Bartlett, who was
counselor to Mr. Bush. “I had on
khakis and a buttoned-down shirt,
and I had to stand by the door and
get chewed out for about 15 minutes.
He wouldn’t even let me cross the
threshold.”
Mr. Obama’s schedule seems flex-
ible. Mr. Bush began each day, Mon-
day through Saturday, with a top-se-
cret intelligence briefing on security
threats against the United States.
Mr. Obama gets the “president’s dai-
ly brief” on Sundays as well, though
unlike his predecessor, he does not
necessarily put it first on his agenda.
Sometimes Mr. Obama’s economic
briefing, a new addition to the presi-
dential schedule, comes first.
Mr. Obama has not gotten around
to changing the décor. A collection of
decorative green and white plates is
one item remaing from the Bush era.
During a meeting with retired mili-
tary officials Mr. Obama surveyed
the Oval Office with a critical eye.
“He looked around,” said one of his
guests, retired Rear Admiral John
D. Hutson, “and said, ‘I’ve got to do
something about these plates. I’m
not really a plates kind of guy.’ ”
Hillary Clinton may be the top American diplomat, but as a special envoy, George Mitchellhas the Middle East portfolio.
From Page I
Repubblica NewYork
M O N E Y & B U S I N E S S
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 V
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By ROXANA POPESCU
SAN ANTONIO DE PINTUYACU, Peru
— Women in this remote Amazon village can
weave fibers from the branch of the chambira
palm tree into practically anything they need
— fishing nets, hammocks, purses, skirts and
dental floss.
But for the last year they have put their hopes
in baskets, weaving hundreds to build inven-
tory for export to the United States. Their first
international buyers are the San Diego Natural
History Museum and San Diego Zoo, and they
plan to sell to other museums and home décor
purveyors.
The enterprise is one of many ventures here
in the Amazon aimed at “productive conserva-
tion,” which advocates say will save the rain
forest by transforming it into a renewable
economic resource for local people — just as
some eco-tourism lodges and other ventures
in places like Africa and Southeast Asia have
tried to do.
The government of Loreto, Peru’s densely
forested and least populous region, organized
the basket project, which is financed by grants
from two nonprofit groups, Nature and Culture
International and the Moore Foundation.
But the program is not without challengers.
Iván Vásquez, president of the Loreto region,
said he had made some enemies for supporting
conservation in a region where fishing and log-
ging have been the primary sources of revenue
for decades.
He called himself “the Quixote of the Ama-
zon.”
“We are part of nature. When we destroy na-
ture, we destroy ourselves,” Mr. Vásquez said.
The basket project was the idea of Noam Sh-
any, an Israeli agronomist and entrepreneur. A
bird-watching trip in 2005 led him to a remote
village on the Tahuayo River, an Amazon tribu-
tary. There, he said, he noticed striking local
baskets for sale in a tourist lodge.
Mr. Shany decided to put his retail experi-
ence to an environmental use. In 2006 he helped
found Procrel, a biodiversity program that has
worked with the regional government to estab-
lish three vast protected reserves. The basket
program is one of several conservation initia-
tives intended to help indigenous peoples.
Artisans get $10 to $12 for each basket, which
sells for $40 in the United States. About a third
of that goes into shipping and distribution, and
the rest is retailer profit, meaning the company
that distributes the baskets gets a little more
per unit than each maker. Mr. Shany and Pro-
crel receive nothing.
The artisan’s cut may not seem substan-
tial, Mr. Shany said, but it is more than double
previous monthly earnings. Two years ago,
households in this region earned as little as
$30 a month selling fish and palm frond roof-
ing at city markets, he said. Today, experienced
weavers can earn up to $100 a month.
The baskets are bringing staples, and stabil-
ity. “Already we’re buying more from the bode-
gas. Rice, sugar, soap,” said Erika Catashunga,
who has just received the first business license
granted to a basket weaver with Procrel, es-
tablishing her as the manager of a nine-village
communal enterprise. Its name is Mi Esper-
anza, or My Hope.
By ERIC PFANNER
PARIS — Two generations ago, the Isle of Man
gave the world the Bee Gees. Now it says it wants
to help the wounded music industry stay alive.
The island, a rainy outpost in the Irish Sea, is
promoting an offbeat remedy for digital piracy,
which the music labels blame for billions of dol-
lars in lost sales. Instead of fighting file-sharing,
the local government wants to embrace it — and
it is trying to enlist a skeptical music industry’s
help.
Under a proposal announced this month, the
80,000 people who live on the Isle of Man would
be able to download unlimited amounts of mu-
sic — perhaps even from notorious peer-to-peer
pirate sites. To make this possible, broadband
subscribers would pay a nominal fee of as little
as £1, or $1.38, a month to their Internet service
providers.
Ron Berry, director of inward investment for
the Isle of Man, said the music industry needed
radical approaches because of the “utter failure”
of its current strategies. Global music sales have
fallen nearly 25 percent since 2000.
Despite nearly a decade of campaigning
against piracy, the industry’s international trade
group estimates, 95 percent of tracks distributed
online are pirated, generating no revenue for the
recording companies.
“A lot of people in the business are concerned
with how much money they are losing, but not
with how much money they could make,” Mr.
Berry said.
Under his proposal, the money collected by
the Internet providers would be sent to a special
agency that would distribute the proceeds to the
copyright owners, including the record labels and
music publishers. They would receive payments
based on how often their music was downloaded
or streamed over the Internet, as they now do in
many countries when it is performed live or on
the radio.
ROXANA POPESCU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Angela Pacaya, the head of an artisans cooperative in Peru, teased apart a palm branch to get at the fiber used to make baskets for export to the United States.
If You Can’t Eliminate Music Piracy, Charge for It
Basket Enterprise Aids Villagers,And Nature
The Isle of Man did not invent this idea. The
concept of a so-called blanket license to distrib-
ute music digitally has been discussed since the
days at the turn of the century when Napster, be-
fore its rebirth as a legal service, defied the music
industry.
There are precedents for such systems in Eu-
rope, where many countries have mandatory li-
cense fees for television owners to finance public
broadcasting.
Several European countries also impose taxes
on blank CDs as well as audiovisual and comput-
er equipment; the money typically goes to sup-
port cultural industries.
In 2006, a French proposal similar to the one
being discussed on the Isle of Man made it to Par-
liament, but it was rejected after fierce lobbying
from copyright owners. The government later
supported a new approach: requiring Internet
service providers to disconnect persistent pi-
rates.
That plan is still wending its way through the
legislature, but it has drawn interest elsewhere,
including in Britain. (While the Isle of Man
shares a head of state with
the United Kingdom — the
queen — it has its own par-
liament and makes its own
laws.) There, policy makers
are dangling the threat of a
system like France’s plan
to disconnect pirates, to try
to get Internet providers
and the music companies to
agree on ways to stimulate
the development of legiti-
mate digital music sales and to curb piracy.
While the Recording Industry Association of
America, which represents the major labels in
the United States, has backed away from a nearly
six-year campaign of litigation against individual
file-sharers, the music companies’ effort to battle
piracy in other ways dismays some analysts.
“They spend 90 percent of their time trying
to keep me from doing what I want to do and 10
percent of their time trying to make it possible,”
said Gerd Leonhard, author of “The Future of
Music.”
The recording companies say their preferred
approach is to work with individual partners to
increase digital revenue, which accounted for
about 20 percent of the industry’s sales last year,
according to the industry’s global trade group,
the International Federation of the Phonograph-
ic Industry.
John Kennedy, chief exec-
utive of the federation, called
plans like that of the Isle of
Man effectively a “state-
imposed tax that would be
unworkable in practice and
discriminate against con-
sumers who want Internet
access without music ser-
vices.”
The island, perhaps best
known as a tax haven — the government prefers
“tax-efficient jurisdiction” — has taken an inter-
est in digital music and other high-technology
businesses as it seeks to diversify its economy
beyond financial services.
Mr. Berry, the director of inward investment,
said he had begun talks with music companies
to try to gain support for his plan. “Our size, de-
mographics and history of innovation means that
the island could be an ideal test bed,” he said.
GUY JACKSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Douglas, the capital of the Isle of Man,which is promoting an offbeat idea toremedy pirated downloads of music.
One plan is to chargea tax in exchange for rights to music online.
Repubblica NewYork
S C I E N C E & T E C H N O L O GY
VI MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009
$*) %./,(" #/&+- '0 #/&+-Rob Holman, a coastal oceanographer from Oregon State University, has collected more than 860 samples of sand, from all continents.
Rodeo Beach
Marin County, Calif.
Dark sand with a
range of metamor-
phic minerals. Grains
are large and round,
suggesting a steep
beach with high
waves.
Vainvamo Beach
Western Samoa
Black sand of
basaltic origin.
Phuket
Thailand
Coarse, angular
grains, possibly
brought in from afar
to replenish eroded
beaches.
Race Point Beach
Provincetown, Mass.
East Coast sand is
mostly clear quartz
mixed with darker,
heavier minerals ...
Lantana, Fla.
... which break up
and are lost offshore
as the sand moves
south, leaving fine
white quartz grains.
Old Course Beach
St. Andrews, Scotland
What most people
think of as “sand,” a
mix of quartz and
other minerals.
Red Beach
Santorini, Greece
Relatively fresh and
angular grains,
probably from a local
volcanic source.
Al Mamzar Beach
Dubai, U.A.E.
Fine grains from shell
fragments persist at
this site because the
beach is protected
from large waves.
Mahana Bay
Big Island, Hawaii
A green beach of
glassy olivine sands
from local volcanic
sources.
Pipeline
Oahu, Hawaii
With no large rivers
to provide sediment,
much of the sand is
shell fragments.
Isla Floreana
Galápagos Islands
Olivine-rich sand
from local volcanic
sources.
Ayers Rock
Australia
Not beach sand, but
a fine-grained sand
that is red from its
iron content.
Nouakchott
Mauritania
Very fine-grained
sand blown in from
the Sahara.
Biak Island
Indonesia
Well-rounded sand
composed mostly of
shell fragments.
THE NEW YORK TIMES; PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE REINERTSources: Rob Holman; Oregon State University Coastal Imaging Lab
Sand images shown
approximately twice
actual size.
By CORNELIA DEAN
CORVALLIS, Oregon — As a young
geophysicist in the 1980s, Rob Hol-
man attended a conference in San
Francisco that included a field trip to
a beach. Dr. Holman, who grew up in-
land, in Ottawa, stared at the ocean,
assessing the strengths and vectors
of the waves and currents. But when
he looked around, everyone else was
studying the sand.
He realized, he recalled, that “sand
is not the same everywhere.” So he
started collecting it. “I collected a few
samples and put them in jars,” he said.
“Then I had so many I built a rack.
Then I built three more racks. Then I
built four more.”
Today Dr. Holman is best known as
a coastal oceanographer at Oregon
State University whose computerized
photography system, called Argus,
has given researchers new ways to
observe and measure beaches. But he
still collects sand, which he displays on
shelves in the corridor outside his of-
fice. By now he has almost a thousand
samples. They come from his travels
and from geologists and amateurs all
over the world (including this report-
er) who send him grainy shipments in
envelopes, plastic bags, paper towels
and other wrappings. Each offering is
dried and transferred to glass labora-
tory jars a few centimeters high, which
Dr. Holman labels by latitude and
longitude of their site, as best he can
determine them from the sometimes
sketchy information his contributors
provide.
The collection includes sand from all
continents, including Antarctica.
Geology students at the university
study his collection, and they can learn
a lot from it. “This row is a north to
south transect along the East Coast,”
he said one day recently, pointing to
tubes containing samples collected at
American sites from Cape Cod to Key
West. “It just gets lighter and finer.”
That is because most of the time sand
is not stationary on the beach. On the
East Coast, “the big waves come in
from the northeast, and they drive the
littoral drift predominantly from north
to south,” Dr. Holman said, referring
to the longshore movement of sand.
By the time a grain of sand washes
up on a beach in Florida, it has been
battered by waves for a long time.
“The physical action of being continu-
ally beaten causes the grains to break
down, the angular corners to break
off,” he said. “They become more
rounded.”
And relatively dense mineral grains,
like garnet, have settled out. The re-
sult is a row of samples shifting from
the relatively dark, coarse grains of
the Northeast to the fine white beach
sand of the Southeast.
“There are a number of characteris-
tics you can look at — the nature of the
sand and the shape, where would the
minerals come from, different trans-
port and aging,” he said. “Those all af-
fect the sand you see on the beach.”
Dr. Holman developed the Argus
system during research he began
about 20 years ago at the Army Corps
of Engineers research pier on the coast
at Duck, North Carolina. Today, there
are Argus installations at Duck and in
Oregon, California, Hawaii, England,
the Netherlands, Australia, New Zea-
land, Spain, Italy and Brazil.
Researchers assigned to the Duck
pier send instruments into the surf to
make precise measurements of the un-
derwater topography in the surf zone,
particularly the formation and move-
ment of sandbars.
Understanding these sandbars is
critical to the study of beach erosion
and climate-related sea level rise, but
the surf zone is a notoriously hostile
research environment. As a practi-
cal matter, the measurements made
routinely at Duck are unobtainable
almost anywhere else.
Dr. Holman used the Duck instru-
ment data and time-lapse film from a
camera he mounted on a tower at the
Corps installation to figure out how to
correlate photographic information to
changes in the topography under the
surf. The results were surprising. For
one thing, sandbars were not moving
in simple patterns, as many coastal
scientists had thought they did. “The
biggest thing we learned is how much
more complicated it is than we thought
it was,” he said. “There is a richness of
morphologies.”
Using Argus data, scientists can
watch, almost in real time, as sand-
bars appear, disappear, curve, drift,
breach and otherwise act up under the
camouflage of breaking waves. The
system can even be used to spot rip
currents in real time.
S. Jeffress Williams, a coastal geolo-
gist with the United States Geological
Survey, called the system “a critical
piece of new technology.”
“The Argus system allows us to
quantify and document visually the
changes that take place along the
coast on a variety of different time
frames,” he said.
Grains of Sand Offer Lessons About the Oceans
LEAH NASH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Rob Holman, with sand samples from nearly 1,000 sites aroundthe world, developed a system toobserve beaches.
F I N D I N G S
The Wrong Foot ForwardThe way four-legged animals
walk has been well known since
the 1880s, when Eadweard Muy-
bridge’s motion-capture photo-
graphs revealed the sequence of leg
movements.
They walk this way: the left hind
leg moves forward, followed by the
left foreleg, right hind leg and right
foreleg, in order.
You’d think that artists, taxider-
mists, toy designers and others
responsible for depicting animals
would get it right.
But a study by Gabor Horvath
of Eotvos University in Hungary
and colleagues shows that this is
often not the case.
After analyzing more than 300
depictions of walking animals in
museums, veterinary books and
toy models, the researchers report
that to their surprise in almost half
of them the leg positions are wrong.
HENRY FOUNTAIN
Hunting and Fishing May Hasten EvolutionHot Liquids Ease a Cold
Like ice for a burn or a lozenge for
a cough, a cup of hot tea is an age-old
balm for sniffles, sneezing and stuffi-
ness.
Hot liquids, it is said, help loosen
secretions in the chest and sinuses,
making them easier to expel and ulti-
mately clearing up congestion.
The fluids are also meant to re-
verse dehydration.
But only recently have scientists
examined whether the effect is real.
In December, researchers at the
Common Cold Center at Cardiff Uni-
versity in Britain looked at whether
hot beverages relieved the symp-
toms of 30 people suffering from the
flu or common cold any better than
drinks at room temperature. They
found that the contrast was marked.
“The hot drink provided im-
mediate and sustained relief from
symptoms of runny nose, cough,
sneezing, sore throat, chilliness and
tiredness,” they reported, “whereas
the same drink at room temperature
only provided relief from symptoms
of runny nose, cough and sneezing.”
Other researchers have looked at
hot foods like chicken soup and had
similar results.
Chicken soup also contains
cold-fighting compounds that help
dissolve mucus in the lungs and sup-
press inflammation.
ANAHAD O’CONNOR
By CORNELIA DEAN
Human actions are increasing the
rate of evolutionary change in plants
and animals in ways that may hurt
their long-term prospects for survival,
scientists are reporting.
Hunting, commercial fishing and
some conservation regulations, like
minimum size limits on fish, may all
work against species health.
The idea that target species evolve
in response to predation is not new.
For example, researchers reported
several years ago that after decades
of heavy fishing, Atlantic cod had
evolved to reproduce at younger ages
and smaller sizes.
Based on an analysis of earlier stud-
ies of 29 species — mostly fish, but also
a few animals and plants like bighorn
sheep and ginseng — researchers
from several Canadian and American
universities found that rates of evo-
lutionary change were three times
higher in species subject to “harvest
selection” than in other species. Writ-
ing in The Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, the researchers
say the data they analyzed suggested
that size at reproductive maturity in
the species under pressure had shrunk
in 30 years or so by 20 percent, and that
organisms were reaching reproduc-
tive age about 25 percent sooner.
In Alberta, Canada, for example,
where regulations limit hunters of
bighorn sheep to large animals, aver-
age horn length and body mass have
dropped, said Paul Paquet, a biolo-
gist at the University of Calgary who
participated in the research. And as
people collect ginseng in the wild, “the
robustness and size of the plant is de-
clining,” he said.
The researchers said that reproduc-
ing at a younger age and smaller size
allowed organisms to leave offspring
before they were caught or killed. But
some evidence suggests that they may
not reproduce as well, said Chris Da-
rimont, a postdoctoral fellow in envi-
ronmental studies at the University
of California, Santa Cruz, who led the
work. The fish they studied that are
reproducing earlier “on average have
far, far, far fewer eggs than those who
wait an additional year and grow a few
more centimeters,” he said.
Dr. Darimont said it was unknown
whether traits would change back if
harvesting were reduced, or how long
that might take.
The researchers also noted that the
pattern of loss to human predation like
hunting or harvesting is opposite to
what occurs in nature or even in agri-
culture. Predators typically take “the
newly born or the nearly dead,” Dr.
Darimont said. For predators, target-
ing healthy adults can be dangerous.
But commercial fishing nets and
other gear that comply with conserva-
tion regulations typically trap large
fish while letting smaller ones escape.
Trophy hunters seek out the largest
animals. “Targeting large, reproduc-
ing adults and taking so many of them
in a population in a given year — that
creates this ideal recipe for rapid trait
change,” Dr. Darimont said.
Bighorn sheep and Atlantic cod are generally killed by humans as mature adults.
LEIF PARSONS
Repubblica NewYork
H E A LT H & F I T N E S S
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009 VII
By BETHANY LYTTLE
David Shack’s Type 1 diabetes had
been so out of control for so many
years that he had had more than 100
seizures.
So, of course, he decided to partici-
pate in an Ironman race.
Given that Mr. Shack, 31, a science
teacher and father of three in Boone,
North Carolina, had gone long stretch-
es avoiding medical care and enjoyed
nibbling on steak fat or chicken skin, he
made an unlikely candidate.
“Dave was a doctor’s worst night-
mare,” said John Moore, who lives in
Denver and sells annuities. “There’s
no question his life was at risk.”
Mr. Shack was recruited for the
2008 Ford Ironman Wisconsin by Mr.
Moore, 31, who also has Type 1 diabe-
tes. Participants would have to follow a
3.8-kilometer swim with a 180-kilome-
ter bike ride and a 42-kilometer run.
But, Mr. Shack said, “something
about the craziness of it got me go-
ing.”
And go he did.
Mr. Shack completed the race in
September. It took him about 16 hours.
“I was the last dude across the finish
line,” he said.
Faced with a chronic condition or a
terminal diagnosis, some individuals
start training regimens that even the
healthiest would find taxing. And the
result is fascinating if somewhat in-
congruous: people fighting sickness
or disease who are, at the same time,
in the best shape of their lives.
“It’s not always as simple as some
sort of headlong rush into denial or a
desire for supreme control,” said Dr.
Gail Saltz, a psychiatrist at New York-
Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell
Medical Center. “People who have a
close brush with their own mortality
sometimes experience a reaction akin
to separation anxiety. A separation
that, in this case, is from life.”
Some may push themselves too hard,
while others may put too much faith in
their new physicality, believing that
they can defeat disease and sickness
purely through physical exertion. But
experiencing the body as capable, ex-
perts say, can be a powerful, and em-
powering, way to cope.
Kim Klein, a student at
Loyola University Chicago
School of Law, experienced
such a shift. Until 2007,
she had managed to avoid
exercise for most of her 41
years.
“I was the person who
was always going to join a
gym and never did,” Ms.
Klein said. Then came
breast cancer.Ms. Klein
decided to train for a five-
kilometer run.
“ S o m e t h i n g h a d
changed,” she said. “I was
desperate to feel my body
again. I needed to know it
was still there.”
In April last year, she finished that
race — and went on to complete four
more.
“Look,” she said, “there’s no ques-
tion that I’m running away — yes, lit-
erally — from the cancer. Every step
feels like maybe I’m farther away,
maybe I’m stopping it from coming
back.”
But for some, the realization that
they can’t outrun an illness can be dev-
astating. Richard Brodsky, 56, found
out he had terminal brain cancer in
2002. Increasing his running distances
each day, Mr. Brodsky, an architect and
philanthropist, set out to run the 2003
New York City Marathon.
“It felt so right to me to be pushing
myself,” said Mr. Brodsky of Atlan-
tic Beach, Long Island, in New York.
“Then a radiologist told me that fitness
had nothing to do with my life expec-
tancy, nothing at all. It was such a blow.
I guess on some level
I knew it, but when
I heard it I got very
upset.”
Still, one year and
one day after learn-
ing of his diagnosis,
he crossed the finish
line with his neurolo-
gist at his side.
For medical profes-
sionals, patients like
these present a chal-
lenge. Just because
it is exercise doesn’t
mean it’s good.
“A line can be
crossed,” said Chris-
tine Mermier, an ex-
ercise physiologist at the University of
New Mexico at Albuquerque. “Howev-
er, my experience is that patients of this
type tend to be very in touch with how
much they can get away with. Those
who develop a real passion for athletics
seem to find a way to walk that tight-
rope.”
By ABBY ELLIN
Randall and Katherine Hansen,
who live in DeLand, Florida, have
made a ritual of doing the “Fat Flush
Plan” at least once a year “to cleanse
our bodies and help break some bad
habits,” said Mr. Hansen, 48, presi-
dent of Quintessential Careers, a ca-
reer guidance Web site.
The regimen, publicized by the
nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman
in a 2001 book, mostly targets the
liver, which Ms. Gittleman believes
is less able to metabolize fat because
of toxins absorbed orally or through
the skin. Her plan includes a low-
carbohydrate, high-protein menu of
about 1,200 calories a day, with no al-
cohol, caffeine, sugar, grains, bread,
starchy vegetables, dairy products,
fats or oils (save flaxseed oil). She
also recommends a “Long Life Cock-
tail” of diluted cranberry juice and
ground flaxseeds, or a teaspoon of
psyllium husks, in the morning and
evening; and a mixture of cranberry
juice and water throughout the day.
Ms. Gittleman sells a Fat Flush kit
for $112.50 with herbs and nutrients
like dandelion root, milk thistle and
Oregon grape root.
“It’s horrible when I’m on it — I
feel very deprived,” said Mr. Han-
sen, who credits the program with
helping him lose more than 30 ki-
lograms. “But I always feel better
after, and I end up dropping about
10 pounds [4.5 kilograms] in the two
weeks — an added bonus on top of
the detox.”
The Hansens are among the
thousands of people who regularly
“detox” in an effort to rid the gas-
trointestinal system of unsavory
substances that proponents believe
build up and can cause allergies, ex-
haustion and certain cancers.
But many Western doctors believe
detoxification does little to no good,
and is possibly harmful.
“It is the opinion of mainstream
and state-of-the-art medicine and
physiology that these claims are not
only ludicrous but tantamount to
fraud,” said Dr. Peter Pressman, an
internist with the Naval Hospital in
Jacksonville, Florida. “The contents
of what ends up being consumed dur-
ing a ‘detox’ are essentially stimu-
lants, laxatives and diuretics.”
Still, detoxification is enormously
popular, according to SPINS, a mar-
ket research and consulting firm
based in Schaumburg, Illinois, that
caters to the natural and organic
products industry. Sales of herbal
formulas for cleansing, detoxifica-
tion and organ support among nat-
ural food retailers were more than
$27 million from December 2, 2007,
to November 29, 2008.
“Western medicine is treating the
symptoms instead of addressing the
root cause,” said Edward F. Group
III, a Houston-based naturopath
with theholisticoption.com, an on-
line resource for the alternative
wellness community. “We basically
have a world that’s constipated. It’s
like if you change your oil in your car
but never change the oil filter. Ulti-
mately it gets so full of sludge the en-
gine’s going to break down.”
The goal of detoxification is to
remove that sludge. Indeed, most
regimens — whose benefits have
been espoused by celebrities like
Beyoncé Knowles, who claimed to
have lost 9 kilograms before the
movie “Dreamgirls” on the Master
Cleanse, a concoction of lemon juice,
cayenne pepper, maple syrup and
water — typically involve fasting,
food restriction, nutritional supple-
ments or a combination thereof.
Most regimens eliminate caf-
feine, alcohol and nicotine; some
limit meat and solid foods and rely
on unusual juice blends (cayenne
pepper and lemon, for instance), all
in an effort to rid the gastrointesti-
nal system of pesticides, dioxins,
polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
and food additives — in other words,
just about anything you have eaten,
drunk, smelled, inhaled or looked at
that isn’t organic.
Because many holistic doctors
believe that one’s bowels should be
irrigated as much as four times a
day, some detoxers rely on colonics,
enemas and herbal laxatives. Others
rely on liquid fasts, herbal supple-
ments, colonics and formulas.
As the number of products and
treatments grows, critics continue
to emphasize what they say is a lack
of scientific evidence that detoxifica-
tion actually works.
As Dr. Frank Lipman, a specialist
in integrative medicine in New York
puts it: “People are selling a product.
There’s a difference between selling
a product and practicing good medi-
cine.”
Ask mothers why babies constantly
pick things up from the floor or
ground and put them in their mouths,
and they often say that that’s how
babies explore the world. But why the
mouth, when sight,
hearing, touch and
even scent are far
better at identifying
things?
Since all instinctive
behaviors have an
evolutionary advantage, chances are
that this one too has helped us sur-
vive as a species. And, indeed, accu-
mulating evidence strongly suggests
that eating dirt is good for you.
In studies of what is called the
hygiene hypothesis, researchers
are concluding that organisms like
the millions of bacteria, viruses and
especially worms that enter the body
along with “dirt” spur the develop-
ment of a healthy immune system.
Several continuing studies suggest
that worms may help to redirect an
immune system that has gone awry
and resulted in autoimmune disor-
ders, allergies and asthma.
These studies seem to explain why
immune system disorders like multi-
ple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, inflam-
matory bowel disease, asthma and
allergies have risen significantly in
the United States and other devel-
oped countries.
“What a child is doing when he
puts things in his mouth is allowing
his immune response to explore his
environment,” Mary Ruebush, a mi-
crobiology and immunology instruc-
tor, wrote in her new book, “Why Dirt
Is Good.” “Not only does this allow
for ‘practice’ of immune responses,
which will be necessary for protec-
tion, but it also plays a critical role
in teaching the immature immune
response what is best ignored.”
One leading researcher, Dr. Joel
V. Weinstock, the director of gastro-
enterology and hepatology at Tufts
Medical Center in Boston, said in an
interview that the immune system at
birth “is like an unprogrammed com-
puter. It needs instruction.”
He said that public health mea-
sures like cleaning up contaminated
water and food have saved the lives
of countless children, but they “also
eliminated exposure to many organ-
isms that are probably good for us.”
In answer to the question, “Are
we too clean?” Dr. David Elliott, a
gastroenterologist and immunolo-
gist at the University of Iowa, said:
“Dirtiness comes with a price. But
cleanliness comes with a price, too.
We’re not proposing a return to the
germ-filled environment of the 1850s.
But if we properly understand how or-
ganisms in the environment protect
us, maybe we can give a vaccine or
mimic their effects with some innocu-
ous stimulus.”
Dr. Ruebush deplores the current
fetish for the hundreds of antibac-
terial products that may actually
foster the development of antibiotic-
resistant, disease-causing bacteria.
Plain soap and water are all that are
needed to become clean, she noted.
“I certainly recommend washing
your hands after using the bathroom,
before eating, after changing a dia-
per, before and after handling food”
and whenever they’re visibly soiled,
she wrote.
Dr. Weinstock goes even further.
“Children should be allowed to go
barefoot in the dirt, play in the dirt
and not have to wash their hands
when they come in to eat,” he said.
While Believers ‘Detox,’Skeptics Are Scoffing
CHRISTIAN HANSEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Richard Brodsky ran a marathon after learning he had cancer. “It felt so right to be pushing myself,” he said.
GWENDA KACZOR
STEVE DYKES
David Shack, who has Type 1 diabetes, finished a triathlon.
ESSAY
JANE E.BRODY
Ask Any Baby: A Little Dirt Can Help an Immune System
Disease Invades, and Motivation Kicks In
GREG NEILL
Repubblica NewYork
A R T S & S T Y L E S
VIII MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2009
Director Tries to Honor the Dark Heart of ‘Watchmen’
DAVE GIBBONS/DC COMICS
Previous efforts to make a film of“Watchmen” have failed.
By DAVE ITZKOFF
BURBANK, California — When Zack
Snyder became the director of the film
adaptation of “Watchmen,” the graphic
novel about troubled superheroes in a
declining age, he knew he was taking
on not only a seminal piece of popular
culture but more than 20 years of un-
fulfilled expectations and competing
agendas.
From his encounters with the origi-
nal comics, written by Alan Moore and
illustrated by Dave Gibbons, he was
well versed in the creators’ weighty,
grown-up ideas about the futility of
heroism. He was also aware that many
directors before him had been unsuc-
cessful at the same endeavor.
But Mr. Snyder said he believed that
his greatest challenge would be satis-
fying the desires of the book’s devoted
fans, who, like him, regard it as an ex-
emplary work of postmodern storytell-
ing and who would eviscerate him if he
strayed too far from the original com-
ics. And he believed that the only path
to satisfying these viewers began by
breaking from the source material.
“Watchmen,” which opens world-
wide in March, begins with a scene de-
picted only in fragments in the comics:
a fight between an unknown assailant
and an avenger called the Comedian.
This is followed by an opening credit
sequence, largely of Mr. Snyder’s in-
vention, that juxtaposes Bob Dylan’s
“The Times They Are A-Changin’ ”
with a montage of masked do-gooders
with names like Dollar Bill and Hooded
Justice as they participate in key mo-
ments of history, like V-J Day and the
assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The scenes that follow will be famil-
iar to readers with a panel-by-panel
familiarity with the comic: the surreal
dream of a costumed vigilante who is
plagued by sexual shortcomings and
fears of nuclear war; a man-god cre-
ated in a scientific accident, strolling
the red sands of Mars; New York City
partly annihilated by a villain’s master
plan — all connected by a story about
heroes corrupted by the darkness they
cannot expunge from the world.
The two introductory scenes, Mr.
Snyder said, are concessions to audi-
ences who know nothing of “Watch-
men,” “so that they will swallow the
bitter pill of the next 20 minutes of the
movie and listen to a bunch of superhe-
roes rap it out for a while.”
For more than two and a half years
this has been the problem that Mr.
Snyder has been asked to solve: how
to preserve enough of the multilayered
graphic novel to satisfy its devotees,
while providing enough entry points for
a mass audience willing to sit through a
$120 million, 160-minute, R-rated mov-
ie about contemplative crime fighters
who rarely get into fights.
Almost from the moment that the
first issue of “Watchmen” was pub-
lished in America as a limited series by
DC Comics in 1986, Hollywood has tried
and failed to film it. The director Terry
Gilliam pursued the project in the late
1980s, only to conclude that it could not
be condensed into a movie.
When Mr. Snyder, 42, was ap-
proached in 2006 to direct the film, his
résumé made many “Watchmen” fans
nervous. A director of TV commercials,
he was known for flashy, hyperkinetic
work. In 2004 he had scored a hit with
his remake of the George A. Romero
zombie movie “Dawn of the Dead” and
was at work on an unheralded action
movie called “300,” a violent adaptation
of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about
the ancient battle of Thermopylae,
which went on to make $456 million.
“He’s got a very pop sensibility, which
requires an incredible visual style,”
said Jeff Robinov, the president of the
Warner Brothers Pictures Group.
But Mr. Snyder, who first read
“Watchmen” in college, knew it was an
arcane, intricate comic in which phi-
losophy is exchanged more often than
punches. “There’s no moment where
it’s not self-aware,” he said.
Even as “Watchmen” adheres to
superhero formulas, it is dismantling
many traditions of the medium. Mr.
Snyder said, “It’s always shining a light
on the idea of putting a costume on and
going to try to right wrongs and saying,
‘Really, you think that’s cool?’”
Mr. Snyder said he hopes the film
might shift the balance of power be-
tween movie studios and comic-book
creators. To this day, he said, Warner
Brothers still wants Mr. Miller and him
to create a sequel to “300.”
“The attitude toward comic books,
they show their hand a little bit,” Mr.
Snyder said. “They would never say
that about a real novelist, but they
would about a comic book. ‘They just
crank those out, right? It’s like no big
deal.’” In the end, he said, “all I would
hope is that this movie gives geek cul-
ture a little bit of cred.”
He was known as Buzz and used to
boast that he had never had a dance
lesson in his life. He wasn’t the type to
go on about his choreographic ideas,
the best of which, he said, came to him
in the bath.
But the director and
choreographer Busby
Berkeley’s vision
was solidified by two
seemingly disparate
concepts: his appre-
ciation for beautiful
women and his time in the Army,
where he created large-scale parade
drills for American troops in Europe
during World War I. Whether or not
there was any tangible connection be-
tween those ravishing dances and the
rejuvenating power of time spent in a
tub, his wild imagination and famous
overhead shots remain astonishing,
especially in the way he turned danc-
ing bodies into human kaleidoscopes.
As part of this year’s Dance on Cam-
era festival in New York, Berkeley’s
work was highlighted with screenings
of “Blithe Spirits: Rudavsky Meets
Busby Berkeley,” which features four
shorts by the Slovakian artist Ondrej
Rudavsky. There was also a screen-
ing of Berkeley’s 1934 film “Dames”
in honor of its 75th anniversary, and
of “The Gang’s All Here,” Berkeley’s
first color film, made in 1943.
Berkeley’s scope is still astounding.
His agile camera changed the way
dance and musicals were filmed. In
his work the power is not rooted in the
individual dancer, but in the majestic
force of the group.
In “The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti
Hat,” from “The Gang’s All Here,”
Carmen Miranda is joined by a long
line of barefoot chorus girls who carry
giant bananas aloft, lowering them to
the ground in what now brings to mind
a stadium-style wave. As an over-
head camera passes by, 12 dancers,
linked at the feet and holding jumbo
strawberries, form a star while others
surround them, raising and lowering
their bananas like petals on a flower.
As Miranda sings her final verse,
the camera pulls back to reveal two
rows of strawberries and her stupen-
dous headwear: a towering sprout of
ripe bananas.
But strangely enough, for the ex-
tra thrill that Technicolor provides,
Berkeley’s productions are most
ideally represented in the subtle
shadings of black and white, where
they shimmer incandescently under
silvery light.
The black-and-white “Dames” has
it all, beginning with “The Girl at the
Ironing Board” and its witty homage
to “Swan Lake,” in which a laundry
room comes alive with swans as danc-
ers slip their arms into white fabric,
curving their palms like delicate
heads. Moments later the clothes
come to life in a dance without danc-
ers. The scene is still modern.
GIA
KOURLAS
ESSAY
The Dance Master With Kaleidoscope Eyes
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER
In Busby Berkeley’s first color film, “The Gang’s All Here,” Carmen Miranda had the lead role, and anoutrageous headdress. Mr. Berkeley, below in 1932, first created large-scale parade drills for American troops.
A superhero movie withmore philosophy debatesthan fight scenes.
By JIMMY WANG
BEIJING — Rougher and more
rebellious than the bland pop that
floods the airwaves here, hip-hop is
not sanctioned by broadcast media
producers or state censors but has
managed to attract a grass-roots fan
base. And many students and work-
ing-class Chinese have begun writ-
ing rap as a form of self-expression.
“Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll
— we can talk about our lives, what
we’re thinking about, what we feel,”
said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-
hop D.J. in China who is known as
Wordy. “The Chinese education sys-
tem doesn’t encourage you to express
your own character.”
While American
rappers like Eminem
and Q-Tip have been
popular in China since
the 1990s, home-grown
rap didn’t start gain-
ing momentum until a
decade later. The group
Yin Ts’ang (its name
means “hidden”), one of
the pioneers of Chinese
rap, is made up of global
nomads: a Beijinger, a
Chinese-Canadian and
two Americans.
“The big change
was when rappers
started writing verse
in Chinese,” said Zhong
Cheng, 27, a member of the group who
was raised in Canada but born in Bei-
jing, where he returned in 1997. “Be-
fore that, kids listened to hip-hop in
English but maybe less than 1 percent
could actually begin to understand.”
Yin Ts’ang’s first hit was “In Bei-
jing,” from its 2003 debut album,
“Serve the People”; the title is a twist
on an old political slogan. It sets a
melody played on a thousand-year-
old Chinese fiddle called the erhu
against a hip-hop beat that brings
Run D.M.C. to mind. The song, an
insider’s look at the capital, took the
underground music scene by storm.
“There’s a lot of cats that can rap
back home,” said Jeremy Johnston, a
member of the group and the son of a
United States Air Force captain. “But
there’s not a lot of cats that can rap
in Chinese.” Mr. Johnston, 33, moved
to Beijing in the late ’90s because, he
said, it was “the thing nobody else
was doing.”
Since “In Beijing,” the Chinese hip-
hop scene has quickly grown. Hiphop.
cn, a Web site listing events and links
to songs, started with just a few hun-
dred members in 2007; in 2008 it re-
ceived millions of views, according to
one of the site’s directors.
Dozens of hip-hop clubs have
opened across the country, and thou-
sands of raps and music videos by
Chinese M.C.’s are spreading over
the Internet. But making Chinese
hip-hop is still a relatively profitless
— and often subversive — activity.
Some Chinese rappers address what
they see as the country’s most glar-
ing injustices.
Wong Li, a 24-year-old rapper from
Dongbei, uses Chinese proverbs in
his lyrics to create social commen-
tary. “All people care about is mon-
ey,” he said. “If you don’t have money,
you’re treated like garbage.”
In the recent hit “Hello Teacher,”
Yin Tsar, one of the hip-hop scene’s
biggest acts (its name means “The
Three Shadows”) rails against the
authority of unfair teachers: “You’re
supposed to be a role model, but I’ve
seen you spit in public.”
Shuo chang, the Chinese word for
hip-hop, translates to “speak sing”
and is a loaded term. It also describes
a contentious subject for musicians,
producers and fans in China. Pop
stars who have their own spin on hip-
hop dominate the mainstream here.
Many tack high-speed raps onto the
end of their songs, even ballads, and
consider themselves rappers.
They rap about love “and call it hip-
hop when it isn’t,” said Wang Liang,
the D.J.
With Rhymes in Chinese,
Rappers Confront the Power
YINENT
The group Yin Ts’ang comprises a Beijinger,a Chinese-Canadian and two Americans.
Wang Yao contributed research.
Repubblica NewYork
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